That the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling may have been the single worst thing to happen to the US.
People bring this up regularly, but I don't think it's that relevant. Studies regularly show that campaign contributions actually have very low influence on elections.
Trump notably had much smaller campaign budgets than his opponents in both winning elections, not even including the massive amounts of brazen fraud he used to pay himself with the money.
Fundamentally, it's presidential democracy that is flawed. We have a very powerful high office, and if enough people want to willing vote in a corrupt president, there's really not many checks against the damage that they can do.
The problem with money in politics is not that money guarantees a win, but that the presence of large donations distorts the entire incentive structure of campaigning and governing: Courting big donations means spending time with big donors (who expect access in exchange for their money) and when it comes time to govern, studies have shown that campaign contributions and lobbying are dramatically more influential to what gets proposed and passed than the preferences of the general public.
Focusing on the problems with presidential campaigns re: money in politics is missing the forest for the trees: All politicians have limited time to spend between campaigning and governing, and if they're constantly raising money the governing gets delegated to lobbyists.
(This is why people are always so shocked when politicians who don't accept corporate PAC contributions have drastically different priorities than those who do. Of course they do! They don't have to spend all their time hanging out with corporate lobbyists!)
(Also, there has been the opposite trend, which is that more money than ever comes from private donations from billionaires and other wealth.)
Why do people do this though? Maybe it's inevitable, but I think there was a lot of pent up frustration with the government that led a lot of people to just say "fuck it". Not really excusing it (especially for his second term), but I feel like we're reaping years and years of a dysfunctional and ineffectual congress. Not that that's an especially easy problem to solve either.
I think this also explains a lot of the frustration with SCOTUS. In-theory, SCOTUS is supposed to just interpret and flesh out the policies decided on by congress. In practice, congress doesn't really do anything, and people started depending on SCOTUS's ability and willingness to make far-reaching and impactful decisions. Now a more conservative SCOTUS isn't doing that.
Countries that follow the presidential model regularly succumb to strong man type leaders. Ironically, in the modern era when the US had a hand in helping other countries establish their governments, we specifically helped them establish parliaments.
But yeah, it prevents an ineffective legislature from leading to strong-men, which does seem nice. :)
At the risk of my analogy making something serious sound like a game, I'd like to see another team have a chance at bat.
> Trump notably had much smaller campaign budgets than his opponents in both winning elections
I'm not sure where you're getting this information.
> Fundamentally, it's presidential democracy that is flawed.
No disagreement
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240633007_Measuring...
TL;DR: Spending might matter up to a certain point, but becomes very inefficient. It's also more effective for challenges than incumbents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_in_the_2024_United...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_in_the_2020_United...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
In congress this means a complete inability to compromise, resulting in the current stalemate. In the presidency, you end up with someone who thinks of his opponents as criminals deserving prosecution.