"Democrats running for office ditch Obama ties" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff October 05, 2014
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Alison Lundergan Grimes has campaigned with former president Bill Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren by her side. But the Democratic candidate for US Senate has not appeared with the leader of her own party, President Obama.
Instead, it almost seems as if Grimes is running against the president. She has run a recent television ad declaring “I’m not Barack Obama” as she shoots clay pigeons from the sky. Calling him out by name, she tells voters in her conservative state that “I disagree with him on guns, coal, and the EPA.”
Obama, whose celebrity once filled large arenas, has not appeared with a single House or Senate candidate at a campaign rally this year, according to a database maintained by CBS News.
Perhaps nowhere has the Obama-at-a-distance policy been on display as starkly as in Kentucky, where Grimes is trying to unseat the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.
On Thursday night, McConnell seemed ebullient as he appeared at a news conference with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the failed Republican 2012 candidate who has appeared with GOP candidates across the country, and tried to make the campaign a referendum on Obama.
It already is, and the verdict is another failed presidency.
“This race here in Kentucky and the races across the country are about Barack Obama’s agenda,” McConnell said at a Lexington horse farm.
Behind closed doors, Obama has been a key fund-raiser for his party, holding at least 10 private events for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year alone, as well as events for individual candidates and party committees, including a closed Illinois fund-raiser Thursday.
He can still scoop up corporate cash, and this is looking like a rerun of 2006.
But on the campaign stage, Obama seems persona non grata. It is not unusual for candidates to try to distance themselves from an unpopular president or make him the issue. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton attended just a handful of public campaign events at this stage in their presidencies, with Bush ramping things up in the final weeks of his sixth year in office.
Seems to be a pattern. It must be the convergence of political promises with reality.
But the lengths to which Democratic candidates are going this year to avoid association with Obama has become one of the most striking themes of the 2014 elections. Grimes’s ad may be the bluntest presidential rejection, but she is hardly alone.
Say goodbye to the Senate, Democrats.
Democrats in key House races from Texas to Florida, and in close Senate races in Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas, and West Virginia, have taken aim at the president, his policies, or both in ads.
Representative Pete Gallego, a Texas Democrat, ran an ad criticizing the GOP for the shutdown in which he also bragged that “I told the president ‘no’ to special treatment for Congress when he tried to exempt them from Obamacare.”
Romney narrowly carried Gallego’s district, a large swath of West Texas in which voters have turned out the incumbent three of the past four elections.
“Obama’s very unpopular. I don’t need a poll to tell me that,” Gallego said in an interview, adding that voters are disgusted with leaders of both political parties, and carried similar ill will toward Bush at the end of his tenure.
That is where I am, yeah.
The most recent national Gallup Poll found only 42 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s performance. But it’s far lower in many of the states where Democrats and Republicans are fighting the hardest for control of the Senate. In Kentucky, just 31 percent of voters approve of Obama’s job performance, according to a September NBC News/Marist poll.
Those are Bush numbers.
Obama’s low rating has been a major obstacle in Grimes’s effort to unseat McConnell, who is also unpopular with his home-state voters.
It's called the Obama drag.
Patsy Peters, a retired factory worker from Lexington and a Republican who has previously crossed party lines, said in an interview at a local Walmart, “Grimes to me is just like Obama, and we don’t need her in there.”
E.W. Evans, a 91-year-old Democrat, concedes Obama is unpopular, but asserts it’s based on “a lot of prejudice because he’s black.”
Pfft!
It's the policies, stupid!
Regardless of the reasons, McConnell has been pounding Grimes with comparisons to Obama, including one advertisement this week that portrayed both politicians as inexperienced promise-breakers.
Grimes and other Democrats who are trying to keep their races focused locally were dealt a new obstacle Thursday, when Obama delivered a speech in Chicago on his economic agenda.
“I’m not on the ballot this fall,” Obama said. “But make no mistake. These policies are on the ballot, every single one of them.”
Then vote Republican to shove it in his face.
