David Sirota: Clinton Isn’t Warren, No Matter What Her Allies Say

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Clinton Isn’t Warren, No Matter What Her Allies Say
Despite recent claims by Hillary Clinton constituents that she aligns with Elizabeth Warren, a look at her track record proves otherwise.

BY David Sirota


Hillary Clinton’s political allies want Democratic primary voters to believe that the former secretary of state is just like populist Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and they've been claiming that there are no differences between the two possible presidential contenders. There’s just one problem: That’s not true.

Clinton last week filled in for George W. Bush at an Ameriprise conference, continuing a speaking tour that is raking in big money from Wall Street. One of her aides later downplayed the idea that Clinton’s relationship with the financial sector could be a political liability for her, should she face Warren in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. The aide defiantly insisted that the two are exactly the same.

“Ask any so-called 'left' or 'liberal' critic of Hillary to name a single vote or position (on) which Elizabeth Warren and Hillary would disagree,” said the Clinton strategist to The Hill newspaper.

OK, fine. I’ll take the challenge—there are many differences between these two politicians.

For example, in her book, The Two Income Trap, Warren slammed Clinton for casting a Senate vote in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that ultimately passed in 2005. That legislation makes it more difficult for credit card customers to renegotiate their debts, even as it allows the wealthy to protect their second homes and yachts from creditors. According to a 2009 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the bankruptcy bill’s provisions changing debt payback provisions played a central role in the foreclosure crisis, as the new law forced homeowners to pay off credit card debts before paying their mortgage. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17021/Clinton-Warren-differences

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Kick, Rec n/t

[closeupready]

2. To be honest, I thought Hillary abstained from voting on Bankruptcy Deform.

I guess I was wrong.

At any rate, I agree with Sirota. K&R

[PoliticAverse]

5. She voted for the 2001 bill which didn't pass and missed the vote on the 2005 bill.

NY times article on Hillary Clinton and the bankruptcy bill(s)...
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/clinton-and-the-bankruptcy-law/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[KoKo]

3. k&R

[Laelth]

4. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[Thinkingabout]

6. Why would Hillary be Warren or why would Warren be Clinton? How do you determing who would be

aligning with whom?


Warren on the issues

http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Elizabeth_Warren.htm

Hillary on the issues

http://ontheissues.org/hillary_clinton.htm


WTH?

[BeyondGeography]

7. The present Warren or the one who probably voted for Reagan twice?

That's how easy it would be for Clinton to brush this off, if it ever comes to that, which seems very unlikely. Warren was a registered Republican when Hillary was taking incoming from Republicans. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a not-so-small reason why the decision not to run is very easy for her.

[hedgehog]

9. "probably voted for Reagan twice"? "PROBABLY"!

Nice way to smear someone!


Regardless, who better to speak to those who need to change their minds than someone who has changed her mind!

[Plucketeer]

11. Per-zactly!

Thanks for savin' me the keystrokes!

[BeyondGeography]

17. She can say she didn't vote for him

But, when asked, she hasn't.

[Fred Friendlier]

33. I am sick and tired of Republicans oozing over to join the Democrats

They have dragged the party so far to the right that even Nixon looks liberal by comparison. We should kick them back out and return to the glory days of Hubert Humphrey.

[Scootaloo]

51. There's not enough "oozers" to explain that effect

The problem is the party itself constantly lurching rightward. Not due to the nefarious influence if a small gribble of ship-jumpters, but because it is easy and profitable. it takes effort to take a stand. Taking stands can have expense. Why rock the boat whe nyou can float along and get showered with lobby money for "doing the right thing?"

And of course there's the problem that Democratic voters seem to have no concept of how to say "no." I've been watching this tide of stupid rise around us fr the last few years, this hyper-partisan "DEMOCRATS DO NO WRONG!" belief system that mirrors that of the Republicans... and it's dangerous. when you put party above principles, well, shit, why are you bothering with a party at all at that point?

[PADemD]

24. Hillary was a Goldwater girl

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/hillary-worked-for-goldwater/

[BeyondGeography]

25. Who supported Eugene McCarthy as a junior in college, and then campaigned for McGovern in '72

Warren was a registered Republican when she was 46 years old.

[beerandjesus]

28. Hey, good point. Richard Shelby was a Democrat when *he* was 46 years old....

Maybe he'd make a good running mate for Hillary!



