How Much Does Your Vote Count?

       200! That's right, 200 people will decide who gets elected from now on. In fact somewhere near half that number will make that decision. Now I know, I know, you're gonna tell me that the voters make that decision, right? Well officially that's the right answer, but in fact those deep pocketed one hundred on each side are the ones who decide which candidates get the nomination, because they buy enough advertising to assure their choice makes it to the general election.
       Of course, once their man, or woman, gets into the general, then it the voter's decision, right? Well, actually it isn't quite that easy. See it depends on how thorough their investigators and ad writers are. And the more money spent on these folks, the better the chance they'll hit the right chord and convince the voters that their candidate is the best choice.
       Well, okay, so what? It's still the voters that make all the difference, right? The voters only get to vote on who's gonna serve, but not what those who serve will do. Of course nobody can know what those people will do, right? Actually the deep pocketed folks do get to know what they're likely to do because all the elected officials want to get reelected, and to get reelected they have to please the deep pockets. Otherwise they're not likely to get the advertising exposure needed to win an election.
       So with all this in mind, we have kissed our rights to own our government goodbye. Yes, we still get to trudge to the polling booth and cast our ballets, but by then we've all been programed to vote the way deep pockets require us to vote. The occupy movement tried to change that, but they got a bad rap. The Tea Party tried to do that but got coopted by big money and probably still don't realize it. And both parties have been  outflanked by those same deep pockets. I wonder if that was the strategy of the Supreme Court when it voted in the Citizen's United v Federal Elections Commission?