Dear James, Daniel and Emily,
It just seems obvious to me that when you really look at this election, paying close attention to the parts of the many many many nasty attack ads out there, that there is an effort on the part of some people with really big pockets to buy this election. I would say that it's about a 3-1 ratio of attack ads attacking Democratic candidates here in my home of Colorado. And I would say about 2 in 3 of those ads are not paid for by the Republican party or the Republican candidates. Nope ,they are paid for by PAC's whose funding is alarmingly invisible. And this is really alarming, and should be alarming no matter what side of the aisle you are on.
If we truly believe we live in a Democracy, where the power resides in the hands of the people, this is a bad thing. Because, while it is still up to us to vote, and those votes do count, if the voters only ever hear one side of the story, they cannot make good decisions. I am as guilty as anyone of unconsciously filtering my news sources, getting much of my news from some admittedly liberal sources. But when I come across a story I still research it, or at least take the slant of the reporter into account most of the time. But what kind of electorate would we have if all of the news, and political campaign information only came from 1 side?
That's the real issue here. A great majority of voters are not willing to really dig on most issues. They will listen to the barrage of ads and eventually the message sinks in. If all of the campaign ads, or 75% of them come from the same side people will not get the whole story without getting off the couch and researching the issues. As an example, there are 3 ballot issues here in Colorado, 60, 61, 102, that have been labeled 'the bad 3'. I have only seen ads opposing them. Admittedly I will still oppose them, but if I only ever see an ad that opposes them what is the likelihood I would vote for them?
Once Citizens United opened the floodgates to Corporate spending this is the result. Big money can buy up the air waves, flooding them with ads in favor of the candidates or issues they support, and ads attacking those they don't support. And don't think that the lesson of this fall is falling on deaf ears on the side of the Democrats. Yes, I think it is good, and pure, and presents the right image for the DNC and it's candidates to not court the big money corporate spenders this year. But that could change in 2012. If you're a conservative do you really look forward to an avalanche of Pro-Obama, anti-Republican ads paid for by the wealthy liberal elites and their corporate allies? Because that is exactly the logical chain of events.
Their are some who say this is great, it's free speech, it's the Free Market. But it is the exact opposite, it's paid for speech, and the last I checked we lived in a Democracy, not a Corporate Oligarchy where we were governed by candidates chosen by and supported by the biggest spenders.
What can we do about it? One, look at who is paying for the ads you see, research those organizations to see where their money is coming from. Two, demand that there be laws on the books that force any and all donations be transparent and visible so you can know who is truly funding these ads. Finally, hope and pray that a couple of elections like this will eventually force a reversal of Citizens United and we can return to being a country where our representatives are truly of and by the people, not some rich business person who can get the bigger corporate backers.
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