Via the Politico came the news earlier Thursday that Democratic lobbyists have welcomed Sen. Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday, believing President Obama would allow them to represent their clients’ interests like seldom before.

There are some key legislation ideas these lobbyists would like to see passed by Congress and approved by the president, and Obama, they believe, will be willing to help them out. They are, the Politico says, especially happy because Obama is quite inexperienced, and went directly from the Senate to the White House. This may mean, lobbyists hope, that Obama will look at Congress first and foremost for advise.

Additionally, lobbyists believe, Obama will be easy to influence and willing to work with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid to pass legislation the lobbyists have been lobbying hard for, for years.

“When you come out of Congress, you tend to look to Congress for help because you have an easier, more pervasive working relationship with the people there,” said David Hoppe, president of Quinn Gillespie & Associates. “The legislative branch will be more of a partner in the executive-legislative decision-making process. It would be wise for [lobbyists] to look at that relationship.”

One of the issues lobbyists hope Obama will be open for is renegotiation of NAFTA.

During the Democratic primaries, president-elect Obama said he wanted to unilaterally announce that NAFTA would be renegotiated. This resulted in tremendous criticism from proponents of free trade inside and outside of America and especially from Mexico and Canada.

After the criticism, Obama tampered his criticism of NAFTA considerably, leading many moderates to believe that he may not make renegotiation of NAFTA a key issue.

Lobbyists disagree, the Politico report explains. Never before have they seen so many new clients in such a short amount of time. (Potential) clients all believe that working with Obama will be easier than working with Sen. John McCain, so they are celebrating Obama’s victory, believing their interests to be served quite well by an Obama administration.

Although lobbyists have, to a very large degree, rightfully received a lot of criticism in the last couple of years, they do, in the end, represent real people and real businesses, as Sen. Hillary Clinton rightfully put it during the Democratic primaries. One does not need to be a fan of lobbyists, for they often use their contacts to get bills and spending approved not in the interest of the American people as a whole, but only in the interest of a very small group of people, namely these lobbyists’ clients, but they are not purely evil either.

A lot of spending advocated by lobbyists is useless, however, meaning that both Obama and members of U.S. Congress would probably be wise not to give in to their demands and requests too often, for the more special interests are served under Democratic leadership, the more likely it is that Republicans will make a comeback two years from now with one very simple message: serve the people, not special interests.