Some More News - SMN: Why Are U.S. Elections So Long?

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

Hi. In today's episode, we look at the election-industrial complex, why U.S. election season drags on for so long, and what we could do to lessen the influence of corporate money on politics. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11uveT1kN2P2FeU23P7XARjyKpr0YEy9ItQiZTvkqbTQ/edit?usp=sharing   Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh  Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here-- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA  If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to https://drinkAG1.com/morenews.  Take care of yourself from the bottom up this holiday season. Visit https://hellotushy.com/morenews and use promo code MORENEWS for 10% off your first order. Don’t miss out on their Spend & Get event going on now through November 18.

Okay, hi, hey, I'm fine, everything is fine. Hey you, you made it, that's awesome. I clearly almost didn't. Thank you for meeting me here though. Okay, so no time to waste, we gotta get some gosh darn news going. Am I right? So here's some more, the news. I said it.

Okay, there's an election coming up. All right, folks. And by coming up, I mean in exactly one year from now. You gotta cover that election though. Yes, sirree. You can't be last to cover the election. No, sirree. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta cover it since 2022, right after the midterms.

Yes, those headlines are all from 2022 because you gotta cover it every day, all day until we all die at our desks of septic shock. until we all die at our desks of septic shock. Why can't we escape elections? Yeah, hi again, it's still me. Not much time has passed, so obviously it's still me. So okay, how are you doing? Don't just answer, all right?

Really think about it. Also, here's some more news. Elections, which happen every few years apparently, seem to be taking longer and longer and longer. Campaign season now takes up the entire year, if not multiple years, even for the less important elections. I mean, the former very good president

and guy who totally owns real valuable property, Donald Trump, filed his candidacy for reelection on the day of his very crowded inauguration in 2017. Hey Don, how'd that reelection go for you? Cool, how's the second possible reelection gonna go for you? Maybe better? Oof, we'll see.

And okay, so yeah, that guy's an asshole. But this is quickly becoming the norm. Ted Cruz, everyone's favorite, least favorite guy, announced his candidacy for president 596 days before the 2016 election. Nikki Haley, an equally terrible guy who is not my favorite, announced her recent candidacy 629 days before the election, which again,

I cannot stress enough, has not happened yet and is still a year away. So today we're gonna maybe figure out why these elections are taking so freaking long. And yes, I can see you rolling your eyes and saying, well, gee, Cody, are you gonna blame capitalism for yet another problem? And look, listen, look.

Yes. Yes, I am gonna do that. Okay, spoilers, I guess. Because it's time to talk about the election industrial complex. Neat! And look, listen, hi, hey, hey, listen, hey, hi, yes. Yes, I'm aware that the phrase industrial complex

is something people love to throw around. Military industrial complex, prison industrial complex, that guy at my gym who keeps hogging the elliptical industrial complex. It was coined by President Eisenhower to warn against the aforementioned military industrial complex, and has become a somewhat ubiquitous term

to describe a mutually beneficial system where businesses become enmeshed with political or social systems in order to make a profit off of them. So, you know, it's not my fault if that describes a lot of bullshit we do in America. And as an American, nothing is my fault. So the election industrial complex

that we're going to talk about today is one cog, albeit a large one, in the larger machine that is America's political industrial complex. That's right, a complex inside a complex, like putting a Christmas village inside a mall. The hubris! Malls can't have villages, you festive freaks. And things can't be inside other things.

MC Escher is spinning upside out of his grave right now. The political industrial complex is itself a massive self-perpetuating engine at the heart of all of our frustrations with the two-party system. In other words, it's the disregard for actual progress or public interest in favor of perpetuating the business of politics.

