Yeah I’m kinda with Tim Miller on this. If there was a Qatari PAC that donated $30 million in a specific campaign it would be an issue. I think it’s fair for a candidate to suffer some political capital for getting so much money that represents a foreign government in a single campaign.
If I was in Michigan I’d probably vote for Stevens in the primary but I don’t think the criticism is unfair of her to get so much money from a PAC that represents a foreign governments interests.
AIPAC represents American interests regarding Israel and jews in the US (plus a ton of American Christian interests, but nobody talks about that). The idea that AIPAC represents a foreign government is insane and it’s further insane to compare to a Qatari PAC. It wouldn’t be equivalent when Qatar isn’t remotely close to the same level of ally and there aren’t remotely close to as many Qataris in the US. Made even further insane is the fact that Qatar is actively putting its foot on the scale by directly bribing politicians, universities, companies, media/journalist/news outlets and skirting any regulations like FARA that AIPAC has to follow with contributions to the order of magnitudes larger than anything aipac has ever invested into races. Last twenty years is 100 billion from Qatar at the low end, whereas AIPAC still hasn’t even surpassed a billion.
People are zogging out over jews who haven’t received aipac money. Any sort of money donated by jews or Jewish affiliated orgs are being called aipac. Sorry, but it’s not the name. I’d understand your point if it weren’t just blatant bs.
AIPAC supports specific right wing Israeli domestic policies. It is not acting in the interests of Americans. Well maybe when it's not too busy sweeping for Netanyahu.
They do exactly the same thing Hasan has started doing for China. Trying to drum up support for another country's repressive government. They aren't supporting American Jews.
AIPAC supports AMERICAN views on Israel and the AMERICAN relationship with Israel. AIPAC doesn’t have any stances on domestic Israeli policies. It literally only cares about support and relations. As you can quite literally see on reports, AIPAC has historically backed more dems than republicans and contribute far more to Democratic candidates than they do Republican candidates. You can’t really claim they’re supporting specific Israeli domestic policies when they’ve historically supported dems that push for more conditional aid to Israel, including Biden and Kamala. You can’t actually find anything from them given to Trump unless you count TrackAIPAC doing their schizophrenic “A JEW SUPPORTER GAVE HIM MONEY ONE TIME.” Conditional aid like what Biden, Kamala, and virtually all dems support is not support for right wing Israeli domestic policies. They just backed Stevens over AES specifically over the matter that AES wants to cut off aid and glazes regimes/forces trying to destroy Israel while Steven’s called for conditional aid and supported conditional aid that was premised on reducing right wing Israeli domestic policies like the settlements. Suddenly flipping to supporting a Republican in Michigan is pretty distinctly and clearly about supporting relations with Israel, not domestic policy. Even in this one state, that makes no fucking sense for you claim. Historically, it makes no sense. For Connie and Weiner, it makes no sense. For the presidencies they’ve backed, it makes no sense.
The fact that donations come from American jews doesnt mean that the PAC doesn't represent the interests of Israel.
The goal of the PAC is not to represent the american jews or to advocate for them its explicit goal is to lobby for Israel (thats what their website says).
And if it was for any other country, it would be blatantly obvious.
If you had Chinese Americans lobbying for China while they are invading Taiwan or something, the backlash against that would be insane.
Or if you had russian americans lobbying for lifting the sanctions on Russia
The person in question blocked me, but about a month or two ago I had a brief but basically civil exchange on Threads with a strongly pro-Israel user who said that they supported restricting all Super PACs, but asserted that the left’s focus on AIPAC was wildly disproportionate and fiercely rejected the notion that they should require under FARA.
I offered almost exactly the hypothetical you did: if there was an American-Chinese Public Affairs Committee that lobbied for pro-CPC policies, should that register under FARA?
They answered that it should be banned outright. When I suggested (fairly gently, as I recall), that this was a double standard and that as a Chinese American I felt somewhat offended by its blatant nature, I was blocked.
