Note to Ellison: No one’s gonna notice.
Sounds good to the purity-left, but it would be a major handicap to the Dems at a time when money to fight the GOP is needed in vast amounts.
Such a ban also includes lobbyists for the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, SPLC, SCLC, and other liberal interest groups.
It’s a dreadful idea—beloved only by those who are foolish enough to believe that all lobbyists are bad actors.
That group is composed almost exclusively of Bernie’s Bern-outs.
Off topic, but I had to note this nonsense:
Bingo. If the RNC did it, they’d roll it out with enough aplomb to get the message out (not that they’d ever do it), but this would be entirely message-failed by the DNC and ignored by the MSM as a result.
Stupid. You don’t get “purity points” from the general population. You do get tagged as “a bunch of losers” when you don’t have enough money to compete in all 50 states.
Barack Obama is a Bernie Bern-out? This irrational anger and resentment towards Sanders and his supporters lead so many people here to write such stupid things.
A real leader would figure out how to leverage those contributions to do good. Politics is not conducted inside a monastery. Unless he can get everyone to pony up something $10/month for the next two or four years, this will not work. Passion does not mean you have to be 100% pure.
There is nothing irrational about my attitude toward St. Bernie or his rabid fans.
Quite frankly, I’m angry this DNC chair race has somehow become an extended Democratic primary at this critical time when that’s the last thing we’d need.
To Ellison’s idea – what thunder et al said above. Rich = all bad, big = all bad, lobbyists = all bad is a simplistic idea. And no, we won’t disarm ourselves unilaterally.
And there you have it, Ellison is the real deal, Perez is a Johnny come lately establishment Dem. Their time is over.
Jesus Christ give it a rest. The mid terms are going to be critically important and Democrats are going to need Bernie supporters, to continue to antagonize them is beyond idiotic,
Maybe Ellison is thinking that DNC could raise money (small to large donations) from individuals as some campaigns have done quite successfully.
I think a lot of people who normally wouldn’t donate to DNC would donate if lobbying money wasn’t involved.
These are probably just two different models of raising funds. Both could be successful. And if Ellison were to win and were to try this model and it didn’t work, my guess is that he’d be willing to switch back to the DWS method.
Let’s remember that Ellison is simply proposing to reinstate the ban on lobbyist donations to the DNC that was originally put in place at Barack Obama’s behest in 2008.
But even if the party rejects the ban, and continues taking lobbyist donations, it had better be ready to replace a lot of those funds anyway – with Democrats having little to no power in Washington, it seems likely that a lot less lobbyist money will be forthcoming anyway. (Unless we are to believe that lobbyist donations have nothing to do with their clients’ desire for access and the opportunity to influence those in power…and does anyone really believe that?)
By the way, the total amount of money we’re talking about here is pretty modest in the context of overall party fundraising. Politico offers the figure of $18.7 million as the total amount the DNC received from “lawyers and lobbyists” during the 2016 cycle. Not sure why lawyers and lobbyists are lumped together, but even if we assume most of that $18.7 million is from lobbyists who would be banned from giving to the DNC if the Obama ban is reinstated, it’s a pretty small part of the DNC’s budget (Politico says about 8%, and that’s for the combined “lawyers and lobbyists” figure) and it’s a truly tiny portion of overall Democratic party fundraising (which OpenSecrets puts at about 1.27 billion for the 2016 cycle).
If this is all about how people feel then I would prefer he say lets take their money AND tell them no special deals, that they’ll get the same amount of access, input and influence as the private citizen who contributed $5. The DNC needs money, the more of it the better, the issue isn’t the money (or even how people feel), it’s about raising enough money to have enough of an impact where Democrats can make the most advances into state and local government.
The problem with that plan is that no one really believes that, and for good reason.
Big mistake if the DNC picks Ellison as it’s Chair.
That statement alone should disqualify his stupid ass from DNC Chair. It takes money to win and if he cuts off ne of the major sources of money, he has already lost.
So the party has to move toward Bernie supporters but they don’t have to do anything? That reasoning is what put Trump in office.
The point on lobbyist donations is correct. You take the right ones and leave the rest. You take from those you agree with.
The DNC has to run a national campaign organization, not just the next presidential campaign. They have to elect state legislators and officials, as well as city representatives. You can’t do that without money, and if Bernie supporters don’t understand that, then they are childish and causing more harm than good. You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.