At What Cost

It is that time again when the primaries are looming large in everyone's minds, and populism is running rampant this week in discussions about the US Senate race. David Van Os sent out a newsletter reiterating a post on his website declaring that "we need a people's candidate" to run against John Cornyn, and I agree. I do, however, question a point that he and others have been making about money.

The two arguments usually presented by grassroots activists who are dissatisfied with party leadership are the following:

1. The candidate for Office X should not be someone with money/I won't be dictated to.
2. I don't want a politician running for office.

I've never understood either one. The latter argument is similar to ruling out heart surgeons for your heart surgery, even if you are afraid they might be beholden to the pacemaker lobby. The former argument is popular as of late, and Van Os makes it in the following text:

Have you heard any of the rumors going around about potential Democratic candidates to challenge John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate in 2008?

Well I have, and I don't like what I'm hearing. The Washington Beltway Insiders are trying to pick a candidate to run against Cornyn on the basis of their ideas about what the people of Texas need and want, and — surprise, surprise — on the basis of who has or can raise the most big money.

John Cornyn is a supporter of Bushite tyranny who needs to be taken out for the good of the people of this state, for the good of the whole country, and for the good of the Constitution that he has so repeatedly dishonored by being a lapdog for the Bushites' attempts to stuff our rights and our heritage into the trash. But I'll be damned if I want a private club of wealthy Beltway-centered elite deciding who the Texas Democratic nominee will be to carry the people's banner against Cornyn. And I'll be double damned if I want the choices for the people of Texas to be decided by the power of money rather than the power of the people.

It appears nothing has changed with the Insiders. But we are supposed to live in a system of democracy, not aristocracy! The people are supposed to govern themselves, not be governed by money and those who have large amounts of it.

We cannot allow the blooming populist movement of the last few years go die on the vine in relation to the Cornyn seat. We need a people's candidate.

Van Os makes the good point that Cornyn is bad and must be defeated. To say that the democratic process is circumvented because some people have money or can raise money and others do not or cannot, however, is illogical. The democratic process is guaranteed by the primary, and no one can dictate who can or cannot file to run, no matter how much money they have.

However, a candidate must spend money on media and getting his message out. In order to communicate to possible voters, you have to have the ability — indeed, the means — to communicate that message. I am tired of hearing over and over again that money in politics is evil. I don't even like hearing that it is a necessary evil. It is just necessary; the fiscal realities of a campaign cannot be argued with.

So: in order to win a Senate race, a candidate needs enough money to be competitive, to communicate, and to run a real campaign. This is irrefutable and incontrovertible. With that being the case — and it very much is the case — I don't understand why money is so demonized. I am all for a populist candidate who is mainly concerned with the needs of the people. I want a candidate for Senate who thinks first of what is best for the people of Texas and for America. I want a candidate for Senate (and for every other office) that looks to those among us that need the most help and, to borrow a phrase, gives them a hand up. Money has no effect on the ability or likelihood of a candidate to be any of those things.

I also would really like a candidate who can compete, and you do too. Money doesn't make a candidate good by any stretch of the imagination; we have learned that lesson many times. I will argue fervently against the idea that a candidate must have a pile of money to swim around in, Scrooge McDuck style, in order to be worth considering. That being said, campaign money has to come from somewhere.

This is a point about which a great deal of digital ink has been spilled, and I have no qualms about making my case. In order to have an intellectually honest discussion about what a campaign or a candidate must do, we have to get beyond the money taboo. We all love Bill Clinton, and he raised a ton of money — and had to. We all voted for John Kerry, and he had truckloads of it to begin with. Money is an inexorable fact of political life.

Say this to yourself, quietly, three times:

Money in politics is not evil.
Money in politics is not evil.
Money in politics is not evil.