It's Not About Speech

The Supreme Court, by the tediously usual 5-4 majority, has just struck down a matching-funds campaign finance law in Arizona. The idea seems to be that a) we've already established that using money to disseminate political advertisements is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment; b) we've already established that the government cannot appreciably restrict that speech, i.e. enact contribution or spending limits; c) giving matching funds to the opposition is a dis-incentive for someone with lots of money to spend it on political advertising; therefore d) matching funds count as censorship. Oh my god I can't believe how wrong this is.

The right is not now merely the right to speak, it is the right to speak louder than anyone else, particularly if you have money. It is the right to speak and not be spoken back to, because god forbid anyone dare question the right of rich people to dominate the process. Literally, they've given up on the speech idea. I can't believe that any political candidate can ever have an expectation that their opponent won't mount a vigorous campaign. But now, they do, if they are rich enough.

The argument made is that the prospect of the rich guy's speech being met with speech of equal "magnitude" in favor of the opposition, financed by the government, will make people reluctant to make their speech. Why? Not because they wouldn't get to speak. No. Because their speech might not amount to dominance of the political process. Because they might lose. You have a right to speak, fine, but you don't have any sort of right to dominate the political process.

It's hard actually to construct a rational, legalistic argument against this nonsense, because that's what it is: nonsense. The Roberts Court has long since stopped caring, particularly with anything involving corporations or rich people. They don't even bother to make their rulings sound like reasonable legal arguments anymore. Listen to this quote from the Chief Justice of the United States:

"Leveling the playing field can sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game."

What the hell is that? (As an aside, of course it's a game, it has rules and players and victory conditions and everything; it's just a high-stakes game.) Campaigning for office is not a game, therefore we have to let it be wildly competitively imbalanced because god forbid we try to level the playing field in something serious? They don't care anymore. They've just given up trying to camouflage pure political warfare as serious jurisprudence, because what's anyone gonna do to them?

Needless to say, if Democrats can do a half-decent job of winning elections for the near future and the Senate gets even the tiniest bit saner, all of this will be reversed shortly down the line.