How is Bernie not burning bridges best preserved and giving Trump quotes to use against any

[betsuni]

41. It's illegal for them to take money from industries.

They receive donations from people who work in those industries and there are legal limits.

Dealing with lobbyists is part of the job of an elected official. Lobbyists are not handing them envelopes of cash. There are rules and limits to legally contribute to a candidate. A Democratic voter donating to Democrats is doing so because they are on the same side fighting for the same things. Otherwise, they'd donate to Republicans.

Al Franken:

"The proliferation of money in politics is a huge problem ... it has some pretty terrible consequences. But does this mean that elected officials are all bought and paid for? The truth, I've discovered, is a little more complicated. Campaign contributions don't buy votes. What they buy is access. That's why lobbyists write campaign checks. They're not bribes. They're grease. They enable those lobbyists to come to fund-raisers, where they get to talk to you while you're trying to remember their names. Gross, right? And it is! I hear from a lot of lobbyists. And, yes, some of them are every bit as transactional as you're imaging. But others, often the more effective ones, are actually passionate about the issue they're representing. And while lobbying -- and all the money associated with it -- offers lots of opportunities for corruption, lobbying itself isn't inherently corrupt. Many lobbyists represent good causes, like solar energy or Alzheimer's research or a woman's reproductive rights. They may have donated to you not in order to buy your support going forward, but because you've been supporting their good cause all along. And more often than not, you're not meeting with them because of a check they wrote, but rather because you're on the same side. You're strategizing together about how to move the ball forward, and trading useful information about how to achieve a shared goal."