Donald Trump would describe it as the swamp, while ironically serving as the beefiest bog monster of them all. But I think you get the idea. The election industrial complex, a phrase I've already said too many times and yet am going to continue saying many more times, funny how that works,

is the industry within that larger system built specifically around elections. Duh, you might be saying. Which is rude, so shush. This industry includes strategists, pollsters, TV ad makers, media buyers, and the actual TV networks, not to mention the candidates themselves, all of their management, consultants, media buyers, and the actual TV networks, not to mention the candidates themselves, all of their management, consultants, accountants,

and so on and so on and so on and so on. Not in service of governing, but rather devoted to being elected. Ironically, the start of this monstrosity can actually be traced back to early efforts to rein in campaign spending. New post- post Watergate rules imposed stricter accounting requirements,

which meant suddenly every candidate had to hire an accountant. And those accountants had to hire accountants and down the rabbit anus we went. Remember last year when we talked about how hospitals and the healthcare industry became profit driven and the more administrators and math nerds you hire, the more incentive there is to seek profit

from running a hospital so you can pay those very same math nerds. It's like that, except with election nerds. Nerds, the square root of all evil. The big picture here is that political elections in this country are now a massive billion dollar industry. A 2021 report from Public Citizen found that across the 2018 and 2020 elections,

70 consulting firms made a collective $1.4 billion with 90% of the money going to just 10 firms. This is obviously gross. Like that's so much fucking money. What a waste. It's on its face icky and bad that privately owned companies are making obscene amounts of money off the backs of a democratic process that in theory is supposed to be

all about giving a voice to the people and letting us control how our own country is governed. Rocking the vote and so on. Yeah, rock it till you make it. But as this pattern continues, it's clear that the purpose has nothing to do with rocking any kind of vote. The United States, which is where I live,

has the longest election cycle compared to other industrialized countries. And that's in part because other countries have rules to prevent this kind of hogwash. Wait, that's not rules. What's the word? Laws, they have laws. In 2007, Mexico passed legislation

which shortened their presidential campaign season to just 90 days. In Argentina, advertisements start only 60 days before an election. And in France, most presidential campaigns are only two weeks long. Two weeks, can you imagine? What would we do with all that extra time?

Pass laws, debate specific policies, play Baldur's Gate 3? It's probably that last one. Foppish vampires don't just fuck themselves, you know. You gotta put in the work to make them feel safe and free. But since here in the good old U.S. of A, we don't have any laws like that, it's pretty much open season

on when an election cycle starts. And so after the break, we're gonna look at the consequences of this system and who exactly is positively affected from a longer election season. Quick hint, it's not us. U.S., U.S., United St... U, us, United States, us, U.S.

Oh, has anyone ever thought of that before? Like some greasy weirdo who was president for four years but only made that simple connection three years after he was president? Nah, nah, nah, nah, it's new, it's new. I just picked that up myself. Excellent thought, me. Hello, it's me, Gentle Cody. I'm very well behaved and learn many tricks fast,

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Check it out. Okay, we're back and we're talking about the endless election cycle. And we were exploring the consequences that come from stretching our election season into a star-spangled Ouroboros. Well, in short, this benefits basically everyone besides the voting public.

Not only do longer elections mean more money paid to consultants and staffers and other administrative types, it also means more time campaigning, which leads to a more lucrative advertisement campaign, which benefits TV networks, advertisers, PACs, et cetera, et cetera. Trump's presidency may have undermined the foundation

of our national democracy, but it was a huge windfall for television execs. CNN posted nearly a billion dollars in profits in 2016 on the back of the presidential election. And of course, Fox News has conquered the news by hand feeding partisan election season politics to the right, or you know, maybe, maybe, maybe they're just really informative and entertaining.

Time once again for leftovers. It's the Emmy winning cooking segment I stole from Rachel Ray. I kid. Do you, Greg? Do you kid? Gosh, I love it when my late night comedy hosts constantly look bored, miserable, put out by being there

and bizarrely uninterested in the jokes they're in the middle of telling. Now, a longer election cycle also incentivizes lawmakers to campaign while in office, spending more of their time eating babies and kissing hot dogs instead of actually doing the job they were elected to do. as lawmakers to campaign while in office, spending more of their time eating babies and kissing hot dogs instead of actually doing the job they were elected to do.

