How Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Citizens United
The Obama of 2010 might not recognize the Democratic Party of 2014.In the intervening years, Obama and his fellow Democrats embraced big-money politics. Democrats formed super-PACs to defend the presidency, gain seats in the House of Representatives, and preserve their majority in the Senate. Obama is the first president in history to utilize a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group, which can accept unlimited sums from anonymous donors, to promote his policy agenda. (Organizing for Action, the president's nonprofit, chose to voluntarily disclose its 2013 donors.) And with an eye toward the 2016 presidential race, Democratic operativeshave gone to work for various super-PACsmounting a campaign-in-waiting for presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton. If Democrats hateCitizens United on paper, they love it in practice.
