Starting a New Gig Today

So this morning session might be all she wrote for me. You never know what kind of downtime you'll have on a new gig, plus you want to be on your best behavior.

I'll leave you (hopefully not for long) with this story, which shows me which way the wind is blowing. The lobbyists on K Street are akin to the big money in Vegas. When a lot of money gets dumped on a game, you can tell that somebody on the inside knows something, or at least thinks they do. Similiarly, you can tell a lot about what's fixing to happen by how the uber-insiders are positioning themselves:

Washington lobbying firms, trade associations and corporate offices are moving to hire more well-connected Democrats in response to rising prospects that the opposition party will wrest control of at least one chamber of Congress from Republicans in the November elections.

In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so.

"We've seen a noticeable shift," said Beth Solomon, director of the Washington office of Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm that helps to place senior lobbyists and trade association heads.

Actually I think this is a horrible development, but not unexpected. Lobbyists think they can control both parties by using the purse strings. They sense the zeitgeist, and they're shifting to the left. My hope is that, if the Democrats do take the House or Senate, they slam the door in the lobbyists' faces. If they had an ounce of self-respect, they would do so, considering how the lobbying community undermined them for over a decade. But I'm not holding my breath. Washington is still a company town. At least for now.