[regoldste]

The article is an incisive analysis of the pernicious effect of money on politics, though it mostly repeats arguments that Lawrence Lessig has been making for the past five years, and adds little new insight to the conversation.

Towards the end of the article Reifman proposes a thoughtful but perhaps overly-simplistic solution: a populist "culture war against the corrupting influence of financial power in government." But he doesn't develop this idea or offer any roadmap for how it would work. And it isn't clear that the culture war strategy which has been so successful for single-issue advocacy--e.g., marriage equality and marijuana legalization--would be a successful model for an abstract, theoretical, and systemic issue like campaign finance. Or at least, it isn't clear how this would work in practice.

Perhaps I'm underestimating the public, but I think it's considerably difficult to create meaningful conversations about the conceptual topics--e.g., theories of representative democracy--that are at the heart of this issue. While this issue is undeniably important, it is also--to all but the political science nerds among us--also undeniably unsexy, theoretically tedious, and difficult for the average person to relate to. I would be interested to hear him flesh out suggestions for how to develop a successful culture war that effectively educates and engages the public on these complex issues.