It was not entirely unexpected, but is still dramatic and depressing news: in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a century-old ban on direct corporate political spending, potentially opening a very large spigot of special-interest money into our airwaves just in time for the 2010 elections.
The decision did not immediately affect federal limitations on contributions to candidates, or “soft money” contributions to party committees. But it did strike down the ancient prohibition of direct corporate sponsorship of “issue ads.” The decision also kills state-level corporate political spending bans.
It will take awhile to fully digest the impact of this decision, which is the most tangible consequence yet of George W. Bush’s Court appointments (Roberts and Alito joined the majority). And it’s not an unambiguous victory for corporations, since labor unions and progressive non-profit corporations are also “liberated” by the ruling.
But this does represent one of the hard-core Right’s long-term agenda items, and obviously strengthens the Court’s “money equals speech” formulation of First Amendment rights, which has long frustrated campaign reform advocates and puzzled observers from other countries. It also may feed the trend among reformers to focus on public financing of campaigns as an alternative to private political money, instead of increasingly futile efforts to regulate private political money.
All in all, though, the Supremes made sure this will go down as an especially bad week in progressive politics.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 19: Will Chaos of Chicago ’68 Return This Year?
A lot of people who weren’t alive to witness the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago are wondering if it’s legendary chaos. I evaluated that possibility at New York:
When the Democratic National Committee chose Chicago as the site of the party’s 2024 national convention a year ago, no one knew incumbent presidential nominee Joe Biden would become the target of major antiwar demonstrations. The fateful events of October 7 were nearly six months away, and Biden had yet to formally announce his candidacy for reelection. So there was no reason to anticipate comparisons to the riotous 1968 Democratic Convention, when images of police clashing with anti–Vietnam War protesters in the Windy City were broadcast into millions of homes. Indeed, a year ago, a more likely analog to 2024 might have been the last Democratic convention in Chicago in 1996; that event was an upbeat vehicle for Bill Clinton’s successful reelection campaign.
Instead, thanks to intense controversy over Israel’s lethal operations in Gaza and widespread global protests aimed partly at Israel’s allies and sponsors in Washington, plans are well underway for demonstrations in Chicago during the August 19 to 22 confab. Organizers say they expect as many as 30,000 protesters to gather outside Chicago’s United Center during the convention. As in the past, a key issue is how close the protests get to the actual convention. Obviously, demonstrators want delegates to hear their voices and the media to amplify their message. And police, Chicago officials, and Democratic Party leaders want protests to occur as far away from the convention as possible. How well these divergent interests are met will determine whether there is anything like the kind of clashes that dominated Chicago ’68.
There are, however, some big differences in the context surrounding the two conventions. Here’s why the odds of a 2024 convention showdown rivaling 1968 are actually fairly low.
Gaza isn’t Vietnam.
Horrific as the ongoing events in Gaza undoubtedly are, and with all due consideration of the U.S. role in backing and supplying Israel now and in the past, the Vietnam War was a more viscerally immediate crisis for both the protesters who descended on Chicago that summer and the Americans watching the spectacle on TV. There were over a half-million American troops deployed in Vietnam in 1968, and nearly 300,000 young men were drafted into the Army and Marines that year. Many of the protesters at the convention were protesting their own or family members’ future personal involvement in the war, or an escape overseas beyond the Selective Service System’s reach (an estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, and how to deal with them upon repatriation became a major political issue for years).
Even from a purely humanitarian and altruistic point of view, Vietnamese military and civilian casualties ran into the millions during the period of U.S. involvement. It wasn’t common to call what was happening “genocide,” but there’s no question the images emanating from the war (which spilled over catastrophically into Laos and especially Cambodia) were deeply disturbing to the consciences of vast numbers of Americans.
Perhaps a better analogy for the Gaza protests than those of the Vietnam era might be the extensive protests during the late 1970s and 1980s over apartheid in South Africa (a regime that enjoyed explicit and implicit backing from multiple U.S. administrations) and in favor of a freeze in development and deployment of nuclear weapons. These were significant protest movements, but still paled next to the organized opposition to the Vietnam War.
Political conventions are different today.
