Howard Dean tries to discount contributions by corporate lobbyists for fossil fuel corporations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign by arguing (1) they are not really corporate employees, (2) they may lobby for more than one industry, and (3) Bernie Sanders is slanting the facts his way.
Before getting to these points, one should note that Barack Obama refused to accept corporate lobbyists donations and prevented the DNC from accepting lobbyist donations until recently. If it is such a good idea to accept lobbyist donations, why did Obama think it was a bad idea?
Getting to the finer details, corporate lobbyists are not employees, but they are the hired guns, the registered agents that represent corporations to elected officials. In terms of the political process, their relationship to elected officials is more significant than any of corporation’s employees, save perhaps the top executives. Secondly the money that corporate lobbyists give to campaigns is money they received from the corporations they represent. It is corporate money as much as any direct contribution from a corporation would be. So lobbyist contributions are corporate money funneled by agents of those corporations to specific campaigns. It is a mechanism of gaining corporations access to and influence with elected officials. Once it is understood who lobbyists actually are, where the money comes from, where it goes, and why, Howard Dean’s first point, “They are not employees” evaporates into irrelevant vapor totally devoid of logic or meaning.
So let’s turn to the second point, “lobbyists often work for more than one corporation or industry.” OK, if the fossil fuel lobbyists work for other industries, which industries are those? Heavy equipment manufacturers that supply equipment to the fossil fuels industry? Electric utilities that depend on coal and natural gas? Or different industries, such as Wall Street banks, Big Pharma, telecoms that oppose net neutrality, food industry giants? It would be a good idea to document the full range of industries on whose behalf lobbyists are contributing to Hillary Clinton. Following the trail of multiples sources of money to its destination in the Clinton campaign is not favorable to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. For example, the Sanders campaign could well say that when she accepted money from X lobbyist, she accepted money from the fossil fuel industry, plus Wall Street and Big Pharma, etc. Howard Dean’s logic is not one that the Clinton campaign should want to see pressed forward to its logical conclusion.
Which leads to a related point. When “good ole Joe,” the corporate lobbyist, bundles $100,000 that comes from three industries, the elected official does not mentally divide the $100,000 into separate $33,333 pieces—one for fossil fuels, another for Wall Street and the last for Big Pharma. No, “good ole Joe” gets full credit for $100,000 of access for each of his industry clients over an over again. It is a kind of multiplier effect where any single industry contributions are multiplied or inflated by contributions from other industries funneled through the same lobbyist. A multi-client lobbyist gets to renew the politician’s memory of his $100,000 contribution every time he contacts the politician, regardless of which client he is representing. It is the gift that keeps giving back in full amount to each industry even though a single industry contributed only a portion of the total.
Dean’s point that lobbyists may work for more than one industry is, from the standpoint of the best interests of the Clinton campaign, worse than meaningless. Dean’s logic, carried to its full conclusion and documented as to all the industries behind the Clinton’s lobbyist contributors, would actually damage her campaign.
When all is said and done, it looks like Howard Dean was trying to divert attention from the Sanders campaign attacks on Hillary accepting fossil fuel lobbyist donations. Why divert attention? Because in making these criticisms, Bernie Sanders is not slanting anything, but highlighting a real problem with Hillary Clinton accepting lobbyist donations. Maybe that is why Barack Obama also thought accepting lobbyist donations was a bad idea.