People complain about this all the time, but it's really worth stepping back and reflecting on it. Congress literally spends more of its time asking for money to get reelected than it does passing legislation or debating green eggs and ham or whatever. That shouldn't be the case, but it is. Once in office, a Senator typically needs

to raise around $10,000 a week to fund their reelection campaign, a process that can look like anything from schmoozing with special interest groups to schmoozing with super PACs to writing those annoying emails Bernie still won't stop sending me. I have sent back so many nudes and he just keeps asking.

Starting to think it's not actually him. I'm still gonna do it. Power to the people. The good politicians raise their money by just doing some light insider trading and spend the rest of their time working hard to pass meaningful legislation to help the most vulnerable people in the country.

Do not fact check that. Meanwhile, the bad politicians also do the insider trading, plus fundraising, plus spending their time passing laws to make it easier to fundraise. Earlier this year, Ron DeSantis signed a bill exempting him from Florida's resign to run law, meaning he could run for president while still being the governor of Florida,

which seems kind of sketch. That same bill makes it harder to know where political committees in Florida are getting their money from by loosening the regulations on how often those committees have to file campaign finance reports. And, and, and, and, and, the bill also imposed new and stricter voting restrictions across the state

and made it harder for nonprofits to do voter registration drives because of course it did. I mean, to be fair, he needs all the help he can get, what with being extremely unlikable and off-putting and having bad unpopular ideas. And these are all the very practical, tangible ways that this system gets gunked up by elections. There's also the fact that these long election cycles

are just, you know, annoying and tiring. In 2016, Pew Research reported that 59% of Americans felt exhausted by the election coverage. In 2016, little did anyone know that we were only at the start of a nonstop political shit parade that would drag on for the next seven years. Seven years. You know, I was once happy.

Were you, though? Hey now. No, I wasn't. Good point. And while people being annoyed doesn't sound like a crisis, this is the kind of situation that could eventually lead to even more voter apathy as well. Currently, our turnout has actually gone up

in the last few decades. 66% of eligible Americans voted in 2020. That's not as high as other countries, mind you. And also that's for an election where one of the candidates literally looked directly at the sun before and during everyone telling him not to. But it's an improvement, but it was also like a big election. And you'd think that if voter apathy is still an ongoing concern, then it would be bad for our election cycles to be a constant stream of noise. The world is already filled with noise.

We all have these little noise squares in our pockets that give us constant updates about the most horrific things happening in the world that we can't do anything about, including the slow death of the climate. It's extremely easy to completely burn out in that environment, like our environment is doing, actually. Oh, that's fun.

And then on top of that, we get the people who are supposed to be doing stuff, using their platform to campaign about how they'll totally do stuff at some point, so long as you keep hiring them to do this stuff they aren't doing yet, but totally will eventually. And by do stuff, they actually mean tweeting that someone should do something while we all go,

wait, I thought that's what we hired you to do. And then it just starts over again, often with the exact same people who were running last time, just running again. And we're too tired with like our lives to figure out why that is. And a lot of that isn't new, mind you, and part of the larger political industrial complex

we discussed. But the problem has compounded with the lengthening election system. Hell, even when not officially campaigning, social media has made it so a politician is always kind of selling themselves to some extent. And it seems easier than ever to play the part while doing nothing.

You can just tweet about wokeness or whatever and no one will even notice that you're not actually governing. And so the lingering question is why we let this happen? Why doesn't anyone else run against these weirdos? Why is it that people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi can embed themselves in our system while anyone remotely new is instantly unlikable

and out of touch? Well, that's in part because since political campaigns are now its own industry, you have to be at least a millionaire to actually run for office in a lot of cases, because it's like everything else now, getting married, having kids, buying a house. The price for simply existing has gone up.

So why not also the price of politics? And so since the 1980s, the average cost of any election has increased 555%. That's a steeper rise than even healthcare or college tuition. Becoming a politician is now a luxury item. And like most luxury items, it mostly attracts unlikable dipshits

who just want more luxury items. And so it's really no surprise that Americans have completely lost faith in our government. And that would be a real bummer if it was the end of the episode. But no, we have another ad break. So let's do that ad break. Then unbreak. Unbreak.

