It's Hard to Top This as a Case Study in Plutocratic Contempt for Popular Democracy [View all]

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Jane Mayer
@JaneMayerNYer
Koch Operatives' Phone Call on HR 1 Leaked to Jane Mayer at 'The New Yorker'

It's Hard to Top This as a Case Study in Plutocratic Contempt for Popular Democracy
These folks believe the Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, and its members have nothing to do with the will of American voters.
esquire.com
12:50 PM · Mar 29, 2021

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a35970185/koch-operatives-hr-1-dark-money-elections/

The invaluable Jane Mayer—whose Dark Money is the definitive text on how post-Citizens United politics works—has managed to squirrel out the details of a conference call between an appendage of the Kochtopus named Kyle McKenzie and a passel of congressional aides, including an adviser to Senate Minority Leader—that’s Senate Minority Leader—Mitch McConnell, about how to derail the enormously popular election-reform bills that the House of Representatives have sent over to the Senate. As a case study in plutocratic contempt for popular democracy, it’s hard to top this one. From The New Yorker:

The speakers on the call expressed alarm at the broad popularity of the bill’s provision calling for more public disclosure about secret political donors. The participants conceded that the bill, which would stem the flow of dark money from such political donors as the billionaire oil magnate Charles Koch, was so popular that it wasn’t worth trying to mount a public-advocacy campaign to shift opinion. Instead, a senior Koch operative said that opponents would be better off ignoring the will of American voters and trying to kill the bill in Congress.

Because they believe the Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, and its members have nothing to do with the will of American voters. The story also delineates the limits of barbering the language to create political bogeypersons and, believe it or not, things have gotten so bad over the past couple of decades that there are actually limits to that.

He related that “an A.O.C. message we tested”—one claiming that the bill might help Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez achieve her goal of holding “people in the Trump Administration accountable” by identifying big donors—helped somewhat with conservatives. But McKenzie admitted that the link was tenuous, since “what she means by this is unclear.” “Sadly,” he added, not even attaching the phrase “cancel culture” to the bill, by portraying it as silencing conservative voices, had worked. “It really ranked at the bottom,” McKenzie said to the group. “That was definitely a little concerning for us.”

Even the most recently minted conjuring words aren’t working. What’s a highly paid political button man to do?

*snip*