Recently I’ve posted about a conference paper I’ve presented with the working title “Big Data, Big Media, Big Money = Small Politics: The Massachusetts Election of 2014.” So why do I go picking on polls, media debates, and big money? It’s because they largely serve the bottom line interests of corporate media or billionaires and not the concerns of people. In fact the media and campaigns treat voters like children; which may be suitable, since we act that way.

First as to polls, as I’ve noted in A World Without Polls. Amen. that polls are often inaccurate, especially for primaries and for  any contest that is some time away (for instance, the presidential election). That is why political scientists encourage people to ignore early polls. The larger question though is what role do polls play in our democracy? Is it somehow important for people to have an understanding of who is ahead and who is behind, and what their possible campaign strategies might be? Yes, this sort of thing is entertaining but it is empty. Presenting substance in depth is much more difficult than covering the horse race and it yields fewer watchers and listeners (advertisers hate that). Polls suck up the media atmosphere and things people really need to learn shuffle to the back.

I present a similar critique of media debates in Campaign Debates: More Low Comedy than High Stakes. In 2014 we had alleged scandals like Charlie Baker’s pay-to-play scheme or Martha Coakley bagging the case against Robert DeLeo (anyone hear much about those lately?), Lincoln-Douglas in two minutes, lightning rounds and of course, Charlie Baker crying. What we didn’t have was much discussion of the state’s fiscal condition, public transportation, or other boring topics like the commonwealth’s preparedness for a SuperStorm Sandy type of event. Those are topics that defy the one word answer, even the one minute answer; they require thought. In other words, bad TV.

In SuperPacs in the Governor’s Race I wrote about how SuperPACs controlled much more of the campaign messaging than did the candidates themselves or their parties. This is terrible for many reasons but just one is that while politicians and parties have some accountability to the people, SuperPACs have none. That accountability helps rein in the candidates and parties’ negativity or anything that would unduly reflect upon them harmfully. SuperPACs don’t care about their reputations, which could not possibly get worse. Their stock in trade is not reputation but money for negative ads. It is blunt force, a kind of political violence.

My problem with poll proliferation and media debates is that they are driven by the bottom line and not the needs of the voters. SuperPACs are obviously driven by the interests of their funders. This was bad enough in the gubernatorial race but the emerging spectacle in the presidential race is truly shocking. We can already see on the Republican side that candidates who were once regarded as fringe at best (for good reasons, such as their obvious unsuitability for the job) are guaranteed a long well-funded run at the nomination simply by the expedient of appealing to one billionaire. Big Data, Big Media, and Big Money leave little room for the citizen.

The final problem that confronts us is that when these institutions treat us like children, we accept it. We act like children. We are mesmerized by polls, are challenged by debate answers that drone on for longer than sixty seconds, and for some reason totally divorced from logic are influenced by obviously misleading thirty second advertisements.

The situation is very dire and with the 2016 presidential election of unlimited money, is about to become much worse. This isn’t democracy folks.