Democrats Trash Lobbyists In Speeches, But Party with Their Cash - ABC News

Sen. Pat Leahy, left, and lobbyist Tony Podesta at a party at Charlotte's Mint Museum during the Democratic convention. (ABC News) By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , MATTHEW OSK (@mattmosk) , RHONDA SCHARTZ and MEGAN CHUCHMACH (@megcourtney) (September 7, 2012) Inside the Democratic convention hall in Charlotte this week, the lobbyists and special interests took a rhetorical beating from the party that has tried to carry the mantle of Washington reform.
"If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote," President Obama said as he accepted his party's nomination Thursday night.
But outside the hall, lobbyists and their friends in Congress were the toast of Charlotte, just as they had been in Tampa during the Republican convention.
At the Mint Museum, a global art museum with a modern flair, top Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta received a steady stream of guests -- senior Democratic senators, ranking members of the House, and the congressional staffers and insiders who play key roles in the legislative process.
"We're happy to entertain our friends and guests," said Podesta, whose clients include BP Oil, Wal-Mart and dozens of other corporations with major issues in Washington.
When Charlotte was named as the convention host city, the Democratic National Committee said they wanted a different kind of political event -- one that would be in keeping with President Obama's vision for diminishing the role of special interests and corporate lobbyists.
When he announced his White House bid in 2007, Obama complained that lobbyists "think they own this government. But we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."
In the convention hall, lobbyists were enemy number one.
"American families didn't have an army of lobbyists on our side," said the Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, to lusty applause, as she described the fight to create a new consumer financial protection agency. "And when the lobbyists were closing in for the kill, Barack Obama squared his shoulders, planted his feet, and stood firm. And that's how we won."
But by the time the 2012 convention launched this week, the goal of a convention free from lobbyist money had been significantly watered down. One of the major sponsors donating to an entity formed to help pay for the festivities was McGuireWoods LLP, a firm registered to lobby for Duke Energy, the NBA, and others.
Lobbyists were an even greater presence outside the official convention events -- at restaurants and other party venues around town. Lobbyists for electric utilities rented out the historic Duke Mansion in Charlotte's oldest residential neighborhood, and entertained Democratic governors with a string quartet and open bar. Casualty insurance lobbyists held court at a nightclub called Tilt, where drinks flowed and music pounded.
There is a reason the lobbyists have blanketed Charlotte, even in the face of the harsh rhetoric aimed in their direction, said Jack Abramoff, the one-time super-lobbyist who became an advocate for reform after he served a prison term for bribery.
"It gives a lobbyist an opportunity to be displayed in a setting of political importance for the members of Congress, and for the others who will be, perhaps, in the administration," Abramoff told ABC News. "And I think the more the lobbyists are seen in the context of important events and hobnobbing with people who are important, the more their stock goes up."
While many of the events were closed to the media, Podesta was one of the few members of his trade who didn't feel the need to hide his efforts in Charlotte. ABC News spotted five U.S. senators at one of his daytime events, among them Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy.
Podesta said he was happy not to be hit up for money to support the convention host committee. "It enables us to be able to do wonderful parties like this instead of spending money on fencing and security so we thank the President for his direction of our activities more to events like this," he said.
Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia said he did not feel compelled to defend his decision to attend Podesta's event.
"It's still a free country and people can network with people of their choosing," he said.

Jewish Democrats still unhappy with corrected party platform, which omits clauses on Hamas, refugees and borders | The Times of Israel

