Wall Street Is Cool With Hillary Clinton Pretending To Be A Populist

At this stage of the game you have to be exceedingly dim or incredibly delusional to think that Hillary Clinton is a progressive. Her record of supporting cuts to programs helping children in poverty, voting for reckless wars overseas, applauding domestic surveillance, and standing with corporate power in Congress speaks for itself.

But in order to win an election in a country with a population increasingly skeptical of trickle-down economics Hillary Clinton is going to have pretend to be a populist. The risk is that her rhetoric could scare away her corporate base especially her strongest supporters working in finance.

Fortunately for Clinton those supporters understand the pretense of modern electoral politics and, according to Politico, aren't holding the charade against her. Wall Street understands they are unpopular after bringing the US economy to its knees with their greed and criminality. They know Clinton has to criticize them in public even after taking their money in private.

Hillary Clinton sounded like a woman on a mission after her long drive into the heartland: “There’s something wrong,” she told Iowans on Tuesday, when “hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80 when I was driving here over the last two days.” But back in Manhattan, the hedge fund managers who’ve long been part of her political and fundraising networks aren’t sweating the putdown and aren’t worrying about their take-home pay just yet. It’s “just politics,” said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street, explaining that some of Clinton’s Wall Street supporters doubt she would push hard for closing the carried-interest loophole as president, a policy she promoted when she last ran in 2008...  

The only surprise, even to those who are apparently the targets of the remarks, was that Clinton’s denunciation on the trail in Iowa and in a fundraising email — widely read as a nod to the wing of the Democratic Party that prefers Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Clinton — came so soon. Far from creating genuine waves on Wall Street, Clinton’s comments were met with a resounding “meh.”

The banksters understand the game all too well. Clinton will try to position herself as a populist during the primary, maybe somewhat less during the general, then come home to Wall Street after she takes the oath of office. She had the opportunity to see her husband do it firsthand and, if a mirror was around, herself do it while serving as Senator.

The most pathetic part of the primary process may end up being progressives trying to contort their brains into seeing her as a progressive - she isn't one. She is from the corporate wing of the party and now would be a good time to accept that reality.

Marco Rubio Announces Run For President To Build 'A New American Century'

Yesterday Republican Senator Marco Rubio announced he was running for president. In a speech in his home state of Florida Senator Rubio emphasized his working class and Hispanic background and claimed it was time for the Republican Party to make a "generational choice."

Rubio appeared to be attacking both his Republican rival for the nomination, Jeb Bush, as well as Hillary Clinton with lines such as "yesterday is over, and we are never going back." Rubio continued saying America had always been about the future and moving forward but "We can’t do that by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past. We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them."

Senator Rubio's working class themed speech was immediately followed, ironically, by a full public embrace of billionaire sugar magnate Jose Fanjul. The Fanjul family is the epitome of wealth and privilege relying on government subsidies and labor exemptions. Recently they promoted an astroturf campaign to oppose preservation in the everglades.

But Rubio's biggest problem may be his record of jumping out in front of issues only to abandon them when the pressure comes. His stance on immigration has been all over the place and his initial position cost him support among the Republican "Tea Party" base while his subsequent flip angered everyone else.

Despite his rough start as a national figure Senator Rubio could be a force to be reckoned with in the Republican primary, especially among Republicans looking for a newer face from a key swing state that can appeal to Hispanic voters. Most Republicans should realize by now that if they fail to expand their electorate outside of older white voters they will be unable to win national elections.

Rand Paul Announces Presidential Candidacy

Today Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) announced he is running for president. The kickoff event included a video of Paul providing medical care in the developing world playing on his background as an eye doctor. Other videos emphasized Paul's opposition to the drug war and NSA domestic spying as well as his outreach to the black community.

Paul emphasized his distaste with both parties and the Washington political establishment saying there was no point in voting for a "Democrat light" candidate in 2016. This opened the way for Paul to say he wanted term limits for Congress and a bill that would force members of Congress to read bills they passed.

The speech could be fairly characterized as hardline libertarian and oscillated between economic conservatism and social liberalism. Paul said he wanted to privatize public schools, lower corporate tax rates and cut off foreign aid while also saying he wanted to stop government surveillance on US citizens and repeal laws that disproportionately target people of color such as laws associated with the war on drugs.

Senator Paul also went into his opposition to an Iran deal that is not approved by Congress calling any such deal "illegal." Paul infamously signed the 47 Senators letter to Iran trying to sabotage a deal which alienated him from many libertarians who viewed the letter as an attempt by neocons to kill any deal with Iran in order to promote more war in the Middle East. Paul further said that America was "at war with radical Islam."

Senator Paul, as always, presents a somewhat confounding candidacy for progressives and traditional conservatives. Each video before the speech featured the line "The future of conservatism," but is that true? Is conservatism really conservatism without the social reactionaries? Not to mention that by having parts of a national campaign platform that strongly appeal to both those on the left and those on the right Paul also risks having policies that disgust those on the left and those on the right. Everyone decries bland vague candidates but authenticity and strong opinions has its own pitfalls.

In any case, the Paul candidacy is official starting today.

