Tag: Dark money

WHAT DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE DOING

Democrats should be taking steps now to lay the ground work for electoral successes and policy making in the future. Running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to state what they are for. They should ban super PAC and dark money from their primaries and support progressive policies.

SUMMARY: Democrats should be taking steps now within the national party and at the state level to lay the ground work for electoral successes and for policy making in the future. Running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to clearly state what they are for. Americans support progressive policy solutions. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state committees should ban super PAC and dark money from their primary elections.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

While Democrats have very limited influence on national policy right now, there’s a lot they should be doing now within the national party and at the state level to lay the ground work for electoral successes and for policy making in the future. My previous two series of blog posts on fair taxation and the affordability crisis identified policies that Democrats should be supporting at the national and state level, and enacting now at the state level.

Electorally, running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to clearly state what they are for. Sure, Trump is a convicted criminal and unpopular, but nobody cares about that if they cannot afford basic needs and they think Trump and the Republicans will address the affordability crisis better than Democrats. That’s what happened in 2024 in a nutshell.

Voters will not believe Democrats are serious about addressing the affordability crisis if they don’t unequivocally embrace progressive remedies, as Senators Warren (D-MA) and Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), among others, have been doing. Opponents, including Democrats, call their policies “too progressive,” which is code for opposition to any policy that favors working Americans over the oligarchs.

The real split among Democrats is between (a) Democrats on the take from the oligarchs of the crypto industry, Big Tech and AI businesses, and Wall Street; and (b) Democrats who are standing up for working Americans and against the oligarchs and their monopolistic companies. It’s that split that deprives Democrats of unity and of a consistent message that resonates with the real frustrations of everyday Americans. Democrats need to acknowledge the failures of our rigged economic system and clearly advocate for structural changes to the status quo that would: [1]

  • Boost pay including by raising the minimum wage
  • Build more affordable homes and crack down on corporate landlords
  • Increase Social Security checks
  • Provide universal child care
  • Block price gouging
  • Strengthen unions
  • Establish universal health care
  • Tax the wealthy and giant corporations
  • Stop members of Congress from buying and selling stock and crypto assets (i.e., insider trading)

For years, polling data have repeatedly shown that Americans support progressive policy solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives. For example, over 70 percent of Americans support Medicare for All, which would make health insurance more affordable and health care more accessible and less fraught. Seventy percent believe our tax system is unfair, while 66% support universal free child care. More broadly, 66% of Democrats now view socialism favorably, while only 42% view capitalism favorably. [2]

To enact this policy agenda and to get Democrats to unequivocally support it, billionaires must be stopped from buying our elections and our policy making process. A Democratic Party that worries more about offending wealthy donors than enacting policies that support working Americans will not succeed. Democrats should refuse campaign money from organizations and individuals opposed to basic workers’ rights and a strong social safety net.

As a first step, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state committees should ban super PAC and dark money (i.e., money where the true donor is unidentified) from their primary elections. Unfortunately, the DNC recently voted for a resolution that simply condemned the influence of dark and corporate money in Democratic primaries. It needs to go further and ban such money, which it can do, given that it sets the rules for its own primary elections. Corporate and Republican-linked super PACs and dark money organizations spent over $200 million in 2024 Democratic primaries. Their goal, sometimes successful, was to defeat progressive Democrats, particularly ones opposing Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians. [3] The Israel, crypto, and AI interests have been, and will in 2026, skew Democratic primaries and candidates to ones supporting their interests, which are not the interests of mainstream Democrats and Americans.

A ban on super PACs and dark money would force Democrats to turn to smaller donations from regular people, as Senators Warren (D-MA) and Sanders (I-VT) and New York City Mayor Mamdani have successfully done. This is what democracy, as opposed to oligarchy, looks like.

I encourage you to contact your state and local elected officials, as well as your U.S. Representative and Senators, to ask them to support policies that support working Americans. If any of these officials are Democrats, I urge you to point out that just running against Trump isn’t enough, as we saw in 2024, and that they need to run on what they stand for. [4]

If you’re frustrated that the Democrats aren’t unequivocally supporting working Americans, you might want to look at and perhaps support the Working Families Party. They’ve put forth a platform, their Working Families Guarantee, which is reminiscent of FDR’s economic bill of rights. It includes:

  • A home you can afford
  • Healthcare you can rely on
  • A good job to support your family
  • Childcare when and where you need it
  • Paid family and medical leave
  • Taxing the rich, and
  • Getting big money out of politics.

