Hillary's Scooby Van Plan Includes Finance Reform

Poking the bear might be one method of training, but I imagine that a few bear trainers have died trying that approach.

Change is hard on all of us, and the reality is that we've asked a lot from conservative white America over these years with a communist black president.  Asking angry white men to put up with 4-8 years of a leftist woman might be the equivalent of poking a political polar  bear when it comes to deepening the polarization that has been exposed by the Obama presidency.

Have I got a plan for you. 

My greatest hesitation for a Hillary Clinton presidency is the fear that she will be forced to absorb the worst parts of Obama hatred while grappling with her own disdain from the public. Though she is playing the media like a fiddle, powerful entities hate getting played.  I've come out in support of Jeb Bush because I know that he is genuinely different than his father and brother and time will reveal this version of the Bush family to everyone in a way that will increase his popularity.  As it stands, my belief is that the most capable white male republican would be the best way to stop poking that angry polar bear, finally snapping Washington gridlock. Jeb seems eager and capable of doing the job of also calming that angry bear and finally coalescing congressional votes into collective change and not obstructionism.

Jeb, however, had better drop a hand on the table as impressive as the one Hillary just laid down with her Scooby Van tour through Iowa.  Not  a hand like the staged burrito bowl talk or wearing the sunglasses as night.  Even Hillary's support of the middle class is rather typical as each of the current candidates have observed the same illness while differing on the route to the cure.  I'm also not terribly impressed with her support of the free college ideal that Obama already offered up because it will only change things for middle class kids whose family didn't save for college but make too much money for our current financial aid system. Only a very small portion of these kids will jump all over the small/free college route. Middle class kids coming out of high school are NOT likely to embrace the value of such an approach since they've fought for 4 years to get into a "good" school- not the cheap community college option that only poor kids have to go to. Poor kids already go to these schools for free, so the plan means nothing to them.

The idea that will make Hillary the game changer is the idea of reforming campaign finance- even if it means modifying the Constitution, she claims.  Hillary is too savvy to not know that she's walking down a dangerous road with such a suggestion because her own campaign finance becomes open season- which means she's ready for a universal healthcare type fight like the one she took on years ago as a first lady.

Barack has cherry picked several important domestic and international agenda's from the left and right, but he hasn't really challenged the money engine that has taken over politics.  In many ways, he morphed it into the beast that its become.  Not that his internet based coalition building comes close to impropriety, but it did force the opposition to up the ante in response.  What happened when republicans up'd the ante? It forced the entire issue of campaign finance reform to be heard in a landmark Supreme Court case between the government and the conservative group Citizen's United. (Citizen's United .v. FEC (Federal Election Commission).  This case involved a District Court block against Citizen's United who wanted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton close to the time of the 2008 Democratic primaries.  This film was interpreted by the FEC as a violation against the BRCA (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) commonly known as the McCain/Feingold agreement, however, the upper and lower level of the judiciary are at odds.

In their ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the lower court, opening the door for free spending by PAC's (Political Action Committee) like Citizen's United.  With a de facto SCOTUS green light, congress passed  an overstuffed Omnibus bill in December (and Obama signed it) that lifted the lid on spending limits of individual donors from 32,400 per year to 324,000.  At this rate, congress will add another zero in a year or two.  Though the Supreme Court verbally agreed with McCain Feingold language that attempts to insure donor disclosure,  they assumed congress would ultimately solidify the language to insur donor disclosure.

They did not!

What they did do was add a zero to the donor limit making the hope for disclosure more dim than ever before. Only a couple of notable voices in congress (Elizabeth Warren  and Bernie Sanders) spoke out against the change. President Obama accepted the change as a necessary evil of the business of campaign finance, and to bring the government away from the edge of another shutdown.

If Hillary wins this election on the strength of campaign finance reform, she will have to lay in bed with the same evil that she is trying to commit to Sheol. Simply hearing this tired suggestion felt like the highest level of pandering until she said two things.  Amending the Constitution away from big money and/or forcing every American to vote, another Obama idea that Hillary could push as president. The first fix she has repeated more often than the mandatory vote idea, which blew up social media when Obama first mentioned it in March.

Achieving a Constitutional amendment would be challenging for sure because the forces that fund elections will not let go of their grip very easily.  Individual donations to Super PAC's were already being protested before the recent bill blew them up exponentially.  A roll back to half of new levels still represents over a 500% increase from last election limits. Fighting the fight to limit the wealth driven grip on American politics must be a TRUE democratic effort.

Written before they added a zero,
raising the limits on donors.

To date, America has never achieved its democratic dreams because we've never advanced beyond the limitations of representative politics.  Even in the socially enraged town of Ferguson, Missouri, where recent elections added two new black Americans to the Ferguson city council, the election turnout was only 30%.  In a town where 67% of the population is black, a 30% election turnout was all it took to achieve the kind of demographic shift that black community members had been begging to see for years.  Ferguson can, and should be functionally governed by more than half black Americans, but less than 30% (some of the turnout was whites) of the black community in Ferguson recognizes their role in change.

To the defense of the new age voters, recent studies say that  polarized older Americans and congressional gridlock have soured them on the belief that the poll booth is the right place to invoke change. Instead, they use social media as their primary political tool.  They could be right, but WE have never tried to assume control of our nation by taking control of the vote. In fact, most of the nationwide efforts to suppress minority votes are aided by the reality that  way too few minorities bother with voting anyway.

In our desperation to deal with healthcare, we've found the value in mandating coverage.  In our desperation to recapture our nation from Big Money,  simplifying and eventually mandating the voting process is probably our best hope. So, if Hillary has plans that will move us closer to that mark, she has my ear.

Don't worry Jeb. I'm only listening.