Oops! Just three days after Sen. Chuck Schumer announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni suggested that maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all. "A poll released last week by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal...found that the percentage of Americans who view her favorably had dropped to 46 from 56."
Wonder why? Despite all of this Ready for Hillary hysteria, as far as her tenure as Secretary of State is concerned, as Bruni put it, "It's hard to pinpoint what, other than all those dutiful miles she logged, her legacy is." What's more, as I pointed out in a previous post, given that her only accomplishment as senator was getting money to rebuild the World Trade Center and as first lady trying and failing to reform health care, what's the big deal?
Then we've got the fact that her husband's legacy as president included signing into law the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which led to the collapse of the banking industry in 2008, along with initiating policies that outsourced millions of middle-class jobs. As I pointed out in an earlier post, thanks to Clinton's lobbying to allow China into the World Trade Organization, the U.S. lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2009 alone.
We can also assume that Hillary's loyalty to Wall Street will trump that of Main Street. During her two terms as a New York senator, Clinton collected more money from the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Industry than any other member of Congress: more than $31 million -- a hugely hefty sum given that she was only in office for eight years.
As former presidential candidate (and Alaska Senator) Mike Gravel put it, "The Democratic Party used to stand for the ordinary working man. But the Clintons and the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) sold out the Democratic party to Wall Street."
If nothing else convinces Americans that the Clintons are sellouts, it should be the fact that Charles Ferguson was pressured to cancel his documentary on Hillary by the Clintons AND the Republican National Committee.
Wonder why? There's no way that Bill Clinton would cooperate with someone who had already produced an award-winning documentary, called Inside Job, that detailed the roots of the financial crisis -- and implicitly Clinton's role in it.
As Ferguson explains, when he asked Bill Clinton about the cause of the financial crisis, "he proceeded to tell me the most amazing lies I've heard in quite a while. For example, Mr. Clinton sorrowfully lamented his inability to stop the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of private (OTC) derivatives trading... Mr. Clinton said that he and Larry Summers had argued with Alan Greenspan, but couldn't budge him.... Well, actually, the reason that the law passed...was because of the Clinton Administration's strong advocacy..."
Ferguson says the Clintons need to woo Wall Street because they need money to pay Bill Clinton's legal bills resulting from his presidential shenanigans, along with funding Hillary's presidential run. "When they were mercilessly hounded by Kenneth Starr... their legal bills soared and the Clintons fell many millions of dollars into debt... and the cost of presidential campaigns has gone from $66 million (both parties combined, in 1976) to an estimated $5 billion for 2016, when Hillary will run. So more than ever, the Clintons need money and the people who supply it."
Bottom line: If Hillary needs money to pay her husband's legal bills she can get a job on K Street working for Wall Street. When it comes to the presidency we need someone who works for her constituents. Someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is not only uncorrupt but the brains behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As fellow blogger Robert Borosage recently observed, the CFPB has already returned some $1 billion that had been bilked from American consumers. As Frank Bruni notes, "The cult fervor for Elizabeth Warren demonstrates an appetite now for liberal firebrands."