The simple answer is: Public financing of political parties. This actually used to be more-or-less the norm in the Western world. France and Germany give public subsidies to their parties. Canada used to, but killed it in the mid-00s — and I think you can actually trace the corrosive effect of relying on small-time donors. The U.S. is ob…
The simple answer is: Public financing of political parties. This actually used to be more-or-less the norm in the Western world. France and Germany give public subsidies to their parties. Canada used to, but killed it in the mid-00s — and I think you can actually trace the corrosive effect of relying on small-time donors. The U.S. is obviously a different beast altogether, but the Presidential election campaign fund checkoff — a subsidy Americans can opt into on their tax returns — used to be a version of that public subsidy, but has been more-or-less dead since ~2008.
So we have the mechanisms! We're just not using them.
The simple answer is: Public financing of political parties. This actually used to be more-or-less the norm in the Western world. France and Germany give public subsidies to their parties. Canada used to, but killed it in the mid-00s — and I think you can actually trace the corrosive effect of relying on small-time donors. The U.S. is obviously a different beast altogether, but the Presidential election campaign fund checkoff — a subsidy Americans can opt into on their tax returns — used to be a version of that public subsidy, but has been more-or-less dead since ~2008.
So we have the mechanisms! We're just not using them.