In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.
.. Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country’s economic health.
.. In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues.
For Warren and her allies, a fight over Clinton’s hires
Warren’s coalition is developing a hit list of the types of people they’ll oppose — what one source called ‘hell no’ appointments — in a Clinton administration.
Warren’s coalition is developing a hit list of the types of people they’ll oppose — what one source called “hell no” appointments — in a Clinton administration. They’re vowing to fight nominees with ties to big banks, and warn against corporate executives assuming government roles in regulating the industries that made them rich. Warren has a mantra — “personnel is policy” — and behind the scenes, Warren, her allies and a left-leaning think tank affiliated with her have fanned out to try to influence the Clinton hiring process long before the election results come in.
.. “Our big point to the Clinton transition people will be that when it comes to positions with power over Wall Street, it is important to appoint people with a proven track record of challenging corporate power,” said Adam Green
.. Rubin’s influence in the Obama administration is what Warren’s supporters are trying to prevent this time.
They point to Michael Froman, a former chief of staff for Rubin at Treasury, who was still getting paid by Citigroup while working as a senior official on Obama’s 2008 transition team. Froman went on to work in Obama’s White House, where he is U.S. trade representative.
The economic issue they aren’t talking about at the DNC
Democrats have been pushing their ideas for jobs and growth. So why are they ignoring the Federal Reserve?
A report released in February found that 83 percent of Fed board members are white; nearly three-quarters are male. Nearly 40 percent come from financial institutions. Given the Fed’s role regulating the largest banks, that last statistic has proven particularly troubling for many liberal economists and progressive activists.
.. “We will also reform the Federal Reserve to make it more representative of America as a whole, and we will fight to enhance its independence by ensuring that executives of financial institutions are not allowed to serve on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks or to select members of those boards.”
.. “No one was even talking about the notion that bankers should not select the people who serve on the Fed until this year
And Then There Was Trump
That approach would not work, Garin said, because voters, including many of Trump’s supporters, don’t really “believe he will build a wall, or get Mexico to pay for a wall” — they have already discounted many of Trump’s over-the-top assertions as hyperbole.
“The real case has more to do with his character and temperament,” Garin said. “The biggest concern is that he is temperamentally unsuited to lead the country.”
.. Responding directly to Trump’s claims often requires repeating them, which gives them extra oxygen. There is a growing literature on attempts to correct “misinformation.” A common theme in this literature is that if a person repeats misinformation or otherwise draws attention to it in an attempt to counter the misinformation, the original claim can be reinforced, rather than diminished, in people’s memories.
.. The problem for Democrats is that in quarreling with the Trump program, they are getting tangled up with specifics, and as a result, they may be seen to be oblivious or insensitive to the underlying message: about illegal immigration or crime or terrorism or loss of local control or American responsibility for world affairs that seems endless and pursued at the expense of concentration on domestic concerns.
.. This strategist cited the futility of accusing Trump of hyping crime:
This seems counterproductive: Voters are not judging a 10-year performance on crime if they are worried about an experienced or feared increase now. The effect of a defense of this nature may be perceived as belittling or minimizing the concern.
.. Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group, described the problem of attempting to refute Trump point-by-point:
Democratic think tanks and surrogates and experts will dissect his proposals and show how they fail, but that won’t mean much. He’s an attitude, a direction, not a policy agenda.
.. “Her biggest challenge is to be different than Obama — bolder, challenging Wall Street, corporate trade and tax deals.”
.. net illegal migration has been zero or negative for eight years, so building walls and increasing border enforcement is addressing a problem that no longer exists... Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported in July 2015 that numerous studieshave shown that immigrants — regardless of nationality or legal status — are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated.
These facts are unlikely to dissuade voters convinced that immigrants are taking jobs, committing crimes and undermining American values. From their point of view, any crime by an illegal immigrant is one crime too many.
..1) “to deny Trump the ‘I’m-on-your-side’ space,” and 2) “to keep hammering on how bizarre and dangerous he is to America and our interests around the world. His weird man-crush on Putin and his invitation this week to Russia to invade the Baltics seem like good places to start.”.. Haidt argues, is because themind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict, like a small rider — conscious, verbal, reasoning — sitting atop a large elephant — the other 98 percent of mental processes, which are automatic and intuitive.
The elephant “really runs the show,” Haidt said, Translating this analytic approach to the 2016 election, in Haidt’s view, means that
in matters of politics and morality, you must speak to the elephant first. Trump did this brilliantly in the Republican primary, and in his convention speech.
To counter Trump, Democrats have to get into the electorate’s automatic, intuitive and unconscious level of responding to events before attempting a critique based on reasoned argument, according to Haidt. To do this, he wrote, the goal should be to portray Trump in ways that conflict with “deep moral intuitions about fairness versus cheating and exploitation.”
.. The next step is to present a vision of Trump that violates “moral intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity:”
.. Haidt put it another way:
Trump talks about patriotism (a form of loyalty), but he seems to be pals with one of our main adversaries (Putin) while telling our friends in the Baltics that we may not defend them. In these ways he brings shame to America and weakens our stature among our friends.