[beezlebroxxxxxx]

The amount of money in US politics and elections in particular is staggering when you think about it. In 15 weeks Kamala Harris' campaign spent $1.5 billion. That's just insane. Especially when you find out that a lot of that spend goes through "media consultancies" and PR firms...run by former DNC staffers. And the same is true for the RNC. The two parties are basically a giant revolving door and network of jobs with access to this enormous slush fund.

[docdeek]

Here in France the presidential candidates who make it to the second round are limited to spending €22.5 million over the course of the entire campaign (first and second rounds). About half gets reimbursed from public funds, so you 'only' need to raise about €10-12 million. Hard limits on campaign donations (about €4K) mean big money impacts the race less, and limits on advertising means you don't have to spend it on TV ads or direct mail.

Spending $1.5 billion on a campaign (and still losing) is near unfathomable.

[jopsen]

> Spending $1.5 billion on a campaign (and still losing) is near unfathomable.

Perhaps we should be delighted in the fact that political ads can win an election.

I have a hard time seeing other positive outcomes :)

[dmurray]

It does seem like a lot of money, but distributed across all Americans it's not that insane. Americans spend approximately the same on election ads as on chewing gum.

Here's a source, but h/t James Gleick for the comparison: https://www.statista.com/topics/1841/chewing-gum/

[beloch]

The first thing an American politician does after winning an election is start fundraising for their next election. Governing would be an afterthought were it not so helpful in raising money.

[lovich]

Your post sounds conspiratorial but there are basic economic reasons why those revolving doors seem to exist.

Every campaign is going to need largely the same set of skill sets in their campaign staff. Spinning up these groups and also going through the startup time of any new team learning to work together costs a lot of time and money.

So several of these standard skill sets, like data science, marketing, etc have been spun out into companies or consulting firms that are treated like a pool of available resources by campaigns based on their party.

It’s not treated as a slush fund and there’s usually a handful of competitors in your parties pool but you do end up working with a lot of the same faces at different clients/campaigns if you work at one of the servicing companies.

I worked at one of them once and I recall realizing that fact when I asked why a coworkers email had numeral in his name when he had a relatively uncommon first and last name