Posted by speckx 3 hours ago
That doesn't imply that lobbying doesn't work, only that it doesn't work like that.
Suppose there are two main candidates in the running, one of them is running on issue X and the other on issue Y. You're not going to get either of them to change their position there. But if you care about issue Z, which most people aren't paying attention to, and you give money to the one that supports that, they're more likely to win because they have more money. They're also more likely to support your position on that issue if they know it means they get more money.
You probably can't get a candidate polling at 3% up to 51%, but you can often get a candidate who is only 3 points behind the front runner into the lead. Or get the front runner to change their position on something most voters aren't paying attention to in order to dissuade you from doing that.
If the news is to be believed, the online influencer with no elected office experience came within a couple points of the experienced politician that won, so I would disagree with your assessment.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lefty-influencer-kat...
A 4 point lead over someone barely over the Congressional age requirement with no experience is hardly a clear-cut win and almost margin-of-error territory.
You sure about that?
How does letting 20+ homeless people die in freezing temperatures deliver them public services like shelter when severe weather bombards the region? Or get the roads properly plowed out and the garbage taken care of after a horrible blizzard? Mamdani already failed in delivering even the most basic of services to its constituents. How do people not realize this is the guy they were voting for?
Its also one thing to talk about delivering public services to the constituents. Its quite another to explain how you intend to pay for such luxuries when the city and the state already have copious amounts of duplicitous public services that would cover such initiatives already. Why would you need a free grocery store when there are hundreds of free food shelfs and non-profits that offer free meals in the city?
I'm not discrediting anything except the notion that this was business as usual and the winners were as expected.
The article was simply the first I found as reference (could not remember the original source I read about this) and I make no comment on its bias.
This is starting to get into 2015 "nothing to see here, Donald Trump will never win" levels of denial.
And since it's a great way to answer the "If your side/candidate/issue was so great, why did they lose?" question without having to deal with any introspection whatsoever.
I mentioned that to my wife and she of course rolled her eyes because it seemed so self-serving to her. (Last night we were sitting around the kitchen table and talking about how much better The Economist was than Bloomberg Businessweek and how I finally canceled my subscription to the latter when they hired genius financial writer Matt Levine [1] to write a whole issue boosting crypto in a 200% cringe writing style just before the FTX scandal broke)
[1] ... sent him an email about how sorry I was for him!
The candidate doesn't own you anything and cannot receive donations directly anymore. Thus you get to pull the corruption, illegal, or indirect, less effective, cards.
Supporting the candidate to get him elected is much different.
Yet they all seem to exit office quite wealthy, despite their rather modest government salaries.
What’s helpful is donating to people who you already know are going to win so that they do you favors later on.
The intention is to not waste money on supporting candidates, but to attack those that challenge the crypto industry.
It's a very unique strategy in US politics that has been deployed quite successfully at varying times (Bill Clinton, uber, airbnb). Now with the elites being so brazen about their opulence they're taking it to the extreme.
This is not a story about people being bad at bribing, it’s a story about The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking those bribes. Not necessarily because they took crypto money, more because shit policy positions usually come in sets, and we’re not into it.
Everyone wants to write checks to the winner, because they think they will win. But writing checks to some random candidate doesn’t result in them suddenly winning.
The people voted for candidates who were openly taking bribes from other people.
> You don’t think the professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing bribes?
Crypto bros know better and wont hire the professionals
They're concerned about regulation, as always.
Note that this election has no impact over the current congress. Senators and Reps won't be seated until January.
I read that as them having mistakenly sent the cryptos to the "opposing candidate"
:-D
Campaign spending does have an effect for unknown candidates, but once the voters know who you are and what you stand for, further spending doesn't move the needle.
It's true that the campaign with most money usually wins, but that does not the money caused the win!
One way to think about it is that the most popular candidate naturally gets the most donations, just like they get the most votes. It can also be a good investment to be on good terms with the future winner.
Having a Fox Mulder moment, because I too, want to believe. However, it makes me think, if it didn't work to some degree, whatever that may be, it wouldn't be common.
It's far more accurate to say that pro-Zionist groups spent big in the Illinois primary and got mixed results. Crypto just went along for the ride.
There is a war in the Democratic Party between anti-genocide candidates, who enjoy 90% support in the base, and the establishment who is doing everything to defeat them, up to and including intentionally losing the 2024 presidential election [3].
Nobody cares about crypto.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illino...
[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...
[3]: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-...
The right to petition the government is explicitly protected, but that doesn't apply in the case of IL-9, which was an open race and therefore none of the candidates were actually elected representatives.
I mean the Second as written also isn’t primarily about the right to pack heat, so it’s not that surprising.
I don't like lobbying and campaign finance either, but people shouldn't pretend these are simple or absurd arguments.
And this is not an American thing every country has its lobbying industry.
I have criticisms of her campaign, specifically
1. She was a carpet-bagger (as you said). She moved in Illinois in 2024 I believe;
2. She initially ran in a district she didn't live in. I believe she initially lived in IL-7 but ran in IL-9 and moved there at some point;
3. She chose to primary a relatively good candidate, Jan Shakowsky. My working theory is she was trying to fly under AIPAC's radar by primarying a relatively pro-Palestine candidatei; and
4. She essentially advocated for going to war with China over Taiwan for literally no reason. Nobody in her district cares about this. You can blame that in part on having a bad foreign policy advisor but the buck stops with the candidate.
And despite all of that and millions being spent against her by pro-Israel groups she still got ~30% of the vote and came second.
But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice is "run a better camapign".
In the Illinois 9th, AIPAC supported candidate seemingly at random in an attempt to split the progressive vote and clear a path for Laura Fine. Didn't work there either.
It may very well be the case that Israel is disfavored by a strong majority of Illinois Democrats (I'd certainly understand why). What your analysis misses is salience: people care about lots of things they don't vote about. Poll primary voters here; you will find a small group of them that think Israel is the most important issue in the district (they will be almost uniformly white PMC voters and they'll be disproportionately online). Mostly you're going to find voters that (a) hate Trump and (b) are concerned about the economy.
It's clearly not the case that "anti-genocide candidates" enjoy a 90% share of the Illinois Democratic primary electorate, because they didn't win.
Davis was a progressive but has a more mixed record on Israel funding and defence bills. He's concered with what he has called a "humanitarian crisis", which is more than most, but never gone so far as to use terms like "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" AFAIK.
Davis faced challenges in 2024 but won pretty handily. One of his challengers wasa the future 2026 AIPAC chosen candidate, Melissa Conyears-Ervin. AIPAC indirectly (eg through UDP) spent millions [1] in the IL-7 Democratic primary and still came in third.
So, IL-7 in 2026 was a massively funded primary in an open field with no incumbent and 2024 was a 14 term incumbent seeking reelection without massive spending. In what way are they comparable?
Bonus question: if millions are spent to oppose a candidate and they still win, how can you say the results were "identical"?
[1]: https://chicagocrusader.com/la-shawn-ford-wins-7th-district-...