Senator Ted Cruz Formally Announces Presidential Candidacy

Today Senator Ted Cruz formally announced he is running for president. The announcement came at Liberty University a conservative Christian school founded by the late evangelical preacher the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

After an introduction from Jerry Falwell Jr. saying Liberty University was not endorsing any political candidacy Senator Cruz launched into a long speech starting at the biography of his parents and focusing on the role Christianity played in keeping his family together. 

Cruz said he wanted conservative Christian voters to join him in fighting for liberty and "restoring the Constitution" and promised that he would repeal Obamacare in its entirety if he was elected president. The speech included a litany of other hot button issues such as gay marriage, gun rights, and government spying on emails. 

The theme of the speech was "imagine," a word Cruz repeated continually throughout the address such as "Imagine a new president repealing every word of Obamacare." Cruz also invoked the Shining City Upon a Hill phrase used most famously in recent history by President Ronald Reagan multiple times.

Senator Cruz is going to have a difficult time winning the Republican presidential nomination let alone winning the general. He is a polarizing figure within the Republican Party, especially amongst the party establishment who see him as disruptive and irresponsible after he helped force a shutdown of the federal government over Obamacare.

Cruz's support comes from the conservative "Tea Party" base which he will have to unite convincingly around his candidacy to have any chance of taking on whatever choice the GOP establishment and its high money donors settle on. If Cruz can effectively lock up the base early and soundly win Iowa he could overtake the establishment's candidate.

But building such an organization is going to take time which is likely why Senator Cruz was the first to announce, he has to get rolling early or his candidacy is over before it begins.

Governor Martin O'Malley Says Dodd-Frank Did Not Go Far Enough, Weighing Presidential Run

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley recently wrote an op-ed endorsing further regulation of Wall Street to prevent another financial crisis.  Just as noteworthy as the sentiment of the article is where it was published, the Des Moines Register of Iowa.

In recent weeks O'Malley has been signaling a clear interest in a run for the presidency and appears to be positioning himself on Hillary Clinton's left flank with on a platform of "reinstating Glass-Steagall banking regulations, hiking the capital gains tax, increasing the minimum wage, raising the threshold for overtime pay and strengthening collective bargaining rights." A progressive message no doubt and certainly to the left of Wall Street-friendly Clinton.

On Sunday the Boston Globe made an open appeal to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president saying there needed to be a progressive populist in the Democratic Party and that "Democrats would be making a big mistake if they let Hillary Clinton coast to the presidential nomination without real opposition."

Given Warren's popularity within the party due primarily to her ideas, there seems to be a solid constituency for a progressive economic populist to run. But Warren has stated repeatedly and concretely that she is not running for president in 2016, so who will take up the mantle?

The O'Malley op-ed in the Des Moines Register claims efforts to gut Dodd-Frank are finding support in the Democratic Party and that "[T]oo many Democrats have been complicit in the backslide toward less regulation." It's no secret that the faction of the party backing a Dodd-Frank rollback is the same one most supportive of a Hillary Clinton candidacy. So is O'Malley picking a fight?

Such a fight could be exactly what the Democratic Party needs to clarify the boundaries (if any) of Democratic Party support for Wall Street.

Jim Webb Looking To Challenge Clinton In 2016

Former US Senator Jim Webb has been loudly exploring the option of running for president in 2016 appearing at numerous campaign-esque events such as a speech before the firefighters union as well as on ABC's This Week yesterday where he discussed his prospects as a candidate and his vision for the country.

In the interview with ABC Webb said he was "truly exploring" a run for president and claimed that he was looking to see if there was enough support for his candidacy before formally deciding whether or not to run. He will continue "exploring" that support by traveling to South Carolina, Iowa, and New Hampshire.

On his website Webb plays up his military record both as a soldier in Vietnam and as a defense official including the Secretary of the Navy. Webb also positions himself as economic populist and in the ABC interview he asserted that the economic system has "become rigged against working people," and that "the people at the very top have clearly moved away from everyone else in our society in the benefits they are receiving."

The value of a Webb candidacy would be, in theory, that he could appeal to white working class voters both with his message and his background. That remains to be seen, though Webb will start out with less negatives than Hillary Clinton with that group. But the advantage will do little to even the odds in a contest between Webb and Clinton as Clinton will have a tremendous advantage both in resources and initial popularity within the party.

Beyond overcoming the Clinton Machine there is the legitimate question over what Webb's policies are and how they will supposedly help workers, address inequality, and fix a rigged economic system. Web's issue statement on "economic fairness" does not offer much change from traditional neoliberal pablum:

I would agree that we cannot tax ourselves into prosperity. But we do need to reconfigure the tax code so that our taxes fall in a fair way. It is possible to simplify the tax code, including reducing the corporate tax rate in exchange for eliminating numerous loopholes, and to examine shifting our tax policies away from income and more toward consumption. We did not even have a federal income tax in this country until 1913. The loopholes and exceptions that have evolved have made a mockery out of true economic fairness. I would never support raising taxes on ordinary earned income, whether it goes to a school teacher or a nurse or a doctor or a film star. But we need to find a better way.

Webb makes the point that executive compensation is a key driver of inequality and has increased considerably in recent decades. Whether closing "loopholes and exceptions" is enough to fund social programs for the working class if income taxes are frozen has yet to be proven. Most candidates, of both parties, claim they are in favor of closing special interest tax advantages - the devil is in the details.

Whether Webb is a serious candidate should become known in the coming months, 2016 is not so far away.