Its the last remnant of the various property owning/landed gentry/aristocracy control of government. They had to give up their exclusive right to sit in court and then "democratic" government, and then their exclusive right to vote.

They are holding on to money-as-influence, trying to convince us its fair because everyone can make donations (you get a great tax receipt!!). However, even donation limits are mainly just a way to cover up their thumbs on the scale, because all they require the rich to do is spread out their money.

Giving tax money so politicans can market themselves needs to stop. We all here understand how crowdfunding works, it would work just as well with political parties.

The funding they receive from their own members should be enough.

i mean, that's not quite how it worked for me. politics (at least the kind i did) is basically getting the people with $10 million or more in assets to donate to and get involved with their communities. we had to trade some favors (there are a few musicians on the board who lend their services for such instances. most of the time it was that, once or twice it was "teach my fuckup kid how to work"), but we got funding for homelessness services.

if we couldn't trade those favors, we wouldn't have any homeless shelters in my county. they ran off grants mostly (during democrat administrations. during republican administrations, we ran off hope and loan forgiveness), but they can't expand without extraordinary help. which unfortunately takes politicking (which i hate, but they wanted me doing it)