When the dust set­tles around this seem­ing­ly end­less pres­i­den­tial race — the most expen­sive cam­paign in world his­to­ry — one ques­tion to address will be how the var­i­ous media may have affect­ed the out­come of the elec­tion. In oth­er words: Was it worth it?

Don’t get me wrong, Citizens United was a dreadful and deeply undemocratic decision. But it also might be the case that, as the Beatles put it, money can’t buy love.

In one cor­ner we have Shel­don Adel­son, the Koch broth­ers, Karl Rove, and their mil­lions spent pri­mar­i­ly on neg­a­tive adver­tis­ing against Democ­rats. Join­ing them are a con­cert­ed Repub­li­can-led effort at vot­er sup­pres­sion and a Repub­li­can can­di­date a lot of peo­ple real­ly don’t like one bit. In the oth­er cor­ner we have the instant­ly viral Moth­er Jones ​“47 per­cent” video, Sarah Silverman’s auda­cious and hilar­i­ous chal­lenge to Adel­son (also gone viral, check it out if you haven’t), and mil­lions of Face­book users shar­ing anti-Rom­ney and pro-Oba­ma posts.

When the 5 – 4 rul­ing in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed came down in 2010 from a deeply divid­ed court (Jus­tice Stevens’ dis­sent was 90 pages of rage at the deci­sion), pro­gres­sives were right­ly alarmed by the impli­ca­tions. By over­turn­ing McCain-Fein­gold — the rul­ing deemed cor­po­ra­tions (and unions) the equiv­a­lent of indi­vid­u­als and grant­ed them under the aus­pices of ​“free speech” unlim­it­ed, anony­mous spend­ing — the court opened the flood­gates to elec­tions awash in mon­ey from sources oth­er than the cam­paigns them­selves. Because cor­po­ra­tions have much more mon­ey than unions, and because bil­lion­aires are typ­i­cal­ly (though not always, of course) con­ser­v­a­tive, we feared, cor­rect­ly, that right-wing groups would dom­i­nate the air­waves and attack Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates with end­less neg­a­tive advertising.

Even worse, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed led to the metas­ta­siz­ing of ​“social wel­fare” groups, also known as 501©4s, like Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS. These groups do not have to reveal who their con­trib­u­tors are and can raise and spend how­ev­er much they want; with­in two years of its found­ing, Cross­roads GPS brought in $77 mil­lion, 90 per­cent of it from only 24 donors. This lack of trans­paren­cy has been huge­ly alarm­ing to pro­gres­sives. But the ques­tion after the elec­tion will be: Were we more wor­ried than we need­ed to be?

Don’t get me wrong, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed was a dread­ful and deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion. But it also might be the case that, as the Bea­t­les put it, mon­ey can’t buy love.

As of this writ­ing, the Moth­er Jones video appears to have done con­sid­er­able dam­age to Rom­ney, and pos­si­bly to downtick­et Repub­li­cans, who have dis­tanced them­selves from him and his tru­ly cyn­i­cal and chill­ing remarks. No big media buys here: Just put it out there and watch Face­book work its magic.

At the same time, ​“Restore Our Future,” the pro-Rom­ney Super PAC, had spent $85 mil­lion by the end of Sep­tem­ber on anti-Oba­ma ads.

One of the biggest spenders was Rove’s Cross­roads GPS, which tar­get­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate can­di­dates like Claire McCaskill in Mis­souri, Tim Kaine in Vir­ginia, Tam­my Bald­win in Wis­con­sin and Sher­rod Brown in Ohio. With Bald­win pulling ahead of Tom­my Thomp­son in the polls in the wake of the 47 per­cent video, Cross­roads made a $1.2 mil­lion dol­lar ad buy in Wis­con­sin to smear her for her ​“extreme tax-and-spend agen­da” and for sup­port­ing the ​“failed” stim­u­lus pack­age — which, of course, saved the econ­o­my from total dis­as­ter. Will such attacks work in Sen­ate and Con­gres­sion­al races?

The gap in bat­tle­ground states between the amount spent by right-wing Super PACs, 501©4s and oth­ers, and the poll results that show Oba­ma lead­ing by 8‑to-10 points, rais­es the ques­tion of whether unlim­it­ed spend­ing on attack ads works in our media-sat­u­rat­ed cul­ture. In Michi­gan and Penn­syl­va­nia, Super PACs have spent at least $18 mil­lion to sup­port Rom­ney, but Oba­ma leads him by wide mar­gins as of now in both states. Peo­ple get sick of those ads and tune them out, min­i­miz­ing their effectiveness.

And after the elec­tion, will the IRS and the FEC aggres­sive­ly inves­ti­gate 501©4s for vio­lat­ing the terms of their tax sta­tus? As ​“social wel­fare” groups, only an ​“insub­stan­tial amount” of their funds can be spent on polit­i­cal activities.

So now we wait. Turnout is every­thing in this race. But whether a grainy, ama­teur video, zoom­ing through social media at the speed of light, trumps big money’s slick­ly pro­duced tele­vi­sion ads — that’s the ques­tion of the year.