The GOP, Hillary, and lobbyists

Republicans, according to Paul Krugman, are in big trouble with corporations. 

According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, in the current election cycle every one of the top 10 industries making political donations is giving more money to Democrats. Even industries that have in the past been overwhelmingly Republican, like insurance and pharmaceuticals, are now splitting their donations more or less evenly. Oil and gas is the only major industry that the G.O.P. can still call its own.

Why is everyone (except oil) giving up on the Republicans? The corruption and incompetence got to them. They're politically pragmatic as the election cycle spins faster -- the Republican candidates are largely weak and the Democrats look like winners.  Corporate America has had it with what Paul Krugman calls the Republicans' "lethal amateurishness."   They've had it with the "protection racket" managed by the Republican Party's wholly-owned subsidiary, K Street.  The “annual shakedowns by committee chairmen with jurisdiction over their industries” have turned corporations away from  Republican members of Congress.

This is good news for Democrats, but  while "the sudden burst of corporate affection for Democrats is good news for the party’s campaign committees," it's "not necessarily good news for progressives."

While most Democratic candidates are running on a progressive platform, there are real doubts whether the winner would be a progressive president. 

Here’s an example of the sort of thing that makes you wonder: yesterday ABC News reported on its Web site that the Clinton campaign is holding a “Rural Americans for Hillary” lunch and campaign briefing — at the offices of the Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group, which lobbies for the agribusiness and biotech giant Monsanto. You don’t have to be a Naderite to feel uncomfortable about the implied closeness.

Glad someone's noticed.

I’d put it this way: many progressives, myself included, hope that the next president will be another F.D.R. But we worry that he or she will turn out to be another Grover Cleveland instead — better-intentioned and much more competent than the current occupant of the White House, but too dependent on lobbyists’ money to seriously confront the excesses of our new Gilded Age.

This progressive is serious about separating American government from the overbearing Monsanto and its kin, a lot more serious than the Democratic party is.   

The Democratic party is both empty and overbearing.  It lacks, as Matt Bai pointed out, a central "argument," a driving ethos, any social and political passion that relates to America's needs.  Rove-like, the party has come to depend on stealing some issues from the Republican right and to mimic the hopes and passions of its own left.  But that leaves an empty center.  Most Americans have not the slightest clue whether Democrats can be trusted to do any more than a little better than George W. Bush.

Note: This voter wouldn't be in the least surprised if Mike Huckabee walked away with the Republican nomination and edged out Hillary Clinton.  He has been catching the eye of a number of progressives, less alarmed by his politics than they are attracted by his decency and his ability to govern his own state with a Democratic majority.  David Brooks, not our favorite columnist by far, does justice to Mike Huckabee in an editorial today.  Democrats would do well to look at how Huckabee is winning friends even as they should take the challenges of Ron Paul more seriously.  Turning away with a dismissive chuckle doesn't gain us anything.

Comments

[markg8]

If you want a president who will rein in corporate influence just look to Obama or Edwards.