Big-government policies that empirically make their recipients poorer are an “actual carrot” only under a very odd definition.

The Democrats are offering a carrot while the Republicans proffer an illusion.

If the Republicans were offering “competency at governance at the Presidential level” on the menu in 2008, they kept it well hidden from corporate donors. That is why Obama could turn down public financing.

Christ, re-animate Nixon's corpse! “Tickle-down”, deficits, and Neo-Conservatism are all hardly Conservative policies. Give businesspeople a Republican governor they can vote for, without the guilt of handing down to their own children a more abused United States. The loudness and frequency of Bible-Thumping hardly enters into it.

(Corporate masters? If we take “corporate masters” as being simply “they care about there being jobs and production”, then it's ridiculous [indeed, harmful] to expect or want anything else.

If we take it as meaning, rather, “beholden to protect some specific company for some reason”, then I'd like more evidence as to who and by what means, because I don't think it stands up to much scrutiny. Certainly it has failed to any of the previous times I've seen it asserted and asked for evidence.)

Alan: I submit that something too small to measure (or to measure the effect of) is in fact “negligible”. It just isn't zero.

Too large to be accurately measured, but not infinite.

“…their impact on the political process is not negligible.”

Too small to be accurately measured, but not negligible.

Health care reform (granted, it hasn't happened yet) would be a real change that could make ordinary people's lives different (potentially better, I can't say).

Skimming off the top to redistribute additional wealth to the bottom is a real policy, with real implications.

Whether or not we go to war in Iraq, or stay there, or start a new war with Iran, is a real policy question that hinges on who we elect.

Passing a cap-and-trade system would probably not be ideal to the corporate world, but it has the chance to be passed in the reasonably near future, and it is a real policy question.

Basically, yeah it's true that corporate ties are a big part of the picture, but I think the standard pessimistic public choice picture tries to explain too much from one admittedly important explanatory variable.

Politicians must successfully navigate and interpolate between a variety of forces in order to get elected and be successful. These include the popular will, other politicians, their own policy preferences, and rich/powerful donors.

I'm sure there are plenty of principle-free politicians whose whole orientation is based on serving corporate masters + marketing. But in general there are many important forces, and though people can be duped, their capacity for being duped is not infinite, so that their policy preferences are not just about marketing, and their impact on the political process is not negligible.