Thursday, November 17, 2005

Big Money and the Dem Party Realignment

Eek, big words.

Anyway, there is a realignment going on inside the democratic party that has been a long time in coming. What it boils down is that the Republican party started something called the 'K Stree Project' which was an effort to woo the big money guys on K Street (lobbiest and that sort) over to the Republican party and starve the Dems of a major source of funding. Pretty good idea and with the repubs winning both chambers of congress and the WH the K Street Project was working.

Unfortunately for them and good for us, this happened after the Internet revolution and not before it. What the Dems found after 2000 was that they could actually raise more money from lots of small donors than they were getting from a few big money donors. As a result, a lot of the leadership in the dem party and, in particular, state and country boards and the like are starting to distance themselves from the lobbists.

Any major change or realignment in a political party has to come from the base and that means the states, counties, cities, etc. The big story from the elections last week isn't that we picked up the Governerships in both NJ and VA, although that was important. The big story is that we won in almost every small election country wide that isn't in Ohio. Ohio is a different mess and it will be interesting to see what turns up there.

Big money and lobbiests in general in politics is a bad thing. I don't care how pure you are going into public service, if someone is offering you quite a bit of money or access to their private jet whenever you want it or whatever, it would be hard not to let that influence you to some degree. Lobbiests get the ears of the representatives that should be listening to us, not them.

Anyway, to wrap this all up. I've come to believe that in order for change to happen and for the country to get back to being true to what the people want, one or both of the parties need to separate themselves from the big money lobbiests. I don't care what party does it, it just has to happen. It finally looks like it is going that direction.

Here is a link about the Dems distancing themselves from K Street for anyone who made it this far. Click me!

1 comment:

Ben said...

Nice post. I agree that politicians should be listening more to people and less to money. Eventually people will realize that a lot of today's successful politicians, not just Republicans mind you, are more interested in money and power than they are in serving the country. That's bad. I don't need to remind you of what happens when the leadership of a country becomes obsessed with wealth and power.