Money speaks – approximately $4 billion dollars (per Public Citizen) has been spent on these midterm elections, $345 million was raised for campaigns in Florida. Not only the costiliest election in Florida’s history, but the nation’s most expensive. We’re #1!!!
ZOE CARPENTER, author of DC Dispatches Blog, The Nation and reporter in The Nation’s Washington, DC bureau asked, “Who’s Buying the Midterm Elections? Zoe Carpenter”, her answer, “A Bunch of Old White Guys.” In this, the year of the mega donor, just 42 people are responsible for nearly a third of Super Pac spending in the 2014 election cycle. “Take a look at the list of top donors. They might have distinctly different political agendas, but they have one thing irrefutably in common: they are almost exclusively old white guys. Only seven women made it into the forty-two, and not a single person of color.” That is even less diversity than our present congress. Money speaks – apparently more than the rest of us.
It could have been worse. MICHELLE GOLDBERG, journalist and author, senior contributing writer at The Nation, was very concerned that the personhood amendments in Colorado and North Dakota would Michelle Goldbergtotally change the agenda for reproductive rights for women in this country. If those amendments had passed, it would have been the direct challenge to Roe v. Wade that many have been waiting for. Both were soundly defeated. Michelle will discuss those results and other issues in which people voted against the very policies of some of the candidates they were putting in office.
Do the people see a different country than our leaders? How do we understand the seeming dichotomies between individual measures soundly defeated, yet vote for candidates that espouse the very opposite views?
