The question of the day (and this election) is whether the millions of dollars corporate donors have stuffed into Hillary Clinton's personal pockets as well as into her campaign coffers will influence HRC after the election.
She claims even bringing this up as a concern is a "smear" and constitutes negative campaigning on Bernie Sander's part. Well, is it a smear or simply a fact that big donor money buys political influence? Does that make accepting such donations a clear danger to the public interest?
The gold standard for testing the question is whether a statistical pattern can be found that would bear out or undermine the question about big money corporate influence. Statistical studies are what determine whether there's an association between say, smoking and cancer. Statistical patterns are the mainstay of diagnosis and treatment of disease as well as legal proof of such things as discrimination in housing.
In this case, you might rephrase the question of the day as to whether there is a provable relationship between corporate donations and the diseased American body politic where for over a decade under both Republican and Democratic presidents the majority of people polled say the US is going in the wrong direction (see Gallup polls on right direction/wrong direction).
Professors Martin Gillens and Benjamin I. Page have done the statistical work on this in "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens". This article was published in the American Political Science Associations journal "Perspectives on Politics" in 2014 and can be found here: scholar.princeton.edu/...
Their conclusion:
"It is simply not the case that a host of diverse, broadly-based interest groups take policy stands—and bring about actual policies—that reflect what the general public wants. Interest groups as a whole do not seek the same policies as average citizens do. . . . Relatively few mass-based interest groups are active, they do not (in the aggregate) represent the public very well, and they have less collective impact on policy than do business-oriented groups—whose stands tend to be negatively related to the preferences of average citizens."
That last sentence means corporate money more often than not directly counters or negates public preferences. Which is why opinion polls show the majority of public opinion favor policies (such as Medicare for all) which policy makers, influenced by big corporate money, refuse to honor or acknowledge.
Gillen and Page continue:
"These business groups are far more numerous and active; they spend much more money; and they tend to get their way. Table 4 also confirms our earlier findings about economic elites and median voters. When the alignments of business-oriented and mass-based interest groups are included separately in a multivariate model, average citizens’preferences continue to have essentially zero estimated impact upon policy change, while economic elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact."
That final sentence means that "economic elites" are the variable with most influence in policy making. Average citizens are the variable with zero influence, meaning that economic elites' views and concerns, backed by their money, determine policy outcomes. (Quote from page 573 of the journal).
We common voters have zero influence. Not just less influence on policy than big money, we have no statistically discernible influence at all.
Okay, so Bernie is just telling us truth again. While Hillary personally might not feel sold out to the highest bidder, the fact is that our whole system is sold out. When she or anyone else (Marcos, where are you?) accept our big donor dominated political system, they actually reject democracy in the sense of voters instead of corporate money influencing policy.
Statistics prove it.
And statistical patterns hold up in courts of law and in medical protocols.
In sum, big corporate donor money is making the American body politic sick. The only cure is to take it out of the equation.
And that is Bernie's stance.
It's possible that by taking big corporate money, Hillary could even cost Democrats the White House. Far from being the candidate Democrats can count on to win the White House, as her campaign asserted in its closing argument to Iowa primary voters, Hillary could face a populist Republican running to her left, particularly if she tacks rightward (back toward corporate preferences) after winning the primaries.
Bloomerberg News published an article, ‘Tax Wall Street’ Trump pledges After Worst Market Week since 2011(found here: www.bloomberg.com/... )
In it, "Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump pledged to "tax Wall Street" as he sought to use a severe stock market selloff to plant new seeds of fear among voters during a campaign rally Saturday in Ottumwa, Iowa.”
“At times, the real estate mogul sounded more like Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, a constant critic of Wall Street, than a billionaire candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination.”
“I'm not going to let Wall Street get away with murder. Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us. We're going to tax Wall Street."
“Trump also highlighted his independence from campaign contributions. "I don't care about the Wall Street guys," he said. "I'm not taking any of their money."
Trump is still topping national polls for Republicans even though I think he will ultimately fail to get the nod. And this article pinpoints why his rivals say he’s not a “real conservative.” Real conservatives serve corporate interests, period. They surely don’t tax Wall Street.
But therein lies a real opportunity for Bernie and the Democrats, if we will take it. Roughly a third of Republican voters--the group Trump attracts--may be seeking what they see as a leader who will not be dominated by Wall Street.
As Democrats learned in 2010, Republicans can run to the corporate-democrat dominated establishment's left, and beat it soundly. In their 2010 campaigns, many Republicans cited the Democrat’s Obamacare vote to "cut" funds to Medicare and Obama's call to cut Social Security by changing the way the cost of living increases are calculated as threats to retirees and retirement. While it was an incredible claim to political cognoscenti--Republicans have historically opposed Social Security and Medicare--most voters over 65 believed it in 2010.
Exit polls showed Republicans took that age group by a massive margin.
If Trump or another Republican like Kasich who talks like voters, instead of money, really matters to Republicans win the nod, and Hillary wins ours, we are set up with Democrats standing on the wrong side of the growing realization among voters that "our" representatives do not belong to us or listen to us.
They hear only the sound of big corporate money.
And Money not only Talks, as Gillen and Page proved, it silences and overpowers our influence. We in fact have, according to statistical studies, “zero” influence on policy.
The people must join Bernie's Revolution against big corporate donations, or give up the very notion that we live in a democracy. Actually, acquiescence in this case is acceptance that in reality, we have a democracy of money, not people.
And this is why I stand with Bernie Sanders.