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/)

DEMOCRATS AND ELECTIONS

Two key questions for 2026: Will we have fair and honest elections? What do the Democrats need to do to win – and win big? I encourage you to contact your state election officials, as well as national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials. Answers and messages are provided below.

(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 elections in 2026 are going to be very important for the future of our country and our democracy. In this post, I’ll focus on two key questions:

Will we have fair and honest elections in 2026? Not completely, but if state officials and the courts stand up for the Constitution, which gives the states the power to run elections, the elections should be OK. I encourage you to contact your state election officials and ask them to refuse to give the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) your state’s voter database. (See more below.) [1] [2]
What do the Democrats need to do to win – and hopefully to win big, i.e., take control of both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as expand their control or power in state governments? Unequivocally embrace support for working Americans, i.e., a progressive, populist economic agenda. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials with this message. (See more below.) [3] [4]

Question 1: There are serious threats to the integrity of our elections because Trump and the Republicans know they won’t win if voting is fair and participation is high. The threat is NOT from voter fraud (as Trump and the Republicans like to claim), which is incredibly rare. The threat is voter suppression: keeping people from being able to register, wrongfully purging them from voting rolls, or keeping them from voting through obstacles to casting their vote, intimidation, or negative campaigning that makes them feel that their vote doesn’t matter.

Most notably, the DOJ has demanded access to at least 40 states’ voter databases. Although the Constitution clearly gives states control over election administration, the DOJ appears to be trying to claim that state voter databases are inaccurate and then to demand that states purge significant numbers of voters. If state officials refuse to purge voters as requested, the DOJ apparently plans to prosecute state officials and/or get court orders to force them to purge voters. The Trump administration has also attempted to usurp states’ constitutional power to administer elections by imposing voter ID requirements and taking control of the choice and certification of voting equipment, among other things.

The bottom line is that the DOJ will continue to make (largely unconstitutional) demands on state (and municipal) election officials. Many of them will resist and the DOJ will take them to court. Hopefully, the courts will uphold the Constitution and the states’ control of elections. Some of these cases may make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a track record of supporting the Trump administration and undermining voting rights. The good news is that the Supreme Court would not have time before the 2026 elections to review all the cases that would occur in the lower courts. Nonetheless, it has done significant damage to voting rights and could do more.

There’s also gerrymandering, which selectively amplifies the influence of some voters and dilutes the influence of others. Through sophisticated analyses of detailed demographic data using powerful computers, Republicans have taken gerrymandering for partisan purposes to a whole new level over the last 15 years. Although past gerrymandering will favor Republicans in the U.S. House races in 2026, the recent, very blatant gerrymandering efforts by Trump and the Republicans have mostly fizzled due to some Republican resistance (e.g., in Indiana) and Democrats responding in-kind to neutralize Republican efforts.

Question 2: There’s an on-going debate among the upper echelons of the Democratic Party about what it needs to do to win elections: should it unequivocally stand up for working Americans and unions, and against wealthy individuals and businesses that support oligarchy? Or continue to hedge its support for working Americans and unions in order to garner big-dollar campaign contributions and support from wealthy special interests?

Recent election results and the reception that economic populism gets in polls (over many years) and in politicians’ speeches make it clear that the affordability of living and the economic inequality in the U.S. are powerful issues that motivate voters, especially working Americans. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez, on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that loudly calls for economic populism, have gotten enthusiastic responses from large crowds – even in very Republican parts of the country. Most recently, New York City Mayor Mamdani is getting powerful, enthusiastic responses to his message of economic populism, i.e., making life affordable for everyday New Yorkers.

If the New York City and other election results aren’t enough to convince the leaders of the Democratic Party that they need to return to the Party’s roots in economic populism, perhaps polling results will convince them. An Economist/YouGov poll released on December 30, 2025, showed that 80% of Americans believe that “political institutions have been captured by the rich and powerful,” 82% believe that “elites are out of touch with the realities of everyday life,” and 74% believe that “leaders who come from ordinary backgrounds better represent people like me.” [5] Furthermore, 65% of Americans are worried about the cost of food and 61% about housing costs. Well over 50% of Americans want Medicare for All and 70% believe corporations pay too little in taxes. [6]

Mamdani, in his inauguration speech, underscored a new politics that the Democratic Party should embrace to generate enthusiasm and support and that led to his victory. It focuses on “freedom to” rather than “freedom from.” For most Americans, government regulation and investment in education, infrastructure, and a safety net provide freedom to live and enjoy life that is not limited by economic insecurity and other obstacles imposed by policies that favor wealthy individuals and their companies (the Democrat’s so-called donor class). However, Republicans (and some Democrats) have for 45 years been calling for shrinking the government’s role, for reducing regulations and taxes, in order to increase Americans’ freedom from constraints. [7] This primarily benefits the wealthy and their businesses.