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Tell your butt friends by farting. Oh, hey, you're back. That's good. Keeping your promise is good, and you promised you'd be here. If you recall, before your promise, we were talking about the current state of elections. To sum it up, bad.

The current state is bad and long. But of course, it wasn't always like this. As I mentioned up top, because I'm a very good news guy and set up excellent exposition, we can trace the start of the election industrial complex to the campaign finance reforms made after Watergate. In 1974, President Gerald Ford signed off on quote, "'historic amendments' to the 1971

"'Federal Election Campaign Act, "'which established the Federal Elections Commission "'and placed severe limits "'on campaign spending and donation.'" Can you guess how long it took for Republicans to legally challenge those totally reasonable sounding amendments? Did you guess one day?

You did? God, your hot mother and I are just so proud of you. The courts upheld some of the amendments, but struck down the limits on spending, including independent expenditures, which is money spent by an individual or group that's totally unconnected from the campaign. Can you guess what this led to?

Did you guess political action committees? You did? Good for you and your swelteringly hot mom. Like a sauna she is. See, it goes like this. If a PAC intends to donate directly to a candidate, there are set limits to how much money can be donated to that PAC from an individual.

But if a PAC on paper claims they will donate no money directly to a candidate, well, then anyone can donate any amount of money they want, like some sort of, like a super PAC, which we'll get to. Then of course there's soft money. A 1979 amendment by the FEC created this nifty little soft money concept, essentially allowing political parties to spend unlimited amounts of money as long as the money

goes towards so-called party building activities or issue ads. Hey, that sounds like a way to get around a barrier, like a hole, like a loopy type of hole, like a wall slit you fire arrows out of, but can't get hit because there's a loop, you can't get it yourself, the hole is very small. And it's meant to go around something.

Gosh, I wish I could Google dictionary. Because while the original point of the 1979 amendment was to let political parties spend money on things unaffiliated with any particular candidate or campaign, they quickly realized they could just be identical to ads for a specific candidate. All you gotta do is put a little paid for text on the screen and you are good to go.

Honesty, doing what's right, living up to his word. My husband has come out strongly to protect the victims of domestic violence. That's from the swingin' 90s, hip cat. And it's amazingly an example of an issue ad. According to the Washington Post, both the DNC and RNC would run party ads that were indistinguishable from the Clinton and Dole campaigns.

And during those campaigns, the two parties raised over $262 million in soft money, more than three times what they raised in the previous presidential election, and totally blowing the roof off the caps theoretically set in place in the 70s. You might notice that this sucks, but it was looking to suck a lot harder and faster and deeper and wetter several decades later

when the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Dun, dun, dun! Yeah, I bet you heard about this. This is that good Thanos shit. Citizens United did many things, and we don't have the time to talk about all of them in detail here and now.

But one of the big things the ruling achieved was deciding that independent political spending did not present a substantial risk of corruption in our elections. How did they decide that, you ask? Oh, that's kind of a whole other episode, but the short answer is money, money. Justices who voted with a majority argued

that limiting political spending, even from corporations, violated the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and that somehow independent spending wouldn't be corrupt and would be transparent, which obviously. As a result of this landmark ruling, corporations can spend essentially unlimited amounts of money on campaign advertising, as long as they aren't formally coordinating

with a candidate or political party, which seems like a pretty big, one of the holes I mentioned, with the loops in them. Wait, aren't loops a type of hole? So it's like a hole hole? A loop loop. There's a term for it. Really makes you think.

Anywho, the Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for Super PACs. Despite the name, these are not technically political action committees, but rather quote, "'Independent expenditure only political committees.' Super PACs are to regular PACs what super shredder is to regular shredder.

