Let me finish tonight with this.
I fear, I really do, the evil influence of big, bad money in politics.
Democracy isn’t a joke. It shouldn’t be, anyway. And when a few guys with billions of dollars or influence with big money people can throw enormous amounts of money into a political race, they can destroy democracy.
Yes, they can. Just think about what a dump of a million dollars in TV advertising, really nasty stuff, can do to a race for Congress somewhere. All of a sudden, the airwaves are saturated with negative TV ads. They’re all over the place, on Entertainment Tonight, on sports, wherever you go. You can’t escape the relentless, nasty assault on some candidate.
Think this doesn’t matter? Good luck. We saw what Willy Horton did to one Democratic candidate for President, saw what swiftboating did to another. Just imagine someone out there saying what a bad person you are, telling everyone you know what a bad person you are. Okay, now imagine someone spending tens of millions of dollars buying TV time to say what an evil SOB you are! Don’t think that’ll change some opinions about you? Think again. Not everybody pays attention to politics like the people who watch this show. Some hardworking people just have time to check in around election time. What do they see on TV? Endless streams of bad news about some guy they once thought was okay, but now can’t hear a good word about him or her. Just this endless spew of negativity… I don’t know how we’re going to live with this stuff and still call ourselves a democracy. I don’t know when the Supreme Court is going to look again at the monster they’ve created in Citizens United and kill it befores it destroys the very democracy on which the Congress, the presidency and, yes, the courts, now precariously rest.
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