• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    5 months ago

    Having to grovel for money and spend a lot of your working life strategizing how you can extract enough money from rich people, to pay for your next campaign, is a far too large part of every single congressperson’s agenda.

    It’s not optional and it is time consuming and humiliating and it automatically puts a bunch of power in the hands of rich people instead of voters. It’s for real a little bit confusing to me why the congresspeople don’t put a stop to it (publicly funded elections).

    • LimeZest@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      The ones who are in congress are the ones who are good at successfully navigating this system of campaigning. They don’t want to level the playing field for opponents who don’t have a strong network of rich donors ready to boost them.

    • Sop@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      Because most (if not all) members of congress love to beg for money from rich people and are really good at it. It’s the reason they became congress members in the first place. Public funded elections would never be as profitable for them.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        5 months ago

        Maybe. The way I’ve heard it explained is that it’s time consuming and humiliating for almost everyone though. Here’s the first random story I could find. I’m clearly missing something, though, since they clearly aren’t putting a stop to it, so maybe you are correct and it’s only the scrubs that have to go to the call center.

        • Sop@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 months ago

          The system gets what it breeds… When fundraising is so important you will automatically get congress members with no integrity who already had rich friends or who have great ass kiss abilities. This is just another symptom of the failing of ‘democracy’ that’s bound to happen in a society with class inequality. The dominating class will always use their means to turn the odds in favour of their own needs.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        5 months ago

        And get to tell junior congresspeople to get out and bring in $18,000 a day for you and your friends to use to elect more friends to office, which you then use to enrich yourself on a scale that makes the $18k/day look paltry.

        I don’t know for sure but I can buy it. It would explain a lot.