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"It was like, 'Here's someone who doesn't want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game. Like, maybe here's someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.'"
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7. Paraphrase of Several Attendees' Accounts From Politico
"Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, 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, 'We all got into this mess together, and we're all going to have to work together to get out of it.'"
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Did we, though, "All get into the mess together"?
Would middle-class voters considering voting for Hillary Clinton in New York on Tuesday take kindly to the idea that the Great Recession was equally their own and Goldman Sachs' fault? How would that play in the Bronx?
Lest anyone suspect that Clinton doesn't release the transcripts because she's not permitted to do so under a non-disclosure agreement, think again: Buzzfeed has confirmed that Clinton owns the rights to the transcripts, and notes, moreover, that according to industry insiders even if there were speeches to which Clinton did nothold the rights, no institution on Wall Street would allow themselves to be caught trying to block their release.
And Politico and The Wall Street Journal have reported exactly the same information about Clinton's ability to release these speech transcripts unilaterally.
The problem with the quotes above is not merely their content -- which suggests a presidential candidate not only "gushingly" fond of Wall Street speculators but unwilling to admonish them even to the smallest degree -- but also that they reveal Clinton to have been dishonest about that content with American voters.
Last night in Brooklyn Mrs. Clinton said, "I did stand up to the banks. I did make it clear that their behavior would not be excused."
Yet not a single attendee at any of Mrs. Clinton's quarter-of-a-million-dollar speeches can recall her doing anything of the sort.
Release of the transcripts would therefore, it appears, have three immediate -- and possibly fatal -- consequences for Clinton's presidential campaign:
- It would reveal that Clinton lied about the content of the speeches at a time when she suspected she would never have to release them, nor that their content would ever be known to voters.
- It would reveal that the massive campaign and super-PAC contributions Clinton has received from Wall Street did indeed, as Sanders has alleged, influence her ability to get tough on Wall Street malfeasance either in Congress or behind closed doors.
- It would reveal that Clinton's policy positions on -- for instance -- breaking up "too-big-to-fail" banks are almost certainly insincere, as they have been trotted out merely for the purposes of a presidential campaign.
In a nation whose economy nearly collapsed just a few years ago because of precisely the people and institutions Clinton is now "gushy" toward, it's not hard to imagine the three revelations above being enough to cost Clinton the primary in New York and thereafter, at a minimum, the votes in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and California.
Coupled with the many states remaining that Senator Sanders is expected to win, this could leave Clinton in a situation in which she loses 22 of the final 25 states -- enough of a collapse for unpledged super-delegates to abandon her in large numbers at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Certainly, it's hard to understand how any super-delegate could cast a ballot for Clinton in Philadelphia without knowing, first, what the candidate actually believes about protecting America from another greed-driven Great Recession -- or worse.
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