Before I get into the meat of the post, I realize that there would be campaign finance issues, even in a country where the law is now spelled lol. But it’s a (hopefully) useful thought experiment.
In the 2024 election cycle, Democratic committees, including PACs of various kinds, raised over $2 billion, and the Harris campaign raised around $1.9 billion*. Imagine if it were possible to impose a twenty percent ‘tax’ on campaign contributions, and the money, instead, was spent on the following:
- Funding Democratic-(loosely) aligned journalists (e.g., web-oriented individuals or small publications). In fairness, there are some efforts to do this, but they’ve had mixed success so far.
- Buying up television stations in swing states. Not only would this eliminate (or counteract) Republican programming by news organizations like Sinclair, but, if you’re clever about it, there’s an opportunity to introduce pro-Democratic messaging. But even if you don’t do the latter, the former has value.
- Buying up local newspapers in swing states (the same argument from the previous point for doing this applies here). There’s definitely a market for this in Democratic areas too, that could be very useful in counteracting conservative media.
It’s hard to believe that this would be a worse expenditure of money than giving it to a bunch of shitass Democratic consultants. Probably would be more effective.
The point isn’t to argue for a tax–like I noted at the beginning, it’s probably not legal–but the Democratic Party needs to understand that so many of their problems are downstream of a conservative-controlled media ecosystem. While that ecosystem might not be MAGA, Q*non, or white Christian supremacist conservative, it is conservative, and it does Democrats no favors. Moreover, buying ads from conservative outlets only enriches those bad actors.
I’m not saying these are the only ways to fix this, but professional Democrats must begin to realize that every Brilliant Strategy is filtered through a conservative media environment.
*If I’m reading this correctly, these are not overlapping sources of funding.
mikethemadbiologist
I think it’s a great idea. For years, I’ve been thinking the Democrat should be funding bloggers and journalists covering their state or city. Hadn’t thought of them buying up tv stations. That is excellent.
I hear a lot of people saying Dems should fight dirty like Rethugs. I don’t agree but I do think studying, their tactics to see how best to counter, or even where morally acceptable adopt, them is the kind of thing we aren’t seeing from the institutional Dems, at least in public view. The media ecosystem alignment through direct ownership and inherent conservative leanings is a, if not the, key element of the MAGA advantage. Nevermind the “tax” idea, that would slow things down. What is needed is to do as the right wing has done, get some big money concentrated on such a project. J. B. Pritzker is the person to get interested in this idea. He will get it. If he would go all in to persuade at least some of them, he and his family have the resources and skills to make and fund an action plan, recruit personnel and attract more donors, large and small. Sooner the better. Even in the short term spreading modest amounts of money widely in local/independent media would make a difference and be a good start.