Isaac Otherworld
Member
Oh. No. Not. Ties. To. Wall. Street.
Like do people think everybody and every company on Wall Street is comically villanous? A gargantuan portion of the worlds finances go through Wall Street. Almost anyone with decent wealth has some connection. Yet there are good people with wealth (Warren Buffet, say) and bad and everything in between. Is there any evidence any of her dealings with Wall Street are sinister? Cause we seen her speeches, they were pathetically innocuous.
Just to clarify so everyone knows where I stand, I am voting for Clinton next week. I'm actively pushing everyone I know to vote Clinton. I voted for Bernie in the primary. Most of my time volunteering post convention has been working to get disaffected Bernie voters to come out for Clinton.
I'm not a Bernie or Buster. I'm not a "both parties are shit" kind of person. Trump isn't shit. He's a landmine. Please don't treat me as such.
On to your points.
A global financial crisis caused by criminal fraud by almost all major wall street firms with no repercussions towards those responsible is going to do that to public opinion.
I believe we need a financial industry. I'm not some anti-capitalist who wants to tear down everything. But if the 2008 crash has taught us anything, it should be that these people should not be allowed to self regulate, we shouldn't hire them as federal regulators, and the regulatory system currently in place creates perverse incentives and is only going to lead to bad outcomes. Dodd-Frank didn't change that.
No one really thought Hillary Clinton's speeches were recordings of dastardly secret plots where Hillary Clinton was auctioning off various states to her secret Wall street masters. It's just emblematic of the kind of pool she swims in.
The most problematic thing in her Wall Street speeches is that Clinton is still under the delusion these people are the smartest people in the room. They aren't. Giving the financial industry every regulatory provision they wanted got us the 2008 financial crash.
The next most problematic thing in those speeches is Clinton praising plans to cut social security benefits and raise the retirement age as "The kind of bold leadership we need."
She's not diabolically evil. But those are not good positions and democratic voters should be actively and aggressively lobbying her away from those. It would be nice if Clinton enthusiasts could at least admit that, then there might not be such a festering divide between the party right now.
Probably because the far left won't like an honest answer of "Yeah I try to court business types. I'm not some dumbass that tries to minimize how many people will vote for me by only supporting those that are perfectly aligned with my party on every single issue. If you want Democrats to be able to actually get done then stop it with this party purity bullshit."
I absolutely wish she could give that answer, but unfortunately the far left seems to not get how politics work and would feel "betrayed" by the idea that Hillary gets shit done by appealing to more than just liberals and progressives.
Let's call it what it is: a combination of party purity bullshit and obsession with having an "establishment" to be opposed to.
Yeah Wallstreet has done some fucked up things. But you don't win as many seats as possible by sticking to everyone who doesn't 100% align with your base. Business Type conservatives and Moderate Conservatives have the potential to become part of the democratic Big Tent for a generation. You don't respond to such an opportunity by going "well you don't align with me on everything, so fuck off".
Those "business type conservatives" and "moderate conservatives" are people who have been lobbying for years to privatize social security and medicare / medicaid. It's not that they don't align with me on everything. It's that they don't align with me or the democratic platform on anything. Not cutting social security is literally the most popular policy position among the American public. No one in the democratic party should be conceding that to conservatives. It's not just bad policy, it's bad politically as well.
We live in an era will big business and corporations have never done better. Their profits have never been higher. Half of all children in public schools live in poverty. Wages have been stagnant for 40 years. We've recovered number of jobs lost by the 2008 crash, but most of the jobs gained are low paying service jobs. Global Warming is already having an impact on the world environment and poses an existential threat to society (Don't get met started on Clinton's fracking policy. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.). At what point have we given them enough?