Look at that Jason Chaffetz, for example. A town hall yelling at him for not doing what they want. What doesn’t he get?
Imagine you are the owner of a business. It has well over a million dollars per year in revenue — revenue you fight hard for.
Nearly all of the money comes from a relatively small number of people — there are a lot of five-figure donations.
However, a total of $15,000 — almost nothing, 1% — comes from over 500,000, each of whom demands you do what they want and serve them, listen to them, design your products for them.
Those 500,000 are directly at odds most of the time with the few people you provide 99% of your business’s revenues.
How can you tell the few people paying 99% of your revenue you will do the opposite of what they want, be their enemy, in order to please those 500,000 who give you 1% of your money?
Now, wouldn’t you just like to ‘fire’ those 500,000 people? Get rid of that crappy little $15,000 part of the business and serve the people giving you 99% of over a million dollars?
That is basically the situation Chaffetz finds himself in — those are real numbers for him. And members of Congress generally have similar situations. Under 2% of people donate at all.
For years, I’ve quoted a saying, “Politicians have to LOOK good to voters, and DO good for donors.”
This situation puts them in that mindset — they have to DO what the donors want, but get votes, making them try to say what voters want to hear while not actually serving or representing them.
It helps explain this conflict most members of Congress find themselves in — why the people don’t stand much of a chance at getting more than “lip service”.
There might be a “moral obligation” for them to serve their constituents, but how much can that weigh on them against the money to get elected?
So watching Chaffetz at that down hall, look at as he does — not as a crowd of people, but as a few pennies on the ground yelling at him, demanding, who he has to ignore to stay in office.
Of course, they aren’t entirely at odds with the voters, so every little thing they do that is good for voters, they can hype as their pro-voter agenda. They’re careful to poll and find a few things they can do for that purpose. But they’re working for the people who get them elected, and while the voters actually vote for them, it’s those dollars who fund them that are why they win.
People want easy answers — ‘oh, they should just find a way to do the right thing in spite of all of this’. It just doesn’t generally work that way.
And the Republican organized crime family wants it that way. They’d love nothing more than to have their own members of Congress totally dependent on the central committee to get elected, arranging for the donations, and determining their votes. And this is why they spend billions to demonize Democrats, persuading voters to only vote R.
It’s basically creating a system where the powerful interests own the political system. Our resistance movement is important to try to change things — but the last election results show how things are.
And the worse news is, there is no way to change this in the foreseeable future, thanks to the radical right members of the Supreme Court who corrupted our constitution to enshrine this system.
Not only can we not get a constitutional amendment passed to fix it, Republicans as a hair away from being able to pass their own constitutional amendment to say whatever they want.
We need that ‘revolution’ Bernie mentioned — for the people not to rebel by voting for ‘outsider trump’, but to get a clue, and to support good media and not the right-wing propaganda, to use their spending power to boycott right-wing forces who are those donors, to use our free speech to counter the paid propaganda with the public, not only the choir here.
Until then, it’ s a very cozy little system.
Donors: pay to play.
Candidates: spend half your time raising money from those big donors to have a chance.
Elected leaders: serve the lobbyists in office, and they’ll have your own lobbying job waiting for you.
Right-wing media: keep the public persuaded to vote badly for Republicans.
Think tanks: propaganda factories designed to create the advertising for Republican positions.
And we expect someone like Jacob Chaffetz to listen to that crowd and turn on his donors.
That’s delusional.
Sorry for the bad news, but I think it’s good to understand the problem better.
How long has Congress had horrible approval ratings — but the election didn’t change it? How long can democracy be valued by the people when they see it, correctly, as not serving them?
Why has only one elected leader focused on the ‘political revolution’ around this problem, instead of just talking about issues as if the ‘right positions’ are going to win against this problem?
No business would cater to the 1% of their revenue in ways directly opposed to the 99% of their revenue, and no politician does either. It really makes our democratic processes less powerful.
Because that angry crowd has a very hard time translating into votes over the money.
And every member of the Republican Party understands this, and supports the agenda and the system as a result, viewing any member who would question that as an enemy to the party.
Organized crime knew what they did wasn’t good for the public, but it’s how they made their money.
Same for Republicans.
One could promote loan sharks, prostitution, drug use, extortion and more; the other can promote tobacco, poverty wages, destroying the environment, lack of healthcare, plutocracy.
Here are the numbers for Chaffetz, with a chart making clear the size of the people’s donations: