The Sober Task of Balancing Dark-Money Equations

THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION was one big lovefest and it began to cloy.

Yes, everyone was still staggered by the noble sacrifice President Joe Biden had made in relinquishing his chance to run for a second term. Yes, everyone was exhilarated by the enthusiasm with which Vice President Kamala Harris was immediately embraced as the party’s new standard bearer. Yes, everyone was relieved beyond description that the threat of another presidential term filled by Donald J. Trump was fading day by day. But let us resist getting drunk on our own happiness. 

We can dispel some of the joy by reminding ourselves that the political celebrities called on stage to pledge support for Harris are not the superstars the convention made them out to be. Each had weaknesses characteristic of a long line of precarious presidencies, which is why the country is mired in a series of serious and persistent problems today. Each of those celebrities contributed to these calamitous times in his own way. 

Superstar Bill Clinton (January 1993 – January 2001) enacted NAFTA in 1994, which helped disappear over 400,000 American jobs and depress U.S. living standards. The trade agreement led to the loss of over 2 million jobs and 28,000 small businesses in Mexico, factors one would be justified in thinking contributed to the immigration issues the U.S. is grappling with now.¹ In 1999, Clinton ushered in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, granting savings banks leeway to invest depositors’ money with the same abandon as investment banks while requiring lenders to loosen restrictions on credit risks. Both measures, some believe, helped create the housing bubble that burst in 2007, bringing the global economy to its knees.

Superstar Barack Obama (January 2009 — January 2017) committed a huge error when, in wrestling with the fallout of the 2007-08 financial crisis, he refused to restructure the country’s failing industries to root out the rot. Instead, he spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to salvage those industries, then invited the people who had participated in — and profited from — destroying the economy to clean up the mess. To top it off, he watched some of that hard-earned taxpayer money get disbursed to corporate bigwigs as enormous bonuses, apparently for driving the economy into the ground.

The utter failure of Democratic political promises has nothing to do with incompetence, lack of information, paucity of resources, or even Donald Trump.

What do the flaws of these two former president have in common? That becomes painfully clear when we look at Biden’s salient flaw. In some ways the hero of the DNC, Biden has been presiding over a spectacular failure since October 7, 2023: the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliation. At this late date, Biden speaks about the high desirability of a cease-fire in Gaza, regrets the killing and mutilation of civilians huddled there captive, urges the need to pour in aid to relieve a decimated population languishing near death . . . and approved $20 billion in additional military aid to the government bombing, shooting, and starving those civilians.

What’s wrong with Biden’s equation? What was missing in Clinton’s? In Obama’s? The utter failure of their promises has nothing to do with incompetence, lack of information, paucity of resources, with Donald Trump or MAGA. The real circuit breakers have names the political elite prefers not to mention, so a term was coined to save them embarrassment: dark money. Shine a light on that and all their nutty equations balance. 

Factor financial interests into Clinton’s equation. Factor banks into Obama’s. Factor AIPAC² into Biden’s. The equations balance. 

Our joyful DNC also appeases its donors through silence. Despite the heaving demonstrations held throughout the convention’s four days declaring the nation’s objection to arming Israel, the DNC barely mentioned the issue. The convention declined to permit an American-Palestinian on stage while granting Israelis the right to speak. Why? Light up the invisible factor at work in their modus operandi — AIPAC funding — and it makes perfect sense. 

The tobacco industry’s shenanigan worked for decades until even the Marlboro Man’s widow caught on.

Dark money has swamped the American government. It remains dark — unidentified — because it represents bribes corporate interests pay out to pet politicians who pass legislation those corporations favor, legislation that would otherwise fail because it cheats the American public. Light up that dark money and people might discover the small fortunes the Dairy Business Association, for example, donated to certain state policymakers to loosen manure spreading rules for factory farms and ease oversight of high-capacity wells.³ They might wonder, too.

