Of course it's still bribery. The definition doesn't change just because you happen to agree with what they're getting bribed for.
Your representative has a town hall and afterwards you get a few minutes to speak with him. You argue that the number of stop signs in your neighborhood isn’t enough and causes danger. In other words, you lobby him to pursue increased stop signs in your area. He hears you out, you guys shake hands, and leave.
As you have now engaged in lobbying, have you engaged in bribery? Clearly not. The two words are not synonyms.
Lobbying has, for a very long time, been another term for bribery. Even as recently as the COVID crisis. Why do you think Pfizer got all that juicy government money? Go look at open secrets and see who they paid. If you want a real shocker, look at their top donors and then look at their voting record. Look at all the politicians that end up at Pfizer, Exxon, Northrop, Google, etc. Look at all the executives for those companies that, as if by some miracle, end up running MAJOR parts of our government.
You are correct in the literal sense lobbying was supposed to be about the everyman talking to their representative and convincing them to do right by them. However, now, the everyman has no voice. If you don't donate $X millions you won't even the time of day from most congressmen. It's corruption at it's core and an affront to democracy. It's disguised as "lobbying" because Citizens United allowed it to be. That's all.
There's tons of nuance here; I'm responding to a person who appears to be insisting that there's absolutely nothing wrong with lobbying when in fact there are lots of problems with the actual practice as observed in the US.
Frequently, lobbying is used for corruption. The insinuation that nuanced perception can somehow alter this dynamic, is not compelling.
wait
Didn't you go from lobbying (getting a dinner specifically to discuss and convince):
> Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery?
to having dinner and talking cancer research en passant:
> having dinner while talking about cancer research
With that being said, these matters are supposed to be debated on a parliament's floor and an elected parliament member should have his stance about cancer research in his program, that's what he sold/promised to people who voted for them.
It's fine for normal people to lobby their representative. But if you're a billionaire telling your representative to close the roads near your house because you don't like normal people driving by, and anyway you travel by helicopter, and you donate millions every year to your representative's campaign so they'd better listen to you - then you're using money to increase your influence beyond "one man, one vote" and that's basically bribery.
Who's footing the bill ?