The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings dating back to the ’70s, has decided that political spending is constitutionally protected speech, so you can’t regulate it out of politics. But that means that the workable reforms tend to toss us between plans that amplify the powers of small donors, which worsen the problems of polarization, or plans that permit institutional money to flood the system, with all the attendant corruption. So long as politics runs on private donations, you’re left with the inescapable problem that the people who donate want something different from the people who
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