Can Rick Weiland Ride A Populist Wave Of Resentment Against Big Money Wrecking Our Democracy?

The DSCC preview of the electoral cycle that they hand out to big contributors is as upbeat as they can make it. In the section on South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring, the DSCC asserts that "Democrats and the DSCC are committed to holding Senator Johnson's seat next year and will devote all the resources necessary to elect a new Democratic senator in South Dakota. Recent polls have shown that Democrats are in a strong position to hold the seat. This is another state where a likely divisive Republican primary could force the eventual nominee to the far right. A Tea Party group, the Senate Conservatives Fund, has already pledged to support a Tea Party candidate to take on the GOP establishment candidate, former Governor Mike Rounds."

Even better than a mere Republican primary battle, there are two Republicans who have already vowed to run in the general election, a prospect likely to make it very difficult for Mike Rounds, an establishment shill, to win against a populist Democrat. One of these two ex-Republicans is former GOP congressman and senator, Larry Pressler and the other is extremist teabagger Gordon Howie, who has expressly threatened to upend Rounds' general election campaign if Rounds beats the lunatic fringe teabagger in the primary, state Rep. and mentally deranged racist Stace Nelson.

“I am a Republican philosophically. I am now a registered independent, but I fully embrace the Republican Party platform. That is a significant difference between me and some other Republicans who are running for office,” Howie told The Hill, a reference to former Gov. Mike Rounds, the Republican establishment pick for the nomination.

…“My Stace Nelson signs are staying up through the primary,” he said. “This is basically a plan B, should Stace Nelson not win.”

Howie said a group of supporters had “done the polling and the foundational work and said, ‘Look, if you get in this thing we think you’ll have a good shot at it.' ” He wouldn’t disclose what people had urged him to get in, or the exact polling numbers.

“I was approached by a group of people who said, ‘If you do not get in, Mike Rounds is the next U.S. senator.' And I’ve never been a Mike Rounds fan. Philosophically, he doesn’t represent our conservative values.”

But while Howie hopes to offer a conservative alternative to Rounds, his candidacy runs the risk of opening a wider lane for the Democratic candidate, Rick Weiland… [Pressler] and Howie could draw Republican votes away from Rounds and deliver Weiland the opportunity to win with just a plurality of votes.

A wealthy friend, a big Democratic donor, sent me the the quote from the DSCC in response to a request that he contribute to the Democratic nominee, prairie populist Rick Weiland. My friend was confused because the DSCC listed the Democratic candidate as "TBD," to be determined, and he isn't prepared to contribute unless the DSCC is signaling they're backing Weiland. Executive Director Guy Cecil, the bag of wind who runs the show at the DSCC, having personally picked the weakest Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, as his "boss," isn't ready to give that signal. Although Weiland has been endorsed by Johnson and former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, by Independent Bernie Sanders and by almost every Democrat currently in the Senate, including all the champions of ordinary working families: Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Ron Wyden, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Harkin… Cecil is still in a stage of poutrage that he couldn't get his handpicked Blue Dog, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, who withdrew in a huff when faced with a primary challenge against a real Democrat. Cecil, who has delusions of grandeur and tells everyone he meets he's going to be the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton-- a laughable idea-- is playing with the Democrats' chances of holding onto the Senate majority. He finally did the right thing by endorsing Shenna Bellows but he's still playing childish ego-games with the South Dakota seat.

This week, after the Supreme Court's McCutcheon decision was handed down, Weiland wasn't paying attention to Guy Cecil's dysfunctional management style. He was writing an OpEd, Yelling Fire that went to the very heart of the premise of his entire campaign. All the bolded paragraphs were bolded by Rick, by the way. And when you're done reading, you might want to consider doing what my wealthy friend still hasn't done, contributing to the Weiland for Senate campaign.

The argument that money has the right to speech advanced in Buckley, Citizens United, and now McCutcheon, is of a feather with some of the most infamous decisions of the United States Supreme Court.

The infamy of Dred Scott, Plessy, Minor, and Korematsu is that they denied African Americans, women, and Japanese Americans their fundamental right to have their voices heard equally with those of their fellow citizens. The denial in Dred Scott was far more direct and severe than that of the other cases, but each of these cases involves dangerous denial of that right.

The failure of the Supreme Court to see the danger here results from looking too hard at legal texts and not hard enough at the real world.

For any court to hold that the right of one person to make 100 million dollars in political contributions, and to summon leading candidates for the Presidency of the United States to appear before him so he can judge their fitness for that office, does not infringe upon the rights of his fellow citizens, requires a truly shocking denial of reality.

Political reality today is that America is being turned into a plutocracy by the ability of big money to buy what it wants from Washington, and increasingly from every other level of government as well.

Political reality today is that politicians who used to be public servants are now servants of the big money that elected them.

How else can you explain the endless array of policy decisions at every level of government that are vehemently opposed by large majorities of ordinary citizens, but are made anyway by elected officials. Think about it. 90% plus majorities of the voting public oppose offshore tax havens for billionaires and yet they persist. 90% oppose shutting our government down, yet it is shut down. Oil spills occur, dangerous vehicles are sold, banks evict families from homes they have been conned into buying, payday lenders extort poor families, all practices supported by virtually no one, but permitted to persist, even encouraged by the representatives supposedly elected by the people these things harm.

Each of these policies, and many many more, result from the corrosive effect of big money political contributions. These contributions corrode both parties. They corrode the public's trust in their own government.

They corrode even the word "politics," democracy’s alternative to decision by bloody violence, which has now disastrously been made a synonym for incompetence, greed, and corruption by the mayhem wrought upon it by big money.

When elected officials must spend 80% of their time begging billionaires for money to stay elected, and a Supreme Court does not think that deprives we thousandaires of equal protection of the law, that Court is blind.

The statistics purporting to show that big money influence is not a problem because occasionally a candidate with less money happens to win, are a farce. Of course that happens, but it is irrelevant.  Both candidates are begging for big money, not peoples votes. The staffs of both candidates are meeting with big money donors and lobbyists, not ordinary voters. The consultants who advise candidates make their biggest dollars from big money. Even those in the employ of candidates and elected officials are on the prowl for big money jobs as soon as they can find them.

This and more is what is enabled by decisions like McCutcheon, which defend the right to free speech of a tiny handful of billionaires and powerful institutions by devaluing to the point of near worthlessness the free speech rights of everyone else.

Why, we should ask this court, is the yelling of "fire" in a crowded theater, which is the universally recognized example of speech not constitutionally protected because it infringes on the rights of others, not almost perfectly analogous to what happens when Sheldon Adelson yells in his billion dollar voice, "give me everything I want", so that the 300 million other Americans yelling in their ten dollar voices, "no, please don't," are drowned out?

This and more is why the growth of wealth in America over the last 30 years has gone almost 100% to the richest and most powerful 1% of Americans, and almost not at all to those of us whose voices at the ballot box are being drowned out by a tidal wave of talking money.

The line of "money talks" decisions capped by McCutcheon is a fundamental threat to democracy because it denies the rights of 99% of the American people to compete on a level playing field in the one place that matters most in a democracy, at the ballot box.

That, in my book, reserves for it a place in infamy alongside the very worst decisions ever made by the United States Supreme Court.

Worst, second worst, fifth worst, who cares?  Talking money is destroying our democracy and we need to pass a constitutional amendment to stop it now!