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GUESTS: John Nichols is the Washington DC correspondent for the Nation Magazine, a contributing writer for the Progressive and In These Times, and associate editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Bob McChesney is a Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has authored or edited nearly two dozen books. The book by Nichols and McChesney is called Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America.

*This show was originally broadcast on Oct. 21, 2013.

There is an unnamed major player in the 2016 Presidential election race. And that is, money. The size of a candidate’s campaign war chest is often a better predictor of his or her odds of winning than say, platform, personal integrity, education, or values. As the length of the primary season grows, so does the amount of time candidates have to raise money that they will then proceed to flood media networks with for commercials. Soon after the last Presidential election, John Nichols and Robert McChesney wrote an important book about the changing landscape of money in US elections, especially after the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling.