Episode 1: Biden is Back

This week we will cover political action committees by looking into Biden's recent choice to upstart one himself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/biden-to-create-a-political-action-committee-a-possible-signal-for-2020.html

Summary: Joseph R. Biden, former Vice President, plans to create "American Possibilities" political action committee (PAC) for the Democratic Party. This PAC will support two governor's races this November and future midterm elections. So far, he has been backed up with many aides through his past connections including Greg Schultz who played a crucial role in President Barack Obama's White House campaigns. According to this New York Times article, the creation of this PAC will keep open the prospect of Biden running for president a third time in 2020. However, that goes on unconfirmed.

Analysis: A political action committee (PAC) is an organization created with the sole purpose of raising. Before reading this article and researching more about PACs, I had thought little of how campaigning runs in the U.S. However after doing so, I found that PACs and their creations play a large role in affecting the perceptions of potential voters, basically garnering support for a political party. That's sweeping to know about because today, with two main political parties running the U.S. government, the more funding a campaign has, the more likely that the candidate will win the election. Putting that into perspective, the outcomes of both large scale and small scale campaigns all have some form of PAC back up to shift the number of seats either to the Democrats or the Republicans from provinces, counties, cities, and states which in turn affects the type of policies enforced and created: conservative or liberal. 

With Biden creating a new PAC to support Democrats, not only will this decision help solidify his own name on a potential presidential ballot but also help shift upcoming 2018 elections and beyond to the Democrats, affecting future policies and decisions made throughout the country on local, state and federal level. So essentially, PACs have been a silent but powerful overseer of campaigns almost, however, good thing is they cannot intrude into actual policy-making decisions. Our country's campaigns may have some or most of their aid from PACs but our country isn't allowed to be run by PACs, which helps us hold in our breakfast every morning.