McConnell pounced.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said Thursday night. (Former Massachusetts US senator Scott Brown, seeking a Senate seat in New Hampshire, also saw an opening, making a video Friday featuring Obama’s remarks.)
Related: Scott Brown Surges Past Jeanne Shaheen
And that's a seat that was expected to stay Democrat.
Grimes, after running the ad distancing herself from Obama, Wednesday began running a new commercial in which Bill Clinton endorses her. But her ties to Obama continue to trail her. During a news conference after a campaign rally Thursday afternoon, Grimes ignored a question asked three times about whether she voted for Obama in 2012. She would not say whether she regretted serving as a delegate for Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
“My record speaks for itself,” said Grimes, who backed Hillary Clinton in 2008. “I’m a Clinton Democrat through and through, and proud to be working in this race to help put jobs back here into Kentucky and actually get Kentucky working again.”
We don't need any more of them.
Other Democrats in tough races started distancing themselves from Obama in advertisements months ago. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana staked her independence in an April ad.
“The administration’s policies are simply wrong when it comes to oil and gas production in this nation,” Landrieu says in the ad. “We produce the oil and gas. That’s the message we told to the president.”
Related: Louisiana Lady
Landrieu campaigned last week with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat who ran a provocative ad in 2010 in which he shot a gun and promised to take on “this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets.”
Other Democrats, including Grimes, have campaigned with Warren, who has held public events in nine states, according to her office. Obama’s wife, Michelle, in Boston with Attorney General Martha Coakley’s campaign for governor Friday, has been a more popular draw than her husband, though she too has so far avoided some of the battleground states where the undertow of the Obama name is especially strong.
Obama has never been popular in Louisiana and Kentucky, losing in both 2008 and 2012.
“Democrats who win in ‘red’ states . . . have to put their state interests first and there are occasions where they disagree with the national party, and that’s always been the case,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who recruited many of the candidates six years ago who are now facing tough reelections.
The Democratic candidate for West Virginia’s second US Senate seat, Natalie Tennant, ran an ad in which she pretended to shut off the lights in the White House to “make sure President Obama gets the message” about coal, while Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, ran an ad opposing Obama’s gun control proposal. Senator Mark Begich of Alaska vowed in a Washington Post interview to be a “thorn” in Obama’s backside.
But even some in regions that had previously supported the president have lost faith. Earlier this year, the House Majority PAC, a Democratic group, placed an ad on behalf of a South Florida Democrat, Representative Joe Garcia, bragging that he “took the White House to task” for the poor rollout of the health care law.
Obama won Florida twice and carried the House district by about 7 percentage points.
Garcia insists he is not running from Obama, but he then adds that he fought him on Medicare reimbursements and has taken other positions that are at odds with his agenda.
“To try to hide from a 6’2” president of the United States is not a good policy,” Garcia said. “What you’re trying to establish is that you’re a local guy. You do what’s right for the district.”
Polling data from Garcia’s opponent, Republican Carlos Curbelo, suggests that Obama’s job approval in the district has dropped significantly in the past 16 months, from 60 percent to 43 percent.
“The incumbent will try to run and hide,” Curbelo said. “The president’s policies are clearly unpopular and Mr. Garcia has defended almost all of them.”
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Related: Obama dedicates memorial honoring wounded veterans
At least someone wants him.
He says “let’s never rush into war’’ as he starts or expands another one.
Does this guy ever hear himself, or does he really believe the delusion he spews?
Now about that earlier speech:
"Obama seeks traction on economy amid foreign tests" by Jim Kuhnhenn and Julie Pace | Associated Press October 02, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s escalating military campaign in Iraq and Syria has drowned out the economic pitch he hoped would help salvage a midterm election that has been favoring Republicans.
I'm sick of the sales job, sorry.
But the airstrikes against Islamic State extremists have also introduced a new complicating factor into the fall campaign, forcing both sides to reassess their closing political messages.
They got their war now so I doubt that will be a campaign issue. It will be the same old rhetoric and crap we always get every two years, then it will be back to bu$ine$$ as usual.
