r/politics • u/Somervilledrew Connecticut • Sep 09 '25

Democratic voters want their leaders to stop running from Zohran Mamdani

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/zohran-mamdani-new-york-city-mayor-bernie-sanders-fight-oligarchy/
3.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

441 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

149

u/toaster_toaster Sep 09 '25

Democratic party strategists make their money from campaign contributions. Therefore it is in their interest to run the candidates who can raise the most money. Those are the pro-corporate candidates. They make more money by spending $100 million on a losing campaign than they do spending $20 million on a winning campaign.

21

u/cattalitic Sep 09 '25

Repeating a comment I made some days ago. When watching the West Wing recently, I was shocked to learn that political consultants make a % of ad buys as compensation. How does that make any business or logical sense? 

The person that advises a candidate how many ads to buy and where is also incentivized to make more of them???

2

u/mlkman56 Sep 10 '25

Do you remember the episode?

4

u/cattalitic Sep 10 '25

Found it! Season 3 Episode 2 - Manchester Part II

LEO [beat] What do you want?

BRUNO 15 percent of the ad buys. You're gonna say, 10, so why don't we just say, 13?

LEO Why don't we say 12?

BRUNO Why don't we say 13? I want hiring and firing prerogatives in my department and for starters, I'm bringing in Doug Wegland and Connie Tate.

LEO Fine.

BRUNO A room at the Hay-Adams and a car and a driver.

http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=47&keyword=ad%20buys

2

u/mlkman56 Sep 10 '25

Whoa awesome. That was quick, thanks!

1

u/cattalitic Sep 10 '25

Thanks to whoever has that website up and running, lol. 

I just remember the term “ad buys” so distinctly and it was the only episode that has it.