Election 2010: Follow the Money

There's a lot to be said about the politics and the psychologies involved in this upcoming electoral expression, and of course a lot is being said and will be said. But a lot of it will be disproportionately evaluated, because a lot of it may be less relevant than the cold hard cash silently changing hands. Right now as Dylan said, money doesn't talk, it swears.

So before I meander down those roads, let me state what should be obvious: the super rich and the merely rich are trying very hard to buy this election for the Republicans.

The general approach is ancient, as old as oligarchy. The rich stir up the fears and prejudices of the poor, and flatter them with attention temporarily by making a few stars from their number to voice their platitudes and mockery of their enemies. They do it to serve their own interests, not at all the interests of those they inflame and flatter. And they do it with money. They use money to bribe and buy people. Money to fund institutions that buy people, and buy them influence. Money to buy media, to buy media time, and to fund political campaigns. And of course, they do it chiefly for money. The kind the Tea Partiers they finance will never see.

This year they are empowered by a Supreme Court decision that both allows unprecedented amounts of money into the political system, and hides where it is coming from. Odd that it should come at such a propitious moment, after the Obama campaign showed how much cash as well as energy could come from the grassroots, and the Democrats as a party began to raise money more effectively than the official Republican party. They're doing so in 2010 as well.

But the evidence is growing that the secret corporate and rich folks money is overwhelming, and applied to GOPer candidacies. First a little exposing of a shadowy tax-exempt group operating in Alaska and elsewhere. Then another phantom in Oregon. Then articles exposing the billionaires behind the Tea Party movement. President Obama called it an insidious attempt to take over democracy.

Now the closer we get to election day, the more obvious it is--though only if you pay attention. At First Read Tuesday: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he expects labor unions will be outspent 20-to-1 by corporate groups aligned with Republicans. The CS Monitor focuses on the infamous Karl Rove, and his funneling of millions to GOPer candidates--the Monitor wonders if it is legal, but when has that stopped Karl Rove before?

Update 10/7: President Obama continues to hammer this issue, noting that Democrats are being outspent 6 and 7 to 1 in many races, usually by outside groups--including at least one race in which an outside conservative group is outspending Dem and GOPer candidates combined, on behalf of the GOPer candidate. He also pointed to evidence that some of this money is coming from foreign corporations--something he warned might happen at the State of the Union where one member of the Supreme Court that allowed this was seen to disagree. Some of the evidence of foreign money was turned up by Think Progress.

"A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.” So begins a column by Paul Krugman, noting the other strategy of corporate interests funding institutions and people to press their case--especially the phenomenon of Fox. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy." But that's hardly all that Fox does. While still claiming to be a news network, it relentlessly pushes one point of view and now, particular candidates, with no respect for accuracy or fairness, and with relentless distortion and innuendo in its daily toolbox. As Krugman and others note, the Tea Party movements owes much if not most of its rise to Fox News.

This simply adds new money, new muscle and new megaphones to old sleaze, and there's no better symbol of that, writes Bob Herbert, that the GOPer who could become Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Herbert recalls that he was the guy who literally gave out money from Big Tobacco to sympathetic members on the House floor. Boehner is even more of a tool of corporate interests today, he writes. "Both major parties have, with great enthusiasm, turned more and more of the government over to corporate and banking interests. But the G.O.P., with Mr. Boehner currently the point person, is fanatical about it, has barely tried to hide its willingness to offer up the government wholesale, no questions asked." He concludes "The U.S. is in terrible shape right now because far too much influence has been ceded to the financial and corporate elites who have used that influence to game the system and reap rewards that are almost unimaginable. Ordinary working Americans have been left far behind, gasping and on their knees. John Boehner has been one of the leaders of the army of enablers responsible for this abominable state of affairs."

The America the GOPers want is what their patrons want: very low taxes for the super rich, to be paid for by the cumulative poor of future generations; incomes for the super rich rising into further obscenity while most Americans slip back and more fall into poverty; corporations allowed to pollute their way to higher profits, to sacrifice the planet and life as we know it to their further financial enrichment and temporary power. And they will tell the most outrageous lies--pleasant ones and vicious ones--and with their own network, and others too scared to contradict them, they are given the legitimacy to do so.

They may get the country back all right, to be further exploited and despoiled, thanks to invisible money financing campaigns, and their visible shills--such as the failed actor Glenn Beck, noting with approval the spectre of a family watching their house burn down, killing their dogs and cat, alongside the fire fighters that refused to put the fire out, because the family had not paid their $75 fee to the privatized fire company. This is the GOPer future, and it could be coming to your town, too.

So when I write about other aspects of this election, other kinds of portents, please don't forget that politics and psychology may be potent factors, and ultimately the psychology involved may be the most basic. But for the winners and losers and what it all means, don't for a minute forget to follow the money.