I've been a lurker on Dailykos since almost the beginning, when I was in my early teens. I remember the disappointment of the 2004 election, the excitement surrounding Paul Hackett's almost-successful campaign in 2005, and the celebration after the 2006 elections. I supported Barack Obama enthusiastically in 2008 (including the primaries) and 2012. Despite that, I have refrained from posting until now. I knew I would get sucked in, when I needed to spend time on my studies. However, the amount of disinformation and innuendo about Hillary Clinton, especially coming from people with similar demographics and ideology to my own, has convinced me to step up.
Hillary Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No one is. Still, her record as Senator and Secretary of State demonstrate that she would be a very effective president, one that would advance liberal causes. Almost as importantly, I strongly believe she has the best chance at defeating the Republicans in the fall (more on that in a later post). I am planning to write a series of posts about why I support her. In these posts, I will not attack Bernie Sanders. I greatly respect him, and I agree with many of his views on the issues. If I lived in Vermont, I would support his Senate campaigns enthusiastically.
For this first post, I have chosen to write about what seems to be the most effective argument against Hillary Clinton - that the political contributions she has received somehow make her corrupt or beholden to Wall Street. All of these claims are innuendo based on circumstantial evidence. The arguments used against her could have equally been used against FDR (see below), JFK (son of a Wall Street Banker who made a fortune shorting stocks in 1929), and Barack Obama (received large contributions from Wall Street in 2008). The problem with these arguments is that when you actually look at the records and positions of these people, Hillary Clinton included, it becomes obvious that they are not corrupt or beholden to Wall Street. The innuendo is just innuendo. So, when evaluating Hillary Clinton as a candidate for president, consider her record instead. Examine her liberal voting record from her time in the Senate (source 1) (source 2), or her detailed plan to rein in the excesses of Wall Street (source 1) (source 2).
I address the arguments against her point by point:
1. Some of Hillary Clinton’s financial backers work on Wall Street, and some members of Bill Clinton’s administration worked there
Imagine this: a wealthy individual with a famous name is elected president. He or she proceeds to appoint an even wealthier individual, a Wall Street banker, to head the SEC. Is this George W. Bush? Hillary Clinton? No, it is FDR. He appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, prominent Wall Street banker and father of JFK to head the SEC at its inception.
Here is wikipedia on Kennedy’s Wall Street career:
In 1919, Kennedy joined the prominent
stock brokerage firm of
Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated
stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that were later labeled
insider trading and
market manipulation. He happened to be on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets at the moment of the
Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, and was thrown to the ground by the force of the blast.
[23] In 1923, he left Hayden and set up his own investment company. Kennedy subsequently became a multi-millionaire during the
bull market of the 1920s, and even more wealthy as a result of taking "
short" positions in 1929.
and on his relationship to Roosevelt:
Kennedy's first major involvement in a national political campaign was his support in 1932 for
Franklin D. Roosevelt's bid for the Presidency. He donated, loaned, and raised a substantial amount of money for the campaign. Roosevelt rewarded him with an appointment as the inaugural Chairman of the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Kennedy had hoped for a
Cabinet post, such as
Secretary of the Treasury. After Franklin Roosevelt called Joe to
Washington, D.C. to clean up the securities industry, somebody asked FDR why he had tapped such a crook. "Takes one to catch one," replied Roosevelt.
[35]
Kennedy's reforming work as SEC Chairman was widely praised on all sides, as investors realized the SEC was protecting their interests. His knowledge of the financial markets equipped him to identify areas requiring the attention of regulators. One of the crucial reforms was the requirement for companies to regularly file financial statements with the SEC, which broke what some saw as an information monopoly maintained by the Morgan banking family. He left the SEC in 1935 to take over the Maritime Commission, which built on his wartime experience in running a major shipyard.
I can imagine the furor. It's 1932, just three years after Wall Street has crashed the economy. A wealthy New York politician with financial banking from Wall Street is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. "He's corrupt and beholden to the banks! He says he'll rein in Wall Street, but we can’t possibly trust him!" After he wins, he appoints a Wall Street banker, one of his backers, to regulate Wall Street. "CORRUPTION!" This is of course ridiculous, but the same innuendo is being used against Hillary Clinton today.
