As difficult as it may be to make sense of at this point, the 2016 presidential election can best be explained through two equally hilarious video clips. The first comes from the Saturday Night Live cold open when Larry David’s adept Bernie Sanders character is asked about his strategy for financing his campaign, and he implores America to, “send me your vacuum pennies!”
(Skip to 5:50 for the good part)
The second, and more uncomfortable of the two, occurred on the Jeb Bush campaign trail. In the dwindling days of his bid for president, a seemingly despondent Bush pleads the attendees of his rally to, “Please clap.”
The SNL clip represents the campaign finance revolution Bernie Sanders is striving to spark, one that begins with the people. The awkward Bush plea illuminates the sudden anti-establishment swing this country is currently facing. Four years ago, Jeb Bush would have been a very plausible candidate for president. This year, he has been at the constant mercy of outsider and media magnet, Donald Trump. Both of these clips speak the absurdity of the 2016 election cycle. But more importantly, both of these clips provide evidence for why the concerns accumulated following the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling have proven to be unsubstantiated.
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions are allowed, as prescribed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, to spend as much of their money as they please on behalf of a federal candidate. While corporations may not contribute directly to a candidate, they may form political action committees (PAC’s) that allow the management and shareholders of the corporation to pool their money together to donate directly to a campaign. The one stipulation to this ruling is that if the PAC, or any individual, wishes to exceed the $5,400 direct contribution limit, this money must take the form of independent expenditures, which cannot involve any direct coordination with the candidate itself. Many cite this ruling as an affirmation of the legality of the Super PAC—a political action committee that can only make independent expenditures, and can therefore receive unlimited money from whomever they would like and spend unlimited money on any candidate they wish to support or criticize. The most common expenditures are those negative attack ads that flood your TV every election season that look more like doomsday warnings than legitimate political commentary.
In order for the First Amendment to work effectively, it must be applied equally to all, even the rich and powerful. The Constitutional protection that was afforded to Martin Luther King, Jr. when he marched on Washington is the same one given to the head of a corporation when he chooses to dump millions of dollars into a Super PAC that endorses his favorite candidate. Based upon the precedent established in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti – which cemented the notion that the important aspect of speech is not the identity of the speaker, but rather the speech itself—the Court deemed a corporation’s speech to be parallel to that of an average person’s.
Political speech has always been given the highest degree of protection under the First Amendment, particularly by the Roberts Court. It should thus come as no surprise that the majority of the Court held expenditures performed by corporations to be protected. When this ruling was handed down, though, it was . Many Americans could not believe the Supreme Court would enable corporations to further corrupt our elections. Even President Obama stated that, “the floodgates for special interests” will be slammed open by virtue of this ruling.
Here we are in 2016, and the flood has yet to come.
The corruption that many predicted Citizens United would make room for in our elections has gone almost entirely unfounded. This is the case for two simple reasons: Corporations are not stupid and the average American voter is not stupid.
Dr. William Lee, who teaches Communication Law at UGA and co-authored “The Law of Public Communication”, calls the fear that wealthy corporations such as Microsoft or General Motors will allocate large portions of their treasuries to influencing voters, “utterly and completely bogus.” Though it is within their rights, publicly held corporations typically strive to avoid controversial political statements at all costs. Because all Super PAC donations are public record and advertisement funders must identify themselves in TV spots, such statements would risk alienating a large portion of their potential consumers and stockholders. If Microsoft began to blanket TV markets with ads supporting a particular candidate, it would marginalize those who do not support that candidate. This would likely lead to a loss in revenue for Microsoft, which is something it ostensibly does not want.
Contrary to what Super PAC’s would like to believe, the American public carries more wits than a group of sheep. Simply because someone watches a political ad it does not mean they will blindly adhere to that ad’s message.
“Super PAC’s don’t scare me,” Lee said, “because right now the most well funded Super PAC is Right to Rise, which supports Jeb Bush.” It’s true—Right to Rise, a Conservative Super PAC, spent $60 million on Bush’s catastrophic bid for president, more than any other Republican candidate received. And now that Bush is out of the race, though it is fully entitled to continue supporting him, Right to Rise will likely want to spend its remaining $58 million it was prepared to spend on the former Florida Governor elsewhere.
“Just because you spend a pile of money, you can’t convince people to vote for someone who is unappealing,” Lee said. Indeed, money could not buy the election for Bush, even with the low expectations.
While the efficacy of Super PAC spending in elections appears to be subdued, the suspicion that our politicians are being “bought” remains. This is a problem, however, that was neither fixed nor exacerbated by the Citizens United ruling. No court possesses the ability to end the influence of cash flow in political campaigns once and for all; that right is reserved exclusively for the people. And that is exactly what we are seeing now.
As alluded to in the above video clips, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are doing well in their respective campaigns. Very well. Sanders, through his attention to small contributions from lower and middle class Americans, and Trump, through his gaudy insistence of a self-financed campaign (despite some evidence to the contrary), have both devised anti-establishment images of themselves. Each candidate has also been able to, as Lee said, “break the mold of old-school campaign finance.”
Sanders in particular has demonstrated that only a constitutional right of the people, to choose which speech to listen to and to spend their money how they like, can defeat a constitutional right of wealthy people and corporations to do the same.
When the American people join together and decide not to support any candidate who receives money from special interests hoping to corrupt him or her, that will be the day the problem of money in campaigns is solved. No matter how many court rulings are passed down, money will always find its way into our political landscape. It is therefore the exclusive responsibility of the citizens of a democracy to hold the powerful accountable and create an environment in which the wealthy few do not dictate the results of our elections. Indeed, it is only those “vacuum pennies” and the conscientious decision not to clap that will defeat the modern problem of campaign finance.
With Citizens United, the Supreme Court did not give corporations and the wealthy elite an advantage—it implemented a level playing field for all in which the best speech will have the most profound effect on an election, not the most expensive speech. It has become apparent in this election cycle that the 45th president will come about as a result of ideas that appeal to the American people, not wealthy special interests.