Can I spend $10 million creating the youtube video, if I have that much money as a private individual?
Can I organize a group of 10 friends to each spend $1 million on the youtube video?
Can I organize 1 million people to spend $10 each on said video?
Note that under McCain-Feingold (which is the law that was at issue in Citizens United) the answer to the second question is "yes", as far as I can tell: the law instituted restrictions on corporations and unions, not on rich individuals.
Whether the answer is "yes" for the second and third question would have depended on whether youtube counts as "broadcast, cable, or satellite communication" as well as whether a gofundme campaign should fund under the law, and so forth. So it's really not that hard to come up with loopholes around this stuff, if you want to allow spontaneous grassroots production of political youtube videos.
(Also, one person's "political ad" is another person's "documentary", often enough; this goes in both directions.)
Yes.
>Can I spend $10 million creating the youtube video, if I have that much money as a private individual?
Yes. However, if it turns out that those ten million were gathered from other friends, explicitly in the goal to make this video without disclosing your donors or ignoring the caps, you should be fined and be made unelectable for multiple years.
>Can I organize a group of 10 friends to each spend $1 million on the youtube video?
Not if that video is part of your campaign, because then the amount each person can donate is capped.
>Can I organize 1 million people to spend $10 each on said video?
Yes.
The only real problem in those four is the third. Because it is infinitely easier to organize only ten friends to donate one million to your campaign than to organize one million people, especially if you're already in the category of people that can afford to blow ten millions like that.
As a bonus, at least having one million people donating to you demonstrates that you actually have people following you.
Hardly. Some citizens own media outlets and can hire and fire journalists based on their political leanings. Some citizens pay millions of dollars to media outlets for non-political advertising and can adjust their purchases depending on the reporting of the media outlet. Are you going to tell media outlets they can't talk about politics? Or do you disagree that media outlets have influence over elections (at least, more than I do)? I'd guess they have more influence than paid advertisements.
I don't think there is an alternative. What is needed in order to solve the problem is a complete overhaul of how campaigns are financed, including making quite a lot of currently protected speech illegal. And that cure may be worse than the disease. Without it though, politicians will continue to require massive quantities of private cash, and I don't see any way to make that not suck for the country as a whole.
Basically, it's all fucked, I guess would be my considered opinion. Democracy just doesn't work when half or more of the population can be trivially manipulated into believing anything you want them to believe.