One reason the 1968 Chicago protests created such an indelible image is that the conflict outside on the streets was reflected in conflict inside the convention venue. For one thing, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey had not quelled formal opposition to his selection when the convention opened. He never entered or won a single primary. One opponent who did, Eugene McCarthy, was still battling for the nomination in Chicago. Another, Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated two months earlier (1972 presidential nominee George McGovern was the caretaker for Kennedy delegates at the 1968 convention). There was a highly emotional platform fight over Vietnam policy during the convention itself; when a “peace plank” was defeated, New York delegates led protesters singing “We Shall Overcome.” Once violence broke out on the streets, it did not pass notice among the delegates, some of whom had been attacked by police trying to enter the hall. At one point, police actually accosted and removed a TV reporter from the convention for some alleged breach in decorum.
By contrast, no matter what is going on outside the United Center, the 2024 Democratic convention is going to be totally wired for Joe Biden, with nearly all the delegates attending pledged to him and chosen by his campaign. Even aside from the lack of formal opposition to Biden, conventions since 1968 have become progressively less spontaneous and more controlled by the nominee and the party that nominee directs (indeed, the chaos in Chicago in 1968 encouraged that trend, along with near-universal use of primaries to award delegates, making conventions vastly less deliberative). While there may be some internal conflict on the platform language related to Gaza, it will very definitely be resolved long before the convention and far away from cameras.
Another significant difference between then and now is that convention delegates and Democratic elected officials generally will enter the convention acutely concerned about giving aid and comfort to the Republican nominee, the much-hated, much-feared Donald Trump. Yes, many Democrats hated and feared Richard Nixon in 1968, but Democrats were just separated by four years from a massive presidential landslide and mostly did not reckon how much Nixon would be able to straddle the Vietnam issue and benefit from Democratic divisions. That’s unlikely to be the case in August of 2024.
Brandon Johnson isn’t Richard Daley.
Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley was a major figure in the 1968 explosion in his city. He championed and defended his police department’s confrontational tactics during the convention. At one point, when Senator Abraham Ribicoff referred from the podium to “gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago,” Daley leaped up and shouted at him with cameras trained on his furious face as he clearly repeated an obscene and antisemitic response to the Jewish politician from Connecticut. Beyond his conduct on that occasion, “Boss” Daley was the epitome of the old-school Irish American machine politician and from a different planet culturally than the protesters at the convention.
Current Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who was born the year of Daley’s death, is a Black progressive and labor activist who is still fresh from his narrow 2023 mayoral runoff victory over the candidate backed by both the Democratic Establishment and police unions. While he is surely wary of the damage anti-Israel and anti-Biden protests can do to the city’s image if they turn violent, Johnson is not without ties to protesters. He broke a tie in the Chicago City Council to ensure passage of a Gaza cease-fire resolution earlier this year. His negotiating skills will be tested by the maneuvering already underway with protest groups and the Democratic Party, but he’s not going to be the sort of implacable foe the 1968 protesters encountered.
The whole world (probably) won’t be watching.
The 1968 Democratic convention was from a bygone era of gavel-to-gavel coverage by the three broadcast-television networks that then dominated the media landscape and the living rooms of the country. When they were being bludgeoned by the Chicago police, protesters began chanting, “The whole world is watching,” which wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Today’s media coverage of major-party political conventions is extremely limited and (like coverage of other events) fragmented. If violence breaks out this time in Chicago, it will get a lot of attention, albeit much of it bent to the optics of the various media outlets covering it. But the sense in 1968 that the whole nation was watching in horror as an unprecedented event rolled out in real time will likely never be recovered.
Here’s another idea for reversing SCOTUS’ ruling on Citizens United v. FEC;
A diarist named Smintheus posted on unbossed.com a very quick and simply remedy for this power-grab by corporations;
Congress should prohibit any corporation from engaging in this new political spending if it has any non-American shareholders, or owners. Because after all, foreigners have no 1st amendment protections.
This brilliant idea was picked up by PLS who posted the diary “How to hoist the SCOTUS on their own petards!!!” on Daily Kos. This stroke of genius not only undoes SCOTUS’ treasonous decision, it seriously weakens the hold corporations CURRENTLY have over our democracy.
This is AN EXCELLENT way to punish SCOTUS and the Republicans for attempting a coup of our government on behalf of corporations.
Here is the statute upon which the tactic succeeds;
U.S. Code § 441e. Contributions and donations by foreign nationals
(a) Prohibition
It shall be unlawful for—
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 434 (f)(3) of this title); or
(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.
