Are you gay for McCain-Feingold?

[Reiwa]

Well are you?

I swear if one more person confesses their love I'm going to lose it.

[Swish]

Context for anyone who isn't American...

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to regulate political campaign financing. Chief sponsors Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) aimed to reduce the influence of large, unregulated donations in federal elections.

The law primarily addressed two issues:

Soft Money Ban: It prohibited national political party committees from raising or spending unregulated "soft money" (large donations from corporations, unions, and individuals) for federal election activities.
Electioneering Communications: It barred corporations and labor unions from using their general treasury funds to broadcast "electioneering communications"—ads that mention a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
While the Supreme Court upheld most of the act in McConnell v. FEC (2003), key provisions were later overturned:

The ban on corporate and union electioneering communications was struck down in Citizens United v. FEC (2010).
The "millionaire's amendment" was invalidated in Davis v. FEC (2008).
Biennial aggregate contribution limits were ruled unconstitutional in McCutcheon v. FEC (2014).
Although the Senate version was named after McCain and Feingold, the actual bill that became law was H.R. 2356, introduced by Representatives Chris Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), leading to the alternative nickname Shays–Meehan Act. President George W. Bush signed the legislation into law on March 27, 2002.

[Reiwa]

Welp guess I'll die.

[Eagish]

Citizens United was basically the beginning of the end of Democracy in the US.

[Reiwa]

Citizens United was basically the beginning of the end of Democracy in the US.

Even though the law it struck down had only existed since 2002?

Heh, gotcha.

[Anonymous]

Even though the law it struck down had only existed since 2002?

Heh, gotcha.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act can be defended as a regulatory response to a specific technological transition rather than a timeless restriction on political speech. In earlier media environments, political communication was constrained by scarcity: television time, print space, and broadcast reach were all limited resources, and campaigns competed within relatively fixed boundaries. Money mattered, but its influence was partially capped by these structural bottlenecks, because even large budgets could only purchase a finite amount of exposure.

As communication technology evolved, especially with cable fragmentation and later digital advertising systems, those constraints weakened dramatically. Political messaging became scalable, continuous, and highly targeted, allowing spending to translate into far more efficient persuasion than before. Instead of competing for limited broadcast slots, political actors could now buy attention across an expanding ecosystem of platforms, meaning additional funding could generate disproportionate influence through repetition, segmentation, and precision targeting.

From this perspective, McCain–Feingold functioned as a stabilizing intervention during a period when the “money supply” in political communication effectively ballooned in impact, even if not in raw dollars alone. By restricting certain forms of high-intensity, pre-election spending and regulating soft money flows, it aimed to reintroduce friction into a system where technological change had removed many of the natural limits on amplification. The goal was not to suppress speech, but to prevent structural dominance by actors who could most efficiently convert capital into persuasive reach.

The tension that later surfaced in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission reflects this shift in assumptions. The Court treated independent political spending as protected expression regardless of technological context, while critics saw the ruling as ignoring how modern media ecosystems change the scale at which money operates. Under this view, McCain–Feingold makes the most sense as a transitional rule: necessary when technology sharply increased the leverage of money in politics, but increasingly contested once the legal framework stopped accounting for how that leverage had evolved.

[Reiwa]

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act can be defended as a regulatory response to a specific technological transition rather than a timeless restriction on political speech. In earlier media environments, political communication was constrained by scarcity: television time, print space, and broadcast reach were all limited resources, and campaigns competed within relatively fixed boundaries. Money mattered, but its influence was partially capped by these structural bottlenecks, because even large budgets could only purchase a finite amount of exposure.

As communication technology evolved, especially with cable fragmentation and later digital advertising systems, those constraints weakened dramatically. Political messaging became scalable, continuous, and highly targeted, allowing spending to translate into far more efficient persuasion than before. Instead of competing for limited broadcast slots, political actors could now buy attention across an expanding ecosystem of platforms, meaning additional funding could generate disproportionate influence through repetition, segmentation, and precision targeting.

