Which is why the Democrats like them, obviously.
This is exactly right. Campaign finance laws have simply made it easier for incumbents to stay in office while further empowering the consultant class. Its pretty common to see political new comers lambasted with stories when they fail to comply with some bit of obscure campaign finance law. If campaign finance were really working it would make campaigns more competitive.
What I’d like is laws requiring that incumbents participate in debates with all new comers that make the ballot once a quarter in the year prior to an election and that those media companies that utilize public airwaves be required by law to air those debates at no cost during prime time and that the debates have limited moderation in as much that the moderators do not direct what the candidates talk about but the candidates may choose to take questions from the debate audience. This would not preclude them holding other debates but it would make campaigns more competitive. Those candidates that did not participate in the quarterly debates would forfeit their place on the ballot.
SCOTUS has held that “money is speech,” but with all due respect, talk is cheap. But paper, ink, and printing presses are not, and never have been, free. Money is not “speech,” but for certain sure money is integral to any press.The fundamental problem is that although the First Amendment intends that presses be free and independent, wire services generally and the AP in particular unify the presses into a single entity. The general principle was articulated by Adam Smith three quarters of a century before the advent of the Associated Press:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of NationsTo understand why wire service journalism’s predicted “conspiracy against the public” takes the form of socialist propaganda, consider that journalism is superficial (“always make your deadline”) and negative (“no news is good news” because good news ‘isn’t news’). This combination adds up to cynicism. The other way to see that is to compare Theodore Roosevelt’s “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena” with the cynical inverse of that, which is, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” The first is true (pre-1920) liberalism, the last is post-1930 ersatz “liberalism” which not only is socialistic but represents the ultimate elevation of the (to TR contemptible) critic over Roosevelt’s heroic "man in the arena.”“Campaign Finance Reform” makes precisely zero sense if you recognize that journalism is, was, and always will be politics - and, as such, journalism is not now, never was, and never will be objective.