A reader responds to my earlier post on lobbying:
I'm not sure I agree with you when you says: "As precedent, this is probably a healthy thing: Democrats will be less likely to lobby in future off-years." They're not just "off years," they're years in which the right's trying to fuck up everything the previous Democratic administration unfucked. And you need people lobbying against that. A guy in the story said it better..."Heaven help us that there's never another anti-worker, anti-poor-people administration, but my gut tells me there will be. And the last thing you want is to not have people on the front lines to defend the things that this administration wants to put into place, if they think they're going to be discriminated against in terms of future employment," said one nonprofit lobbyist who served in the Clinton administration and has applied, unsuccessfully, to Obama's."Had these people who are advocates not been doing this over the last eight years, it's clear that, for those of us who agree with their positions, and I think by and large the president does, things would be worse. Not only would the economy be worse, the safety net would be worse," he said. "The Bush administration would have gotten more of their way."