They're just roided out versions of groups that technically aren't supposed to coordinate with candidates and have an unlimited cap on donor funding and spending. See, we call them super because of how super and good the Citizens United ruling was. It's just like the Patriot Act, woo hoo. So super PACs are allowed to spend as much money

as their little corporate hearts desire. And they also have done that, they've done that. They've absolutely done that. Super PAC spending went from 63 million in 2010 to 1.1 billion in 2016. Today, Super PACs have spent over $3 billion on federal elections or 1.3 avatar the way of waters. They have basically become a big funnel for candidates

to chug down as much corporate money as their little greedy bellies can take. And so that raises the question as to how they get around laws saying that PACs can't strategize directly with candidates. The answer, easily. They get around those laws easily because the laws are bad and outdated. For example, there's nothing saying that Super PACs

can't invite candidates to outside events they are holding, even though that's literally just an obvious campaign rally. This is what happened with Rick Perry and a round table event hosted by the Opportunity and Freedom Pack. Another particularly blatant example is when Jeb Bush toured with his Right to Rise Pack raising money before announcing he was running for president.

You see, it didn't matter that he kept heavily implying he was running. Legally speaking, he wasn't a candidate yet. Sure, once he announced he was running, he cut all ties with that pack. After, they raised over $100 million. Way to cheat, Jeb. Pretty please, Klopp?

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't show this clip after mentioning Rick Perry literally any time. Rick Perry, watch him, he's a comer. Excellent point, Mr. President. There are a bunch more ways to get around this rule that both Republicans and Democrats utilize. The Hillary Clinton campaign unintentionally spelled out a lot of the tactics nicely,

which in a lot of cases boiled down to using heavy innuendo to donors, like a mob boss fixing a race. It is very easy and no one in power really cares to change that because of the money you see. And what's wild is that it's not like all this money directly translates to a sure win. I mean, we just finished telling you about how much money

Jeb Bush and Rick Perry spent for the 2016 election. That isn't to say that political ads don't work. In fact, they are probably extremely important when an election is really close, but there's no hard science on the subject. So why dump so much money into this? In part, it goes back to those nerds I mentioned earlier and a self-perpetuating system that exists

to justify itself. Because regardless of whether or not the ad campaigns get votes, they certainly turn a profit for everyone involved in making them. Here's an incredibly depressing quote from a political advisor, which I'm going to read to you directly.

Quote, you can do it in five minutes with three people. You set it up and you have a treasurer and a whatever. That's my two buddies and me. Then we go to a couple of the candidates' wealthy friends and say, hey, do you want to elect your friend? Well, we've got a super PAC here. You can give five, 10, 15, $20 million and really have an impact on this race.

The donor doesn't know anything about what we do or how we do it. We're going to go full commission and pay ourselves really well because nobody's negotiating with us. For all the donor knows, 15% is the standard deal because that's what he's being told. This is sort of like saying, okay, you guys,

the bank is open, there's no cameras, there's no security, take as much as you need. Super PACs raise these ludicrous amounts of money. And then because they aren't technically supposed to give that money to a specific candidate, they're almost directly incentivized to pay as much of it to themselves as they are able. It's kind of like how utility companies

make all of their money off building infrastructure rather than actually selling the water or gas. These super PACs don't need to care if the commercials they're creating will actually push voters one way or the other. The production of the ads themselves is a money machine, not just for the PACs, but for the ad companies making them and the TV networks airing them.

The networks in particular have it good. Every year they get to have what's basically a huge bidding war as they auction off the primetime advertising slots to the highest paying pack. Now, you might accidentally think that since political ads aren't necessarily effective, that means super packs aren't a big deal. But more than a funding loophole, the actual value in these super packs is that they allow a handful of wealthy people to spread around their cash in order to directly change policy.

For starters, it's not just ads they're buying, but political movements. Remember Moms for Liberty? They're the group that goes around barging into school board meetings to complain about critical race theory and mask mandates and the existence of gay people and whatever else, maybe green eggs and ham again.

