09 October 2016

Remember When I Said That Hillary's Secrecy Backfired?

Now the Wikileaks email releases detailing Hillary Clinton's speeches to the Wall Street banks have pissed off Bernie Sanders something fierce.

This was foreseeable, and it was a direct result of her unwillingness to get ahead of the story and release the transcripts over the last 2½ months.

I know that politicians are not inclined to admit failure and move on, but the cover-up is always worse than the original mistake:
Supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday expressed anger and vindication over leaked comments made by Hillary Clinton to banks and big business that appeared to confirm their fears about her support for global trade and tendency to cozy up to Wall Street.

Clinton, who needs Sanders' coalition of young and left-leaning voters to propel her to the presidency, pushes for open trade and open borders in one of the speeches, and takes a conciliatory approach to Wall Street, both positions she later backed away from in an effort to capture the popular appeal of Sanders' attacks on trade deals and powerful banks.

The excerpts of remarks by the former secretary of state, made in 2013 and 2014 in closed-door meetings where audiences paid to attend, were published online on Friday by WikiLeaks, which sourced them to the email account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman.

………

"This is a very clear illustration of why there is a fundamental lack of trust from progressives for Hillary Clinton,” said Tobita Chow, chair of the People's Lobby in Chicago, which endorsed Sanders in the primary election.

………

“That is a big concern and this certainly doesn’t help,” said Larry Cohen, chair of the board of Our Revolution, a progressive organization formed in the wake of Sanders’ bid for the presidency, which aims to keep pushing the former candidate's ideas at a grassroots level. "It matters in terms of turnout, energy, volunteering, all those things."
Anyone with two brain cells, and a knowledge of the relationship between Wall Street and the Clintons (Bob Rubin anyone?) knew that this was the case, but Hillary Clinton has handled this in the absolutely worst possible way, and this is not the first time.

The past is prelude, and this does not bode well for a future Clinton administration.

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