From this perspective, McCain–Feingold functioned as a stabilizing intervention during a period when the “money supply” in political communication effectively ballooned in impact, even if not in raw dollars alone. By restricting certain forms of high-intensity, pre-election spending and regulating soft money flows, it aimed to reintroduce friction into a system where technological change had removed many of the natural limits on amplification. The goal was not to suppress speech, but to prevent structural dominance by actors who could most efficiently convert capital into persuasive reach.

The tension that later surfaced in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission reflects this shift in assumptions. The Court treated independent political spending as protected expression regardless of technological context, while critics saw the ruling as ignoring how modern media ecosystems change the scale at which money operates. Under this view, McCain–Feingold makes the most sense as a transitional rule: necessary when technology sharply increased the leverage of money in politics, but increasingly contested once the legal framework stopped accounting for how that leverage had evolved.

The ostensible bad-guy-squad member gave it his imprimatur and I felt upset.

[Anonymous]

The ostensible bad-guy-squad member gave it his imprimatur and I felt upset.
When the perceived legitimacy of an argument is rendered vulnerable to the incidental approbation of a merely adversarial interlocutor, one risks allowing epistemic evaluation to be displaced by inflated affective disturbance.

[Eagish]

Even though the law it struck down had only existed since 2002?

Heh, gotcha.

Dark money spending and individual billionaires buying influence skyrocketed after Citizens became the rule. Currently about 20% of election spending can be traced to about 100 individuals. Their influence can be seen in the many ways the US has turned towards authoritarianism, pro-capital, and anti-citizen.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Dark money spending and individual billionaires buying influence skyrocketed after Citizens became the rule. Currently about 20% of election spending can be traced to about 100 individuals. Their influence can be seen in the many ways the US has turned towards authoritarianism, pro-capital, and anti-citizen.

Of course, that's just my opinion.
It's almost as if the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act can be defended as a regulatory response to a specific technological transition rather than a timeless restriction on political speech. In earlier media environments, political communication was constrained by scarcity: television time, print space, and broadcast reach were all limited resources, and campaigns competed within relatively fixed boundaries. Money mattered, but its influence was partially capped by these structural bottlenecks, because even large budgets could only purchase a finite amount of exposure.

As communication technology evolved, especially with cable fragmentation and later digital advertising systems, those constraints weakened dramatically. Political messaging became scalable, continuous, and highly targeted, allowing spending to translate into far more efficient persuasion than before. Instead of competing for limited broadcast slots, political actors could now buy attention across an expanding ecosystem of platforms, meaning additional funding could generate disproportionate influence through repetition, segmentation, and precision targeting.

From this perspective, McCain–Feingold functioned as a stabilizing intervention during a period when the “money supply” in political communication effectively ballooned in impact, even if not in raw dollars alone. By restricting certain forms of high-intensity, pre-election spending and regulating soft money flows, it aimed to reintroduce friction into a system where technological change had removed many of the natural limits on amplification. The goal was not to suppress speech, but to prevent structural dominance by actors who could most efficiently convert capital into persuasive reach.

The tension that later surfaced in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission reflects this shift in assumptions. The Court treated independent political spending as protected expression regardless of technological context, while critics saw the ruling as ignoring how modern media ecosystems change the scale at which money operates. Under this view, McCain–Feingold makes the most sense as a transitional rule: necessary when technology sharply increased the leverage of money in politics, but increasingly contested once the legal framework stopped accounting for how that leverage had evolved.

[Reiwa]

Dark money spending and individual billionaires buying influence skyrocketed after Citizens became the rule. Currently about 20% of election spending can be traced to about 100 individuals. Their influence can be seen in the many ways the US has turned towards authoritarianism, pro-capital, and anti-citizen.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

So why, in the intervening 8 years, when you could only donate $3500 twice, was the eschaton not immanentized? 🫣

[Eagish]

So why, in the intervening 8 years, when you could only donate $3500 twice, was the eschaton not immanentized? 🫣

It would certainly be a curious condition if one were able to ignore everything else involved in the state of the state from its founding to today.

[Anonymous]

It would certainly be a curious condition if one were able to ignore everything else involved in the state of the state from its founding to today.
literally the storyline for the wizard of Oz.

[Reiwa]

It would certainly be a curious condition if one were able to ignore everything else involved in the state of the state from its founding to today.

I think it did it's ghastly purpose.