ANTITRUSSSTTT! (Bernie Sanders did SO talk about antitrust during his campaign. A LOT. But thank you, Elizabeth Warren, for picking up that mantle now.)
A detailed update follows the original post.
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Is the window closing on Bernie Sanders’s moment? A number of folks, your humble blogger included, have suggested as much. We’ve argued that with Democrats seeming to unite behind Hillary Clinton, it’s possible that the longer Sanders withholds his endorsement for her in the quest to make the party platform more progressive, the less leverage he’ll end up having.
But a new battleground state poll from Dem pollster Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corps suggests Sanders’ endorsement could, in fact, still have a real impact, meaning he may still have some genuine leverage to try to win more concessions designed to continue pushing the party’s agenda in a more progressive direction.
— A Sanders endorsement of Clinton could still make a big difference, Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post, yesterday at 3:24 p.m.
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Paul Glastris reports that a speech Elizabeth Warren gave that was virtually ignored by the news media could provide a template for an argument about the economy that changes the course of the presidential election. — gs
— Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post, yesterday at 6:21 p.m.
Just about exactly a year ago—early last summer—as Clinton was picking up the pace of her campaign appearances and formulating her substantive arguments, she said something that the news media caught onto immediately as really strange. In an attempt to woo aspiring and current small-business owners, she did her default thing: She adopted a Republican slogan and cliché, this one that government regulation and bureaucracy are the main impediments to starting and expanding small businesses, and are, well, just making the lives of small business owners miserable.
Federal regulations and bureaucracy, see.
It shouldn’t take longer to start a business in America than it does to start one in France, she said, correctly. And it shouldn’t take longer for a small-business owner to fill out the business’s federal tax forms than it takes Fortune 500 corporations to do so. Also, correctly. And as president she will … something.
There were, the news media quickly noted, though, a few problems with this tack. One was that regulations that apply varyingly to other than a few types of small businesses—those that sell firearms and ammunition, for example—small-business regulations are entirely state and local ones and are not of the sort that the federal government even could address.
Another was that Clinton was relying upon a survey report that provided average times to obtain business licenses in various cities around the world, for companies that would employ a certain number of employees within a numerical, midsize range (or some such), and that cited Paris as the only French cities; showed that the differences in the time it took on average to obtain a business license there and in several American cities was a matter of two or three days, and that only Los Angeles (if I remember correctly) among the American cities had a longer average time than did Paris; and that the all the cities listed had an average of less than two weeks.
Some folks (including me, here at AB) also noted that the actual time it takes to open a small business depends mostly on the type of business, often the ease of obtaining a business loan, purchasing equipment such as that needed to open a restaurant, leasing space, obtaining insurance, and ensuring compliance with, say, local health department and fire ordinances.
And one folk (me, here at AB) pointed out that the relative times it takes to fill out a federal tax form for a business depends far more on whether your business retains Price Waterhouse Coopers to do that, or has in-house CPAs using the latest software for taxes and accounting, or relies upon the sole proprietor to perform that task.
But here’s what I also said: Far, far more important to the ease of starting a business and making a profit in it than regulatory bureaucracy—state and local, much less and federal ones—is overcoming monopolistic practices of, well, monopolies.*
I didn’t just mean Walmart and the like, I explained. I also meant the monopolistic powers that aren’t obvious to the general public. Such as wholesale suppliers and shippers. And such as Visa and Mastercard, which impacts very substantially the profitability of small retailers and franchisers.
Which brought me then, and brings me again, to one of my favorite examples of how the Dems forfeit the political advantage on government regulation by never actually discussing government regulation, in this instance, what’s known as the Durbin Amendment. It limits the amount that Visa and Mastercard—clearly critical players in commerce now—can charge businesses for processing their customers’ credit card and ATM card transactions.
Talk to any owner of a small retail business—a gas station franchise owner, an independent fast food business owner, an independent discount store, for example—about this issue, as I did back when the Durbin Amendment was being debated in Congress. See what they say.
