— Corruption has become the midterm issue the pundits never saw coming, and it has Trump’s name all over it. For years I’ve been ranting at Democratic politicians and strategists that corruption is the most powerful meme they can use against the GOP. (From 2021 when I started this newsletter to 2022 to at least a dozen articles since including this year.) They finally noticed that the public has always agreed with me because multiple pollsters finally got around to asking the question. The Financial Times reports that corruption now ranks among the top concerns pushing Americans to the polls this year: the FT/Focaldata poll found 69 percent of registered voters, including nearly half of Trump’s own 2024 voters, are worried about “corruption, self-dealing, or conflicts of interest” in his administration. A Fox “News” poll — which has to be alarming Republicans — found government corruption had edged out inflation as voters’ single biggest worry. Gallup says 89 percent of Americans now believe corruption is widespread in the Trump regime, a number that’s jumped up fully ten points from an already mind-boggling 79 percent in a single year. And a Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll found about a third of Republican-leaning adults now say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. The challenge now for Democrats will be to follow through and actually work to drain the swamp when so many of their own “moderate” elected officials are also on the take (since political bribery was legalized by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court). Progressives are leading the way by refusing corporate PAC money, often putting themselves at a disadvantage, but the simple reality is that publicly and loudly standing on principle while pointing out the other side’s corruption is the single most effective way to pull this off.
— Citizens United Alert! Corporate cash in our elections has exploded by more than 5,000 percent since five Republican justices opened the spigot. The year that five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 (Citizens United) that there was nothing wrong with corporations buying judges and politicians, corporations spent a mere $12.8 million on federal elections. This year, Public Citizen reports, they’ve spent more than $737 million. And the most corrupt and sensitive-to-regulation industries have been at the front of the line: More than half of this cycle’s corporate money, $391 million, came from crypto, online gambling, and Big Tech, including the AI and data center companies currently begging for tax breaks and cheap electricity.