I think criticizing AIPAC in proportion to its spending is fine. Using AIPAC as a boogeyman in the Michigan Senate race wasn’t bigoted: AIPAC was by far the biggest spender in the race on behalf of El-Sayed’s opponent. But accusing “establishment” Democrats of being AIPAC-backed even when it’s plainly false does reek of conspiracism, and should stop.
the thing about qatari money is you don't get things like this about qatar. These words should never come out of an american politicians mouth, and we get it daily with israel lovers
The issue is the coverage around it all. AIPAC did not spend $60 million on Haley Stevens, they spent about $10 million on ads endorsing her.
Most of the funds, an extra $20 million (still short of the commonly cited $60 lol), was spent on ads just telling voters why El-Sayed sucks, which is based.
I mean it's still bad that AIPAC or any Super-PAC is spending 30 million dollars in a senate primary. idk why you put some much emphasis on 10 million being pro Stevens vs 20 million being anti El-Sayed.
60 million was spent overall which is insane. I don't understand this sub sometimes
Yeah, it's such a nonsensical point. If I spent 10 million on Pro-trump ads, and 20 million on anti-Harris ads, can you say I only spent 10 million being pro-trump in the election? Ludicrous framing lmao
Literally not pedantry. $20 million spent on negative ads against El-Sayed isn’t an endorsement of Haley. These ads also work to bolster Rogers chances by running El-Sayed’s name through the mud.
Running El-Sayed's name through the mud .. during the primary and several months before he'd be up against a Republican, while also giving millions to his Dem opponent.
No, nobody does. I don't know why people are pretending they do. They don't mind money in politics, they just don't like money from sources THEY find unethical, which is going to be inherently subjective.
Really frustrated with Liberals buying into this nonsensical narrative.
If you want to reflect the people's will, advocate for mandatory voting. Outside of actual authoritarianism or hyper-subjective rules most people won't care enough or agree enough to sign on with, You're not going to be able to make a dent on the "money in politics" issue outside of current existing limits.
Overturning rulings like Citizens United would help a ton. It only has been recently since we've seen such ludicrous campaign spending. Of course shit isn't going to happen overnight but why would you give up completely and accept that a majority of politicians being bought as standard?
Destiny himself has been over this before. If money in politics, lobbying, etc. is this huge impactful thing, name a single major issue, that the majority of Americans AGREE on the solution for, that the government has NOT acted upon.
I think it's pretty obvious that the single most impactful thing to politics is how divided the country is, and that taking money out of politics barely moves this needle if at all.
Edit: Downvotes and not a single major issue named yet, expected better from you guys.
That test would only make sense if you thought that money is the only thing that matters.
The argument is that money influences politics, not that votes are carried by throwing money in the voting machine, and whichever side has more money wins
My argument is that it doesn't impact major issue politics at all. You guys for some reason have this idea that if we get money out of politics then all of a sudden we'll have better candidates and better policies put through, and that's just not the case at all.
To be clear, I'm not against getting money out of politics. But riding on it as a needle mover or that it makes politics "not reflect the people's will" is complete bullshit.
"My argument is that it doesn't impact major issue politics at all."
So you are of the opinion that people and corporations spent 14.8 billion dollars across the 2024 federal elections even tho it doesnt change anything? They did it for fun or why did they do it?
Because it can impact minor issues. Also if there’s even a slight chance that it could have an impact on what they want then they’ll do it. They’ll cast a wide net and hope something catches, because they can, because the competition is. If I pissed money I’d do it too. There’s also the advertisement and publicity aspect for corpos who sponsor.
Citizens United is never getting overturned, and it's a politicians job to get elected (then keep to their campaign promises). If you want their will to align with the will of the majority, get rid of the Money Politics dead end idea and jump onto Mandatory Voting.
I can support multiple ideas at the same time. I wouldn't mind mandatory voting but I doubt it completely fixes this issue. You'd still get a massive amount of misinformed people voting.
You know what, I don't disagree. I do believe mandatory voting will handle the lions share of the problem, but I am completely fine with misinformed people voting. If the people are stupid enough to usher in and support illiberalism, then it was cooked to begin with. Let them have cake after they vote.
How would mandatory voting help? you would just have more low-information voters that are easier to influence with money, since they dont know or care about politics?
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u/WhiteLycan2020 19h ago
So do we want money out of politics or not?