The results of Wisconsin's recall election are understandably upsetting. However, there is some silver lining. We can't judge too quickly that American democracy is dead, because the richest 1% is, perhaps, not as monolithic and negative of a force as we may think.
Yes, the richest of the rich spent $63 million to buy the recall election. The bad news is, that's a lot of money. The good news is, that's a LOT of money. In fact, it is so much money that, I would argue, as long as activists continue to fight for democracy, buying elections like this is a) unsustainable and b) not necessarily effective.
The Voters
There are around 5 million people in Wisconsin (Wikipedia). Around 1/2 of them voted (Huffington Post). That's 2.5 million votes. Walker only won 4% more votes in this election than his 2010 election (Huffington Post). That means, all that money spent was worth around 100,000 voters. That's about $630 per voter. (If you count all citizens in Wisconsin, it's around $315 per voter, but according to what I was told by Democratic Party campaign officials, most campaigns don't even bother to spend money on people who never vote.)
Now keep in mind that the only counties which did significantly better for Walker were the Republican counties (Huffington Post). So that means the voter pool is even smaller.
Of course arithmetic like this may not mean much, but it should give us some kind of ballpark idea of how much money must be spent to buy every single important election nationwide. If people continue to mobilize like they did in Wisconsin, it will force the richest of the rich to spend a LOT of money, probably in the hundreds of billions, every couple of years. Simply multiplying half the American public by the $650 figure gets us almost $100 billion, and this figure assumes, of course, that Americans cast 150 million votes.
And note that this doesn't assume that Americans will cast 150 million votes in a single election. No, it assumes something more like casting 150 million votes in EVERY election. Every two years, voters must decide state senate, state house, gubernotorial, federal Senate, federal House, and Presidential elections, not to mention judiciary elections. And each of these elections is important. Wisconsin proves this, if nothing else. And the more public offices voters must consider, the more money must be spent on each voter. The $650 figure only applies to a single candidate in a single election.
Now for some more down-to-Earth data: My reading of a study by Gregor A. Huber and Kevin Arceneaux ("Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising") is that you're probably not going to get much more than 8 or 9 percentage points no matter how much advertising you use. Nate Silver also suggests that there is a diminishing return on advertising, as people eventually find it annoying, as well as the deleterious effect of the perception that a candidate is buying his office. Of course the effect of the advertising probably also depends on a large variety of factors, including the effectiveness of the ad campaign, the likability of the candidate, and so on. But this is important, because it means, in theory, there are some elections that money simply cannot buy.
There are other variables, too.
First of all, Walker's campaign is a recall campaign, not a general election campaign. This is important because, as the New York Times tells us, 60% of people believe that recall elections should only be held because of official misconduct, and 10% believe that recall elections should never be held at all. Understandibly, these people were more likely to vote to keep Walker in office. If this were a general election, the results might be different.
Also, lest we forget, Walker and his legislation had to get pretty brutal to hold onto his seat, and he may face indictment for corruption (Current TV). All things considered, this is by no means a landslide victory for Walker. And he had to outspend his opponent by at least 7-1 to obtain this far from decisive victory (MSNBC).
Patrons of Our Democracy Store
So far we might have assumed that corporations and the 1% are some kind of united, monolithic Republican force. That every single 1%-er will cough up his or her fair share of the hundreds of billions of dollars they need. But this may be giving them too much credit. The Sunlight Foundation and Forbes and New American Gazette show us that not every rich person is necessarily political. And of those that are political, not all of them are Republicans. And corporations respond to the demands of the public more often than we may think, because they are more interested in making a profit than buying an election most of the time.
And even of the monolithic Republican contributors, it seems highly unlikely that they can or want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars every couple of years. If they wanted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, they might as well just pay taxes and leave elections alone, because it will likely cost about the same, and it's less dangerous. Why is it less dangerous? Because it's less likely to produce large-scale protest movements.
Street-Wise Democracy
First of all, it's important to note that the Wisconsin and Occupy protests are getting it right. They're permanent, non-violent, and large. The question is, of course, will they have any effect. According to Paul Schumaker ("Policy Responsiveness to Protest-Group Demands"), either community support and intra-group support individually will predict a positive outcome more than either agency, elected-official, or media support individually. According to Schumaker and Michael O'Keefe ("Protest Effectiveness in Southeast Asia"), some factors correlated with positive response include whether the regime is democratic, and whether the group is permanent or whether it's large. In other words, the Wisconsin protests have everything going for them.
Conclusion?
I recognize that the information I've presented is not very conclusive, largely because of its speculative nature, and because the different studies seem to be measuring different things. For example, the Schumaker and O'Keefe studies seem to be studying the policy response of the government, while the advertising studies seem to be measuring election outcomes. Also, the Schumaker and O'Keefe studies do not measure the interrelatedness of the various correlations.
But we can be sure of one conclusion: giving up is NOT the proper response. Protest movements may take time, but they are effective. One thing the data clearly do not show is that deep media influence necessarily trumps protest movements. There is a silver lining: We may win yet.
