“Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All” — so runs the campaign slogan of Abdul El-Sayed, who last week won Michigan’s Democratic Party nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Gary Peters.
Dr. El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, later heading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for a few years. He calls himself a progressive, but a “capitalist” one, not a socialist. Yet, seeking a national office, his national fellow travelers are Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s own Rashida Talib and, last-but-not-least, the Democratic Socialists of America.
Today, let’s take the first phrase of his slogan: Money out of politics.
Creating small legislative districts would go a long way toward making outsized campaign spending less effective. Of course, term limits would diminish the value to a special interest of “capturing” an elected official. And limit the threat of politicians forever shaking down interests, special or not.
But that’s not the game plan of Abdul and progressives and, for many years now, congressional Democrats.
Instead, they want to re-write the First Amendment, reversing it from “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech” to Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money insofar as it relates to campaigning.
So far, Congress has legislated a Byzantine regulatory regime that serves only to make politics more expensive. The public benefit? Corruption diminished at all? Anyone?
Allowing career politicians to dictate who can raise or spend money (even in the incumbents’ very own election campaigns) and without regard to whether it silences voices — how is that progress?
If you want to tear down the whole idea of America, this version of getting “money out of politics” is one big rip.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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