Clinton’s Big Donors: No Wonder They’re Complaining

Clinton’s Big Donors: No Wonder They’re Complaining

Some Inside Scoop On A Clinton Campaign Huddle; and an exclusive photo: Bernie’s billionaires!

The NY Times‘s “First Draft” report on a Feb. 17 meeting of top Clinton campaign donors.
First, campaign manager Robby Mook “told the donors that the outcome in Nevada” was too close to call: “depending on turnout, Mrs. Clinton could win by a lot or win or lose by a tiny margin . . . .”

And second: “Donors also voiced some frustration with the lack of media scrutiny of Mr. Sanders, who they said was essentially getting a pass. They pressed Mr. Mook to demonstrate that the Vermont senator’s policy proposals were entirely implausible promises and that his responses to essentially all substantive questions drew on excerpts of his stump speech and rants about the ‘millionaires and billionaires.'”

Comments: by my reading, Sanders’s proposals are getting plenty of scrutiny in the mainstream media, mostly hostile. (Even my hero Paul Krugman is on that bandwagon.)
The trouble is, Bernie supporters aren’t buying it. One reason: the success of many other countries with free college and universal health care make the “implausibility” charge a tougher sell.

(If Paul had said making these changes would be hard — we’d agree. In fact, Paul, I think they’d take something like — well, like a political revolution.)

And about Bernie bashing the “millionaires & billionaires”; on this, he has already & often pled guilty.
But wait a minute: his “stump speech” actually does talk about many different national problems. Yet take a look where they lead:

> Obstruction on climate change? Koch Bros. = billionaires.
> Outrageous drug prices? = gouging pharma billionaires.
> Stupid, needless wars? = War profiteer billionaires.
> Low wages & child poverty? = Union-busting, job-exporting billionaires.
> Private prisons bulging with poor people & non-whites? = Corporate jail billionaires.
> Cash Corruption on Capitol Hill? = Lobbyists for billionaires.
> College students crushed by high tuition & loan debt? = bilking bankster billionaires.
> Middle & working class still declining years after the big crash? = Wall St. cheats & fraudster billionaires.

You get the idea. No doubt a few of our problems don’t lead back to the greedy billionaires club (give me a day or two & I’ll think of a couple). But Bernie’s stump speech could be twice as long before he got to them.
(Memo to Bernie: please DON’T make the stump speech twice as long.)

Finally, this meeting took place around “a conference table in the New York office of Clinton donor and Wall Street investor Marc Lasry. . . . “
And who is Mr. Lasry?
Wikipedia tells it: he’s a Wall Street billionaire hedge fund manager, who also owns the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.

And no doubt, a wonderful guy and a great American.

And I bet he’s watching Nevada almost as eagerly as I am.

 

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