[Gormo]

"SuperPAC" is a loaded term used to refer to independent advocacy groups that spend money to publicize their own political positions; direct coordination or transfers of funds to any actual political campaign is prohibited to them, so referring to these as campaign donations is not really accurate.

[dragonwriter]

Since the 2012 cycle, groups nominally independent of the candidate have formed single-candidate superPACs for almost every major candidate in every election, and the coordinate message and activities with the formal campaign committees indirectly via public messaging, even if they avoid other coordination (they certainly try to avoid being caught in other coordination.)

Legality aside, not considering donations people make to these single-candidate SuperPACs as just as much “campaign donations” for all practical purposes as those made to candidate committees is willful blindness.

[tivert]

Nevertheless, they coordinate:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/10-ways...

[Gormo]

An that's already illegal, so there's already a basis for legal action against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns. So what else are you proposing?

[tivert]

> An that's already illegal so there's already a basis for legal action

Is it? It looks to me like they're exploiting loopholes, which is legal.

The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy).

> against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns.

Who said anything about "directly"? I've noticed you doing that a lot in this thread: missing the meaning, twisting it, then quibbling with your reinterpretation.

[Gormo]

> The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy).

If this is actually happening, again, it's already illegal.

> Who said anything about "directly"?

The only thing the law applies to is behavior that directly violates precisely-mapped rules. I don't know what alternative you're proposing, other than to allow subjective, ever fluctuating criteria to determine who is and is not acting within the law -- if so, that is just not the way our society works.

The idea of allowing the state to preemptively control public discourse because some people might occasionally break the law and get away with it -- a risk with all laws in all cases -- is both based on a dysfunctional approach to law (that increasingly encumbers the general case to address worst-case outliers until the general case no longer functions), and also has the terrifying implication of allowing incumbent politicians to manipulate public discourse for their own factional benefit.