Elections are won by whoever has the largest constituency: their experience & resume is immaterial. The candidate has to belong to a large church, ethnic group, or some other dependable voting block. That’s the obvious side of elections but the underbelly is that the candidate’s primary role is to raise money for the party: no one ever asks, or even wants to know, what their position is on anything. Whether they win is not the most important thing.

Political parties have a lot of expenses and make most of the cost to cover theses things by exploiting money out of naive, narcissistic, first-time candidates, going so far as to pressure them to borrow from their family & friends. The parties then attach huge costs to the campaign which the candidate is expected to pay for: managers, voting software, organization efforts, offices, the list is long. It’s a fortune even before promotional costs. The dismal fact is that nobody wins the first time they run, so the system embarrasses & bankrupts an endless stream of hopeful but futile once-and-outers. The corruption is so insidious that only former candidates know about it.

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