About those "corporate owned Dems"... a primer on 'What Does That Really Mean' or #CampaignFYI

We must get rid of the “corporate Dems”. 

Quite often, I hear this message from someone who self-identifies as an Our Revolution member.

Which makes me wonder if these folks understand the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) campaign finance rules and regulations. 

Because when you say “corporate Dems” it’s clear what you mean: a Democratic politician either in elected Office or running for elected Office; who depends upon campaign donations from special, corporate, interests to fund their campaign. 

Which, in spirit, I tend to agree with; the basic idea at the very least. I find the usefulness of “corporate personhood” which modern Corporate entities use to their very good ROI (return on investment) in lobbying Congress to be utterly without merit (see my old story about this issue: Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific Railroad).

However, the manner in which you are using “corporate Dems” is a failure to understand clearly what you are talking about. 

The FEC requires that candidate campaigns report all of the donations which they receive. But they only require that they report the MetaData details about a donor once that donor has contributed a total of $200 or more during a single campaign season (either primary or general). 

This is some of the data which a campaign is regulated to make every effort to obtain from each and every donor:

Now, when an individual donates to a political candidate campaign, and you go to the FEC to see your donation to that candidate, can you find that? Yes, you could, using the search term of that person’s name (first and last).

But guess what the Media reports? They don’t say, for instance, “32,766 people who work in the Automotive Industry for Chevrolet donated $637,231 to candidate XYZ”. No, they say, the candidate got $637K from Chevrolet or just The Auto Industry. 

Which is maddening to people who have run for Federal Office (like me), because we know that that is Media falling down on it’s job.

Because those corporations DO spend money, but they cannot spend it by directly giving it to candidates, so they contribute via dark money into those Citizens United vs FEC organizations; which have no troublesome regulations about how much anyone can donate or that they disclose ANYTHING about themselves or the entity they represent. 

So if you are on the LEFT side of the political aisle? 

Please stop using rightwing talking points. Stop calling any Democrat a “corporate Dem”, because as you can easily see now, that doesn’t reflect reality in any way.