Courtesy of Pam Martens
John Podesta
Yesterday, WikiLeaks released a new email that synthesizes why Hillary Clinton and the Democrats suffered such devastating losses in Tuesday’s election, losing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that should have been easy wins for the Democrats.
The email clarifies how Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman, John Podesta, had created an impossible conflict in how he was running Clinton’s campaign: he wanted it to serve the dual role of embellishing President Obama’s legacy, thus muzzling Clinton on criticizing the President’s policies. It should have been readily clear that this was a losing gamble as tens of thousands turned out at Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary rallies as he called for a “political revolution” against the establishment in Washington while Clinton attracted modest crowds with her stay the course mantra.
The email shows that on October 7, 2015, Hillary Clinton’s advisers were working on an OpEd that would map out her position on needed reforms of Wall Street. The OpEd would come within a week of the first presidential primary debate where both Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley were expected to endorse the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. The repeal of that 1933 legislation, sacked by President Bill Clinton and his pro-Wall Street administration in 1999, caused the Wall Street collapse and unprecedented bailout in 2008 by allowing banks holding trillions of dollars in taxpayer-backstopped insured deposits to gamble those funds away in exotic securities and derivatives. (See related articles below.)
In the email thread, Mandy Grunwald of Grunwald Communications said she liked the opinion piece “a lot” and made the following suggestions:
“1. I am concerned about the Glass Steagall paragraph. I would recommend cutting it. Three things will antagonize: 1) saying she respects those who support it, is kind of patronizing; 2) calling it ‘old’ is an insult to the work done on the new version and 3) saying it will have unintended economic consequences will annoy. Why not just skip this?
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