Obama is drawing new attention to the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession with a speech Thursday at Northwestern University, linking US stature abroad to economic strength at home. It is a delicate argument for a president whose handling of pocketbook issues remains unpopular and who acknowledges many have not benefited from the upturn.
Well, he's benefited the 1%, the bankers, Wall Street, Israel, the $urveillance $tate, and on and on. That is why he is unpopular!
Senior administration officials insist that unlike George W. Bush in 2002, Obama does not plan to make national security and the threat of Middle East extremism the centerpiece of his message for the homestretch of the fall campaign.
Yeah, MORE WARS is NEVER a WINNING CAMPAIGN ISSUE!
Yet they acknowledge the matter will be impossible for Obama and Democrats to ignore.
‘‘You’d like to be able to be talking about the economy in September, but this is a really important piece of business for the president of the United States to do,’’ said Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director. ‘‘I don’t think it’s time lost.’’
Republicans, too, have had to confront the new dynamic posed by the airstrikes.
Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster advising several candidates in close contests, said Obama’s job approval ratings appear to have improved after his military campaign against the Islamic State group. But he said voters still disapprove of his job combating terrorism.
Oh, we are told he got a bump in the agenda-pushing polls cited by the war-promoting propaganda pre$$.
‘‘So they are telling us they like the fact that he’s doing something they think he should be doing,’’ Anderson said. ‘‘But they don’t trust him on the issue.’’
Who does these days?
They then bring up the North Carolina Senate race, and I could not care less about that or Wisconsin.
Sorry, but I'm no longer wasting time on articles related to rigged elections.
***************
Still, a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday found 65 percent of Americans said the economy would be their top issue when deciding their votes for Congress, while 29 percent cited US military action in Iraq and Syria.
Say goodbye to the Senate, Democrats.
That’s a contrast with 2002, when the economy was moving at a more sluggish pace but when the memory of the Sept. 11 terror attacks the previous year was still fresh in the public’s consciousness.
Well, sorry, but a false flag in the form of an October Surprise will openly make things worse for Democrats. It will show that Obama has FAILED UTTERLY at protecting this nation.
Then 49 percent of voters said the prospect of war with Iraq was their most pressing concern, compared with 42 percent who put the economy at the top.
That was after we had three months of war-drumming in the media about Saddam and his WMD.
Bush and the Republican Party bucked historical trends by winning seats in the House.
Stolen elections.
Mindful of the public’s continued concern about the economy, the Obama White House crafted a midterm strategy aimed at laying the groundwork for a closing argument that would focus on economic gains and cast Republicans as defenders of the wealthy and obstacles to more jobs and better wages.
You are BOTH DEFENDERS of the wealthy, and the political $hit-$how fooley has worn thin.
But a renewed push to increase the minimum wage made no progress on Capitol Hill.
As predicted here. It's all rhetoric to make you think there is a difference between the two corporate war parties.
Sharply partisan speeches by Obama this summer faded as Washington slipped into vacation mode and the president dealt with foreign conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Gaza.
Administration officials said they always expected September to be something of a lost month on the economy, given that Obama’s schedule was dominated by a high-stakes trip to Europe and several days at the United Nations.
Pfffft!
The Islamic State campaign compounded the foreign focus. On Tuesday, for example, Obama met with the National Security Council and top administration officials to discuss the antimilitant strategy.
David Rubinstein, the cofounder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, summed up the dilemma at an economic forum Tuesday with a playful question for Jeff Zients, the director of Obama’s National Economic Council.
More commonly associated with Bushes and Saudi Arabia, but as you can see they are all in the same boat!
‘‘Do you sometimes feel like the Maytag repairman when nobody is paying attention to the economy as much as they’re paying attention to things overseas?’’ he asked.
Awwwwww, poor sphincter president!
The president is the CEO of the United States, Zients told the roomful of CEOs: ‘‘You do a lot things at once.’’
Yeah, I seem to be paying attention to both even if I'm not writing about it at the moment.
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"Democrats lean heavily on PACs" by Ashley Parker | New York Times October 05, 2014
WASHINGTON — With the battle for the Senate tilting toward Republicans and President Obama’s approval ratings hovering near his all-time low, Democrats are more reliant than they have ever been on the very kind of big-money groups they have spent years trying to outlaw.
