Let me finish tonight with this.
I just saw the movie The Campaign. The producers gave me a DVD to watch at home for tonight’s show.
This is a very funny movie. If you love these guys, Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis (and most people do), it’s impossible not to see the craziness in this story of a Democrat running against a challenger who comes out of nowhere to try and beat him and the huge money of a couple of brothers who bear a striking resemblance to the Koch brothers.
But beneath the jokes and slapstick, there’s a hard reality. This is what politics is on the verge of becoming in this country: a couple of rich guys with huge money made in gas and oil who use the latest statistics and political intel to go into a state or congressional district and pick off someone who doesn’t vote their interests, putting in someone who will — right down the line.
Now that isn’t funny. The Communists used to attack our democracy as nothing more than a show put on and paid for by the Rockefellers. It was a sham, they said, during the Cold War to believe that the American people honestly and freely chose their leaders.
It isn’t funny to see even in a comedy movie that that old charge is becoming true. We see in elections here and there exactly what the Communists used to say about us: that we were kidding ourselves, that elections were really run by people with big money for people with big money. I don’t like this Citizens United decision. I don’t like people who think they have a right to as many votes as they have dollars. I don’t like it for the simple reason that it’s not what we Americans believe in, not what Americans fight for, not what unites us as a country. I want the real thing — democracy — and this stuff that’s going on now and that will go on this fall is not it. If you disagree with me, raise your hand. If you don’t, you know what I know — and it’s bad.
Chris Matthews Recommended
