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Thom's blog
Will the billionaires buy another election?
You need to know this…The 2014 midterm elections are officially the most expensive midterm elections in American history. According to the Center for Responsive Politics around $3.67 billion will be spent this election cycle - beating out the previous record of $3.63 billion spent in the 2010 midterms.
To put that number in perspective, CNN estimates that if all the money spent on the midterms was spent on something else - it would be enough to build and operate 100 Ebola treatment centers in Africa.
It would also be enough to fund the K through 12 education of 12,000 American kids - or enough to buy 25 fighter F-18 fighter jets to help in the fight against ISIS. If it wasn’t already obvious before - it should be now.
We have the best democracy money can buy - and if there’s one story about this election cycle that everyone should be talking about - it’s that. Yes - the possibility of a Republican takeover of the Senate gets all the headlines - but the fact that billionaires like the Koch Brothers can now throw money at whatever race they want without any checks on their spending whatsoever is even more important - especially when you look at the big picture of what’s really going on here.
What we’re seeing with all the record-breaking spending in this year’s midterms isn’t an accident - it’s the perfection of the brave new world of money in politics.
The Supreme Court opened the floodgates four years ago with Citizens United - and then it opened them a bit a more with its McCutcheon decision earlier this year. This gave the right-wing money machine power like it never had before - and now - in 2014 - that machine has fine-tuned its strategy - creating a monster.
-Thom
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