[lmm]

> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.

A personal election campaign is presumably something in your personal interest, and money is fungible.

> I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.

On the contrary, giving in to the sophistry that says that this particular system of organised and regulated bribery is somehow not bribery is intellectual dishonesty. Yes there are some relevant differences between this and other forms of bribery, but the similarities are stronger.