It's difficult to construe those as bribes in good faith. If I favor a politician, some underdog, why shouldn't I be allowed to contribute to his campaign? In what ways should I be disallowed from doing so? Is only cash disallowed? Like, if he has some guy come by and clean his pool, can I offer to do that for free, so he can spend that cash on his campaign? Is that a bribe too?
Is it only bad to give campaign contributions if I'm rich? What if I don't contribute to his campaign at all, but I just find (or create) a superpac that says alot of the same things he says, so that anyone who is influenced by the superpac is likely to vote for him?
If instead you insist on no private funding for campaigns, then it becomes the issue that anyone allowed to campaign is chosen by the government through its public funding qualification process. My preferred candidate may be, in practice, barred from campaigning at all.
For a start, I would be okay with 1) limiting campaign contributions to real people, 2) capping the amount at something most middle class Americans could comfortably afford, and 3) similarly capping total contributions to any PAC.
Equating money with free speech is a mistake in my view. It is explicitly saying we believe each person's value to society is strictly their net worth. For political purposes I think everyone should have an equally powerful vote, and I include campaign contributions in that.
> similarly capping total contributions to any PAC.
This is a first amendment violation. If the PAC can make the case that it is not campaigning for a particular candidate, then it's simply people exercising freedom of speech to tell others what is important to them.
> Equating money with free speech is a mistake in my view.
In your view, but from a scientific perspective, you're objectively wrong. Everything's fungible. Especially when we're talking about speech that occurs over mass media, which costs money to access.
> For political purposes I think everyone should have an equally powerful vote
When things like strategic voting are possible, it's impossible for everyone to have equally powerful votes because that would require everyone to be equally intelligent. Anyone more intelligent than you has at least the potential of voting more strategically than you do, and their interests will then dominate yours.
Is it only bad to give campaign contributions if I'm rich? What if I don't contribute to his campaign at all, but I just find (or create) a superpac that says alot of the same things he says, so that anyone who is influenced by the superpac is likely to vote for him?
If instead you insist on no private funding for campaigns, then it becomes the issue that anyone allowed to campaign is chosen by the government through its public funding qualification process. My preferred candidate may be, in practice, barred from campaigning at all.