The Durbin Amendment was one of the (very) precious few legislative restrictions on monopolies, on anticompetitive business practices, to manage to become law despite intense lobbying of the finance industry or whatever monopolistic industry would be hurt by its enactment. To my knowledge, though, it was never mentioned in congressional races in 2010 or 2014, or in the presidential or congressional races in 2012. Antitrust issues have been considered too complicated for discussion among the populace.
Which presumably is why the news media never focused on the fact that Bernie Sanders discussed it regularly in his campaign. And that it resonated with millennials.
And also presumably, it’s why the news media ignored Elizabeth Warren’s speech on Wednesday entirely about the decisive, dramatic effects of the federal government’s aggressive reversal over the last four decades of antirust regulation and the concerted failures of one after another White House administration (including the current one) to enforce the regulation that remains.
Here’s what Glastris wrote in preface to his republishing of the full Warren speech:
Yesterday, straight off her high-profile campaign appearance Monday with Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave a keynote address about industry consolidation in the American economy at a conference at the Capitol put on by New America’s Open Markets program. Though the speech has so far gotten only a modicum of attention—the press being more interested in litigating Donald Trump’s Pocahontas taunts—it has the potential to change the course of the presidential contest. Her speech begins at minute 56:45 in the video below.
Warren is, of course, famous for her attacks on too-big-to-fail banks. But in her address yesterday, entitled “Reigniting Competition in the American Economy,” she extended her critique to the entire economy, noting that, as a result of three decades of weakened federal antitrust regulation, virtually every industrial sector today—from airlines to telecom to agriculture to retail to social media—is under the control of a handful of oligopolistic corporations. This widespread consolidation is “hiding in plain sight all across the American economy,” she said, and “threatens our markets, threatens our economy, and threatens our democracy.”
As our readers know, economic consolidation is a subject the Washington Monthly has long been obsessed with—see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. In our current cover story, Barry Lynn (impresario of yesterday’s event) and Phil Longman argue that antitrust was the true legacy of the original American Populists and a vital, under-appreciated reason for the mass prosperity of mid-20th Century America. But this legacy, and the new Gilded Age economy that has resulted from its abandonment, is not a narrative most Americans have been told (one reason why even the “populist” candidates running president have shied away from it).
What amazed me yesterday was how Warren synthesized the main points of virtually everything we’ve published into a single speech that, while long and wonky, was Bill Clintonesque in its vernacular exposition. You can imagine average Americans all over the country listening, nodding, understanding.
Though many in the press didn’t notice the speech, you can best believe Hillary Clinton’s campaign operatives were paying attention (Trump’s too, I’ll bet). That’s why I think the speech has the possibility of changing the course of the campaign. The candidate who can successfully incorporate the consolidation message into their campaign rhetoric will an huge, perhaps decisive advantage. Hillary has already signaled, in an op-ed she published last fall, that she gets the larger argument. Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren showed her how to run on it. You can read the full prepared text below.
I’m thrilled. Except for that parenthetical that says “even the “populist” candidates running president have shied away from it, which is inaccurate regarding Bernie Sanders. The link is to an article by Glastris in the November/December 2015 edition of Washington Monthly titled “America’s Forgotten Formula for Economic Equality,” which regarding Sanders concludes based upon an answer to a question by Anderson Cooper at a then-recent televised debate in which Sanders asked the question about how he expected to win the presidency as a democratic socialist failed to mention the issue of antitrust, that Sanders did not campaign on the issue of the demise of antitrust law and enforcement.
But as it happens, I knew that was incorrect. One of my fondest memories of the Sanders campaign dates back to a detailed first-person report by a journalist covering the Sanders campaign in Iowa last summer, who attended a rally not as journalist but instead from the cheap seats in the midst of the attendees. I can’t remember the journalist or the publication, and was unable to find it just now in a search. But I remember this: He sat next to a young woman, blond, cheerleadery-looking, who whenever Sanders said a word or phrase referencing one of his favorite topics, would stand up, thrust her arm up in a punch-the-air motion, and shout the word or phrase. Cheerleader-like, the reporter said.