via timesofisrael.com

Democrats who followed or attended their national convention in Charlotte this week generally insist it was energizing, interesting, and reaffirmed for many the argument against Mitt Romney and for Barack Obama.
But the platform debacle – which saw the party dropping mentions of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the only instance of the word “God” and several pro-Israel provisions from its platform, only to have to hurriedly reinstate God and Jerusalem – won’t disappear so quickly from memory if Jewish Democratic leaders have their way. Some have started to call for blood.
The platform was handled “by children,” one Jewish leader in Charlotte who asked to remain anonymous told The Times of Israel.
In the kind of scathing critique that reporters heard from multiple sources this week, the longtime Jewish activist said, “The people responsible for the platform did such a terrible job working on the wording because they did not conduct an inclusive process with members of the [pro-Israel] community. That’s what led to this problem, and those people should be held responsible.”
What’s more, some pro-Israel activists are far from satisfied even with the corrected language in the platform.
Said longtime Democrat and prominent law professor Alan Dershowitz: “I would like to see the president make statements over the course of the coming weeks which re-affirm what was said in the 2008 platform, not only with regards to Jerusalem, but in regard to the borders, the refugees and with regard to Hamas,” he said. Off-the-record, other Jewish Democratic insiders echo the objections.
The 2008 platform had demanded “the isolation of Hamas until that organization renounces terrorism and accepts other requirements of the peace process,” insisted that “any settlement of the so-called ‘refugees’ question in a final settlement make a future Palestinian state, not Israel, the destination for Palestinian ‘refugees,’” and noted “that it’s not realistic to expect [the] outcome of negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
The platform produced ahead of the convention “wasn’t anti-Israel,” said the Jewish leader who spoke to The Times of Israel anonymously. “It wasn’t bad. It’s just that [the drafters] are children on this, and there was no adult supervision. They don’t understand that there has to be continuity of language. They threw out the previous platform and wrote a new one from scratch.”
That inexperience led the Democrats to the embarrassing primetime television spectacle of attempting to forcibly restore language about God and Jerusalem to the platform on Wednesday through a voice vote on the convention floor – a measure that was loudly booed by some delegates in the half-empty hall.
The Jewish activist’s description of the original platform rewrite process was confirmed by a Democratic official, David Harris of the National Jewish Democratic Council, who said Wednesday, “The party platform is not held up from the previous election. A fresh document was created.”
Harris did not himself criticize party officials for the foul-up, instead preferring to add to the praise other Jewish Democrats had for Obama’s decision to reopen the platform, even at the cost of negative media coverage.
“I’d say it’s a pretty significant moment for any political party to reopen a political document like this at the request of the President of the United States,” said Harris.
The Jewish leader agreed. The platform crafters erred by “trying to align [the platform’s language] with the White House’s policy. The White House’s policy is no different than it was under Bush. But policy is different from a platform. They’re not the same thing.”
“The president’s decision to reinsert some of the language,” said the leader, “was a rebuke to those who did this.”
The word “rebuke” figured heavily in Democrats’ version of events by Thursday.
Dershowitz suggested to Algemeiner on Thursday that the boos in the convention hall on Wednesday came from “rogue elements” of the far left. He said the vote on the forced reinsertion of language on God and Jerusalem made him “frankly very happy… because I think it alerted everybody to the fact that this group within the Democratic Party poses a tremendous danger to the bipartisan support for Israel that has characterized American politics since 1948.”
“We caught them, and the president rebuked them basically,” he added.
The Jewish leader who spoke with the Times of Israel, a man intimately familiar with Democratic Party institutions, dismissed the boos from the convention floor, saying they were “mostly about God” rather than Jerusalem.
“The people in the room that early in the day were from the far left of the party. Some of them didn’t understand the process, because it wasn’t previewed for them. So they didn’t like the process, and they were reacting to inserting God” into the platform, he said.
Pressed, however, as to whether C-SPAN’s footage of Arab American activists booing indicated that some convention delegates may, in fact, have been angered by wording over Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Democratic leader conceded, “There were some anti-Israel activists in the crowd who made a lot of noise.”
As they pick up the pieces of the PR debacle, Jewish Democrats are pointing fingers at two names especially: former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler and Georgetown University professor and defense analyst Colin Kahl.
Wexler could not be reached for comment. Kahl did not return emails requesting comment.
The platform changes don’t reflect “the views of Democrats,” said the Jewish leader, or even of a minority as Dershowitz believes. Rather, it was Wexler’s and Kahl’s bungled misunderstanding of what a platform is all about that led to the primetime hiccup and “hurt the president.”
Many Jewish Democrats were still unhappy about the reinserted language on Thursday.
“They still did not reinsert [language saying] Israel is our most reliable ally in the Middle East. And they did not reinsert [language saying Palestinian] refugees will return to a Palestinian state. Those are fundamental parts of the special relationship” between the US and Israel, said the leader.
Dershowitz, too, was “not satisfied…..and I communicated this to the White House.”
Democrats are now looking to move past the incident, which is why it is difficult to get any Democratic insider to speak on the matter on record.
But the public quiet hides behind-the-scenes agitation. Democrats have witnessed, spectacularly, their clumsiness on Israel, even from such veteran and intelligent operators as Wexler and Kahl, insiders acknowledge. They will likely be much more careful on the issue in the 61 days that remain till November 6.