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It's incredibly messed up that the thing that ensures we get a good candidate in US politics is bags of money. It's almost like the system might have some glaring problems.
I mean, we all knew what this campaign was gonna look like.
He appointed Jamie Harrison as the DNC chair, someone that appeared out of nowhere to checks notes lose to Lindsey Graham despite getting record breaking donations...
I mean seriously, dude raised $57,000,000 dollars but couldn't beat Lindsey Graham so Biden put him in charge of the DNC.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/us/politics/jaime-harrison-lindsey-graham-south-carolina.html
And he's got a "media mogul" named Jeffrey Kazenberg as a campaign co-chair. His bonafides involve access to celebrities and bundling donations from millionaires.
https://www.latimes.com/la-influential/story/2024-06-16/jeffrey-katzenberg-hollywood-fundraiser-democrats
It's not like the actual campaign manager knows better, this is the first time she's been a campaign manager, so it's good she used such a low stakes campaign as her springboard.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/bidens-campaign-team-00093671
And that last link covers the rest of the team as well.
But when people keep wondering "who the fuck is making these calls?"
It's those people handpicked by Biden, and they're fucking up a very important campaign and refusing to listen to any feedback that doesn't come from the incredibly wealthy.
Some valid criticism here, but in fairness to the campaign manager, you make it sound like she was pulled off the street when:
That only makes things worse.
Devastating facts, I actually wasn’t aware of Kazenberg. Damn. Most important election of our lives though folks. Promises to keep, to the donor class.
Money endures quality candidates like it endures quantity products, eg not at all.
Where does all this money go? Naively, I would think ad campaigns and campaign tours.
30 million is 10c for every voter they try to reach. That's about a letter per household if bought in masses.
It's important to look closely so they can't misuse the funds, and they need to be held accountable if they do.
It's unsustainable long term, eventually either someone with enough money comes along and ends the game and establishes some kind of an autocracy, Or enough people will get pissed off about it that they can't ignore making reform's on it.
I feel like we're much closer to one of those eventualities than the other at the moment, because as far as I'm aware there's not much for campaign finance reform on the horizon. And it'll be interesting to see what kind of punishment is handed out for violating our current campaign finance laws, but I'm not holding my breath for incarceration.
Well there effectively aren't any rules for campaign finance at the presidential level. There's intentionally huge holes they can use to inject billions of dollars. Of course you need lawyers and networks of connections to access those holes, so yeah it's 100% a proto-oligarchy setup. Step two is using the criminal justice system to shut down effective opposition. Which is why giving Trump the duest of processes is so important. If it becomes fashionable to send political opponents to prison then we've effectively lost the game.
To put it into sports it's mid-game and we're down by half the other team's goals. It's not unwinnable but it's not looking great either.