[w4]

The 2024 presidential election was won by the candidate who spent about 1/3rd less than their opponent, and we’ve seen many successful campaigns in the past decade funded by small donations beat corporate backed candidates. Funding isn’t everything, and it’s a cop out to co-sign vigilantism on such a glib basis: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race

Rule of law is a precious thing, even if it’s imperfect, as all human systems will inevitably be. We shouldn’t be cavalier about discarding it. The alternatives are much worse.

[JohnBooty]

Nobody is claiming that outspending your rivals is some kind of automatic electoral win but nice job, uh, over there. (gestures at the remains of the strawman you tore apart)

Back on topic...

The relevant campaign spending figures here would be "minimum amounts of funding to run a viable campaign" and not "how much did the winner spend."

What I, unlike our recently deceased strawman, was pointing out is that without backing from corporations and the people who own them, your chances of winning elections to higher offices (congress, presidency) are close to zero. And the odds of enough similarly-untainted, like-minded people getting elected concurrently (or at least running campaigns popular enough to pressure those in office) is even more astronomically low.

But....

Campaign funding issues only scratch the surface of what it would take to achieve any kind of real reform re: freeing the government from corporate influence.

Because even if you, say, pull off some kind of underdog miracle and get elected to Congress without completely selling out... you're not going to accomplish shit without political capital, somehow bucking the other 534 members of Congress who have sold out.

[ahahahahah]

> was won by the candidate who spent about 1/3rd less than their opponent

I guess the truth of that statement depends on whether or not you consider the $36 billion dollars that Musk has lost on Twitter to have been "spent" or not.

[harimau777]

Is that the case if you include the fact that Fox News is effectively a wing of the Republican party? It seems to me that Republicans don't need to spend more since they have an entire outside propaganda apparatus.

It's also not just funding. It's funding, gerrymandering, the electoral college, lobbying, the Supreme Court, voter suppression, etc.