For decades, since the election of Bubba Clinton, I have been saying that the Dems have lost their way when they embraced the big bucks from donors and now after 30 years a Dem is admitting what many of us on the Left have been saying for a very long time.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) discussed the influence of money on the political system in the U.S., implicating his own party in the corruption he said it causes.
“I think the entire American political system is corrupted by money,” Murphy said on a Wednesday episode of the “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know” podcast.
Murphy also told comedian Hasan Minhaj that his party isn’t exempt.
“I think Democrats have been corrupted by money as well, much less than Republicans have been, [and] in a much less overt way, but I’d think it’d be silly to pretend as if Democrats, not everyone, but some Democrats … ultimately, are impacted by the fact that they’re spending a lot of time with donors.”
“But is that a real message, ‘Hey, we’re less corrupt than the other guys?’” Minhaj questioned.
“No, you have … to show how you’re gonna fix the problem,” Murphy responded.
In the wake of the 2024 elections, Murphy offered his thoughts on Democrats’ losses in a thread on the social platform X.
“We don’t listen enough; we tell people what’s good for them,” Murphy said at the time about the American left on social media.
“And when progressives like [Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)] aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base,” he added.
Sanders also alleged around the same time that Democrats had mostly ignored working-class priorities, saying that ignorance was a major factor in costing them the White House and Senate in the recent elections.
“The country is in a revolutionary mood today because they see that the whole game is rigged, that if you have money and power, you are in a position to just get more and more of it, and everybody else is left treading water,” Murphy told Minhaj.
(thehill.com)
He said they identified the problem….a bold statement and one that seems to leave an open ended conclusion. They know the problem then tell us just how in the Hell they will fix it.
Identifying the problem is not the solution….and I doubt there is a solution in their repertoire for the money addiction has gone on for way too long.
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Murphy is right, of course, money has indeed corrupted the whole political system. What few safeguards that were in place have been gradually eroded away startin with the Reagan administration, and it’s been getting worse with ever succeeding one until now we have a system where open bribery is going on and no one is doing anything about it.
Could it be fixed? Sure. And it could be done easily. Just pass a constitutional amendment that only individual voters, who actually live in a politician’s district, can contribute in any way to that politician’s campaign. No phony political action committees, no corporate or business contributions, only the individual voters in the politician’s actual home district can be involved in the campaign. That alone would bring a lot of this crap to an immediate end.
And I like the idea that all cash goes into a fund that both parties can share equally….I like your fix. chuq
I agree with Grouchy too. But that is never going to happen, unfortunately.
Best wishes, Pete.
Big words with big ideas but no way to enforce any of it. chuq