MATT BAI, a political reporter for the New York Times, explains that the Citizens United decision has not affected the campaign as much as is commonly believed:

The oft-repeated narrative of 2012 goes like this: Citizens United unleashed a torrent of money from businesses and the multimillionaires who run them, and as a result we are now seeing the corporate takeover of American politics. As a matter of political strategy, this is a useful story to tell, appealing to liberals and independent voters who aren’t necessarily enthusiastic about the administration but who are concerned about societal inequality, which is why President Obama has made it a rallying cry almost from the moment the Citizens United ruling was made. But if you’re trying to understand what’s really going on with politics and money, the accepted narrative around Citizens United is, at best, overly simplistic. And in some respects, it’s just plain wrong.

If Mr Bai's "oft-repeated narrative" sounds familiar, that's because it is repeated so constantly and with such vehemence that it has become for millions of Americans an article of faith. So what's "just plain wrong" about it? Mr Bai points out that prior to the unpopular decision, individuals and corporations were already free to spend freely on 527 organisations, such as the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, or on so-called "social-welfare groups", such as the Club for Growth. But in the olden days of yore, these outfits couldn't engage in "express advocacy" of candidates up for election, and corporate cash couldn't finance "electioneering communications", bits of broadcast speech mentioning a candidate by name within a certain number of days prior to a primary or election. Since Citizens United, "any outside group can use corporate money to make a direct case for who deserves your vote and why, and they can do so right up to Election Day", Mr Bai reports. Super PACs have more or less replaced 527s, and are required to identify their donors, while social-welfare groups are not. Mr Bai contends that these changes are "more incremental than transformational", and have been less significant than the unintended effects of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill, which by banning party-controlled "soft money", shifted the locus of campaign-finance power to groups outside the traditional party apparatus:

The new law stamped out soft money for good, but it also created a vacuum in political fund-raising. The parties could no longer tap an endless stream of soft money, but thanks to the advent of the 527, rich ideologues with their own agendas could write massive checks for the purpose of building what were, essentially, shadow parties — independent groups with their own turnout and advertising campaigns, limited in what they could say but accountable to no candidate or party boss. Wealthy liberals like Soros and Lewis, along with groups like MoveOn.org, were the first to spot the opportunity. All told, wealthy liberals spent something close to $200 million in an effort to oust George W. Bush in 2004, setting an entirely new standard for outside spending.

And that was all well before Citizens United. But isn't there an unprecedented amount of cash sloshing around in this year's campaign? Yes! However, Mr Bai argues persuasively that the recent rise in campaign cash is simply an extension of a longer-term post-McCain-Feingold trend:

The level of outside money increased 164 percent from 2004 to 2008. Then it rose 135 percent from 2008 to 2012. In other words, while the sheer amount of dollars seems considerably more ominous after Citizens United, the percentage of change from one presidential election to the next has remained pretty consistent since the passage of McCain-Feingold. And this suggests that the rising amount of outside money was probably bound to reach ever more staggering levels with or without Citizens United.

Mr Bai goes on to suggest that because "it’s much easier to tap into the fury and anxiety of out-of-power millionaires than it is to amass contributions in defence of the status quo", the "wealthy Democrats who pioneered the idea of outside money during the Bush years have largely stood down this year, even while conservative fund-raising has soared". The implication is that if Mr Romney triumphs this November, we can expect to see aggravated wealthy Democrats doling out titanic heaps of green to unseat him in 2016. That's good news for Democrats who worry that Citizens United will work to the GOP's permanent advantage, but bad news for the well-rehearsed progressive narrative about the balefully transformative effects of Citizens United.

By the way, Michael Kinsley is right that Citizens United was not a jurisprudential boner. "Bush v. Gore is indefensible. Citizens United is not", Mr Kinsley wrote a couple weeks ago. "In fact, it was correctly decided, however deplorable the consequences. Liberals ought to show the chief justice that we too can acknowledge a principle even when we don’t agree with the result." However, the level of outside money in this year's race leads Mr Kinsley to say that nonetheless, "There is no doubt that this year’s election campaign has vindicated the concerns of critics of the Citizens United ruling." Mr Bai's article, I think, introduces some real doubt that those concerns really have been vindicated. In any case, Mr Kinsley may well be right in saying, "The influence of money in politics is greater than ever, and the influence of people with money is growing apace." What's not so clear is that Citizens United is the culprit.

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