The difference is your representative doesn't give a shit about your opinion, but he's basically his funder's sex slave. A representative will listen to his constituents when they actually elect him, but in the current system the ones doing the electing aren't you, it's the ones buying his commercials and funding his campaign which he can't win without.

That's why we need to get big money out of elections.

But that's not true. I'm the person who participates in his campaign, knocks on doors, cold calls strangers, handing out literature in parades, etc. My opinion does matter. People like me are the glue of campaigns. Sure, money means a lot. But it doesn't mean everything.

Money can buy all of those things you just pointed out. Without money, you aren't knocking on anybody's door, cold calling anybody, because you won't hear of him in the first place. You won't have an organization to volunteer for.

Money doesn't buy volunteers.

Greater exposure generates volunteers, which is bought with money. You can also hire people to do everything a volunteer would do.

Well duh. It doesn't change the fact that money isn't everything, it's simply important.

It is, hands down, the most important factor, and that's why when you call your representative's secretary forgets it the next minute. When his donor calls your representative is on the stripper pole in his basement bowling alley. The net effect is your representative doesn't care about your opinion, and the amount of caring that he did for thousands of opinions before gets all shifted to his major donor. People lose out on access to their representative because in a world where money is speech you get as much speech as is in your wallet. CU expanded liberty for those with lots of "speech" in their wallets, and contracted it for everybody else.

I'm sorry, this simply seems to be too much for you. You fight speech with speech, not making sure the other people can't speak.

So are you in favor of directly giving money to politicians in exchange for enacting policy? I mean, money is speech. I'm just asking really hard for him to give my business a tax break or a government contract.