https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3042867
> the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices in general elections is zero.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-012-9193-1
> Because campaign spending correlates strongly with election results, observers of American politics frequently lament that money seems to buy votes. However, the apparent effect of spending on votes is severely inflated by omitted variable bias: The best candidates also happen to be the best fundraisers. Acting strategically, campaign donors direct their funds toward the “best” candidates, who would be more likely to win even in a moneyless world. These donor behaviors spuriously amplify the correlation between spending and votes. As evidence for this argument, I show that (non-strategic) self-financed spending has no statistical effect on election results, whereas (strategic) externally-financed spending does.
Mitt Romney or Michael Bloomberg
John Kerry's net worth far exceeds Romney, too.
John Kerry is also an excellent example of how money won’t buy the presidency, thank you.
Of course it is. Especially these days, your friend is just as likely to have gotten the news they're giving you from a Facebook meme page than from anything with on the record quotes from officials involved.
> There are politically interested people in every community to pick up the Slack
Yes there are. Journalists! That's what a journalist is. They're interested, they research, they present their findings. If you are reading parliamentary papers and reporting the contents to your friends, you are a journalist.
Just deferring to individuals in the community you know is a nice idea but it doesn't cover it. For instance, who was looking into Theranos other than journalists at WSJ? Best I can tell, no one was. Their reporting on the company was invaluable.
Getting your information from friends and family is not going to be worse than sourcing it from talking heads in a studio or newspaper editors. Anyone who, eg, gets their political information from me is going to get information sourced largely from reading parliamentary documents. How is that going to be worse than what they get from the media? There are politically interested people in every community to pick up the slack.
A radical view, but politics would be better off without mass, coordinated outrage. Compromise and thought should be the order of the day.