Bernie Sanders just sent a letter to Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and DNC Chair Ken Martin with a simple ask: stop letting billionaire-backed super PACs buy your primaries. Specifically, he named AIPAC and its affiliated groups, which dump millions into Democratic races to knock off candidates they don’t like, then turn around and fund Republicans in November. Sanders called it what it is. A corrupt system.
Funny how that works. A group pours cash into a Democratic primary to install someone friendly to their agenda, and then that same group backs the other party when it counts. And Democratic leadership is supposed to be fine with this because… why, exactly? Ask yourself who benefits from a system where the party’s own nominees are effectively pre-selected by outside interests with no loyalty to the party or its voters.
Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsSanders laid it out in an Aug. 8 letter, shared publicly on Sunday. He pointed out that the Democratic Party has the power right now to prohibit super PACs from participating in its primaries. No new law required. The party just has to decide it wants to. “That can be done. That must be done,” Sanders wrote. He also called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and for public financing of elections, because he understands that the super PAC problem is really just the tip of a very large, very expensive iceberg.
Back in May, Sanders and Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act, which would cap individual contributions to super PACs at $5,000. That would effectively gut them. Five thousand dollars. The same limit a normal person faces. Imagine that. A mechanic and a hedge fund manager playing by the same rules. The establishment nearly fainted at the thought.
AIPAC, for its part, operates through a super PAC called United Democracy Project, which openly states its mission is to defeat “detractors” of the U.S.-Israel relationship, “both Republicans and Democrats.” Read that again. They say it out loud. They spend in Democratic primaries to crush Democrats who step out of line, and nobody in leadership lifts a finger. AIPAC’s website notes its PAC is funded by individual citizens who care about the U.S.-Israel partnership. Fine. But when those “individual citizens” are funneling money through a super PAC that can spend unlimited amounts to torpedo candidates in a party primary they may not even belong to, that is not participation in democracy. That is purchasing an outcome.
U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Jeff McEvoy (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsNow here is where the gut kicks in. Sanders sent this letter to Schumer, Jeffries, and Martin. Three people who have built their careers inside the exact machinery Sanders is describing. You think Schumer, who has raised hundreds of millions through the Senate Majority PAC, is going to wake up Monday morning and say, “You know what, Bernie’s right, let’s shut off the spigot”? You think Jeffries, whose entire job is keeping the caucus funded and compliant, is going to volunteer to make his own life harder? These are not people who stumbled into the swamp. They are the swamp.
Fox News Digital reached out to AIPAC, Sanders, Schumer, Martin, and Jeffries for comment. Nobody got back to them. Of course they didn’t. What would they say? “We agree the system is corrupt and we are the corruption”? The silence is the answer.
United States Congress (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsSanders is right that the party could act tomorrow. He is also right that it won’t. Not because it can’t, but because the people who would have to make the decision are the same people the system serves. The little guy sends his twenty-seven dollars and thinks he is part of something. The super PAC sends its ten million and actually is. And leadership looks at both deposits and decides which one matters.
The corrupt system will keep running until someone with actual power decides their own comfort matters less than the integrity of the ballot. Don’t hold your breath.