by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
While it's great that the liberal cognoscenti have moved away from focusing solely on economic growth to again focusing on questions of income distribution and political/economic power, the facts on the ground suggest we have a long way to go before we can reach the relative quality of the mid-'70s. Via Publius, the New York Times reports on the lobbying communities last-minute donations to the Democratic party. Now, the Democratic coalition has always depended on business support to some degree, but let's not break out the inequality-reducing bubbly just yet. After all, Chuck Schumer & Rahm Emanuel kept the Democrats close in the money race by raking in big contributions from the financial services industry.
Yglesias points out that "the Democrats are inevitably going to be less of a front for the business lobby than the GOP but there's still a widish range of possibilities". What's more, as long as Bush wields the veto pen, business groups will have a good deal of influence on any legislation that passes. That's the usual state of affairs, so it's really a question of which sorts of compromises Democratic leadership make.
