00:00Let's talk to Murray Leith. He's a professor of politics at the University of West of Scotland.
00:04Great to have you on Global Business Group.
00:06Look, this is a mid-term. It's not a presidential election, yet it's the most expensive election in US history.
00:13What is that money actually buying?
00:17Well, it's hopefully, at least the people spending the money are hoping,
00:21that it's buying them access to people's everyday lives.
00:24They're hoping that it's getting the message across about who they want elected and, rather, who they don't want elected.
00:32Because, at the end of the day, not everybody watches the news.
00:36Well, you've got crypto, AI, tech companies. They're amongst some of the biggest backers.
00:43What do they want from the next Congress?
00:46Well, they want a Congress that gives them what the last Congress has given them,
00:50which is deregulation, or lack of regulation, and the right to build, and the right to continue to build along
00:57their lines.
00:58So, that's going to be a problem, because the Democrats have run very strongly against data centres and greater use
01:05of AI.
01:06But that's what the Republicans have been backing.
01:08So, this is why all this money is being spent.
01:11They want to try and influence the race to keep continuing to support what they see as the expansion of
01:17their industrial interests.
01:18Now, voters say that the big thing for them is the cost of living.
01:23That's their big, big worry, from groceries to rent to fuel.
01:27When both parties are pouring all of this money into adverts about it,
01:32how much of that message do you think is reading the ordinary people who are struggling to pay those bills?
01:37As you've just said, not everybody watches the news.
01:39Well, that's right.
01:40But also, I would say that not everybody's pouring money into adverts on this.
01:44The Democrats are beating that drum very heavily.
01:47They're mentioning affordability.
01:49They're mentioning gas prices.
01:51They're mentioning grocery prices.
01:53The Republicans are not.
01:54They're trying to stay very quiet on those issues.
01:57They are not vote winners for the Republican Party.
02:00They're too closely tied to Donald Trump.
02:02So, they're trying to focus on other issues, culture war issues.
02:06They're mentioning all sorts of weird and wonderful things about the Democratic candidates
02:10and trying to avoid the affordability issue.
02:13And that's why the Democrats are pushing it, because they think it's a winner for them.
02:17Now, once the money's counted, or once the money's spent and the votes are counted, I should say,
02:22how much will the result actually change things for the markets, for the global economy?
02:28Well, this is a good question, indeed, at the end of the day.
02:31I mean, there's no doubt that this is not going to be business as usual for the Donald Trump administration
02:37after these elections.
02:38The Democrats are expected to win the House of Representatives, and there's an excellent chance they could actually gain a
02:44majority in the Senate.
02:45And at that point, as Donald Trump says today, he's going to be Mr. Veto.
02:49And it's going to be vetoing every bill that comes across his desk from Congress that he doesn't like.
02:53And I fully expect those to be the majority of bills that this Democratic Congress would pass.
02:58I've just got one more for you.
02:59In a nutshell, you know, if you think about, you know, in Britain and in France, a whole election campaign
03:04costs a small fraction of this.
03:07What does spending on this scale in the United States tell us, tell the rest of the world about American
03:12politics?
03:14Well, it tells them that they have a written constitution that guarantees freedom of speech
03:18and that the current United States Supreme Court has said freedom of speech means whatever you want to spend your
03:24money on.
03:25And if you've got the money, you can spend it on whatever you like.
03:28Murray Leith, thank you very much indeed.
