The Return of Corporate Electioneering

Let's assume for a second that we belong to a multi-trillion-dollar corporation, and we don't like a specific candidate. Before Monday's decision by the Supreme Court, we wouldn't have been able to run fake issue ads against that candidate within 60 days of an election. But now we can!

Justice Souter wrote the dissenting opinion and read it from the bench, because he is hardcore. His basic argument is that this was settled by a previous decision in 2003, in which the prohibition against naming of a candidate in connection with an issue during an ad for or against that issue by a corporation, a special interest group, or a union 60 days or less before an election was upheld. The reason for this provision in the McCain-Feingold bill was that most issue ads run that close to an election were not really about an issue at all, and instead were about why or why not a certain candidate should be elected. More often than not, these ads amounted to thinly-veiled attacks on candidates that were held in contempt by whichever group paid for the ad.

Without throwing around legal terms and acting like I know all of the relevant arguments concerning a Supreme Court decision, I can say that this is a decision that largely favors business, and, summarily by that, helps the GOP. Yeah, the restrictions on special interest groups and unions are loosened as well, but consider the power of a major corporation's general fund, and what one could spend on a race if it were so inclined.

Let's say we live in BizarroWorld, and Al Gore runs for President and wins the nomination. What kind of an ad campaign would Exxon put together to run against him? What kind of an ad campaign would most giant corporations put together to run against any kind of Democratic candidate?

This is a big deal, because it substantially changes the landscape of campaign finance once again, and not for the better.