Why do rightwing billionaires spend hundreds of millions on elections if both parties are the same?

[woo me with science]

57. No, because it's PROFITABLE and sustains the illusion of democracy.

This question in the OP is always the weak "trump card" attempted in the corporate talking points to deny that we are an oligarchy now rather than a democracy.

We are supposed to scratch our chins and nod wisely and conclude that these corporations wouldn't do something silly like WASTE all this money on donating to campaigns if the two candidates didn't really offer a substantive choice!

What a crock. What an absurd argument....for one simple reason. It tries to suggest that the oligarchs LOSE money through their donations, when actually they are profiting beyond their wildest dreams. Here was my response the FIRST time this poster attempted this argument. Actually, the entire thread is worth reading, because it exposes the "obstructionism" and "lesser-of-two-evils" deceptions that the corporate talking points use to manipulate us into voting for our own destruction by Wall Street-funded corporate predators: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026197237

Why would corporations spend all this money on campaigns?
ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO ARGUE THAT THEY LOSE MONEY BY DOING IT?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6197863

SERIOUSLY? Because that's perhaps the most absurd spin I've heard all day. Look at this chart posted by Teamster Jeff re: our economic "recovery." Note the circled red numbers. These are the donors you speak of.

Reality Check
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026192719

The illusion of democracy must be maintained.

And you've got to hand it to our .1 percent. They are nothing if not forward-thinking and creative. What can you do, when you dismantle a 240-year-old representative system of government from the inside and replace it with oligarchy and even nascent fascism? What do you do with the shell of that system? The elections? The parties?

We have a *corporate oligarchy* focused on profit, so the solution should not be surprising: Don't throw away the shell, the outward trappings, of democracy. Keep it, because it's USEFUL.

1. It's USEFUL because it sustains the illusion of democracy.

2. And it's USEFUL because it's PROFITABLE.

Hence what we have seen done to our democratic process. Our presidential elections have been turned into an obscene, hyped, massively profitable corporate pageant, a sports event that, as the Princeton study showed, has virtually *nothing* to do with the actual direction of policy or of governance in this country anymore. It is the illusion of democracy, in which the people's voices have no real impact.

We have TWO Superbowls in this country now...two major, vapid, nationally hyped and advertised sporting events in which the people are urged to take a side and mindlessly cheer for their side to win. And from which the media oligarchs, the political oligarchs, and the banking oligarchs profit BILLIONS.

And the oligarchs are buying up new private islands with the profits from it all.