By the way, if HRC were anything like McGovern, I don't think so many of us here would be so skeptical of her.

[roguevalley]

42. there are pubs in my family who vote dem. broad brush much?

[cascadiance]

30. And Reagan used to be a big time Democrat too!

You can play the "used to be" game in many different ways!

I also voted for John Anderson for president too, back in the days when Jimmy Carter was "born again" and Michele Bachmann was campaigning for Carter...

I would vote TODAY for someone like Carter in a heartbeat!

You can try to distract from what Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton have been doing today and recent years with this sort of distortion, but ultimately people will look at the issues and who stands with them.

When Ms. Warren grows up in Oklahoma, I cut her a lot of slack in the older days.

It's not about just which "team" they are on, but what they actually do for their constituency and the people in general.

[BeyondGeography]

37. The main point is how easy

it would be for Hillary to deflate Warren's would-be "real Democrat" status in a primary setting with the rank-and-file.

[roguevalley]

43. not likely imho

[cascadiance]

48. I guess just as easily as wingnuts "deflate" Thom Hartmann for campaigning for Goldwater...

... when he was young and doing things more that his Republican dad wanted him to do.

He acknowledges this, and any right winger would be a fool to try and tear down what Thom Hartmann is NOW in terms of what ideology he supports and who he supports in politics.

I think it would be a similar loser's play if Hillary's campaign or others tries to tear down Warren's past as a "Republican". Walmart board member Hillary has so many more skeletons in her closet that are a lot harder to defend than Warren has. And people can see how much more vocal Warren is about trying to make the government and the banksters more accountable to the American public.

[Cali_Democrat]

35. How dare you not toe the DU line when it comes to the infallible Warren...

She is the Messiah...the one who will deliver us from the darkness.

[ljm2002]

38. So the person who "probably" voted for Goldwater...

...gets to complain that another person "probably" voted for Reagan? Is that how it works?

[BeyondGeography]

39. She was not even eligible to vote for Goldwater is how it works

[ljm2002]

40. Well since she campaigned for Goldwater...

...one would be foolish to believe she voted for a Democrat the first time around. I'm sticking with "she probably voted for the Republican candidate" as soon as she was eligible to do so.

Ha ha, bet you had to look that up before replying!

[Thinkingabout]

46. She campaigned for Goldwater but was not old enough to vote.

She campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, the first year she was eligible to vote.

[ljm2002]

49. I concede. n/t

[rhett o rick]

45. Or, or the future Warren that probably will become a Scientology.

Your skewed logic not withstanding, H. Clinton represents Goldman-Sachs and Wall Street and she doesn't care who knows it. If you love Wall Street running the country, you'll love H. Clinton-Sachs.

H. Clinton-Sachs betrayed Democrats, Americans, especially our troops, the world and the Iraqi nation when she bowed down to Georgie the Boy King. I will never forgive her that (along with others, of course).

If you want Jeb to be president, nominate H. Clinton-Sachs.

[joeybee12]

8. Good...Warren also has her flaws...

Although her supporters here will never admit that.

BTW, Hilary has flaws, too, in case you're going to jump on me for that!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

27. No, they do admit she has flaws.

She has a huge flaw in her position on I/P, although, admittedly, it's one shared by virtually every elected member of both parties.

[joeybee12]

29. If anyone is looking for any dem to mildly criticize and say, maybe, just maybe

Israel could do something a tad differently, he/she will be sorely disappointed.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

32. Actually, they can look at Rep Ellison of Minnesota. nt

[joeybee12]

34. He's the only one, and I should clarify any Dem with national

aspirations...or even wanting to stay in office, in most places, it would be political suicide.

[L0oniX]

10. I would vote for Warren over Hillary but I have some suspicions about what role Warren is...

playing right now ...if it is a role. It may be that Warren is a tool to show a false inclusiveness of populists in the Dem party so as to keep Dem voters in the fold ...and it wouldn't be the first time the idea of the good cop bad cop was used either.

[hedgehog]

13. Don't forget, we're talking about the Democratic Party here -

the notion of someone manipulating events behind the scenes is ludicrous!

"I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."

Will Rogers

[L0oniX]

15. Yep ...thinking the Dem party is above manipulation is indeed ludicrous.

[hedgehog]

23. If we are going to discuss manipulation, let's get serious and look

at who is giving money to whom. Crowning a nominee for 2016 partly because she has all the big money tied up is not a good step.