Tobacco was finally exposed and censured for funding fraudulent research and hiring charlatan “experts” to deny that smoking was unequivocally connected to cancer. Proof was not the critical component, the industry had learned; sowing doubt was key. The shenanigan worked for decades until even the Marlboro Man’s widow caught on.⁴ Now fossil fuel industries are having their field day, lavishing their ample wealth on sham research and phony “experts” to remind the sweltering masses that the levels of CO₂ were far higher 500 million years ago and the Earth survived.

Dark money’s most tragic consequence has been in evidence since October 2023, with AIPAC’s month-long triumph spelling Biden’s gravest failure: coddling the worst massacre witnessed since the modern world had live streaming devices slipped into its hands. 

It’s important that we, the victims of hijacked political promises, understand the process of contamination dark money initiates. The politician who sells us out does far worse than perform the briber’s bidding. He forces the brain of the hand that took the bribe into overdrive to manufacture a benefit the purchased deed enabled him to deliver to his constituents. The copious lying required to manufacture such a truth muddles our sullied politician’s understanding about what he did and why, although he does remember the business end of the deal: he well remembers what he was bribed to do. When Jim Jordan cries foul about the onslaught of criminal cases pending against former President Trump, he no longer knows what he’s blathering about. His bogus counterattacks, repeated for months, have besmirched his reasoning. No longer his own master, neither is Jordan a reliable representative of his constituents in Ohio. Dark money bewitches, intoxicates, erodes, corrodes.

You can detect where dark money lurks by listening to what politicians don’t say.

As the Democratic Party congratulates itself on its emergent strength, unity, and joy, let it chasten itself by reflecting that the real work ahead involves hard truths not yet faced: global warming, environmental protection, green energy, Gaza. Behind each of these issues stand monied interests who have business along those lines. How awkward that those monied interests number among the Democratic party’s biggest donors. That in itself is no huge shame. The fact that those interests fund all of U.S. politics is the shame.

You can detect where dark money lurks by listening to what politicians don’t say. At the convention, the Harris-Walz team refrained from speaking of Gaza in any meaningful way, working instead to keep their joy balloon aloft. In doing so, they indulged the same manipulative tendencies characteristic of all ambitious political parties, MAGA included. 

To show their supporters they are serious about change, our Democratic frolickers must not only talk about the issues dark money pays them to ignore, they must address the issue of dark money itself. They could start by inviting talks with the nerds who know the malignancy best: a nobility of scholars and experts⁵ who have consistently spurned corporate money and been sidelined by dark money in return. They have seen their reputations trashed, research challenged, speaking engagements cancelled, media sponsorship dropped, media coverage denied, university tenures rescinded. Deadly assaults are not unknown. Yet they persevered, and our ebullient Democratic elite must now heed their voices. 

The first item of business will be to root out corporate money in politics and the action is clear: ax Citizens United. An ungodly squall will follow, but surely our hale Democrats can ride it out, knowing exposure accelerates healing. The reward: a healthy political system whose equations — public promises weighed against outcomes delivered — finally balance. 

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1. “The Failed Experiment: NAFTA at Three Years,” Economic Policy Institute, Institute for Policy Studies, International Labor Rights Fund, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Sierra Club, U.S. Business and Industrial Council Educational Foundation, June 26, 1997. ↩︎
2. American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a pro-Israel lobbying group. “Support among congressional members includes a majority of members of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. According to AIPAC, the annual Policy Conference is second only to the State of the Union address for the number of Federal officials in attendance at an organized event.” AIPAC entry, Wikipedia. ↩︎
3. “Influence Peddler of the Month — Dairy Business Association,” Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, August 1, 2016. ↩︎
4. In 1996, the widow of David McLean, the Marlboro Man who died at the age of 73 from lung cancer, sued Philip Morris Companies Inc. in federal court. According to the suit, “The stoic Marlboro Man, tall and alone in the saddle, image of all that is masculine and strong, was actually an actor choking his way through pack after pack of cigarettes while fussy film directors tried to get the smoke to rise just so and the ash to tip in just the right direction.” Associated Press. ↩︎
5. Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hedges, and Norman Finkelstein, for starters. ↩︎