But you have a choice, voters: corporate $hitbag D or corporate $hitbag R.
They are countering the Republican Party’s expansive and formidable outside spending network this fall with a smaller but more tightly knit alliance of groups that share donors, closely coordinate their advertising, and hit harder than their conservative counterparts.
To hold the Senate, the Democratic outside spending network is working hand in hand with — and is funded by — the party’s traditional ideological allies, including abortion rights organizations, environmentalists, and labor unions.
Fools. Better off keeping your money.
They have overlapping board memberships, use the same voter data, and even share advertising content. Most of their on-air money is being spent through a small cluster of “super PACs,” which can explicitly advocate the election or defeat of specific candidates.
And they have rapidly narrowed the traditional financial gap, alarming Republican strategists in what has otherwise been a dismal year for Democrats.
“The Democrats — their coalition has been around a while, and it’s tried and true, and they all know how to tango together. And the Republicans are all kind of doing their own individual dances,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist.
Coordination on the right has been hampered by competition for donors and lingering distrust between the party-allied groups, like the Crossroads organizations founded by Karl Rove, and those seeking to challenge the party establishment, such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, the lead players in the political network overseen by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.
So which controlled-oppo$ition movement do you like, Rove or Koch?
The two sides have jockeyed for cash and influence, while also grappling with a wave of ideologically tinged primary battles this spring and summer that sucked up time, money, and good will.
To keep donors secret, most of the pro-Republican money is coursing not through super PACs but through political nonprofits. While Republicans have spent more overall on advertising during the midterm campaign, their cash has been spread among a larger array of groups.
“I think the problem for the Republicans is that all their big-money supporters are doing their own thing, and not really giving as much money to the party committees,” Feehery said.
The result has been stark: a message of discipline and unity on the left, and a profusion of messages and ideas on the right.
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This country needs a Third Way:
"Third Way in struggle for the Democratic Party’s soul" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff October 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — On a summer afternoon amid the frenzy of the Democratic National Convention in Boston 10 years ago, a group of Washington business lobbyists, political operatives, and a smattering of senators gathered at one of the city’s downtown law firms to hear a plan.
Members of the group worried that, with the end of the Bill Clinton era, the Democratic Party’s centrist wing had lost its way. Over sodas, they pitched a new think tank named for Clinton’s political philosophy, Third Way.
Related: Making You Think
It was the corporate Clinton's that got that ball rolling.
Fast forward a decade: The philosophy, sketched out privately at the Boston office of Brown Rudnick, is now at the center of an intense struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
They have already lost it.
Third Way, backed by Wall Street titans, corporate money, and congressional allies, is publicly warning against divisive “soak-the-rich” politics voiced by populist Democrats. Its target: Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator whose rise to power two years ago helped galvanize Democratic grass roots against Wall Street and pushed the issue of income inequality to the forefront.
Here we go, more game garbage.
With all due respect, Liz Warren is nothing but a party hack and fraud. Look at the bottom of this post for more.
This is more than a grudge match. At stake for the Democratic Party is the support of middle-class, swing voters who decide elections.
What middle class voters? There are non left.
Third Way ignited a clash in December when its leaders essentially declared war on Warren in a guest column in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, warning Democrats not to follow Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “over the populist cliff.”
Many on the left were shocked, and angered. Warren’s allies saw Third Way as a proxy — being used by her enemies on Wall Street to scare off the rest of the party.
“Wall Street is extremely good at pushing anybody that is critical of them as being populist, or know-nothings,” said Ted Kaufman, who temporarily served as an appointed US senator to replace Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., then succeeded Warren in leading a special congressional panel that oversaw the bank bailout.
For their part, Third Way representatives bristle at the idea they are doing the bidding of Wall Street power brokers.
Because that is exactly what they are doing.
With the income gap growing between most of the nation’s taxpayers and the wealthiest 1 percent, the battle is over how aggressively the party’s candidates — including, potentially, Hillary Clinton — will contrast themselves with Republicans on tax and economic issues in 2016.