[sadoldgirl]

18. could it be,that Rogers meant a small d?

[Enrique]

12. if Warren lets Hillary make that claim, then it's essentially true

I don't want Democrats to be at each others' throats, but if any Democrat keeps their dissent to themselves, then they are not really dissenting. If they decide the best thing to do politically is to support a corporatist candidate, then it's fair to call that a corporatist position.

[Thinkingabout]

47. It is going to be hard to find a candidate who is mot supported by corporations.

I have ask several times who has the very deep pockets to support a candidate through a presidential race. Just to put some light on campaign cost, Warren spent $42 million on her run for senator. Multiply this times 50 states. As yet I have not found anyone to step up to the plate and donate the funds. This leaves a great portion of the needs being donated by corporations.

[conservaphobe]

14. Sirota is taking a break from Obama bashing this week?

Maybe miracles do exist.

[Doctor_J]

20. some people don't like conservatism, regardless of who's practicing it

Maybe you'll be happier when the last few liberals are completely silenced

[conservaphobe]

21. Lol. Melodramatic much? nt

[Doctor_J]

22. says the poster of reply#14

[JaydenD]

16. That is a good read.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, and most likely purposeful, to paint Hillary Clinton as some caring and fair minded progressive, which she is not and has not ever been. Her carelessness with her votes (IWR) and with some of the things she carelessly blurts out are just two samples of what a true progressive is not.

[Doctor_J]

19. The Hillary Is Inevitable club make a few vanity posts every time Warren

agrees with HRC. This issue draws pretty stark lines between real dems and the turd way

[LiberalLovinLug]

26. Its like Obama split into two people

It worked so well last time with the progressive sounding senator Obama, who once got into the running with all those liberal votes bumped further to the right, then once elected, bumped even further.

Hillary has it made. She has this "change and hope" Democratic voice in Warren to sweep ahead and secure the liberal vote for her. And once elected she can do what Obama could never do, and that is say she never said she agreed with the kind of 99% policies Warren espoused. As long as she keeps her mouth shut no one can hold her to what some other senator said. Some senator that will be marginalized, ie. Howard Dean, once Hillary ascends the throne.

[antigop]

31. HRC played a leading part in drafting the TPP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101667554

[totodeinhere]

36. To be fair Clinton was in the Senate for eight years whereas Warren has only been in

office for 1 1/2 years. So Clinton has had more time to acquire baggage. Lets see how Warren stands after she has been subjected to tough votes for eight years.

[wyldwolf]

41. Sirota - still a hack

David Sirota doesn't like so-called centrists. We get it. He's made it abundantly clear. And if he'd stick with facts and avoid the slime-ball tactics, I'd have a lot more respect for the guy. But as it is, he's never been one to walk the straight and narrow when it comes to writing.

There was that really odd attack on Senator Clinton in 2007 after one of the Democratic debates. Here was the line from then that so infuriated Sirota:

Moderator: All of us remember the big NAFTA debate when your husband was President of the United States and a lot of us remember the debate between Al Gore, who was then Vice President, and Ross Perot. Ross Perot was fiercely against NAFTA. Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?

(Laughter first from the audience, then from Hillary]

Clinton: All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts. That sort of is a vague memory.

Here, Senator Clinton was obviously making a quip about Perot's debate with Gore and his use of charts. But how did Sirota react?

Really, what an offensive statement Clinton made to the millions of American and Mexican workers who lost their jobs and saw their wages destroyed thanks to NAFTA - a deal pushed by the Clinton administration. You want to talk about showing how utterly out of touch you are, that's how you do it - you laugh and say you barely remember the debate over the very trade deal that is destroying America's middle class.

Regardless of how you feel about NAFTA or Hillary Clinton, Sirota's reaction was way off the mark - either intentionally or unintentionally. Either way says much about Sirota.

