Russ Feingold wonders if the Democratic Party is "losing its identity." He's talking about accepting corporation campaign contributions. This is his signature issue. He's well-known for not accepting them in his campaigns.
I should note, that personally speaking, I like Feingold over-all. He's extremely intelligent, which, I don't care what you say, should be an asset in public life. Also, he's quite principled, mostly in the good sense of the term. (He's the only Democratic Senator to vote to impeach Bill Clinton, on Article 2, if I remember correctly.) Says Feingold:
"I think we'll lose anyway if we do this. We'll lose our soul when it comes to the issue of corporate domination. People will see us as weak. People will see us as corporate-lite. We'll gut our message. I think it's not just wrong, I think it's a dumb strategy. It's dumb because people will not believe us if we do this."
Everybody knows the system is corrupt. Money buys Congress. You can say it flat out because everybody knows it's true. Yet, if our side doesn't take corporate money, we could never win because we'd never have any money to run competent campaigns. So what do you do?
I remember those days. As a Democrat in Kansas, we never had squat for money. We were always outspent three or four or five to one. In Colorado, on the other hand, we gained a majority in both houses of the legislature--and still have one of them--largely because we were well-financed.
What's it worth to have at least one house of the legislature Democratic in a time of budget cuts and austerity? Or when the death penalty comes up for debate? Or when congressional district lines are re-drawn? (Russ Feingold, for all his virtues, is now an ex-senator, keep in mind.)
Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, used to say that he'd be happy to take the devil's money to do the Lord's work. I'm for that!
Money will always find its way into politics. Like water, money seeks its lowest level and it always gets in there somehow. Therefore, the only way to clean up the system is through public financing. It would cost less than people think, and the system wouldn't be bought and paid for by our corporate overlords.
We'll never do it. Corporations are people, after all, and money is speech.
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