Monday, January 9, 2012

Sort of political Monday: Sunlight

The Sunlight Foundation, a left-wing organization that calls itself "nonpartisan', has looked at the one percent of the one percent of political donors. The results have not been given as much attention as they ought have gotten.

That this is the case is entirely the fault of the Sunlight Foundation itself which puts everyone off the scent right off the bat with this highly misleading paragraph:
Unlike the other 99.99% of Americans who do not make these contributions, these elite donors have unique access. In a world of increasingly expensive campaigns, The One Percent of the One Percent effectively play the role of political gatekeepers. Prospective candidates need to be able to tap into these networks if they want to be taken seriously. And party leaders on both sides are keenly aware that more than 80% of party committee money now comes from these elite donors.
That this is not true, however, becomes apparent if we skim down and look at the top recipients of this money. If we go down to the chart in which they present the house members most reliant on the one percent of the one percent, for example, this is whom we get Pete Stark (D-CA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), George Miller (D-CA), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and John Kline (R-MN). The Sunlight Foundation notes, as it could hardly avoid doing so, that most are Democrats. The same is true of the Senators who receive the most from the wealthiest donors. But there are a couple of other details that jump out at you aren't there?

Perhaps the most important of these is that these people all have very safe seats. If Gregory Meeks is ever defeated it will be by another Democrat not a Republican. He has already established beyond a reasonable doubt that you can be stupid, dishonest and crass and that won't bother the voters of NY's 6th congressional district so long as you're a Democrat.  Doris Matsui's sole qualification for her position is that she was married to the former holder of the seat. And this tells us something very important about the way big donors select recipients: they want to fund proven winners.

The Sunlight Foundation gets the problem exactly backwards. You don't need big money to win, the big money seeks out proven winners. If you want to buy anything at all, you have to buy it from someone who has it; if you want to buy political access, you're going to buy from someone who already has it.

Anyone who really wanted to make our politics somewhat cleaner tan it is would promote changes that make it harder for incumbents to remain in power. They, and not big donors, are the real gatekeepers.

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