During Saturday night’s 9pm debate that, thankfully for Democrats, few people watched, Hillary Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street came up. As liberal website Slate notes:
Bernie Sanders pointed out (fairly) at Saturday night’s CBS Democratic presidential debate that Hillary Clinton raises a substantial amount of campaign money from Wall Street, while moderator (and Slate columnist) John Dickerson alluded to the millions of dollars in paid speeches that the former New York senator has given to major banks. Pressed on whether this would compromise her ability as president to properly regulate the financial industry
This is a tough one for Hillary. Although the primary focus of her campaign has been women’s issues- abortion rights, equal pay, and gun control- she has had a hard time convincing the increasing number of Democratic voters who are openly hostile to capitalism that she’s not a pawn of the billionaire class. Running alongside Bernie Sanders, and against Donald Trump, both old style populists, has made this exceedingly difficult.
To date, Hillary has handled this with “evolution.” When asked about whether or not she supported the TPP, a bill hated by unions that she once called “the gold standard” of trade deals, she took several months to formulate an opinion, refuting her earlier support when she realized it wouldn’t be politically advantageous, and she was roundly criticized.
In light of that fiasco, it would stand to reason that Hillary and her multimillion dollar team would come up with a great answer to “how can Democratic voters trust you to regulate Wall Street?” After all, disaffected Democrats are looking for literally anything they can latch on to at this point, recognizing the unelectability of Bernie Sanders and the irrelevancy of Martin O’ whatever his name is. Something that echoed Hillary’s transparent “I can blue collar too” whiskey shooting of ’08 might have sufficed.
Instead, what they got was…well, it was something:
Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, and I’m very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60%. [Cheers and applause.] So I— I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.
To recap: Wall Street supports Hillary because she happened to be the Senator from New York on 9/11 and she helped redevelop the area. This is absurd on several fronts. First, are we to believe that without Hillary Clinton, the World Trade Center site would still be a smoldering rubble? To a person, every American agreed that rebuilding the center of the financial universe and American capitalism in defiance of those who would try to tear it down was a national priority. This had nearly nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s direction, whether she cheerleaded vociferously or not. The Financial District would have been rebuilt even if Osama Bin Laden himself was the junior senator from New York. Is there a less difficult political decision than advocating for the reconstruction of the financial universe after a terrorist attack?
Second, there’s Hillary’s problematic history with Wall Street. As liberal rag Mother Jones reported several months ago:
Hillary Clinton’s shift from declaimer of Big Finance shenanigans to collaborator with Goldman—the firm has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation—prompts an obvious question: Can the former secretary of state cultivate populist cred while hobnobbing with Goldman and pocketing money from it and other Wall Street firms? Last year, she gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences. (Her customary fee is $200,000 a speech.)
The consensus has long been that Hillary Clinton and her husband are for sale, and that Wall Street can buy what it wishes. What’s good for the Clintons is good for Wall Street is good for America, and if not, well, whatever. As Politico noted months ago, Wall Street understands that Hillary’s populism is so much empty rhetoric:
But here’s the strange thing: Down on Wall Street they don’t believe it for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.
Translation: If you enjoyed the last round of bank bailouts, crony capitalism, and government directed economic policy to benefit the privileged few at the expense of the many, you’ll LOVE Hillary Clinton.
Liberals, shockingly, are not giving her a total pass, as the Morning Joe Clip above notes. Voters should pay attention.
AAN Staff
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