According to Bernie Sanders, the money Hillary Clinton gets from Big Banks and the like is tainted.
He likes to point out how he gets all his campaign dough off the Internet from a bazillion individual supporters. He seems to think this means he's in nobody's pocket.
Or maybe he's in everybody's pocket. Who knows?
Needing lots of moolah to run for President is a well-established fact that's not likely to go away any time soon.
But there's this delusion about the source of money, the mistaken notion that some money is clean and some is dirty. And I don't mean the actual source of the money, but the effect that money is thought to have on a given candidate.
(For all Sanders knows, lots of his little donations come from small-time crooks and drug dealers. On the other hand, money from big corporations could just as easily come from legitimate profits gained by providing excellent products to grateful buyers.)
Bernie's idea that Big Bank money, for example, means Clinton is beholden to those guys and will grant them special favors once in office is entirely unlikely.
The fact is, money flows to candidates for a variety of reasons.
If a big company hears that a given candidate is in favor of certain actions beneficial to that company, it might send the guy or gal some money to help get them elected—so that the thing the candidate wants to do will be more likely to occur.
In this case, no influence is sought. The candidate is independently moving in the "right" directions (as defined by the Big Boys with dough).
Other companies, no doubt, do hope to influence a candidate to be more favorable to actions useful to those companies. That doesn't mean actual influence can be expected. Most likely, the best you're going to get is a plate of rubber chicken and a fast selfie with the candidate.
It could be said that every politician is corrupt in this manner: They take your money but give you nothing in return.
The Big Money folks should know this, and maybe they do know it, but they're hoping it's false in this particular case. They give money in hopes it will have a good effect on their cause. But they should know it may not.
Business folk like to say that half of every dollar spent on advertising is wasted. The problem is they don't know which half is wasted, so they have to spend the whole dollar.
Big Corporations are in the habit of supporting candidates of both colors (blue and red). If one of their guys win (and it's pretty much a cinch to happen), they hope to reach in for a bit of the spoils.
But they're likely to get their hands slapped.
The thing is, Presidents are hard to buy. They have an ego-based need to appear presidential, now and in the future. They have to think about their place in history.
Congress-critters, on the other hand, are unlikely to have much of a place in history. If they were to favor some lobbyist or another, they're free to figure their one measly vote doesn't amount to much. Sure, they're leaning on the "proper" path of government, but not that heavily. Their crime is minimal because their power is small. Such crimes are more likely to occur.
And as is well known, the best way to buy one of those creatures is to do it from the inside: offer to vote for his special stuff in exchange for his vote on your special stuff.
Quid pro quo and pork-barrel politics is far more influential than any election contribution. And it's business as usual.
A business that can go on for a long time.
Unlike Presidents, who are limited to two terms (or ten years), congress-critters can hold sway over the path of the nation indefinitely. Consequentially, they're the ones you have keep your eyes on.
Still, presidential candidates are the glamor-pusses of politics, so it's easy to see why Big Money is attracted, however pointlessly.
Taking money from the Big Boys—or giving speeches for twisted amounts of cash—can really only taint a candidate in the area of "optics": how things look.
Unfortunately, how things look can go a long way to hurting your cause. Especially in the spectacularly defective minds of human beings.