For lots of good news, see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1]      Warren, E., 1/12/26, “The Democratic Party is at a crossroads,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/elizabeth-warren-democrats-2026-midterms/)

[2]      Meyerson, H., 1/7/26, “The Democratic base is social democratic,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/01/07/democratic-base-socialist-democratic-zohran-mamdani-medicare-for-all/)

[3]      Wilkins, B., 4/10/26, “DNC half-measures condemning dark money won’t cut it, says Sanders as he demands total ban,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-dark-money-ban)

[4]     You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

BLUNTING THE IMPACT OF BIG MONEY IN ELECTIONS

Big money is corrupting our elections and elected officials. There are ways to blunt its impact that can be taken now by Democratic Party officials and by state and municipal governments. Contact them and encourage them to act now to blunt the impact of big money in our political system.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

The U.S. economy is not working well for regular, working Americans. It is, however, working quite well for wealthy Americans and extremely well for the very wealthy. But for regular people, the affordability of every day life is often challenging and economic inequality is unfair. This is the result of government policies, including those for labor, taxes, health care, financial services, antitrust, corporate regulation, social services (e.g., child care and elder care), and the safety net.

The major reason that policies are so skewed to benefit the wealthy is the way we allow election campaigns to be financed. We now allow unlimited spending, unlimited contributions, and a lack of disclosure of who is contributing large sums of money. Citizens United and related Supreme Court decisions have greatly exacerbated the problem and made it difficult to tackle without a constitutional amendment – which is nowhere on the near-term horizon.

Here are three campaign finance reforms that can be done now and would dramatically reduce the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations in our elections:

  • Democrats should ban super Political Action Committee (super PAC) money and dark money (where the true donor is hidden) from their primaries. The Democratic Party sets its own rules for its primaries, so it could do this without legislation or any outside action. Eight Democratic Senators have called for such a ban. The Arizona Democratic Party has passed a resolution banning super PAC money in primaries. [1] Please see the case study of AIPAC’s spending in Democratic primaries below for an example of why this is important.
  • States and municipalities should enact campaign finance systems that use public funds to match small (e.g., less than $250) campaign contributions from residents of the election district. This previous post describes New York City’s public campaign financing system and its impact. And this post describes the role such campaign finance systems can play in supporting democracy.
  • States should remove corporations’ power to contribute to political campaigns and PACs. States, and only states, not the federal government, charter corporations. Corporations have no powers until a state grants them some and they only have those powers granted to them by their state charters. Delaware, where more corporations are chartered than any other state, does not, for example, grant private foundations the power to spend money on elections. Although the lack of power to spend money on elections has not been a feature of most corporate charters, there appears to be no reason that it couldn’t be. In Montana, an amendment to the state constitution will be presented to voters this November that would eliminate the power to spend money on elections from the powers of corporations chartered or operating in Montana. [2] It would apply to local, state, and federal elections, as well as to spending on ballot questions. [3]

The influence of PAC money in our elections is tremendous. In the sixteen years since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, PAC spending has grown from roughly $150 million to over $4 billion. In addition, dark money spending has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. (There’s no exact figure because much of this money is unreported and intentionally hidden.) However, most of the dark money spending is done by non-profit corporations organized under Section 501(c)(4) of federal tax law, which could have their power to spend on elections eliminated. [4] (For an overview of how money is corrupting our elections and elected officials, see this previous post.)

The campaign spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a case study of the impact of PAC money in Democratic primaries. AIPAC unequivocally supports Israel and demands that the politicians it gives money to do so as well. In the 2023-24 election cycle, more than 80% of the members of Congress received money from AIPAC. It spent roughly $100 million (mostly raised from big Republican donors) targeting Democrats it deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. It spent $15 million to successfully beat incumbent U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in his Democratic primary. Bowman’s offense was that he cosponsored a resolution banning the use of U.S. funding for Israel from being used to harm Palestinian children. AIPAC also targeted Cori Bush (D-IA) for criticizing Israel’s crimes against humanity. She lost in her Democratic primary. The bottom line is that AIPAC, a single-issue lobbying and campaign donation group, using money primarily from Republican donors, has succeeded in muting, if not silencing, Democratic criticism of Israel, despite the atrocities and horrors of Israel’s war against the Palestinians. On the other hand, AIPAC has supported politicians with white supremacist views as well as ones who deny that Biden won the 2020 presidential election because of their unequivocal support for Israel. [5]

Big money has far too much influence in our elections to have a true democracy. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials and to ask them to ban PAC and dark money in Democratic primaries. I also urge you to contact your state legislators and statewide office holders, as well as municipal officials, and ask them to create a campaign finance system that matches small in-district contributions with public funds, as New York State and City have done. While you’re talking with them, ask your state officials to remove corporations’ power to contribute to election campaigns, including ballot question campaigns if you have those in your state.

[1]      Corbett, J., 6/17/25, “8 Senators demand Super PAC, dark money ban in Democratic primaries,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/super-pac)

[2]      Reich, R., 1/24/25, “How to get rid of ‘Citizens United’,” (https://substack.com/@robertreich/p-177418904)

[3]      Moore, T., 9/15/25, “The Corporate Power Reset That Makes Citizens United Irrelevant,” (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/)

[4]      Moore, T., 9/15/25, see above

[5]      Conwright, A., Nov. 2025, “The Congressional Black Caucus’s silent partnership with AIPAC,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/congressional-black-caucus-aipac-gaza/)