The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

While I agree with increasing the number of people in Congress (though that can't really be done in the Senate without a major constitutional overahaul) I don't know that this would be the case.

Currently one advantage to a person running for congress in the face of massive corporate spending is that the constituency is very large. If you can rally financial support from a couple thousand people you can go a long way towards negating the advantage of money. However, if you only have 40,000 people in your jurisdiction you're screwed.

Plus, part of the advantage of money here is in the fact that access to mass communication is essentially a zero sum game. In the Bay Area, there's only one set of TV stations, newspapers, and radio stations. If MegaCorp can dominate those channels in the face of demand from the current volume of politicians, tripling the number of politicians scrambling for that access will only make domination easier.

In other words, significantly increasing the number of office holders may decrease the value of a single "bought" congressman but it also would make it cheaper to "buy" a congressman.