In October 2016, Wikileaks released over 33,000
pages of emails from John Podesta, Hillary
Clinton’s campaign chair.
The Clinton campaign has refused to authenticate
individual emails provided by wikileaks, instead,
saying correctly that the Russian government
appears to be behind the attack.
There are no bombshells in these emails.
If you were planning on voting for Hillary
Clinton, you’re probably still going to
do so, and if you weren’t planning on voting
for Clinton, you probably won’t.
That said, I think these emails will be really
concerning to a lot of liberals who fear and
have already feared that Clinton is too close
to bankers on Wall Street.
Sanders: Our job is to take on Wall Street,
not to take their money
Bash: Secretary Clinton, the question was
about the transcripts of the speeches to Goldman
Sachs.
Why not release them?
One of the ironies of this story is that we
know about these emails at all because the
campaign itself did self-opposition research
to find what in her Goldman Sachs speeches
could prove damaging should they leak.
Among the stuff that’s gotten the most attention
is Clinton saying that Dodd-Frank, Obama’s
signature initiative to reign in Wall Street,
was, quote, “passed for political reasons.”
that doesn’t mean necessarily that her bank
regulation platform is any weaker than Donald
Trump’s. It’s not, it’s much tougher.
But for the left wing of the party, that sees
Clinton as already too close to a lot of these
interests, this is just going to confirm those
suspicions.
You can see aides in the emails, internally debating how
to make sure that her apparent tone deafness
on Wall Street didn’t seep out into the
public.
One example that really drives this home is
that right after the campaign launched, Bill
Clinton was planning on giving a speech at
Morgan Stanley, and Clinton’s aides freaked
out about this.
They said this is something we shouldn’t
do and Hillary herself appeared to be okay
with it.
Now, again, if you are a Clinton fan, you
probably don’t think that’s a big deal,
you probably think that Clinton and her husband
can march into Wall Street, say what they
need to say, collect the money, and not change
their viewpoints at all.
I have never, ever been influenced in a view or a vote
by anyone who has given me any kind of funding.
But it does speak to, I think, something that
we’ve long suspected, which is that Hillary
herself doesn’t really see the political ramifications
for appearing close to Wall Street, or doesn’t care.
Another piece of context that people really
should keep in mind is that if you’re going
to hold Clinton herself to blame for a lot
of this stuff, you also have to find fault
with Obama.
Similarly, Republicans crying foul over this
is pretty rich.
The Republican party has curried extensive
ties with big money donors, and for years
maintained that it wasn’t influencing their
politicians.
The emails also show that Clinton agreed
to go to Morocco in exchange for a $12 million
donation to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Now, Clinton herself wasn’t Secretary of
State at this time.
There’s no reason to believe that there
was a quid pro quo in which she promised to
do a government favor in exchange for something
that the Moroccan government wanted.
But it does, again, add to this idea that
Clinton was more likely to meet with people
who gave lots of money to her husband’s
private charity.
We should be very clear, the Clinton Foundation
has done genuinely live-saving work all over
the world.
That said, it certainly won’t erase fears
from the left wing of the Democratic party
that the reason people were giving to the
foundation was to curry favor with a potential
Clinton white house.
One of the interesting debates from the emails
has to do with the Cadillac Tax, which taxes
luxury healthcare plans at a higher rate than
other plans.
You can see from the internal debates in the
emails that the Cadillac Tax sharply divided
Clinton’s team.
On the one hand you had her political aides,
which were strongly urging her to back away
from the Cadillac Tax in order to win the
endorsement of unions, who she needed in the
Democratic primary.
On the other hand, her policy aides clearly
thought that this was the right agenda, and
urged her to support it.
This is how all politicians operate.
They take a policy position that they think
is good, and they weigh it against the political
considerations.
That said, getting a chance to see how that
works yourself can sometimes be an ugly sight.
