Money is effective. Gerrymandering is more effective.

If anyone thinks that money is effective at getting more votes please post evidence, and not just guesses or suspicions.

I've posted my evidence that it doesn't. Over time we can figure this out.

No, you haven't posted evidence that it doesn't, only that incumbents are more successful, not why.

I guess they declare it as income, pay all the taxes due, then use the balance to help charities and sponsor parks, libraries, and playgrounds. :rolleyes:

My evidence is that Hillary outspent Trump 2 to 1 with no measurable effect on the outcome, and Democratic challengers and open seat candidates outspent Republicans by more than 2 to 1 with no measurable effect on the outcome.

Could just be a 2016 thing, I welcome more evidence.

Oops, my bad. Sorry.
Yes, 2016 had a lot of things going on we didn't, or at least hadn't noticed, before. One was the intense social media and email campaigns against Obama and anyone connected to him, more than just usual damning the Democrats in general.

Another thing I noticed was the push by the Koch & company at governorships and state legislatures. It could be that I'm just more informed than in the past.:confused:

We have no real way of saying what the outcome of that election would have been had those amounts of money not been spent. To what extent massive spending by one side may have served to ameliorate a drop in support

All we have are statistical curves and election on election polling and voting data and if there's anything we all should have learned by now it's that polling and voting patterns are not nearly good enough predictors of major political shifts.

It wasn't as if Trump won by a landslide, sweeping up both the electoral college vote and the popular vote. Maybe the Democrats should take from this that they could have spent that bit more and maybe tipped the election in their favour.

Maybe the Republicans can consider what a close shave they had by not spending as much.

I don't think that's the message they should take but it's as rationale as next message.

Money is a tool - like a hammer. The world's most expensive hammer is useless if used to beat the wood - and not the nail.

amen
awomen
this.

Oh my yes, I agree with monster, that's a good one tw. :thumb:
It doesn't solve the puzzle of money and this election, but it's certainly a powerful metaphor.

Beat wood is a metaphor for what?

Money, or what money buys, is the motivator.

It can be 'here's twenty, vote for me'.

It can be 'vote for me and I'll cut your taxes'.

It can be 'investment in your community comes with a vote for me'.

It can be 'you'll have more if you vote for me'.

Money (as representation of [finite] resource) is what drives the bus.

Look behind every 'ideal', every 'principle', every 'philosophy', every 'altruism', every 'anything' and you'll find moola (placeholder for 'resource' which when controlled, is just plain old nekkid POWER).

Stirner said sumthin' along the lines of 'you get along further with a handful of might than a handful of right'...you can substitute 'cash' for 'might' and it still holds true.

His political ambitions, are always fraught,
with those damn people, who can’t be bought. ;)

I can be bought.

Leave me be and you can do whatever you like...to the other guy.

:)

You have assumed money can buy solutions; money created innovation; money changes all people's minds. Apparently you have ignored everything I have posted here even 20 years ago.

Money is a tool. Any tool can be misused. GM spent massively on new products. They spent more on robots in one factory than the entire budget of any state (and I believe a country called Luxembourg). What happened? It was the most unproductive factory in that corporation. Why? Because they also assumed money buys solutions.

Eventually they had to remove one-third of the robusts (replace them with humans) and completely rebuild another third. Where did money solve anything?

Same applies to manipulating people's minds. Yes, spending massively on Fox News does manipulate the same type of people that Hitler called his brown shirts. Propaganda tells one how to think - and not to think. And so Fox News has a large (and mostly uneducated) following. They can buy the naive.

But money does not fool the majority of Americans. Money did not determine who won or lost. In this case, lying and insulting (not money) proved to be a best tool.

Never for one minute assume money buys solutions or influence. It can manipulate the least intelligent among us. We literally dumped $3 trillion in Iraq. What did we do? We made enemies of the intelligent people in Iraq. Why? We created Coalition Provisional Authority Order Numbers 1 and 2. Even $3 trillion could not under damage created by dumb, anti-American leaders in Washington. That money would have been better spend educating Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, the Project for a New American Century and other extremists.

We did not use that tool in a useful manner. Ironically, same people who did so much harm to the American soldier also destroyed the American economy by throwing more money at wood - and not by pounding nails.

Stop with a brainwashed belief that money solves all problems. If true, then GM is growing massively. Instead GM spent so much money (using MBA philosophies) that MBA are now selling more GM capital assets to claim profits. Only the naive would be so dumb as to believe that profit myth. Only the naive see solutions in money. That lie is even why GM's spread sheets claim a profit - that does not exist.

Money only buys the least intelligent among us. The same people who need to be told how to think. And never bother to demand the underlying reasons why - with numbers. Those same people brought Hitler, Milosevic, Pol Pot, and Richard Nixon to power. Those same people even knew Saddam had WMDs where even numbers made it obvious he did not.

Emotions (adults who are still children) can be bought. (And find this post, that also says why, too long.) Intelligence (adults who use a prefrontal cortex) are not. (And demand answers this much longer because it also says why.)

Why did so many adults (who were still children) know that smoking cigarettes increases health? Why do so many adult children still take up smoking today? Adults who are still children can be bought.

That was a gross oversimplification. Apparently you just didn't think it was worth your time to elaborate. You shortchanged us.

Money is a medium of exchange.