Political Quotes

“I think three things went wrong. First of all, this is a Supreme Court that, unlike most if not all other Supreme Courts, has no political experience. None of them have ever run for office, so they do not have a practical sense of how politics engages in an election. Second, because they sort of invented this question, they did not have a record where people who did know about politics and did know about elections and did know about corruption could assemble a record from which they could then learn. So they were operating in a much greater vacuum than the Supreme Court usually does. Finally, they made two presumptions that supported it. One was that the super PACs and all these big entities would be independent from the candidates. We have seen that was a false assumption. That was a wrong premise. Now the super PACs are connected to a candidate. They have one purpose: to get the candidate elected. They have funds raised by the candidate, they share staff with the candidate, they share consultants with the candidate. They use the same footage as the candidate. The idea that they are independent has been made preposterous by the facts. The second was that there would be disclosure so the public could at least evaluate, OK, this is the coal mining industry coming after somebody who is fighting for climate change. We get that. We can make an appropriate judgment about that use of corporate money to attack a candidate. They were wrong about that as well.…”