Seven of the last eight presidential elections have been won by the candidate who outspent his rival. The exception was in 1996 when Bob Dole spent $1.7 million more than Bill Clinton. Will special interest groups usurp the current election?

T he conventional political wisdom has it that Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party and that the Democrats nominated a mainstream candidate to run in the November election.

Neither narrative tells the complete story because both parties have been hijacked in stages. It’s just that the Democrats have been stealthier about it.

The Tea Party movement founded on the sentiment that Washington was out of touch with the people planted insurgent candidates to run for national and state office for the past three election cycles. Backed by megabucks donors like the Koch Brothers whose combined net worth of $88 billion makes the Donald look like a pauper in comparison some 40 to 60 congressional Republicans have cast their lot either with the Tea Party or the like-minded House Freedom Caucus.

The Freedom Caucus mission statement calls for a country that’s faithful to the Constitution and the rule of law and policies that promote the liberty safety and prosperity of all Americans. You can certainly see Trump fitting right in with the latter portions of that manifesto.

With mavericks having taken over such a large wing of the Republican Party in the past decade it should not have come as a great surprise that the party was ripe for a hostile takeover.

The hijacking of the Democrats has been underway for decades ever since moderates such as Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson faded into the sunset and gave way to a wide variety of splinter movements.

Over the past 20 years campaign cash in the hands of a coalition of these splinter movements and special interest groups has driven a new type of political conversation among the Democrats.

This troubles Jim Arkedis coauthor of the 2014 book Political Mercenaries which detailed how political fundraisers and donors have distorted America’s political process.

“Money in politics is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s how we choose to raise the money that can create distortions” said Arkedis. “The point of my book is that the Democratic Party has been culpable in that over the course of the last 20 years.” Even though Arkedis is an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter he pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing her and the party.

Arkedis noted that when Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 he and the man he beat President George H.W. Bush spent a combined $192 million on their campaigns.

In Campaign 2016 Bill’s wife Hillary has raised almost double that sum – some $374 million – with almost 100 fundraising days left until the general election on November 8.

Now that it takes more than twice as much to run a presidential campaign as it did a generation ago money talks more than ever. Political fundraising has strengthened the coalition of interest groups that we see at the base of today’s Democratic Party including environmentalists the LGBT movement the climate changers antiwar groups and Hispanic groups. 

Jim Arkedis: “We have to acknowledge as a party that Democrats are no longer laser focused on the middle class like we used to be. And that’s why there’s been this explosion of anger among lower middle-class voters.”