Well, and the way the money is given is differnet I believe... so nobody catches on.

Like the CEO of a big company will send a bunch of company money Mitt Romneys way.   Then Donate a bunch of his own money to Obama.

I've made the thread title less of a grammatical abomination.

Responding only to the thread title since the OP is banned...I do dislike the fact that individuals have different levels of leverage over election results depending on how much money they are able to and do invest in an election.  Everyone's supposed to have equal input. 1 vote, 1 person. Money in politics makes such an ideal for all intents and purposes impossible.

But I'd say our bigger problem is our voting system. To quote my post from the other thread:

A First Past the Post voting system that leads to our only viable choices for candidates coming from two parties that properly represent a tiny sliver of the actual populace isn't all that democratic.

We have the ability to vote out the guy that's fucking up assuming we like the alternative better, but that's it. Anything beyond that is made untenable by the spoiler effect.

We need to implement an alternative voting system for the presidency and senate and a proportional system in each state for selecting the house representatives they send to congress for our country to really approach true representation. I'd get rid of the electoral college (popular vote picks the President) and make all campaigning publicly funded with private contributions outlawed to further that aim.

This is a good idea in theory, but it destroys the constituency system. A large state like California has 53 representatives. Whom do you contact in that situation if you have a problem that you want to raise?

I can foresee constituencies triple the size with three representatives, but nothing so large as a state-level proportional representation system.

I agree with the Presidential popular vote, but it does mean that candidates can just stick to their power bases. Perhaps a mixture of both systems would work - you get a bonus for each state you carry, or something like that. Public funding is a good idea in theory, but how do you determine how much is given? Do Johnson and Stein get the same as Romney and Obama?

You'd be surprised.

Money in politics seems to have a LOT less influence then you would think.

In political research there are essentially two prevailing theories.

1)  Money has virtualy no effect on elections once you hit a cutoff point that gives you enough money.

Podcast talking about it  http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-elections-a-new-marketplace-podcast/

if you don't have time for the Podcast: 

LEVITT: When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

2) Money can help, but only the challenger.  

http://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/clarke/204/Jacobsen90.pdf

Or if you don't have time to read the whole thing:

Our understanding of the effects of campaign spending in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives remains at a curious impasse. In one sense re- search findings are clear and remarkably consistent over the eight elections since 1972, when usable spending data first became available: campaign expenditures appear to have sharply different electoral consequences for officeholders and their opponents. In campaigns against incumbents, the more challengers spend, the more votes they receive, and the more likely they are to win. The more incumbents spend, on the other hand, the lower their vote, and the greater their chances of losing. No one has taken this to mean that incumbents routinely lose votes and elec- tions by spending money. They merely spend more money the more strongly they are challenged, and the stronger the challenge, the worse the incumbent does. Taking the challenger's level of campaign spending into account, the incumbent's level of spending shows a quite small but positive relationship to the incumbent's number of votes and probability of winning, although the coefficients achieve statistical significance only when data from several years are combined to pro- duce a very large number of cases (Jacobson 1989). The challenger's level of spending, by contrast, remains strongly and significantly related to both the vote and to the probability of victory without combining election years no matter what controls are introduced and no matter what functional forms are analyzed (Glantz, Abramowitz, and Burkhart 1976; Jacobson 1976, 1978, 1980, 1985, 1987a

Of course, research in number 2, could also be interpreted as reasearch in number 1.  Candidates who spend more are more likely to win because they are more serious candidates who are more charming and appealing so they get more  money.   The Republican primarys were a GREAT example of this in fact.  Look at Herman Cain.   He didn't have the proverbial "Pot to piss in" when he was running his campaign.   Then he got really popular by copying Sim City and suddenly.... Herman Cain's popularity shoots up.   Weeks later he starts collecting huge campaign funds.  Newt Gingrich had Sheldon Adleson singlehandidly keeping him in the race, as he failed, and failed, and failed some more.   Only gaining some traction after every other non Romney option had been expended.

If Romney's money is disproportionatly a bunch of rich guys... it won't help him.

The real issue for Obama is that he isn't getting the same amount of money he did last time.  He's killed is popularity, espiecally among his small time donars.

Oh, another good data point is the last election.

Obama outspend John McCain 2 to 1.

That got Obama an "overwhelming" 51% of the popular vote vs McCains 48% of the vote.

2 to 1 spending, and Obama won by a 3% margin.

Did Obama "Steal the campaign".

Hell no. I'm actually surprised it was that close quite honestly.

Romney is going to lose... and he's going to lose by quite a bit.

Kasz, I have some thoughts about this, but I was just curious as to your reasoning of this conclusion?

Going by the thread title, I'm just going to say money doesn't actually have that much influence in elections. It can help get a message across, but past a certain point it doesn't matter.

For example, look at the last california governor race. Meg whitman spent about 180 mill to Jerry Browns 36 mill, thats about a 6 to 1 spending advantage for Whitman. Did she buy the election? No, she lost by almost 14%.

I wouldn't be too concerned about the money being put into politics because it doesn't make that big of a difference.

I'd be more concerned with what a candidate's donors demand of him post-election than how those funds influence the actual election.  Cabinate seats, tax subsidies, and so on.  Of course, this problem is compounded post-election through lobbying.

And the amount of time candidate's waste pandering to donors in general is also an issue.  This article discusses that somewhat:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/27/120827fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all&mobify=0

Who cares what a candidates donors demand of him post election?  Considering the money doesn't help him win the election why would he listen?

You've got the entire cauation wrong here.

Afterall, to use an example, pro life groups aren't donating money to Barack Obama.  Pro life groups could gift Barak Obama 2 trillion dollars.  It's not going to change Barak Obaman's stance on abortion.  He's going to say thanks!  when the election then spend 4 years making their lives hell.

Pro choice groups are donating money to Mitt Romney and Romney's super Pac because Mitt Romney ALREADY holds those values.

That congressmen may vote a way congruent to there donors intrests isn't a sign that they are influenced by their donors, it's a sign that their donors voted for them because they believe in the same policy!

As for the article, I don't see the problem. First off, again it's baesd off of the premise that money actually matters for Obama. (which it doesn't)

and secondly Obama could of spent no time at all with most of those people, and the truth is they still  likely would of gave him money, so long as his policy interests are clear and in unison with them.

What this seems like is an article complaining that if you want people who disagree with you on everything to give you money you have to spend 5 minutes making them feel appreciated...