Down the memory hole: HRC in 2013: Banker bashing is unproductive and foolish.

[cali]

Because 2013 is sooo long ago. Because she didn't really mean it and she's really, really a populist now who will champion reform of the financial industry. It's Politico and they're lying. Right.

<snip>
But Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000).

Certainly, Clinton offered the money men—and, yes, they are mostly men—at Goldman’s HQ a bit of a morale boost. “It was like, ‘Here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game,’” said an attendee. “Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.”

Clinton’s remarks were hardly a sweeping absolution for the sins of Wall Street, whose leaders she courted assiduously for financial support over a decade, as a senator and a presidential candidate in 2008. But they did register as a repudiation of some of the angry anti-Wall Street rhetoric emanating from liberals rallying behind the likes of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). And perhaps even more than that, Clinton’s presence offered a glimpse to a future in which Wall Street might repair its frayed political relationships.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/wall-street-white-house-republicans-lament-of-the-plutocrats-101047.html#ixzz3Xq3PnPr0

[Katashi_itto]

1. K&R!

The one thing Hillary is good at is crafting the message of the moment. Not that it really means anything.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. One's view points change over time

For example my dog two years ago use to sleep on her back now she sleeps on her side.
and that was 14 years ago in dog years............. Geez.

[cali]

4. fuck that lying shit about how if you don't support your corporate wall street loving

candidate, you must be for Rand.

Let me say it clearly: I detest Paul. I have NEVER posted one remotely good word about him- or any other of the crazy repuke fuckwads on the clown car. Got that toad, old boy (or girl)?

As for quotes, it was, of course, as is HRC's wont, closed to the press and public. But it was leaked by multiple people there to multiple sources and widely reported. It was never denied by your candidate.

I don't question your liberal credentials or attack you HRC supporters for supporting her. Many of you here, pathetically, use the most lying, scurrilous attacks.

It's beneath contempt and dim as can be.

[Scuba]

5. Nicely done.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

26. Fun trivia fact...

Cryptoad's 'favorite' group (by number of posts metric the site uses) is the 'Populist Reform' group. Why do I suspect his typical comment there is less than supportive of any actual populist reform of the party?

[Scuba]

6. It's beyond my comprehension how people can overlook Hillary's love for banksters and war criminals.

[A Simple Game]

9. I can remember when people used to be known by the company they kept,

now it's just by the letter after your name.

[Scootaloo]

11. Some of us still cling to quaint concepts like "Principle' and "ethics."

[L0oniX]

23. To be fair ...you can't become a billionaire with principles and ethics.

[jtuck004]

15. Branding doesn't fool everyone. Just enough of them. n/t

[stonecutter357]

7. you seem desperate!

[cali]

8. actually, you seem desperate. desperate to avoid addressing

your candidate's history. desperate to avoid a substantive discussion about it.

I post facts. HRC supporters freak out and pretend that anything that isn't rah rah is a lie or a distortion.

[Scootaloo]

10. That one also rushes to defend Kissinger

No Clinton context needed, he just jumps out there for the sebaceous old war criminal.

It's fucking weird to see.

[cali]

13. what a shocker. You know, Scoot, much as I detest Kissinger

I haven't knocked HRC for her coziness with the old war criminal. I get the politics/strange bedfellows shit. I've focused on what she's actually said and done and on her political cowardice.

[Scootaloo]

16. I'm... not particularly shocked

a little confused, perhaps, and somewhat amused. But not shocked.

It's gonna be a messy primary on DU.

[Carolina]

12. Bravo, cali

It appears that many can't handle the truth about candidate Hillary and are willingly amnestic about her past and her TRUE loyalties.

But past is PROLOGUE, so a quick review of HRC's is warranted:

She was inevitable in 2008, too. She was in it to win it. She was assured that her name and money were sufficient, until Super Tuesday (March 5, 2008) proved her wrong, her campaign was in disarray and she resorted to kitchen sink tactics against BHO, even going so far as to praise McCain. Then, still not knowing when to quit despite running on empty cash wise, she proceeded on to California because you never know, remember Bobby Kennedy. That was the straw for many, including the Democratic leadership which asked her to bow out in summer 2008. She gracelessly did so, on condition that Obama and the party pay off her campaign debt. Wow, what great leadership skills, what sound management! Screw up, squander a formidable campaign war chest on a 1992 style campaign, then demand that someone else bail you out... kinda like Wall Street which is quite appropriate.

In 2008, HRC also touted her 20 years of experience -- 12 as first lady of Arkansas and 8 as first lady of the US. But if she was, and is, to claim the Clinton legacy, then she has to assume the blame for that job sucking travesty NAFTA, for the Gramm-Bliley-Leech Act which overturned Glass-Steagall, for the Telecommunications Act which has produced the horrid consolidated media of today, and for Welfare Deform which has deepened the abyss of poverty. BTW: imagine the ridicule HRC supporters would heap on Babs Bush if she ever made a similar 'experience' claim based on 4 years as 2nd lady of the US, 4 years as 1st lady of the US and 8 years as 1st mom!

