Obama in Control: No More Lobbyist Contributions To Democratic Party

Obama in Control: No More Lobbyist Contributions To Democratic Party

www.huffingtonpost.com

ABC News reports:

It's been less than two days since he crossed the delegate threshold to become the Democratic presidential nominee and Sen. Barack Obama's mark on the party is already being felt.


On Good Morning America Thursday, ABC News' Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos reported "the Democratic National Committee will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, will no longer take contributions from PACs" in keeping with Obama's well-publicized policy.

UPDATE: DNC issues a statement:

"The DNC and the Obama Campaign are unified and working together to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "Senator Obama has promised to change the way things are done in Washington and this step is a sure sign of his commitment. The American people's priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests."

(visit the link for the full news article)

If this sticks it is going to represent a pole shift in party politics.

One of the reasons Obama won is that Hillary Clinton represented the old way of doing business... she personified the Democratic Leadership Council whose polices not only pushed the party into the center, but effectively neutered it into becoming the conservative lite party.

If this sticks McCain is going to have an even harder row to hoe than he already has since his campaign staff is basically a annex of K street.

www.huffingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is a good thing. i don't think the Democrats will need Lobbyist money with the kind of enthustiasm the Obama has created among his supporters shown through the amount of small contributions from thousands upon thousands of people, which will surely be transferred to the whole party as it looks for contributions.

[edit on 5-6-2008 by Peruvianmonk]

Oh I agree whole heartedly... if it sticks it will be a major step forward for this country... now if we could only get the Republicans to follow suit... of course since they are against everything Democratic they will probably embrace even more lobbyists.

Obama just went up a mile in my estimations.

If he sticks to that it will bring a whole sweep of fresh air into politics - no greedy graspers wanting to feather their own beds at the little mans expense.

Good for him.

A truly fantastic development for our country. Hopefully this forces other political committees to follow suit or look bad.

reply to post by grover


This is great news if they stick to it. This is one of the biggest problems with our democratic system. Corporations are essentially given the status of citizens, represented by a lobbyist, who use a huge corporate bank account to lure politicians into supporting bills and legislation that are in the best interest of the corporation.

How are we Americans as individuals supposed to compete for our interests when we have to go up against large corporations that have vast expense accounts. The top 5 corporations in the US have more money to spend on wooing politicians than the bottom 99% of the population.

Personally, i think that there are way too many conflicts of interest in politics. Politicians should not be able to hold stock in any company or get any money from corporations. There needs to be some serious campaign finance reform as well as congressional finance reform. And this pledge by the DNC and Obama is a great first step.

[edit on 5-6-2008 by iamcamouflage]

What I am curious to see is how Republicans address this. Do they respond in kind or do they ignore it in hope it goes away or do they try and figure out how to turn it (somehow) against the Democrats?