How Elizabeth Warren Raised Big Money Before She Denounced Big Money
Link >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020.html
It's beyond me that people trust and support her...
American politics has massive built-in corruption. It now typically takes about a BILLION dollars to run a campaign for President. If one doesn't raise such a sum, one has little or no ability to respond to smears and lies and disinformation.
There are occasional examples of people running credible campaigns while raising much less money. Bernie Sanders has built his own brand over many years, and has a large cadre of enthusiastic supporters, who give many, many small donations. These examples are vanishingly rare.
Donald Trump has honed an ability to grab the media spotlight, by saying things that get massive attention in the media. For his whole life, he's transfixed the media with his antics, while obfuscating the nature of his actions.
These two examples provide no workable model for most people of good will who want to run in order to reform all the dysfunction. They need to raise a billion dollars, somehow.
If one is prepared to give a candidate the benefit of the doubt, accepting money now while declaring an ambition to end big money in politics is not an inherent contradiction or hypocrisy. It's unavoidable necessity in a structurally corrupt political system.
For me, Warren has demonstrated a very good (not perfect) record of being a reformer and hard-worker.