I think this comment should be higher. Industries have done exactly what Marco wants[1] and it was not a good look for America.
I do think things have shifted more than a bit with unbridled campaign donations as "speech". This isn't someone handing out fliers or manning a call bank—if you're helping someone deeply opposed to your politics make money, and they're spending giant piles of that money to aid candidates you don't like, severing business relationships and trying to harm their ability to make money any way you can seems like fair game to me.
Don't like it? Favor measures to strictly limit money's effect on campaigns.
What if workers' unions were to fire members who don't support candidate X, or fire those who do support candidate Y, after all portion of their salaries could be used to underwrite the uncandidate... Is this kind of political retribution what we're aiming for?
Quantity has its own quality. Bob the riveter donating $500 is far removed from 7-figure donations. It's an entirely different kind of relationship with the candidate and the campaign.
I think this is too arbitrary. It's making a distinction for the sake of argument. Either people can support a candidate freely or we can't and we go the way of official approved politics.
If you want to remove money from politics, go ahead, do try. But don't make arbitrary cases for when its apt and then, when it's convenient, make it not apt.
This is the oligarch-gods of politics warring. Frankly, as long as they stick to hurting one another and leave the little people alone, I consider smacking one another around their role. They want to throw their incredible amounts of money and influence around for an outsize effect on elections, they should be ready for that money and influence to be threatened as fair game in the political battle. They can always not do that and participate like a mere mortal.
This is hardly arbitrary. People choosing to participate in this arena are not on the same playing field as the rest of us. I don't feel that applying identical rules to them as the "little guys" is somehow more fair than applying what is appropriate. Again: no one makes them use their power this way. Challenging the basis of that power is 100% OK in my book if that's how they want to use it. They dragged their professional reputations and fortunes into the mud. Complaining that it got dirty is silly.
Blacklisting people because we think they are a threat to our society is what enabled employers of the past to make it hard for people of an opposing view to get jobs because their politics were "anti-American", even though strictly speaking they could be the antithesis of our political and economic system even now.