Why Democrats want to limit campaign contributions

Democrats have been waging a war against corporate campaign contributions for years. They've also been advocating government funded campaigns to "level the playing field".

They are doing so because they know that in any "fair" situation they will have a huge advantage; the fact that the entire #FakeNews media is nothing more than free advertising for Democrat positions.

Tucker Carlson did us all a service by watching CNN in the aftermath of the Mueller decision.  He found that , in his words:

"CNN is really a super PAC, colluding with the Democratic Party on the news you hear"

His argument is simple right after the Mueller report was released which said that everything that the Democrats and their #FakeNews buddies had been saying for two years was wrong Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democrats had always been about healthcare.  As if by magic the entire coverage on CNN switched from saying that it was "obvious" that Trump had colluded with Russia to endorsing the Democrat's healthcare plan and condemning the Republican plan.

If CNN were a super PAC which wasn't supposed to coordinate with a candidate CNN's act would have been prima facia evidence of a violation of campaign finance laws.  But because CNN is supposedly part of the free press being hyper partisan is ok.

This illuminates a key problem with campaign financing; if a company provides free jet rides for a politician it likes it has to register those as campaign contributions.  However if a media company provides hour long infomercials for a candidate those are not considered campaign donations.

So long as the media is effectively neutral, that is there as many right wing partisans as there are left wing partisans, the current system will work.  However the in the world we live in the number of left wing partisan news outlets far outnumber the number of right wing outlets.

As an aside Fox News is not a right wing outlet the way the WaPo, NYT, ABC, NBC, CBS are left wing outlets.  Fox has major shows hosted by people who hate Trump and who say so.  While I'm not an expert on the detailed content of the #FakeNews media I'm not aware of anyone in the #FakeNews media who is the equivalent of antiTrumpers Shepard Smith or Judge Napolitano; i.e. someone who constantly attacks leftists while endorsing conservatives.

When Joe Scarborourgh is held up as a "conservative" voice in the #FakeNews media it's pretty clear that FoxNews is far more balanced than any of the #FakeNews media outlets.

As a result we have a problem.  Conservatives agree that we can't trust the government to police the free press and enforce ideological diversity.  On the other hand we need to do something to break up the near monopoly that the #FakeNews media has in order to keep them from propagandizing the American people with lies.

While it's true that the best answer to the #FakeNews media propaganda and lies is more speech the reality is that economic factors, including the cost of starting a new network or newspaper, will make it nearly impossible to break the near monopoly that the #FakeNews media has.

I don't know what the answer is but I do know that in every country where propagandists determine what the people know freedom doesn't exist.