If only the media covered primary fundraising the way David Sirota wants them to:
there's something, well, surreal about watching Adam Nagourney andCharlie Rose sit there chin-scratching like Serious Thinkers whilespending a full 15-20 minutes of airtime trying to bend FEC numbersinto a Vegas-style handicapping system, without so much as a word aboutwhat industries are buying what from whom with those contributions.
The horse-race coverage of primary fundraising only serves to amplify the power of big money in politics. Big donors aren't powerful merely because they can give campaigns the resources to run ads and hire staff -- they can make a campaign legitimate in the eyes of the media just by driving up its quarterly numbers. It'd be pretty nice if we could actually get some issue-oriented reporting out of it, with speculation on what policies the various donors are expecting candidates to enact for that money, but our pundits happily allow them to shape our government from the shadows.