Well, guess where they get their money from? At least in part from the Conservatives for Good Government PAC, which gets their money from a bunch of other corporate PACs, you know, real grassroots stuff. PACs can also unofficially create campaign events in a candidate's name. And even if none of this works,

A, what a huge waste of money. Again, so many better uses for money, folks. But also, B, they still pumped a bunch of money toward a political party and candidates that no doubt still hold political positions, right? If Ted Cruz fails hilariously to become president, he's still a politician helping to make laws. So it doesn't matter how effective that money is

in terms of individual costs. If their candidate or their party is elected or not, either way to them, that is money well spent. You're buying access. That's why most non-Super PACs send their limited donations through a lobbyist who gets to speak directly to a candidate. Ultimately, they are buying their time and attention. These very wealthy people skipping to the front of the line

with their wallets. So if you're, I don't know, just to throw out a name, Koch Industries, and you've been funneling money to GOP candidates through super PACs for a decade, then the GOP might be theoretically, hypothetically, very supportive of the oil and gas industry. Again, in like imagination land, it's a theory, hypothetical. In theory, perhaps, maybe.

So yeah, even if TV ads have diminishing returns, there's really no overstating how damaging super packs can be in an election season. We haven't even talked about the fact that these packs are way more free to drum up ass tons of misinformation thanks to the internet. Digital ad spending is obviously the next big thing. And that can range everywhere from pre-roll commercials

to fucking fake social media influencers. Yes, that is actually happening. They are paying influencers to back specific political issues. And so going back to our premise about why elections are unending, well, super PACs play a huge role in this. It's a multi-billion dollar industry designed

to embed politics into every facet of our lives without us even realizing it. From our entertainment to our freaking school board meetings, we can't escape election season politics. And to boil that down even more, it's money and attention. Money and attention are the reasons why elections are unending,

which is what I said at the start of the video. So, you know, it's full loop, it's full hole. No, it's full circle. All right, we end where we begin. It's like Pulp Fiction, which starts with credits and ends with credits. And this is all to say that there are ways to fix this that definitely won't happen

so long as our government makes it so easy for corporations to involve themselves in politics. For starters, we could just force elections to be shorter. Japan has strict laws that place their election cycle on the opposite extreme of the US. They limit campaigning to no more than 17 days prior to election. Some experts have argued that such a short limit

doesn't allow for new ideas or fresh voices to really sink into the public zeitgeist. But there's probably a way to split the difference. In fact, a study examining 113 elections in 13 democracies found that longer elections allowed voters to evaluate economic conditions to inform their evaluations of parties in power. And ultimately suggested that just six weeks

is long enough for voters to start absorbing information on candidates. So not one and a half years, sounds great. Maybe we shift from 78 weeks to six weeks. Also, maybe we should try public campaign financing. It's a tricky idea because we'd have to accept that our tax dollars will directly go to the campaigns of people we do not like.

And Lord knows it wouldn't stop outside influences from butting their way into elections. And of course, a system like that, much like before, would almost immediately be dismantled by the people who don't want that to happen, otherwise known as politicians. So why can't we escape election season? Because the people in power

are the same people profiting off of it. And to them, the only side effect is the increasing apathy of the individual voter, which frankly, just makes things easier for them. Trying to help everybody, it's hard. It's easier if they could just decide elections from a handful of rich people asking for tax breaks and deregulation.

So this is all to say that while elections will no doubt become even longer and bigger and dumber like an aroused clown, we just have to keep showing up despite any obstacles they put in our place, which is why I set up this obstacle course in my home. Huh? All right, you fucker, it's time for round two. Ha ha!

Oh no, I forgot about the marbles! I didn't forget the marbles, you fool. I was prepared for them. Part of the obstacle course was that you had to trip on the marbles, you fool. I was prepared for them. Part of the obstacle course was that you had to trip on the marbles, I won! Thank you so much for watching the episode. Be sure to like and subscribe, leave a nice comment or a mean one if you're feeling mean today.

We got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've got a podcast called Even More News. We've got this show as a podcast called Some More News. It's where the podcasts live and breathe and dance around in the moonlight. We got merch. You can buy some stuff from there. And that's the end.

That's the end. That's the end. Not of the end. That's the end. Not of like this show, but of this episode. See you next time.