Election 2012: 'Swift-boat on Steroids'

Activists rally in Washington, D.C. on January 21,
2011 for an amendment overturning Citizens United.
(photo: Public Citizen/Flickr)

By Ruth Conniff, The Progressive

14 January 12

he Presidential primary season has never seemed less relevant to ordinary Americans.

As the Mitt Romney juggernaut moves through New Hampshire and South Carolina, the sense that voters, even in early primary states, have anything at all to say about the eventual outcome of the elections is rapidly diminishing.

"This will be the most spending, in 2012, that we've ever seen in the history of the country - and even the world," Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy said in a telephone conference with reporters today. Thanks to the Supreme Court's two-year-old Citizens United decision, most of that spending, she added, is "dark money" - money spent by shadowy groups in order to influence the outcome of elections.

"It's swift-boat on steroids," Graves quipped.

No wonder Americans have trouble mustering much enthusiasm for the process.

But even as the presidential primary carnival devolves into more of a sideshow than ever this year, citizens' groups are mobilizing unprecedented political energy to combat the hijacking of our democracy by corporate cash.  READ MORE