Is it fair to argue the money spent on U.S. midterm election ads could have been better spent on poverty, education, etc or is that money earmarked for political use only?
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It’s not really “earmarked” because it’s not a kind of spending like “military spending” or “education spending” that the government is paying for using tax dollars.
Political spending is (mostly) “private” money that politicians spend trying to get elected/reelected. It comes from “political donations” given by people/organizations to particular candidates, or political parties, or lobby groups, that they want to see win.
While most sane folks would argue that *entirely too much money is being spent in politics* it’s not quite fair to say that *”…this ad money could have been spent on X, Y, or Z…”* because it is not like those donors would have given that money to X, Y, or Z instead had there not been an election going on. Furthermore, political donations can’t just be used to buy whatever-the-candidate-wants (you’ll often hear of folks getting in trouble for misuse of campaign funds – to buy themselves a new yacht or something) so the candidate can’t just decide *”I want to spend $1M on charity rather than pay for my campaign ads.”* without getting in trouble.
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