Trump and Sanders are very loud about not taking advantage of the advantages to candidates provided by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which I think is admirable. Trump has pretty much paid for his own campaign and Bernie is all grass roots. Citizens United is a very unpopular decision as it exemplifies the corrupt system both proclaim to be running against. In this way, there very possibly would be no Trump or Sanders this far in the election cycle without Citizens United.
For those of you who might need a refresher on CU v. FEC:
“Citizens United didn’t just unleash corporate spending; it enabled the creation of a whole new vehicle for influencing elections: super PACs. These pseudo-corporations don’t have to disclose their donors and can spend unlimited amounts on elections, as long as they’re not officially coordinating with specific candidates (which has turned out to be a joke).”
”...the Court has taken a laissez faire attitude not seen since the anti-New-Deal Lochner era, hamstringing any efforts to curb the effects of big, dark money. The result has been not just a crop of establishment candidates propped up by billions of corporate dollars, but their radical challengers as well.”
How Citizens United Gave Us Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump
Jay Michaelson
The Daily Beast
21 January, 2016