"Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.
I am large; I contain multitudes!"
-- Walt Whitman

Acting classes and books are full of advice that it is impossible to act two things at once. I have always found that to be crap -- the best actors are always showing internal contradictions and struggles. It's not only more dramatic, but also truer to real life.

Perhaps if I used the old "on the one hand..." phraseology? All right:

"On the one hand, it's great that all that money is going to Democrats for a change. On the other hand, all that money makes it less likely that a Democratic majority will actually do what we who support progressive reform want them to do."

You want an example? Look at the retroactive telecom immunity that was part of the FISA bill. Democrats theoretically control both houses of Congress (they certainly control the House of Representatives), yet there it is. Of course, the $41,000 in telecom money donated to Senate Intelligence Committee chaiman Jay Rockefeller in the two-week period leading up to their vote had nothing to do with his changing his mind. Nor did the AT&T bailout of the underfunded Democratic convention have anything to do with Barack Obama's last-minute switch. Of course not!

Tenants' groups have been fighting a rear-guard action for over a decade, losing ground every time housing issues came up in Albany. Landlord money has certainly had a lot to do with that. For example, the RSA (Rent Stabilization Association -- a group of landlords) sent about $10 million to Republican coffers in Albany in 2006 alone. It would be great if a switch to a Democratic majority in the state Senate could turn the tide, but the very fact that all that landlord money is already moving to Democratic campaign committees makes me very, very nervous.

It's a standard formula that every dollar a special interest group spends in lobbying and campaign contributions yields ten dollars in profits from tax breaks, government contracts, and laws passed to benefit those interests. That's a return on investment that no Wall Street broker can legitimately promise, yet it happens in government all the time. If we want real budget reform, if we want real fairness in education funding, if we want better, less expensive health care and health care coverage, if we want ... oh, a whole host of changes, we had better begin by cutting special interest money off. If we don't, it's an ironclad guarantee that a Democratic majority will not be nearly as good for us as all but the most cynical among us believes.