Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC Announcement Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means

| Adam Smith

Hillary Clinton said addressing “unaccountable money” in our political system would be a “pillar” of her campaign. On Wednesday, news broke that she would help raise money for an affiliated super PAC. These two things might seem incongruous, but they don’t have to be.

It would be better to live in a world without super PACs or without the pressure on candidates of both parties to embrace them. But thanks to the Supreme Court and lower court decisions, we don’t live in that world.

It’s not an ideal situation, but as Every Voice’s David Donnelly told MSNBC this week, “Hillary Clinton’s decision to solicit super PAC contributions makes it all the more important for her to offer a bold, detailed plan to to address the public’s belief that our elections are for sale to the highest bidder. Vague platitudes are no longer enough,” ”

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza misses what Clinton’s announcement means in his blog post yesterday.

1. Cillizza uses a Gallup poll showing “money in politics” missing as a top priority to show people don’t care about it. People are concerned about politicians doing favors for donors. They’re concerned about government not working for them. They’re concerned that those who give large amounts of money to elect candidates will get better treatment. They see candidates auditioning for billionaires. That may not be defined as, simply, “money in politics.”

In Election Day polling we did last November with Democracy Corps, voters ranked themselves last on a list of six items of things that have the most influence over elected officials. Donors and lobbyists come first. That’s on the day voters were actually choosing their elected officials and they still put themselves last.

In the same Gallup poll Cillizza cites, “dissatisfaction with government” is the top non-economic problem. What do you think causes that?

2. Cillizza looks into a crystal ball and claims money in politics won’t be a top voting issue for a national electorate this cycle. But who knows? The challenge is not to place an issue at the top of the heap on its own – it’s to make the issue among the top priorities for enough voters and to connect it to other issues: corporate money and trade; Wall Street money and financial security; oil money and energy policy; and so on.

3. Hillary Clinton has some of the smartest minds in politics working for her. We’ve seen the polling on this and we bet she has, too. She wouldn’t be talking about it if her team didn’t think it was an effective, persuasive message.

4. Republicans keep talking about money in politics! What’s the Clinton Foundation storyline but one of money in politics? If they didn’t think tarnishing her as a corrupt politician wouldn’t work, they wouldn’t use it.

Also: Ted Cruz has called for a ban on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists. Marco Rubio specifically called out Hillary Clinton’s money from Wall Street. Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee have called for more disclosure. Lindsey Graham has said we need a constitutional amendment.

As Cillizza’s colleague Matea Gold wrote a few weeks ago, “money in politics is unexpectedly a rising issue in the 2016 campaign.”

Adam Smith Adam Smith is Every Voice's communications director.