Matt Yglesias called out Sirota's creative spin on reality in a thorough debunking of a piece he wrote on 'centrism.' Again, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, it's clear Sirota simply didn't know what he was writing about:

It seems to me that David Sirota's latest attack on the DLC and other "centrists" is in need of a response... the problem is that he's gone off and created a straw man here, attacking the nefarious DLC for positions it doesn't hold... The point here isn't to become a thoroughgoing DLC apologist, and I've offered criticisms of some things they've said... Sirota's attacks are growing increasingly vitriolic and wind up having increasingly little to do with the actually existing DLC and its real merits and flaws.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/12/debunking_debun.html

I seem to recall some (ahem!) creative interpretations Sirota made of statements from President Obama back in the day as well. And if I wanted to spend the time, I could did up more misleading pieces by him.

So that's why I wasn't surprised at Sirota's little jab at Clinton here. I mean, all this has been debated thousands times on DU but he broke new ground here with his inclusion of Elizabeth Warren:

For example, in her book, The Two Income Trap, Warren slammed Clinton for casting a Senate vote in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that ultimately passed in 2005... “As first lady, Mrs. Clinton had been persuaded that the bill was bad for families, and she was willing to fight for her beliefs,” Warren wrote. “As New York’s newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position. … The bill was essentially the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025321334

quoting: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17021/Clinton-Warren-differences

Typically, Sirota either didn't dig deep enough or left off some pertinent Warren information to better influence progressive minds. It only took me 30 seconds of Googling to find this from a 2007 PBS interview between Maria Hinojosa and Elizabeth Warren

HINOJOSA: There's a story that I wanna share with our listeners that you actually shared when you were on Now—on our TV program and it's a fascinating story about Hillary Clinton. You said that when the credit card companies were pushing for legislation to tighten the bankruptcy laws, and this is when President Clinton was in office you were summoned by Hillary Clinton to discuss this legislation. And you sat down with her in this back room and you filled her in on what this new bankruptcy law was gonna mean.

And she at that moment said, "Oh my God. We have to stop this law. It's not gonna happen." It gets passed in Congress and Bill Clinton, because of Hillary's conversation with you more or less, vetoes that bill. Now we fast forward to Senator Hillary Clinton, bankruptcy law comes for a vote and she votes for it?

WARREN: Yes.

This excerpt was quoted and posted a lot at the time - not as any statement on Warren because none of us knew who she was back then. Rather, it was meant damning evidence of how Senator Clinton has changed.

But Warren made a clarification in that interview and gave, in my opinion, some very insightful information about working in Washington that we already know:

WARREN: ... So it was one thing for Mrs. Clinton to be First Lady and not running for office and tell President Clinton what she felt about this bill. And then very different for Senator Clinton who had to get political contributions and run her—her campaign—she voted differently. Now I wanna be fair in this story.

Mrs. Clinton, in a much more secure position—as Senator a couple of years later—when the bill came up once again—Senator Clinton was not there—the day of the vote. It was the day that President Clinton, you may remember, had heart surgery. But she issued a very strong press release condemning the bill and I assume if she had been there that she would have voted against it. I—I tell my story not to try to thump Senator Clinton but the story is important because it's a reminder of how money talks in Washington.

Here is an excerpt from Clinton's statement on the bill:

This bankruptcy bill fundamentally fails to accord with the traditional purposes of bankruptcy, which recognize that we are all better off when hard-working people who have suffered financial catastrophe get a "fresh start" and a second chance to become productive and contributing members of society. With the passage of this legislation, which makes obtaining this fresh start more expensive and more difficult, we are ensuring that many responsible Americans will continue to be buried under mountains of debt, and unable to take back control and responsibility for their lives.

I also want to add Senator Clinton voted for every single amendment to add consumer protections to the bill - both times - each of which were rejected by both Republican majority and other Democrats. She voted against cloture in an attempt to keep the final bill from coming to a vote at all.

As a side note, Joe Biden not only voted for the 2005 bill, he rallied around it.

[roguevalley]

44. that is_why he will never get my vote. clinton better step up. I'm already tired of her and her tin

Ear

[Major Hogwash]

50. " . . . filled in for George W. Bush . . ."

That's all you really need to know about Hillary.

[Babel_17]

52. Well, it's a step, and a tool

We can now credibly hold her to that standard and the press can more credibly question who she brings to her team and her policies.

[yurbud]

53. Hillary is clearly campaigning for the support of the wealthy and no DLCer

has betrayed the trust of those wealthy backers to help middle class Americans.

What is tragic is it shows how little actual voters and activists matter to politicians like her anymore--at a time when you would think she needs prove herself to us, she is not only ignoring us, but essentially giving us a big FU.