If Democrats want to win elections, they have to be unequivocal about addressing the affordability crisis, which requires embracing economic populism and progressive remedies including increasing the minimum wage; ensuring affordable food, health care, housing, and child care; stopping monopolistic companies from ripping off consumers and employees; and requiring wealthy individuals and companies to pay their fair share in taxes. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials to give them this message.

[1] Kuttner, R., 12/23/25, “Will we have free and fair elections in 2026?” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/will-we-have-free-fair-elections-2026/)

[2] Atkins Stohr, K., 12/25/25, “Why Trump’s Justice Department is coming for your voter data – and your vote,” The Boston Globe

[3] Sunkara, B., Sept. 2025, “Democrats keep misreading the working class,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/working-class-democrats-mamdani-jeffries-schumer/)

[4] The Nation, Nov. 2025, “People are furious with Democrats. Bernie Sanders knows why.” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-mamdani/)

[5] Cox Richardson, H., 1/2/26, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-2-2026)

[6] Caiazzo,J., 11/13/25, “How Democrats can build a party worth believing in,” The Hill (https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5602181-rebuilding-democratic-party/)

[7] Cox Richardson, H., 1/2/26, see above

WHAT DEMOCRATS NEED TO DO Part 2

Democrats need to be more dramatic, effective, and consistent in opposing Trump, his nominees, and the congressional Republicans’ agenda. They need to step up their resistance while promoting and committing to enact policies that would support everyday Americans.

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

(Note: Correction. In my previous post asking you to contact your U.S. Representative and ask them to oppose elements of the proposed Republican budget, I wrote that the proposed cuts to Medicaid were “$700 – $800 million.” As many of you know, that should have been $700 – $800 BILLION.)

This previous post made the case that Democrats need to be more dramatic, effective, and consistent in opposing Trump, his nominees, and the congressional Republicans’ agenda. It identified policies that Democrats should be promoting for our economy and the economic well-being of all Americans. This current post focuses on policies in the social services arena, including health care reforms, drug price reductions, enhancements to Medicare, and ensuring long-term funding for Social Security.

Here are some specific policies Democrats ought to be promoting and committing to enact in the social services arena when they are back in power:

Ending wasteful and dangerous privatization of health care. Here are two examples;
- Private equity firms should be banned from the health care industry. The example of Steward Health alone should be enough to seal this case, but there are plenty of other examples as well. (See this previous post for more information.)
- End the Medicare Advantage program, which privatizes Medicare and results in huge, often fraudulent, wasteful costs to the Medicare program. For example, in 2024, illegal overbilling by Medicare Advantage providers (i.e., big insurance corporations) was estimated to be $83 billion. Medicare Advantage is estimated to cost Medicare $140 billion more per year than if all individuals were on traditional Medicare. [1] (See this previous post for more details.)
Strong regulation of drug prices. President Biden took some initial steps to regulate and reduce drug prices, but President Trump is undoing them. In 2022, U.S. drug prices were two and three-quarters times (178% more than) prices in 33 other industrialized countries. This means that our federal, state, and local governments (i.e., taxpayers) and all of us pay over $200 billion a year extra, which fuels exceptionally high profits for drug makers (when compared to other sectors of our economy). [2] (See this previous post for more details.)
Enhance Medicare. If the Medicare Advantage program was eliminated and Medicare was allowed to negotiate prices for all drugs (see the above two bullet points), the savings would be sufficient to pay for the addition of dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare, as well as to cap out-of-pocket spending by Medicare enrollees.
Ensure Social Security funding for the rest of this century. Currently, workers pay taxes into Social Security only on the first $176,100 they earn in a year. This means that someone making a million dollars stops paying into Social Security after February 15 and someone making ten million dollars stops paying into Social Security after the first week of January. Simply eliminating this cap would increase Social Security’s revenue by roughly $100 billion per year. This would provide about 75% of the funding needed to allow Social Security to pay out its full planned benefits for the rest of the century. The rest could be raised by taxing investment income, estates, and gifts or a variety of other strategies. [3]
- NOTE: The Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act in Congress would require taxpayers with over $400,000 in income in a year to pay a bit more into Medicare and Social Security. This would fully fund planned Medicare and Social Security benefits for at least the next 75 years. [4]

There are plenty of other policies that Democrats should be advancing to demonstrate that they would better serve and support workers and everyday Americans than Trump and the Republicans. Examples include housing; early education and child care; supporting workers and their unions; effective regulation of businesses for worker, consumer, and public safety; and strong enforcement of antitrust laws including the breaking up of monopolistic companies.

If any of your members of Congress are Democrats, I urge you to contact them and ask them to step up their resistance while promoting and committing to enact policies that would support everyday Americans. 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.

[1] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, “We found the $2 trillion,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trillion-elon-musk-doge/)

[2] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, see above.

[3] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, see above.

[4] Conley, J., 5/9/25, “Democrats’ bill would extend Social Security and Medicare solvency ‘as far as the eye can see’,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-medicare-2671925476)

DEMOCRATS ARE MOBILIZING!

