Roseanne canceled by ABC

[Dill]

(05-30-2018, 08:50 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: One of the biggest misconceptions in politics is the role money plays in swaying political opinions. One of the political scientists on my campus, and a friend of mine, did his graduate work with people researching this and he has continued researching it, himself. He actually used to work for OpenSecrets.org before coming here to teach and research.

Anyway, the previous research, and the recent research he has done, indicates that lobbying money doesn't change the positions of elected officials. Elected officials were going to vote the way they were going to with or without lobbyist efforts or donations. That's why lobbyists and donors target them.

I wonder how that study was set up.

There is another manner in which money can influence elections. When the already elected do not do the bidding of, or seriously cross very rich donors, those donors can donate to primary challengers or even to the other party.  That was largely how ENRON got the Texas legislature to vote for privatizing that state's electricity.  With all the Republicans on their side anyway, all they had to do was turn a few Democrats. 

Seems like your friend's study, as described above, might register opposition-targeted influence as minor, since only a few positions were changed. Yet the outcome had a major political effect. I don't know the success rate and frequency for threatening to fund opposition donors. But it seems natural that it would--and that this effect would be difficult to measure.