(b) “Foreign national” defined
As used in this section, the term “foreign national” means—
(1) a foreign principal, as such term is defined by section 611 (b) of title 22, except that the term “foreign national” shall not include any individual who is a citizen of the United States; or
(2) an individual who is not a citizen of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 1101 (a)(22) of title 8) and who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence, as defined by section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8.
Here is the above mentioned section 434 (f)(3)
3) Electioneering communication
For purposes of this subsection—
(A) In general
(i) The term “electioneering communication” means any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which—
(I) refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office;
(II) is made within—
(aa) 60 days before a general, special, or runoff election for the office sought by the candidate; or
(bb) 30 days before a primary or preference election, or a convention or caucus of a political party that has authority to nominate a candidate, for the office sought by the candidate; and
(III) in the case of a communication which refers to a candidate for an office other than President or Vice President, is targeted to the relevant electorate.
(ii) If clause (i) is held to be constitutionally insufficient by final judicial decision to support the regulation provided herein, then the term “electioneering communication” means any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which promotes or supports a candidate for that office, or attacks or opposes a candidate for that office (regardless of whether the communication expressly advocates a vote for or against a candidate) and which also is suggestive of no plausible meaning other than an exhortation to vote for or against a specific candidate. Nothing in this subparagraph shall be construed to affect the interpretation or application of section 100.22(b) of title 11, Code of Federal Regulations.
– end of code description –
Piecing together the most salient parts of the above statute, we have the following;
“It shall be unlawful for a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make a contribution in connection with a Federal, State, or local election, or expenditure for an electioneering communication. The term “electioneering communication” means any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office, is made within 60 days before a general, special, or 30 days before a primary or preference election.”
The limiting phrase in this law is “which refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office.” Because the Citizens United v. FEC ruling refers to non-identified candidate communications, what Congress needs to do is extend this statute to include ANY elections-related communications. An example of why this extension seems very reasonable would be in order to prevent a foreigner from an oil producing country from bombarding U.S. television shows with ads that claim “Global warming is just a hoax; keep buying our oil.”
Smintheus’ solution seems very promising. We should explore it a bit further, and if it proves solid, quickly take action on it.
With their ruling in favor of Citizens United v. FEC, the Conservative members of the Supreme Court have committed treason far more dangerous and egregious than their having stolen the 2000 election for Bush. This time they have gone too far by handing our democracy to corporations. The way to remedy this treason is simple and straightforward.
The first step is for Congress to end or fix the filibuster rule so that Republican and Blue Dog Senators can no longer usurp majority rule in the Senate, and prevent the second step.
The second step is for Congress to create two new Supreme Court seats, increasing the total number of justices from nine to eleven. FDR failed in this in the 1930s because he tried to create SIX new justices, and because he was not facing as great an assault on our democracy as we are now. The American People would support Congress’s appointing these two new justices in order to preserve our democracy.
The third and final step is for someone to challenge the new ruling in the courts and have the suit move its way up to the Supreme Court. I’m not sure if that can happen before the Citizens United v. FEC decision allows corporations to hijack the 2010 election. If so, such a delay is not an acceptable option.
Until Citizens United v. FEC is overturned, Obama and the Democratic Congress have a course of action. According to the Constitution, the President is not bound by Supreme Court decisions. There is a famous instance when the Supreme Court rendered a decision and a president said something to the effect that; “Well, you’ve made your decision. Now try to enforce it.” I think it was FDR, but I’m not sure on that.
SCOTUS’ handing our democracy to corporations with this decision can and will, if we let it stand, defeat any and every major progressive initiative after the 2010 elections. If this decision stands, we risk losing both our Senate and House majorities.
We need to put aside every other initiative right now and concentrate our power on defeating this decision by advocating for Congress to end the filibuster, create two new SCOTUS seats, and then have the new SCOTUS reverse the decision. We need to alert the public about this assault on our democracy so that they will fully back Congress’s decision to end the filibuster in order to create the two new seats.
We cannot do everything at once. If we try to assume a business-as-usual approach and continue to work on many other initiative while also working on this one, we risk failing. That is not an option we can afford.
WE NEED TO TABLE ALL OTHER INITIATIVES UNTIL WE GET THIS JOB DONE.
The vast majority of blog posts on all of the Liberal/Progressive sites for the next several weeks should be about getting this done. We should organize our efforts so that some blogs are focusing on some parts of this, and other blogs are focusing on others. We need to organize and fight like our democracy depended on it, because it does.