Winston Churchill famously stated that democracy was the worst form of government — except for all other forms.
That sentiment certainly holds true for how we select legislators, chief executives, and judges. Having those individuals stand before the people for election is time-consuming, noisy, confusing, and expensive.
But it beats presenting “patents of nobility” proving you rule by divine birthright.
A similar principle applies to how we pay for elections. Politicians financed by just a few big donors are generally viewed as “bought and paid for.” Their decisions are suspect because “he who feeds the hen has claim on her eggs,” to paraphrase a Swedish proverb.
That means financing a political campaign through many thousands of small (usually defined as less than $200) donations is the perfect solution, right? Maybe not perfect.
It turns out that democratizing fundraising creates some unique problems of its own.
Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute, who spent years studying how we pay for elections, noticed that “candidates who depend on small donors tend to take more polarizing positions.”
This is easily explained. Big donors want details. You promise to reduce the deficit? How? Cut social security? Cut national defense? Raise the alternative minimum tax? To get the big bucks, a candidate must deliver a detailed and philosophically consistent message that major donors can embrace.
The opposite is true of small donors. Small donors devote little time to analysis. Their “giving reaction” is driven by hyper-emotional messages, increasingly viewed online. The average TikTok pitch is between 21 and 34 seconds. A display ad on Facebook is successful if viewed for more than .7 seconds. And Youtube’s most effective ads last only 15-20 seconds.
So small-dollar donations are driven by short, soul-wrenching pictures and heart-pounding narratives conveyed in mere seconds.
Goldberg notes that “on the right, small donations tend to flow to candidates and grifters vowing to wage war on the mythologically all-powerful establishment.”
As an example, he points to former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake. She raised $1.4 million in her race for governor. After the election was called for her opponent, she refined her message to “the establishment stole my election.”
Within months her cry of foul play raised $2.5 million, 80 percent coming from outside Arizona. She expended less than ten percent of that money challenging her “stolen” election, and the rest was banked to support her current run to be Arizona’s next U.S. Senator.
It is undoubtedly better to be funded by many small donors than to be bought and paid for by a few millionaires. But there is a candidate who has found a clever path in between those two models. He’s a billionaire known as “Small-donor Don.”
An advantage to being Donald Trump is you don’t worry about millionaires funding your campaign when the “big donor” is yourself. And this “being beholden mostly to yourself” is amazingly popular . . . with small donors.
That is why the Democrat strategy is to break the Trumps financially. Dry up his personal fortune, and then re-cast him as dependent on Elon Musk, or Texas oil tycoon Timothy Dunn. Question his independence and you’ve pierced the Donald’s most popular selling point.
The Trump team saw this tactic a mile away and the former President has gone to great lengths to counter it. Throughout, his small donors are what has kept his campaign afloat.
So yes, the former President delivers emotionally charged one-liner zingers. He might even mention an auto sector experiencing an economic “bloodbath.” That’s the language that motivates his smaller donor base.
And while it’s not the perfect way to campaign, it’s better than the alternative: rake in millions from fat-cat donors while being incapable of delivering a single coherent one-liner.
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