Today's Charlie

Esquire:

Most of the poll-related buzz today has to do with the new CNN numbers that are alleged to be bad news for Hillary Rodham Clinton (and for Jeb too, truth be told). But The New York Times has another poll that is both a cause for great optimism, and a source of some dread. Simply put, the numbers in the poll show that an overwhelming majority of Americans of all ages, and of both parties, realize that the Citizens United decision and its progeny have deformed American politics almost beyond recognition.

--and ending with-- 

So what the polls shows is the country knows that its elections largely are a rigged business, but that the country also rather has given up on the only mechanism through which the problem can be corrected. At a fundamental level, this should surprise nobody, since we've had 30 years of successful propaganda about how politics and politicians, and the government they inhabit, is some sort of alien beast, rather than something we all create, over and over again. We've had almost a decade now of efforts to make it more difficult for people to vote, a campaign run by the people whom the tidal wave of campaign money have swept into office. So what we have now is a citizenry that realizes the corruption that the Supreme Court has embedded in the political life of the country when it legalized influence peddling. And it has convinced itself that there are no remedies. So what we end up with is a WWE democracy -- rigged as hell, but entertaining. All that's missing is somebody getting hit with a ladder.