Deciding on a candidate.
After watching the presentations of leading Democratic Party candidates at the Take Back America Conference,
http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/progressives_have_mojo_now
I was prepared to decide on a candidate for the California Democratic Primary in February. I have a preference.
However, I am frustrated. Each of the major candidates are taking and are relying upon corporate money. They are passing on public financing. I understand that each feels a need to be competitive. But, I can’t get past the influence of corporate money in our elections. I have no reason to support a corporate candidate. I resent that our democracy has been reduced to a place where the corporations through money decide which of the candidates we choose between.
Al Gore, in his new book, Appeal to Reason, describes well the way money influences media buys and candidate selection. So, I am stuck. Advice is welcome.
I am also reading and writing for the revision of my book, Choosing Democracy. I am working on the role of democracy and schools. More on this in future posts.
Also, see the prior post on a Fall conference.
Duane Campbell
Monday, June 25, 2007
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2 comments:
The good news is that there's an answer to this problem of private money taking over our public politics. It's to reform and revitalize the presidential public financing system. The reason all major candidates are passing is that the dollar amounts provided by the system have not kept pace with modern campaign costs. Also, the system has no "matching funds clause" to provide additional money to candidates who are outspent by privately funded opponents (like the successful systems in Arizona and Maine have). Senator Russ Feingold has introduced legislation to correct these problems but there's much work to be done to persuade lawmakers of its merits. In the meantime all the candidates have to do the best they can with the current pay-to-play system they're stuck with. All the major Democratic presidential candidates have said they favor such a reformed public financing system so in the meantime I think we'll probably have to cut them some slack.
I agree. I campaigned for the Calif. Prop. on public finance.
This may be all we can do this year.
Duane
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