It's a gap between all of us, not just taxpayers.
Related: What to Expect for the 2014 Elections
Then it is back to bu$ine$$ as usual.
The philosophy set out by Third Way will be part of that conversation.
As if Wall Street and money didn't have enough influence.
The organization publicly discloses little about its funding. But a Globe examination of public documents and the backgrounds of its leadership offers a window into how some wealthy Wall Street and business interests — who contribute generously to Democratic candidates — have sought to tip the Democratic Party’s intellectual debate against populism.
Third Way raises just over a third of its $9.3 million annual budget from undisclosed corporations. The remainder, the bulk of its funding, is donated by individuals, almost all of whom are members of Third Way’s board of trustees.
The group is dominated by executives from the financial industry, people who are typically the targets of the populist rhetoric of Warren, and sometimes even President Obama.
And that is all it is, rhetoric.
Two-thirds of its 31 trustees have held senior leadership positions in investment funds or big banks or served in some other capacity on Wall Street.
Board members include its chairman, John Vogelstein, who once led the private equity firm Warburg Pincus; vice chairman David Heller, the former global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs; and Derek Kirkland, a managing director at Morgan Stanley.
Both Vogelstein and Heller were major financial backers of Obama, and all three contributed heavily to Senate Democrats.
Third Way’s founders dispute that they are doing Wall Street’s bidding or are trying to leave the poor behind. They also insist their financial supporters on the board of trustees do not influence the organization’s political and policy positions.
“We’re not remotely aligned with what Wall Street wants,” said Jonathan Cowan, the group’s president and cofounder.
If you say it to yourself you just might believe it.
This is certainly no Tea Party-style civil war of the sort that is fracturing parts of the Republican Party. This struggle among Democrats often plays out behind the scenes — in the White House, the corridors of Congress, and the office suites of lobbying firms in downtown Washington.
Yes, thank God we have Democrats oppo$ing Republicans.
But in a decade of existence, Third Way has been able to expand its influence, hosting Vice President Joe Biden and other Democratic luminaries at its symposiums. Visitor logs show that Third Way leaders have enjoyed excellent access to the Obama White House, with at least 50 visits since 2009.
Third Way leaders are extremely sensitive to questions and criticism about their sources of funding.
Almost as if they feel guilty about it.
The real issue, Third Way says, is that harsh populist positions and rhetoric are damaging the Democratic Party.
Yeah, be more like Republicans!
“It goes back to what Bill Clinton said, which is ‘You can’t love the job and hate the job creators,’ ” said Matt Bennett, Third Way’s vice president for public affairs and one of its cofounders. “Vilification of industry isn’t helping Democrats.”
The more time that goes by the more I despise that globalist scum shit.
Washington home base
Third Way’s offices are just off K Street, the epicenter of Washington’s lobbying district. The space is modern and youthful, with frosted glass separating work pods and offices for the think tank’s 40 casually dressed employees. The walls can be written upon, which researchers do with colorful markers.
Much of their work squares with bread-and-butter liberal orthodoxy: gun control, gay rights, immigration, and health care reform.
In other words, it's an agenda-pushing outfit of propaganda.
“We are centrist Democrats, not centrists,” Cowan said.
Their overarching emphasis is on solidifying political support among the middle class.
What middle class?
Where they differ from many Democrats is how they plan to appeal to the vast middle: reduce deficits and cut spending growth on such entitlements as Social Security and Medicare.
The vast middle class?
Btw, they are NOT ENTITLEMENTS! WE PAID for those SERVICES!
They insist on deficit reduction and entitlement cuts as conditions for key tax hikes on the wealthy.
That is a sharp contrast from many other Democrats, including Warren, who speak about taxing the wealthy as a matter of fairness and who would support raising their tax rates as stand-alone measures.
Third Way’s insistence on linking tax hikes to a grand bargain — which has been impossible to obtain in the Obama era — has a direct bearing on the wallets of the group’s wealthy funders.
