Book Review: A Look Back at the Panic Over Big Money in Politics

Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spendingby Ann SouthworthUniversity of Chicago Press, 336 pages, $32.50 A decade ago, it passed for common wisdom that the Republican Party and maybe the Democrats too were captives of a wealthy donor base that could lock up electoral results by burying rivals in campaign spending. It all seems long ago. As populist energies surged through U.S. politics following the rise of Donald Trump, Big Money's power has come to seem overrated, to say the least. Corporate America preferred almost any random Republican off the street to Trump, which made no difference. Democrats, who'd been doing well with business donors for years, have outraised and outspent Trump by a wide margin each time, and that didn't seem to matter much either. Even so-called dark money, a category in which the Democrats surged ahead in the 2018 and 2020 cycles, seems to have lost its magical powers.