Sanders Is Crowdfunding a Campaign, but That Doesn’t Diminish the Need for Campaign Reform

http://www.thenation.com/article/sanders-is-crowdfunding-a-campaign-but-that-doesnt-diminish-the-need-for-campaign-reform/

 As a long-time critic of the current system for financing campaigns, Sanders usually finds himself in the position of criticizing big money in politics. Even as his campaign raced to increase its third-quarter total Wednesday, the senator was urging backers to “chip in $3 before the midnight [Federal Election Commission] deadline as a way of saying you have had enough of the billionaire class buying our elections.”

The Sanders campaign’s approach to fund-raising suggests an alternative model for crowdfunding presidential campaigns. He has attracted 1.3 million small donations (from 650,000 individual donors) and, in the context of contemporary politics, they really are small: In the previous quarter, the senator’s average donation was $33.51. Ninety-nine percent of the donations came in amounts under $250.

But one candidate’s ability to do things differently does not amount to a repair of a broken system. In fact, it can foster the fantasy that it is possible to address the crisis without making necessary reforms.

 Reforms remain as necessary as ever. Thus, while the headlines about Sanders this week will focus on his current fundraising, it is more important that earlier this year—with far less attention—he reintroduced a constitutional amendment to effectively overturn US Supreme Court decisions that have struck down limits on campaign spending by corporations and the wealthiest donors. Those decisions have ushered in an era of money-drenched politics in which candidates spend too much time raising money, in which they raise too much money and in which they spend too much money. And in which shadowy networks of special-interest groups and billionaires flood the process with even more money.