Democrats in Congress are finally stepping up to resist the unprecedented challenges the Trump administration and complicit Republicans are presenting to our democracy and its foundational institutions. They are using outside-the-box tactics to slow progress on Trump nominees and Republican legislation. They are more aggressively and effectively communicating with constituents and the public. Contact your members of Congress to thank them for what they’re doing to resist and ask them to do more.

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

The Hands Off! protest rallies across the country on Saturday, 4/5, showed the depth and breadth of the opposition to the Trump administration. Somewhere between 3 and 5 million people participated including in every state and in communities large and small, Republican and Democratic. To those of you who participated or supported the protests, THANK YOU! Many smaller, local protest rallies that hopefully will involve even more people are being planned, possibly for Sat., 4/19. More information will be forthcoming, but please plan to participate and bring a friend so the next protests are even bigger than April 5.

Democrats in Congress are finally stepping up to the unprecedented challenges the Trump administration and complicit Republicans are presenting to our democracy and its foundational institutions. The Democrats are beginning to use outside-the-box tactics, including delaying and obstructing progress on Trump nominees and Republican legislation. Some Democrats are more aggressively and effectively communicating with constituents and the public, including about the incompetence and failures of the Trump administration, as well as its illegal actions.

Thank your members of Congress when they do good things and push them to do more.

Democrats in both the Senate and the House have introduced bills (The Trade Review Act, S.1272 in the Senate) to take back control over tariffs from Trump. Eight Senate Republicans have now joined this fight. Ask your Senators and Representative to co-sponsor and support this bill. Thank them if they already have.

More Senators are putting holds on Trump nominees. (See this previous post for the initial holds.) Senator Schatz (D-HI) is placing holds on over 300 nominees and Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) has announced plans to place holds on all Trump nominees. Holds force the Senate to take votes to override each hold and this slows done the process of approving Trump nominees.

House Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) (the second highest Democratic leader) is working with her colleagues to produce one-minute videos critiquing Trump administration actions on a variety of topics. They’re putting out roughly one per day. As far as I know, they’re only available on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/housedemocrats.bsky.social. (Note: Rep. Clark is awesome! In the interests of full disclosure, she was my State Senator before she was elected to the U.S. House. Unfortunately, I’m one town away from being in her congressional district.)

There are 19 one-minute videos available by various Representatives on topics including the Republican budget (and its health care cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy), the SAVE Act (voter suppression), tariffs, Social Security, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Signalgate, the Department of Education, and protecting the privacy of our personal information.

(Note: I hope you have a Bluesky account and if not, I encourage you to sign up for one at: https://bsky.app/. It’s a partial alternative to Facebook and X. I encourage you to leave both of those platforms if possible or minimize your use of them because of the objectionable policies and politics of them and their owners. Unfortunately, Bluesky doesn’t have a group feature like Facebook and many of my online friends are still only on Facebook, so I still use it, but I minimize my time on it. I’m on Bluesky: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Follow me there if you’re so motivated.)

Individual Democrats in Congress are, of course, also creating videos on important issues. Senator Schiff recently did a 2 ½ minute video calling for an investigation of the likelihood of insider trading in the stock market by Trump cronies in advance of Trump’s announcements on tariffs.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is coordinating Town Hall meetings by members of Congress all over the country, including in Republican districts where the Republican refuses to hold a Town Hall meeting. The list of them is here: https://democrats.org/peoples-town-halls/. Please participate if there’s one in your area.

The DNC recently announced the formation of a “People’s Cabinet.” It will feature subject matter policy experts who will provide facts and better alternatives to the Trump administration’s lies and reckless agenda. [1] However, I don’t see anything on the DNC website about this yet.

Democrats in Congress are holding hearings even when Republicans refuse to cooperate. For example, Representatives Jeffries and Barragan recently held a hearing on the cuts targeting veterans. (The hearing starts two minutes into the YouTube recording and lasts an hour and 14 minutes.) Senator Shaheen (D-NH) convened a hearing on the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (See this previous post for more detail.)

Democrats and a few Republicans are standing up and pushing back more frequently and vigorously, but they need to do more to resist the Trump administration and most Republicans’ support of it. The resisters need to feel free to use outside-the-box tactics; they need to fight fire with fire.

I encourage you to contact your US Representative and Senators to thank them when they pushback against the inhumane and illegal actions of the Trump administration. Ask them to stand up and resist when the Trump administration is not acting in the best interests of all Americans, is violating the rule of law, and usurping the role of Congress.

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.

[1] Martin, K., 4/4/25, “DNC Chair Ken Martin launches ‘People’s Cabinet’ to fiercely counter Trump administration chaos and lies,” Democratic National Committee (https://democrats.org/news/dnc-chair-ken-martin-launches-peoples-cabinet-to-fiercely-counter-trump-administration-chaos-and-lies/)