By David Zsutty
In American elections, candidates who outspend their opponents tend to win. Some question whether correlation is the same as causation because donors may want to bet on the stronger horse to ensure access after the election. But when the top spending Congressional candidate usually wins 90% of the time or more, its hard to explain this away as anything other than primarily causation. This is especially true since the problem of democracy devolving into rule by money is not a new phenomenon. Decades ago, Oswald Spengler observed in The Decline of the West that “Democracy is the completed equating of money with political power.”