Yes, he's a bought and paid for legislator, but he's our bought and paid for legislator

Kevin Drum finds comfort in the fact that K Street lobbying shops have started hiring Democrats again, hedging their bets after several years of a Norquist/DeLay blitz to make lobbyists into the fourth wing of the GOP-controlled federal government.

When pollsters predict a Democratic win this November, I'm hopeful but cautious. But when the lobbyists start betting serious money on the proposition, maybe it's time to start believing.

To the extent that this development helps break DeLay's "iron triangle," linking GOP lobbyists, corporate donors, and GOP legislators in one corrupt structure, then yes--this is a good thing.

But David Sarota points out what should by now be very, very obvious: If corporate/lobbyist money starts flowing toward Democrats, especially in conjunction with a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress this fall, it simply starts the clock on the return of corruption to the Democratic party from corporate money.

Some progressive writers are cheering this development, but even though its great that the story means Democrats really do have a shot at winning, I don’t think a story like this is cause for celebration - I think it’s a cause for at least some concern about what a Democratic-led Congress would actually DO. […]

Put it all together, and you can see why the fight against the hostile takeover crosses party lines, and why holding both parties’ feet to the fire is critical. I know there are some Democratic partisans in Washington who every two years tell everyone to just shut up and wait until we win the next election- and I certainly am working as hard as I can to help Democrats win Congress in 2006. But the calls every two years by Washington insiders to not raise any substantive issues is a ploy to get us to ignore their corruption. And make no mistake about it - when we ignore the worst forms of corruption because of purely partisan concerns, we become complicit in that corruption.

Many Democrats innocently believe that the Democrats are largely untainted by the corruption scandals of the last few years because they are inherently less corrupt as a party. The truth is, you can't sell out when you don't have anything worth buying. It's not so much that the Democrats, all but frozen out of the legislative process by Republican political and procedural tactics, have kept their virtue intact but rather that they've been too politically impotent to be worth seducing.

That may change in the next couple of years. It took Democrats forty years to become so corrupt that they lost control of Congress in the early 1990s. It's taken the Republicans barely a decade to reach the same point. Corporate America has figured out that investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy regulatory "relief" that could be worth billions is a no-brainer. If the Dems get back in control, look for them to start back down that path again. It's only a question of when.

Sirota's wind-up:

Remember, […] the batch of potential incoming Democratic chairmen in Congress are serious progressives - but they are going to face Big Money forces within their own party who will try to stop them from implementing the progressive agenda. The more we simultaneously go up against the GOP and fight the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, the easier we make their jobs when it comes time for the rubber to hit the road.

The means most likely to prevent this is to replace corporate-financed campaigns with publicly funded campaigns, but that's a total political non-starter. Lamont's primary victory over Lieberman is cause for some carefully-modulated optimism on this front, since it was achieved in large part by grass-roots and rank-and-file efforts (strongly motivated by anti-incumbency fervor which is unlikely to last). The corporate donors and the professional campaign advisors who are their symbiotic partners were mainly on the Lieberman side.