John Kerry: “I ask the Senator simply to acknowledge what I think he would acknowledge is the state of the law, which is that there…”

“I ask the Senator simply to acknowledge what I think he would acknowledge is the state of the law, which is that there is a distinction that the Court has drawn between issue advocacy of the kind the Senator from Kentucky was referring to--which I would not seek to restrict; I understand the first amendment--and express advocacy of a candidate. There is a clear distinction the Court has drawn between a legitimate effort to talk about an issue in the abstract and an effort to help a candidate get elected. I think that most Americans would feel, in fact, in answer to the Senator saying, ``Well, there's nothing in here that connects the amount of money to the effort to get people, you know, into the living rooms and out of their offices,'' I suggest respectfully to my colleague, there is, because the more the money, the more there is this effort to simply have these distorted 30-second advertisements, the less people feel connected or need to connect to the politician or the process and the more they are in fact alienated from it. In the experience of Massachusetts, where we set a limit on what we would do, I in fact felt an enormously greater incentive to go out and organize at the grassroots level because I knew it was that much more important.”