Last Fall, during the election, I mused numerous times about the worrisome phenomena of Democrats hugging corporate lobbyists (for example, here). Yeah, I know, this isn’t new. The point was that if Democrats wanted to take power and really be different, they needed to reject those kind of relationships.

Well, The Politico has a story which is not a good sign:

The top Democrats on the 20 most business-related congressional
committees hauled in nearly $240,000 from the 35 most active corporate
political action committees in the first couple of months of the year,
according to an analysis by The Politico.

Their Republican counterparts — the committees’ ranking members — received $182,200 from the same industry committees.

The giving trend reflects a simple reality: Democrats are resetting
congressional legislative priorities, threatening some industries and
boosting others. Previous Republican chairmen, for instance, were
content to largely protect the energy industry; the new Democratic
hierarchy wants to remake it. Companies from both sides of that
equation are now trying to make sure they can get a hearing with the
new agenda-setters.

Read the rest here. This is a far more important aspect of our politics than who happens to be leading in the polls.