US Politics without Corporate Donations to political campaigns.

What if during the Progressive Era instead of just Legislation like the Tillman Act banning Corporate Donations, the Progressive and the Socialist and others had actually got a Constitutional Amendment passed that forbade using Corporate donations in political campaigns at the Federal, State and Local Level or went further and actually banned all donations to political campaigns and mandated a completely public financing system for Elections?.
 
I imagine the US would put more work into preventing Global Warming and the top income tax bracket would be different.
 
I like politics might actually manage to get more top heavy, as only the rich can afford to run (even more than in OTL). Or, since funding is harder to come by, politics stays much more closeted, probably staying at the convention and through use of surrogates.
 
We've repeatedly tried to reform campaign finance, only to have the fat cats figure out a way around it.

In TTL you'd just see a lot more issue ads. Saying "Senator X kicks his dog" is simply informing the voters and falls under free speech. We never said what the voters should do with that information.
 
I like politics might actually manage to get more top heavy, as only the rich can afford to run (even more than in OTL). Or, since funding is harder to come by, politics stays much more closeted, probably staying at the convention and through use of surrogates.

You'd also see an even greater incumbency advantage. Incumbents can generate free news coverage, use the franking privilege and their office budget to send updates to their constituents (which are NEVER pro-incumbent propaganda), and travel home on "official business".

Challengers have to raise money and buy ads.
 
I find threads like this interesting in terms of the one sided view of the problem with US politics.

Certainly corporate donations are a problem but what about large union ones ?

A small employer with say 10 employees giving 5000 to a candidate falls under "corporate" donations and is banned from donating.

A million member labor union can donate 500,000 without blinking
 
I find threads like this interesting in terms of the one sided view of the problem with US politics.

Certainly corporate donations are a problem but what about large union ones ?

A small employer with say 10 employees giving 5000 to a candidate falls under "corporate" donations and is banned from donating.

A million member labor union can donate 500,000 without blinking

The number of million member unions left in this country can probably be counted on one hand, two at most. They're outweighed by other corporate money by several orders of magnitude. Anyways, it doesn't matter, because any amendment worded the way the OP words it would certainly be interpreted by the Supreme Court to include union contributions as well, just like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act almost entirely being used to bust unions instead of trusts.
 
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