Can Democrats Resist Using Super PACs In the Primaries?

Walter Shapiro: “Democrats, unlike Republicans, have never firebombed each other with unlimited Super PAC money in presidential primaries. That Democratic record of restraint owes as much to a quirk of timing as it does to party-wide opposition to whatever-it-takes fundraising.”

“Barack Obama ran unopposed for the nomination in 2012, the first election cycle after the Citizens United decision. And in 2016, Hillary Clinton, a frontrunner with a shaky commitment to campaign reform, decided for strategic reasons not to attack the small-donor-powered Bernie Sanders.”

“But as more than a dozen serious Democratic candidates game out their potential 2020 presidential races over the holidays, thoughts turn to sugar plums and, sadly, to Super PACs. A recent front-page New York Times story, augmented by my own reporting, suggests that 2020 is likely to be the year when ambition leads some Democratic candidates to try to follow the Super PAC route to the nomination.”