No, but the majority of voters are not politically engaged or informed and tend to go by what they see on TV. And that means cash to get the message out, to higher people and to maintain "visibility" before the election. A lot of cash. A typical Senate campaign is several million. This isn't being raised from the $10 and $20 from the normal person. It's the people who can marshall many donors to pony up the $2100 or whatever the max is.
The politicians spend a huge chunks of their time fundraising all through their terms (with the 2-year cycle of Congress, it's almost continuous). And the big donor base tends to favor the corporist interests over those of the normal working person.
So if you need at least $5M to run your campaign, and here are groups of persons who can raise several thousands, and over there are people who will give you - much less, let's say, who will the average politician be inclined to please?
Thank you for your well thought-out analysis. I don't have TV, and the people I associate with are well-informed conservatives, pure partyline Republican/Democrat voters or don't vote at all. It leaves me feeling the pols are wasting a lot of money on TV time.
Besides, I've been seeing a few stories that people don't even watch commercials anymore and the price of marketing is going down, so that could be good too.
Maybe they are better off spending money to influence TV Commentators, newspaper editors, authors, bloggers and columnists instead?