{"id":734,"date":"2026-04-19T16:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2026-04-19T16:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:25:11","slug":"money-out-or-more-parties-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/?p=734","title":{"rendered":"Money Out? Or More Parties In?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I replied to another X user who had posted<\/a> that “changing the party in power” will not be “sufficient”, and that the following are essential reforms for American democracy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. No presidential pardon for officials<\/li>
  2. No presidential immunity and drop impeachment threshold to 60%<\/li>
  3. Money out of politics<\/li>
  4. Multipartyism 1<\/a><\/sup><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    As I wrote in my reply<\/a>, I consider the fourth of these, a multiparty system, to be the one that is truly essential. It’s also the only one of the four that we can have without amending the Constitution. If we had it, I believe that in the long run, the other three would seem less vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I want to focus here on getting money out of politics. I know a lot of people consider it essential; so did I, for a long time. When the Citizens United<\/em> decision was announced in 2010, I was as shocked and disappointed as anyone. But when I looked into the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence on questions of campaign spending and the First Amendment, I realized that it went back at least to the 1970s, with antecedents going even further back, and that it would be difficult to ever get money completely out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    With this in mind, along with my thoughts on the advantages of a multiparty system — i.e. one where not only could parties exist<\/em> outside the dominant two, but could be viable<\/em> and have a real chance of representing their voters’ interests — I began to think of other ways system reform could address the problems raised by the corrupting influence of money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I realized that the goal, both for reformers who want to get money out of politics and for those who want to reform the party system, is accountability<\/em> — and that’s what money interferes with. It tends to make government more accountable to big spenders, at the expense of voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But while money can buy influence, it cannot actually buy elections. We’ve seen this proven many times, such as when Elon Musk’s millions failed to get him the result he wanted in Wisconsin’s 2025 Supreme Court election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If the voters could be given a viable choice of a party that refused all corporate and big-money donations, I think a lot of them would be very interested, as long as the party espoused reasonable policies. And in the age of the internet, it wouldn’t take a lot to get the word out. Such a party could gain traction quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When there are only two parties, it’s hard for either one to refuse big-money donations. It would be a bold leap of faith, like unilaterally disarming in an arms race. But in a system with more variety, a new party could test the waters with such a strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A multiparty system, which has the requisite variety<\/a> to perform the functions a party system should in representative democracy, would be a competitive marketplace of ideas, where good ideas would rise and bad ones would fall, in response to voters’ demands. Competition is a powerful mechanism for creating a more accountable system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One way to look at this is to consider voters’ defection options<\/em>. In 2016, for example, when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, a lot of Bernie Sanders voters felt cheated by the party. But how could they hold their party accountable? The only other viable<\/em> party, in our duopolistic system, is the Republican party — which was not a serious option for most Bernie supporters. In a multiparty system, voters would have more defection options, and these would put pressure on parties to be responsive and accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So with a multiparty system that offered real, viable choices to voters, there would be much better accountability. Even if two or three dominant parties got more money than they deserved, they’d be kept on their toes since there would be other parties waiting to take their “market share” if they did not cater to voters’ interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Think of it this way: Is the market for soda too consolidated in the United States — being dominated by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper? Probably so. But if you want something different, in most big cities it is not difficult to find. And to a large extent, the reason those three corporations dominate is because they give consumers what they want. If they started not to, eventually they would lose market share — and they know that. Competition keeps them responsive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That’s why getting money completely out of politics would not be necessary, given a multiparty system. But I’ll go one step further: a certain amount of money might be helpful. As James Madison knew, when crafting a balanced system of interests, we should be alert to the possibilities of an “opposite danger”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When it comes to a more competitive system of political parties, this could take the form of too much “churn”, or instability, in the identity of the leading parties. It would not be helpful for the party landscape to change radically with every election. We should want political parties to have stable identities, based on their values and policy positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The system should ideally have some tendency toward continuity, a form of “inertia”, if you will, to balance its newfound responsiveness to the demands of voters. Something to help ensure that the marketplace of ideas doesn’t descend into chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Organized economic interests can provide such a force. They can be stabilizing even if they do “tilt the playing field” to some degree. The worst problems of corruption by money could still be contained, since we’d keep existing rules about disclosure and limits on direct contributions to candidates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Changing our party system would go further than any other systemic reform toward delivering the accountability that people expect from an advanced liberal democracy, and that has become scarce in 21st century America. It’s the only one of the four listed above that can be done through statutory, not constitutional, changes. Given the dysfunctional state of the republic, I think it’s an idea worth taking much more seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    With a multiparty system that offered real, viable choices to voters, there would be much better accountability. Even if two or three dominant parties got more money than they deserved, they’d be kept on their toes since there would be other parties waiting to take their “market share” if they did not cater to voters’ interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,71,72],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dollar-signs.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wJJ7-bQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}