I firmly reject this argument. Of course no one is whispering nefarious things in the ear of either Clinton. The problem is undue influence, and the fact that over-engagement with the extremely wealthy (and the existence of a super-wealthy group) just takes away incentive to engage any more than superficially with ordinary folk.

The point, for me, is just that all of these organizations are buying themselves the Clintons' ears. Once they have those ears they need to make reasonable arguments, of course. But I don't trust that process. Most of these things never come up for debate in the political process: Why? Because corporations and the wealthy have absolutely no reason to bring up their issues in public. Why do that when they can buy a private audience?

Before this month you might have argued that this is an inevitable feature of our system for the foreseeable future: Money is required to make politics run, and it's just the way things are now that money is concentrated. But Sanders has shown at least the promise to out-fundraise Hillary relying exclusively on small donations. That's remarkable.

Given that possibility, should we trust that Hillary will see that the undue political influence of a few is undemocratic and change the way she does business? I doubt it. It's not that I distrust her motives or think she's a bad person. I just think she's human. And she has a whole lot of friends who already have her ear and are going to be making forceful and persuasive arguments to her, in private, to leave things many things as they are. Again: Once she's in office, what reason does she have to engage any more than superficially with me?

Superficial engagement might fly for social issues, the debates over which are inevitably fleshed out in public, but I just don't see how it can stand for economic issues. We need a president that relies on us as much as we rely on her.