You need money to run a political campaign. They don’t run themselves fir free even though a lot if people on the campaigns actually start out as volunteers. Political hopefuls who can get their message across to their voters successfully usually end up getting more campaign donations than those who struggle to relate to voters. This is nothing new. Campaign funds usually pay for advertising spots on all TV channels and various multimedia platforms. The more donations a campaign gets the more advertising they can pay for. Recently the only people complaining about money funding politics are the Republicans because Democrat voters made bigger contributions in previous elections.
@ninalanyon maybe we should do it American Idol style and have them get on stage and make it an event where they go through every conceivable position on every conceivable issue because once we know where they stand on the things that matter to us there's no longer any reason for them to campaign
It's, perhaps, possible to outlaw formal lobbying but it's much harder to rid the system of you scratch my back I'll scratch yours style favours. Just look at the number of highly ranked politicians who get lucrative jobs afterwards in just those industries that they were involved in regulating.
Citezens United has to go. Corporations and the rich buy elections. It's like when they got Zuckerberg to answer questions in Congress. If Congress was about to vote on a bill that would affect Zuckerberg he would just buy the votes to change the vote.