Cash Register Politics Destroys Democracy

December 09, 2014

Are You Tired of Rinse-and-Repeat Electoral Politics?

Cash Register Politics Destroys Democracy

by RALPH NADER

“The mid-term elections are over. After spending hundreds of millions of business dollars, the Republicans now control the Senate and hold on to the House of Representatives. It is amazing that the Democrats did not do worse.” If those sentences ring familiar, it’s because I wrote them in 2002 in response to that year’s midterm elections, although they could easily apply today.

Now several weeks removed from the 2014 elections, the news cycle has moved on to other matters, but the fallout remains to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans. Unless Americans start to get serious about their elections, we may as well repeat the same sentiments in another 12 years with an even greater price tag attached.

After spending even more hundreds of millions of campaign dollars, the craven, corporatist Republicans once again control Congress. Of course, the Democrats dialed for many of the same commercial dollars and spent their own hundreds of millions in campaign advertising, all while spectacularly failing to make a better case about the direction of our country to the voters than the worst Republican Party in history.

Note another 2002 reaction of mine: “…the Democrats were not highlighting the desperate need for raising the federal minimum wage (now about a third less in purchasing power than it was in 1968!)” Once again, 12 years later in 2014, Democrats dropped the ball on an issue that polls show 80 percent of Americans agree upon. I also wrote about the Democrats failing to go after Republicans on consumer protection issues like food safety and clean air and water, which we all need regardless of political alignment.

In light of history repeating itself so completely, one must ask where did all these millions of dollars go if, 12 years later, the very same mistakes, blunders and oversights are being made?

The answer is: huge media buys, endless mailings both paper and electronic, and incessant telephone calls, many recorded, to registered voters. One firm estimated that $2.6 billion was spent just on TV advertising in the 2014 midterms. Very few, if any, of these political ads are informative to voters — in fact, most people find them enormously irritating, specifically in swing states where they run constant until Election Day. Despite the overload of political noise on the airwaves, the issues that would really strike a difference are disturbingly ignored.

Just think about all the good those millions could have done were they focused on public needs such as repairing roads and infrastructure, or easing student loan burdens, or refurbishing water systems, schools and libraries — it is enough to get anyone with a deep interest in the preservation and improvement of their own local community riled up. The amount of money and resources poured into these showy and substance-lacking elections is appalling.


http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/09/cash-register-politics-destroys-democracy/