She won, but was not given the Presidency. Regardless, Sanders outspent Clinton and Clinton outspent Trump, but Trump is in the Oval.
So, no, 2016 proved conclusively that money isn’t the issue everyone keeps insisting it is...
You just
might be ignoring a whole lot of "dark" money (aka Rubles, un-declared contributions etc.) that was spent to destroy HRC and elect Cheato.
Possibly, but what was far more damaging wasn’t the money spent; it was the reaction to what the candidates said (and didn’t say). Hillary was painted
by both sides as an “establishment” “corporate whore” fully equivalent to if not surpassing Trump in her evil.
When you have your own people spreading the exact same false arguments as the other side—for
months including up to this very day, no less—that is a far more powerful weapon. And the presidency came down to a tiny sliver of a fraction of votes in just three key traditionally Democratic states.
Regardless and again, Sanders outspent Clinton and he lost
massively, having not been able to motivate more than about 5% of Democrats to give a shit about his fraud of a campaign and that was with significant Republican and Russian assistance (including monetarily). That is one of the lasting ironies of the Sanders fraud; that one of his main arguments against Clinton and supposedly in his favor was that she had all the money and was the big bad “establishment” friend to Wall Street and an aw-shucks little curmudgeon from the old school had no chance of winning, so give him money. And they did, in amounts surpassing Hillary’s efforts, yet...it did no good.
It was the same lie of an argument Trump used, only on his end it was “I’m so rich, I don’t need anyone’s money so no one has a hold over me like the ‘establishment’ politicians!” Exact same strategy enacted from two different angles outflanking the center stronghold.
Gee, it’s almost like an intelligence strategist put such things in motion and/or bolstered it along as it unfolded for precisely that effect and for some
still unknown reason one of those flanks that
should have removed himself from the fight way back in March when it was unmistakeable clearly he could not possibly win, stayed in and continued to escalate the flanking attack all the way to the bitterly divisive end in spite of the fact that it was later revealed he knew all along that the Russians were using his attacks for their own and vice versa.
Regardless, if money is the great big evil then how is it he lost and Clinton lost to Trump? All told, Clinton and the party contributions/fundraisers and the PACs raised over a
billion for her bid and she spent—at one point—107% of it (trusting more would flow in). Conversely, Trump only raised a total of $956 M. He lost the vote, but due to a ridiculous flaw in our system—where 1 vote on one plot of land somehow equals 1,000 votes on another plot of land across the way from it—he’s POTUS.
So, again, it’s not the money that matters. It certainly helps, of course, but it’s all proportional. If you limited everyone’s spending/fundraising to say $100 M each, then it would STILL come down to who lied more effectively about their oponent than the other, evidently. Frankly, I’m surprised that the money people don’t already understand this. Unless you’re a Republican, money doesn’t buy you anything on the Democratic side. “Access” as Obama
proved with Goldman Sachs doesn’t buy you shit with most—most—Democrats.
Again, 5-10% error/corruption rate on the left is being equivocated with a 90-95% error/corruption rate on the right. This is being done by members of
both parties, as has always been the case. There have always been those on the extreme end fringes of the political spectrum (line, really) in America, it’s just that with the new “social” media, only the loudest, most radical assholes who were traditionally and rightly shunned by the press get center stage. So
they all shout, “Everyone’s the same and everyone’s corrupt so why bother” and this is, of course a boon to only the GOP, because it argues for no one to vote.
And due to a reverse DK effect—where people on the radical left are actually too intelligent to accept the fact that they’re actually arguing insipid nonsense—this has an even greater impact today than it did in the days where journalists could be counted on to step back and judge the sophistry for what it was. Now it just all spews out like bile at a fraternity hazing.
ETA: I missed one small detail in that
WaPo piece, which is that Trump personally only raised $269 M (the other amount attributed to him personally was supposedly his own $50 M), which means Sanders personally raised almost as much ($234.4 M).
Yes, again, that’s not counting other sources, but it still shows the argument about money in politics—whichever one you want to boot up—is not supported by the facts, either in 2016 or in regard to, at least, Obama’s administration (re: Wall Street money).