2. CLAIM: Wall Street contributions make Hillary corrupt
I think Barney Frank, former Congressman from Massachusetts, author of the Dodd-Frank bill, and liberal hero makes the case better than I could. But first, I thought I should quote Elizabeth Warren:
There is no one in or out of Washington who has worked harder on financial issues than Barney,” [Senator Warren] said. “During the great financial crisis of our lifetime, Barney provided unparalleled insight and extraordinary leadership, resulting in landmark legislation. — (source)
Congressman Frank writes in an article at (unfortunately) Politico:
On the electoral side, the fact that Barack Obama received an unusually large percentage of financial-industry donations for a Democratic candidate in 2008 didn’t keep him from doing more to increase regulation in this sector than any president since FDR. One of my biggest allies in the effort to secure a CFTC majority for regulating overseas derivative activity was Chris Dodd, who received more money from banks than I did. — (source)
I think everyone should read the
article in its entirety.
So why would Wall Street employees donate money to candidates, like Barack Obama, Barney Frank, or Hillary Clinton, who favor increased regulations on banks and higher taxes on the wealthy? The first thing to consider is the amount of money they have contributed is a drop in the bucket compared to their total wealth, or the amount they contribute to Republican candidates. The second is that the contributions are made by individual employees (a small percentage of the total number of bankers), not the big banks themselves. Wall Street pays a lot of smart people a ton of money. Most of these people are socially liberal, and not all of them are driven solely by financial gain. My guess is that most of the Wall Street employees who contribute to Democrats do so knowing they are voting against their own personal financial interests, to promote their progressive values on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. In that way, they are analogous the many poor people who support Republicans for the opposite reasons. No one is claiming that the Republican candidates are beholden to (or even care about) to the economic interests of poor, white southerners! (Another factor might be that the economy does best under Democratic presidents (
source)).
I earned a graduate degree in a quantitative field, and every week I receive recruiting emails from big banks and hedge funds. I delete all of them. I would never sell out, but if I did it would not change my liberal values, and I would still contribute (substantially more) to Democrats.
3. Hillary made lots of money on the public speaking circuit
Corporations hire prominent speakers to impress their clients, and universities do the same to provide an experience for their students. They pay speakers very high fees, in an amount proportional to their fame. I've read comments suggesting that Hillary must be corrupt because she takes these fees - "because no one would pay that much just to hear a speech." On the contrary, her speaking fee is in line with what someone of her prominence would earn (
source). Former Secretaries of State command some of the highest speaking fees, even after they have retired from the political sphere, including Colin Powell ($150,000), Condoleeza Rice ($150,00), Madeleine Albright (>$40,000), and James Baker (>$40,000) (
source 1) (
source 2).
The fees are not a quid pro quo. Some of the speakers earning the highest fees are celebrities, athletes, and former politicians who no longer influence the public sphere. I don’t think the groups that pay pay five-to-six figure sums to hear famous historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, physicist Michio Kaku, or former football coach Lou Holtz (
source) do so with the aim of influencing their work, but rather to impress their clients/educate their students with the words of a brilliant and/or famous speaker.
I don't think anyone can fault Hillary Clinton for accepting speaking fees, unless one starts with the assumption that she is corrupt.
If someone was willing to pay “famous bloggers” five figure sums for them to give a speech about their views, I don’t think many diarists here would resist. I She was a private citizen at the time, and there was no quid pro quo. It’s not like she was using her influence to lobby for a corporation, something she could have made a lot more money on if she wanted to. In her own words:
I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company, as so many people who leave public life do. (source)
4. Conclusion
The innuendo about Hillary's Wall Street ties is just that: innuendo. When evaluating her as a candidate for president, please consider her record instead. Examine her liberal voting record from her time in the Senate (
source 1) (
source 2), or her detailed plan to rein in the excesses of Wall Street (
source 1) (
source 2).
The two most important things a President can do to rein in the power of corporations are (1) maintain the Dodd-Frank bill and Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Agency and (2) appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Citizens United. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would both accomplish these things, and none of the Republicans would. So go ahead and promote your favored candidate based on his or her merits, but don't claim that Hillary is "Republican-lite" or spread misleading innuendo that could harm her chances in the general election if she does end up winning the nomination.