Then there’s 2002, HRC's first term in the Senate. How can anyone forget that IWR vote, that callous, finger-in-the-political-wind vote cast because of her POTUS aspirations. That vote makes her ultimately culpable for the death, debt, destruction and destabilization that war of choice has caused. Sure Bush would have gone to war anyway, but without the votes of Democrats like the would be presidents Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, Biden and Dodd, it would truly have been BUSH’S war. Instead, HRC and the others were profiles in political cowardice displaying politically ambitious calculation, awful judgment, and a stunning lack of morality while providing the liars and thieves in the Bush White House bipartisan cover. Here at DU, we knew better than to believe the Bush cabal. Democrats like Edward Kennedy (a genuine liberal), Bob Graham (of FL who even now points correctly to the Saudis), Robert Byrd and others not only cautioned their peers about such haste (casting votes just before the 2002 midterm elections) but warned, like canaries in the mine, about the long term consequences. Never forget Byrd’s poignant speech about the rush to war, the cost of war, the waste of war... It didn't take a classified report to see the facts. And those who think that vote is outdated, past history, something to be forgotten because HRC apologized for it, called it a mistake… should remember that there are no do-overs for votes that cost so much in terms of death and destruction.

HRC is no friend of the common man. She pays handlers and marketing personnel to package her as the people’s champion, but it’s all smoke and mirrors because Wall Streeters (the likes of Robert Reuben, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein aka Mr. Goldmann Sachs, et.al.) own her. She is the mistress of triangulation who helped found the DLC and who remains 3rd way to her very core. She is tone deaf and thin skinned (see that 2008 primary campaign, again) and lacks the natural political skills and charisma of Bill. On that note, I would even go so far as to say, she is no pave-the-way feminist. She is where she is today because of Bill.

After law school, she may have worked (ever so briefly) on the Nixon impeachment committee, but she was no heavy hitter, she didn’t pass the DC Bar, and she didn’t last long there. So what did she do? She ran off to Arkansas (to Arkansas… who goes there, who goes from Yale to DC to Hope Arkansas, if they are such a gifted and talented attorney… sorry Arkansans). She followed Bill because she recognized his innate talents and his rising star quality, and she latched on to him. She made it because of being Mrs. Clinton not because of being Hillary Rodham. Her only real lawyering was shilling for Walmart (a corporate lawyer for WALMART… so much for walking the talk of being the people’s champion) and at the Rose Law Firm, she relied heavily on Vince Foster!

If she's the best the Democratic Party can offer at this critical time in history, then we're fucked. Go ahead and flame me, I really don't care

[cali]

14. thank you, Caroline. Good summary.

I don't agree with you about highlighting her early career and I won't engage in speculation about her relationship with her husband, but I think the reminders about her lack of leadership on liberal issues is important.

[L0oniX]

22. ^^^THIS^^^

[cali]

17. kick for remembering. kick for evidence that populist anti-Wall Street rhetoric

is political, not principle.

[Autumn]

18. Recommended. You know cali someone mentioned Brooksley Born

and I remembered when she testified to the House Banking and Financial committee in 98 warning about the crash coming. No one listened then and no one will listen now. It all seems rather hopeless, Summers, Greenspan? Them and their ilk never go away. Never. They keep coming back into power with the politicians and we little people keep paying the price.
Hillary? She's a good person but she isn't going to do a damn thing to reign in the banks. She can talk all she wants to and whisper sweet nothings to the Democratic base but she isn't going to do a damn thing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-warning-brooksley-borns-battle-with-alan-greenspan-robert-rubin-and-larry-summers-2009-10

[cali]

19. thanks. Yes, HRC may well be a good person, but she has yet to demonstrate any

leadership or vital issues. She is risk averse to an incredible degree. Autumn, I can predict how her campaign will go. Rhetoric as fig leaf, vague enough for most democrats to read into it what they wish. She will not take a stand on anything remotely controversial. She'll try to be as inoffensive as possible, avoiding any controversy.

[Autumn]

20. Your prediction is spot on cali, and that's a shame because she has it in her to

fight and be fierce but it won't happen not on the tough issues that must be taken on and fought for. We lose and she loses.

[cali]

21. I don't see any evidence that she has it in her. Not in the last 15 years

know what I just found? This quote:

I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Cabinet/Hillary_Clinton_Abortion.htm

So yeah, she's always supported abortion, but man, her language about it needs some serious revision.

[Autumn]

24. Before that she had it in her. That quote really does stand out.

Fuck it, it's all too depressing.

[cali]

25. yeah, it's sad- and the support and denial of reality on the part of so many

of her supporters;the refusal to deal with the evidence that contradicts what they want to believe, is really sad. I find that more depressing.

And if she loses the general, which I think is a real possibility whatever polls say now, who do you think they'll blame?

[Nay]

27. Yeah, how come none of these big 'progressives' have hired Ms Born to

advise them on the economy? Why are Larry Summers and Tim Geithner always picked? They were wrong and she was right.

I guess being right doesn't get you much in this 'meritocracy .'