Why It's Delusional to Think a Campaign for a Constitutional Amendment Can End Citizens United

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/activism/why-its-delusional-think-campaign-constitutional-amendment-can-end-citizens-united



The three-plus-year push for a constitutional amendment on money and politics, leading to a bill sponsored by Senator Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, ended with a predictable thud in the Senate Thursday morning when 54 senators, including all Democrats, voted for it, and all 42 Republicans voted against it. Since two-thirds of the Senate is necessary to pass an amendment, and no Republicans indicated any interest, it never had a chance.

The push for the 28th Amendment was a desperate reaction to the latest series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have unleashed an unprecedented flood of secret money into American elections. As Steven Rosenfeld reported, super-donors have more power and influence than ever, thanks to many court decisions leading up to Citizens United. In response, a huge campaign by dozens of liberal advocacy groups and a relentless Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) garnered more than 1.5 million online signatures to line up votes for a 28th Amendment in the hope it would pass a first hurdle in a long, virtually impossible path. In other words, given today’s hyper-partisan political landscape, the biggest effort to engage federal lawmakers on the topic of rescuing American democracy was fated to fail.

On Monday, it was first thought Senate Republicans would prevent debate, which would have killed the amendment on the spot, since five Republican votes were needed to begin debate and break a filibuster. But then some members of the GOP saw utility in allowing the debate to advance to score some points. The vote to open debate was 79-18 and immediately seized by groups like MoveOn.org and DCCC, and hyped as a harbinger of big progress, but that was far from true. When Laurence O’Donnell shared his delight on his MSNBC show that night, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken, had to break ths spell and tell him sorry, but this is all a maneuver by those sneaky Republicans to run down the clock to prevent any progress on issues like minimum wage before a recess.

So by Thursday, the charade ended. The sporadic debate interrupted by lack of quorum, and by more compelling issues like the militarization of the police and the ISIL foreign crisis crawled to a halt and the amendment fell 13 votes short. The predictable failure of this effort—along with the fact that constitutional amendments on campaign finance have been debated four times in the Senate dating back to 1987 and all have failed (even though in the past they attracted some Republican votes)—suggests it's time to step back and ask some hard questions.

[frazzled]

1. I'm not going to say it wasn't sincere

but given (a) the difficulty of the path for any constitutional amendment and (b) the hyper-partisanship of Congress, this seemed unlikely from the beginning.

After my 200th email from various senators (running for reelection) asking me to sign a petition supporting this amendment, I really decided this was not just "clicktivism" but yet another tiresome fundraising ploy (any time you sign a government official's petition, you are really just being sent to a donate page).

I'm not saying the amendment shouldn't have been introduced (you have to keep trying and trying), but really, I don't think a single Democratic senator ever thought there was a chance in hell of it getting anywhere. I do think they thought it would be a nice bone to throw to supporters. And I find that cynical. I'm tired of being taken for naive. If even one of these emails about the amendment had been realistic about it (rather than "sign our petition now!!) and its prospects, I would be fine. As it was, I do think the whole thing was largely, as they say, for the "optics."

And yes, there are other things that could be done.

[The Magistrate]

2. Worth Pressing, Though, Sir, As a Rally Point

Bring it up again and again, denounce its opponents, keep the issue of Koch bros. billionaire buying of elections in front of people's faces....

[MineralMan]

3. It's exceedingly difficult to enact an amendment.

Frankly, it's not going to happen until the composition of Congress changes in our favor. We can work on that right now, leading up to the November elections.

GOTV 2014 and Beyond!

[polichick]

4. Here's the hard question Americans will eventually have to ask:

How do we make government fear the people?

"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

Often attributed to Thomas Jefferson

[KoKo]

5. The whole article is an interesting read...

Particularly about Laurence Lessing's Campaign.

Awhile back I read an article about how we could cut the influence of the Citizens United decision. I can't remember the source but this is what I remember of the article:

There is one way of stopping this that gets little mention. We could work on getting the FCC to bring back some parts of the "Fairness Doctrine," modified. Force the the TV/Radio/MSM to give Free and Equal Airtime to all Candidates. Put limits on the time allowed so that everyone gets their two minutes or whatever time seems appropriate for message. Limit the ads to a month before Primaries and a month before the General Elections.

Candidates could still do their mail campaigns and advertise in whatever newspapers still exist and online.

Does anyone else remember reading about this as a solution?

[gratuitous]

6. Well then, let's do nothing and see how that works

After all, if you just sit back and wait for the ridiculousness to collapse on its own, then nobody has to do anything or feel bad about doing nothing.