A press release from opensecrets.org, a campaign finance tracker, discussing the financial outlook of the current election as of February 4.
Even before a single vote was cast, the candidates running for the White House raised and spent more money in 2007 than in all of seven of the last eight presidential elections, the Center for Responsive Politics has found.
While I may be unpopular in my views, I don’t think anything could be better for democracy than spending increased amounts in personal donations. While I hear comments all of the time suggesting that this money could be better spent, to solve “real problems”, I couldn’t disagree more that the money is ill spent. The first thing one must remember when making such an argument is that such donations are made, personally, by a citizen. If an individual does not wish to support a political candidate with his or her money, they are free to spend it elsewhere.
More importantly, I think many people forget that money is, to some extent, a form of speech. In order to achieve the strongest Republic (by which I mean most favorable to the most people), the discussion needs to welcome as many people as possible. Campaign contributions enable this discussion. Still skeptical? Fringe candidates from both parties, such as Edwards and Paul, promote a message outside of the popular views. Contributions enable such ideas to enter the marketplace, opening debate on these less popular issues. Because a variety of viewpoints are represented in the primaries, more popular candidates are forced to address and adopt some of these issues or face losing votes to other competitors. This notably happened when Edwards dropped out of the Democratic primaries. The remaining candidates, in particular Clinton, directly addressed Edwards’ supporters.
Whenever people make decisions for themselves from their own purse, it cannot be a bad thing. If people want their money to go elsewhere, they would do it.
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2 Responses to “Cost of ‘08 Presidential Race Already Tops All Elections Prior to ‘04”
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Hey Ryan,
I meant to post this earlier but I have to say that I feel as though the candidates in this Presidential race are being a bit hypocritical. That is, I feel that it is unfair of them to be raising millions and millions of dollars to simply promote themselves and advance their cause while at the same time discussing how the American economy is the number one issue. To me it seems as though if they were sincere about the economy and the dire situation that it currently is in, they could be finding better use for this money. I understand idea that donating money to a candidate with similar ideals to your own is a powerful means of political expression and speech, however, I just feel that all this money could be better spent to stimulate the economy.
As always I enjoy your writing and your opinion, however, here I simply must disagree.
How do you think the money should be used? I mean this money is an individual’s given to the candidate to support his/her campaign. Seems odd that it would be used for something else.
People often confuse the two, but money and the economy are two totally different things. They interact, but just because you have extra money doesn’t mean you can spur the economy with that money.