Third Way denies that its wealthy donors give money only because the organization is against stand-alone tax hikes on the rich. Rather, its leaders say it is a political blunder for Democrats to wage class warfare on the 1 percent.
As the 1% and their minions in government wage it on us.
It publicly issued a memo in July that said the group’s polling suggested a better message to appeal to America’s middle class: “economic growth and opportunity.”
They hope to bamboozle you so they can keep taking your money.
“Raising taxes is absolutely essential, but it is not sufficient from our perspective,” Cowan said in an interview, in which he also said the group advocated strongly for Obama’s health care law and the deal that ended the fiscal cliff, both of which included tax hikes on the wealthy.
Related: Fiscal Cliff Fraud
Some tax "increase," huh?
“If the Democratic Party stands only for raising taxes on the wealthy, not for actually making entitlement reforms and other spending cuts,’’ he said, “then the other half of the equation will never happen.”
The group also had some suggestions about the bank bailout that has fueled so much of the anger at Wall Street for the past six years: Don’t call it a bailout.
“This is an emergency line of credit,’’ Third Way executives wrote in September 2008, as anger was reaching a ferocious pitch. “Banks need this loan so they can loan to you — the American consumer.’’
We are ferocious and angry because of you greedy a$$holes.
Btw, they didn't loan the money; they kept it to bolster the bottom line and dole out bonuses.
To some of Wall Street’s harshest critics, such talking points — which could have easily come from a public relations shop in Lower Manhattan — undercut the group’s entire mission.
Probably did.
“When your positions correlate 100 percent with your paymasters, you have to wonder about the independentness and robustness of the work product,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and chief executive of Better Markets, a Wall Street watchdog.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
That explains my new$paper.
Donations to Third Way
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, when big banks were being bailed out, several faced intense pressure over the size of their executive bonuses. Goldman Sachs announced it would shrink its bonus pool and increase its charitable giving. It turns out some of that charity went to Third Way.
OMG! It is as I have been saying for years! The charity of the wealthy is $ELF-$ERVING!!
The think tank received a total of $850,000 from Goldman Sachs Gives, in 2010 and 2011, according to the charitable fund’s IRS documents.
Bennett said it should not be characterized as a donation from Goldman Sachs, but as a personal contribution from Heller that was made through the Goldman charity.
Does it matter?
A Goldman Sachs spokeswoman declined to comment. Goldman Sachs Gives is a “donor-advised fund” that gives money to charity based on recommendations from Goldman managers, according to its IRS filing and company statements.
Heller reported giving Third Way an additional $250,000 in 2010 from his own charitable foundation, The Hermine and David Heller Foundation. Heller did not return messages and Third Way said he would not comment.
Though Third Way does not report details of its contributions, some of its donors do so through private foundations.
What $cum!
Donald Mullen, who headed global credit and mortgages for Goldman Sachs, gave Third Way a combined $200,000 through his private foundation in 2011 and 2012. Internal Goldman e-mails written during the housing crisis, later made public by the Senate, show Mullen talking about making “some serious money” as the housing market plummeted, the type of revelation that inflamed populist anger. Mullen declined to comment.
Oh, he was part of the criminal mortgage-backed securities $windle, but at least he is a good Democrat!
Related: Final Tourre of Goldman Sachs
The current chairman of Third Way, Vogelstein, heads New Providence Asset Management, which controls endowments for nonprofits and portfolios for wealthy individuals. He remains a senior adviser to Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm he ran until 2002. He and his wife have given Third Way $625,000 between 2010 and 2012, according to IRS filings.
Additionally, the liberal magazine the Nation reported in December that Third Way paid a Washington lobbying firm, Peck Madigan Jones, to raise more than $500,000 of its budget, according to Third Way’s 2012 tax filing. Peck Madigan, which did not respond to e-mailed questions, lobbies for several Wall Street-tied clients, including MasterCard, Deutsche Bank, and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.
Although Cowan insisted contributions from trustees play no role in the think tank’s positions, in at least one instance, Third Way gave a major donor direct influence over its public policy positions: a paper that took aim at populists.
