Hillary Clinton was pushed tonight about her Wall Street ties more than in the first debate. A big moment came when Bernie Sanders said Clinton wasn’t proposing we break up the banks or re-enact Glass-Steagall because she’s getting campaign money from Wall Street.
“I have never heard a candidate, never, who has received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street, from the military industrial complex, not one candidate say, oh, these campaign contributions will not influence me. I'm going to be independent. Well, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that.”
In response, Clinton said.
“Well John, wait a minute. Wait a minute, he has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity. Let's be frank here… 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 percent.”
Clinton pivots away from talking about why Wall Street would be donating to her campaign if they’re not getting anything, to the support she’s getting from women. As a woman, I really do not appreciate her using our struggle for equality, freedom, and lives void of fear to avoid talking about her weaker policy proposal.
Then she goes on to 9/11.
So, 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.”
What does any of this have to do with Wall Street funding your campaign? What does this have to do with you proposing we wait until the banks step out of line again to break them up? What does 9/11 have to do with financial policy in 2015?
This honestly made me think of the Republican debates. 9/11! Terrorists! Americuh!
This was a breaking moment for Clinton. She really floundered for an answer, probably because Sanders’ assertions of her are the truth.
Clinton wraps up her response by saying,
So, you know, it's fine for you to say what you're going to say, but I looked very carefully at your proposal. Reinstating Glass- Steagall is a part of what very well could help, but it is nowhere near enough. My proposal is tougher, more effective, and more comprehensive because I go after all of Wall Street not just the big banks.”
But the truth is, Hillary’s plan is not as tough as Bernie’s.
From Politico,
Clinton’s plan lacks [Elizabeth] Warren's fiery rhetoric, and is also missing a key element many liberals say is essential: an unequivocal call for “too big to fail” banks to be broken up to reduce risks to the economy. And unlike Clinton's primary opponent Bernie Sanders and Warren, the former secretary of state isn't pushing to rebuild the firewall between investment banks and commercial banks…
‘The concerns are what appears to be an incredible over-reliance on regulators’ and ‘the lack of a structural firewall to protect the American people.’”
Clinton is proposing we wait for the banks to prove to regulators that they’re being poorly managed, or burn Americans again, before breaking them up. And she’s refusing to make banks work for either the public good or their own private interests, but not both.
We need to break them up now. We need to separate investment and commercial banks now.
As Sanders said at the debate,
“If Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, were alive today, you know what he'd say? ‘Break them up.’ Reestablish Glass-Steagall.”
This is over a century old. The richest people in the country are going to keep seizing power, just like they always have. And it makes logical, greedy sense. We can’t all be super rich; there isn’t enough for that in a finite world. The super rich would have to give up some of their millions and billions in order to level the chance at life in America, and that’s not at all what they want to do.
The powerful will cling to their power, as they always have.
It's happened again and again -- towering empires rising to rule over the people, societies of nobles and peasants, stark wealth against stark poverty: the Aztecs, the Romans, the British, the Qing, the Umayyad, the Spanish, the Han, the Russians, the French.
The banks and insurance companies and hedge funds in this country are in the same vein. Greed knows neither country nor religion nor time.
And Hillary’s “tough” plan to leave them alone until they do something else wrong is because they’re funding her campaign, as they’ve done throughout her career. She wants to run for re-election in 2020, who do you think is going to be funding her campaign then? She’s not going to hurt the people who are putting her in office. She quite literally can’t, or else she won’t be in office.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is beholden to we, the people. You work for who pays you. We’re paying Bernie, the banks are paying Hillary.
As he says,
“Here’s the story...Let’s not be naive about it… Why, over her political career has Wall Street been… the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? ...Maybe they’re dumb and they don’t know what they’re going to get, but I don’t think so.”
I don’t think so either, Bernie.
I think we’re the dumb ones if we think we’re actually going to get what Hillary Clinton is selling.