Citizen’s United is not merely a mistake easily corrected, nor is the case simply about campaign finance or money in politics. Citizen’s United is a corporate power case masquerading as a free speech case. In many ways, the decision was less a break from the recent past than a proclamation about the sad reality of corporate power in America.

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

We saw in the last days what President Obama was capable of when he truly put the force of his political skill behind an effort. But as time wore on, the mountain of data unearthed could lead to only one conclusion: this bill, with its eerie similarities to a plan written by insurance industry lobbyists in 2008, was what the president wanted.

Rather than use his talents to rein in corporate interests, as he promised on the campaign trail, the President used his office to shield them from accountability. This was our chance to weaken them, and the Americans that Obama inspired with his message of change would have fought like hell by his side to do just that. Sadly, that opportunity was squandered. President Obama made himself the defender of the corporate interest problem that we still need to overcome. Perhaps that is the best that can be achieved within our current system. If so, that is a sobering reality.

More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that with a few notable exceptions, both Republicans and Democrats in Washington are basically employees of corporate lobbyists. How do we fight the corporate beast?

The recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court has caused a lot of consternation, to say the least. The main concern is that decision is so broad that, if they care to, any cooperation could spend unlimited amounts of its collective money to influence the election of a Senator, a Representative or even state level judges and elected officials. Today the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on the impact of this decision and where there might be legal curbs placed on the now unlimited money.