Does the lying come with the money addiction, or.... ????
Bernard Schwartz was listed as one of five authors of a Third Way research paper released in February 2007, before the financial crisis, titled “New Rules for the Economy: A framework for the 21st Century.” Among its contentions is that populists are wrong about the decline of the American middle class, one of several misguided “myths” in their ideology.
This country is built on myths, Schwartz is it?
Schwartz is a retired industrialist and Third Way trustee who runs a private investment company. His family foundation has donated $5 million to Third Way since 2006, according to IRS records. Schwartz is one of the Democratic Party’s largest donors, sending six-figure contributions to party committees and Democratic super PACs every election cycle.
The Third Way report Schwartz cowrote also lists two fellow Third Way trustees — Heller and Kirkland — as contributors.
Schwartz declined a request for an interview.
Access to the chief of staff
Just six weeks after President Obama chose William M. Daley as his chief of staff, in February 2011, Cowan walked into the White House for the first of three coveted meetings with the powerful insider.
Daley was tapped for the job after what Obama labeled a “shellacking” in the 2010 congressional elections. His selection was seen by many as a signal that Obama wanted to dial back his rhetoric after earlier lashing out against “fat-cat bankers on Wall Street” in a “60 Minutes” interview.
He has served Wall Street from the minute he took office.
Daley, who held senior positions with JP Morgan Chase, also represented a golden opportunity for Third Way: He was a member of the group’s board of trustees when he was selected to run the White House.
Perfect guy to be White House Chief of Staff, huh?
The former secretary of commerce for Clinton, and a key supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, was seen as friendly toward business. His selection was praised by the Chamber of Commerce and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a step toward common ground.
Cowan would not say what he discussed with the chief of staff. Daley said he does not remember, but that many groups try to “tee up ideas.”
“I knew Jonathan and I knew that they were smart,” Daley said.
Daley said he does not think Obama’s Wall Street rhetoric changed dramatically during his tenure as chief of staff.
“We and others want to break up the banks, however you define that,” Daley said, in describing Democrats. But “that hasn’t become the sort of mantra of the normal person out there so you’re going to continue to have this tension between the left of the party and the middle” over rhetoric, he added.
It's what we call a false argument.
Daley left the White House after a year on the job. He returned to the Third Way board. In May, he became managing partner of Argentiere Capital, a Swiss hedge fund.
Toward the 2016 election
The battle over money and influence has now moved to the 2016 presidential election, and the competition between parties for the financial favors of Wall Street executives will be fierce.
Now you know who is really running this country.
Though Third Way’s salvo against Warren in The Wall Street Journal became a seminal moment in its fight against Democratic populism, the group is now very sensitive about the topic and will not even discuss why they chose to wage it.
Banker cowards!
Cowan and Bennett took pains not to utter Warren’s name in several interviews.
Nor would Warren, who is backing several moderate senators in tough reelection campaigns, talk about Third Way.
Robert Reich, Clinton’s former labor secretary, who has become a leading Wall Street critic, argued that there are several issues Democrats are unwilling to tackle because of Wall Street’s grip on the party — including tax breaks for hedge fund managers, transaction taxes for high-speed traders, limits on the size of banks, and income tax rates for high earners.
“At some point it becomes a Faustian bargain,” he said. “The financial dependence on Wall Street effectively ties the hands of the Democratic Party.”
Which is nothing more than a faction of the two-headed corporate war party.
But moderate Democrats worry the party is doomed to lose general elections if candidates are perceived as antibusiness in an effort to win over activists on the hard left.
“That really has never generated a hell of a lot of support on Election Day,” Daley said.
You "lefties" are so taken for granted. That's why I have absolutely no respect for you.
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Also see: Primer for the Goldman Sachs secret tapes
Related: Senator Warren’s progressive supporters demand accountability for her rightwing pro-Israel positioning
Also see: SILLI Inside the United States
What cost your soul, 'eh?
Just another bourgeois politician, and I can't describe my disappointment.
I wonder how she will like being in the minority after getting nothing done while in the majority.