One of the words? Antitrust. Or, as the young woman said it, “ANTITRUSSSTTT!”
In searching for that article, which as I said I couldn’t find, I did find a slew of references by Sanders to antitrust—the economic and political power of unchecked and ever-growing monopolies—in reports about his rallies. One, about a rally in Iowa, for example, quoted Sanders as saying that Agribusiness monopoly has reduced the prices human farmers receive for their products well below their market value in a competitive economy.
Other statements made clear the critical reason that Sanders has so focused on the call to break up the big banks: their huge economic and political power. Including the resultant demise of community banks of the sort that made America great when America was great—for obtaining small-business loans and mortgages, anyway.
So here’s my point: If you click on the link to that Democracy Corps poll, you’ll see what so many people whose heads are buried in the sands of the pre-2015 political era (including the ones who constantly trash me in the comments threads to my posts like my last one) don’t recognize. All that the Democrats need do in order to win a White House and down-ballot landslide is to campaign on genuinely progressive issues, and genuinely explain them.
Which is why Warren is so valuable to the Dems up and down the ballot. And why Sanders is, too.
Warren endorsed Clinton last week, and on Tuesday campaigned with her in a speech introducing her, singing her praises, and trashing Donald Trump. Headline-making stuff. But not the stuff that will matter most. When she goes on the road and repeats her Wednesday speech, not her Tuesday one, and then asks that people vote Democratic for the White House on down, it will matter far more.
And that is true also for Sanders. But I don’t expect many politicos over the age of 40 to recognize that.
Glastris’s piece yesterday in titled “Elizabeth Warren’s Consolidation speech Could Change the Election.” Yes. Exactly. Consolidation. As in, monopolies. And monopolistic economic practices and political power.
Antitrusssttt!
Surprisingly, apparently in response to the release of the Democracy Corp poll yesterday, hours after suggesting that Clinton was about to begin campaigning as a triangulator because Sanders was refusing to endorse her, and anyway that’s what some Clinton partisans have been urging, someone in the Clinton campaign rescinded that, indirectly. Presumably, it was someone under the age of 40.
Or someone who reads Angry Bear. Probably someone who’s under 40 and reads Angry Bear.
Rah-rah! Sis-boom-bah!
*Sentence edited slightly for clarity. 7/2 at 10:43 a.m.
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UPDATE: Greg Sargent is reporting now:
The latest draft of the Democratic Party platform, which is set to be released as early as this afternoon, will show that Bernie Sanders won far more victories on his signature issues than has been previously thought, according to details provided by a senior Sanders adviser.
The latest version of the platform, which was signed off on recently by a committee made up of representatives for the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and the DNC, has been generally summarized by the DNC and characterized in news reports. Sanders has hailed some of the compromises reached in it, but he has vowed to continue to fight for more of what he wants when the current draft goes to a larger Democratic convention platform committee in Orlando coming weeks, and when it goes to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia in late July.
But the actual language of the latest draft has not yet been released, and it will be released as early as today. It will show a number of new provisions on Wall Street reform, infrastructure spending, and job creation that go beyond the victories that Sanders has already talked about. They suggest Sanders did far better out of this process thus far than has been previously thought. Many of these new provisions are things that Sanders has been fighting for for years.
We already know from the DNC’s public description of the latest draft of the platform that it includes things such as a general commitment to the idea of a $15-per-hour minimum wage; to expanding Social Security; to making universal health care available as a right through expanding Medicare or a public option; and to breaking up too-big-to-fail institutions.
Warren Gunnels, the chief policy adviser to the Sanders campaign, is Sargent’s source. Gunnels listed six additions to the platform draft:
1) Eliminating conflict of interest at the Federal Reserve by making sure that executives at financial institutions cannot serve on the board of regional Federal Reserve banks or handpick their members.
2) Banning golden parachutes for taking government jobs and cracking down on the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington.
3) Prohibiting Wall Street from picking and choosing which credit agency will rate their product.
4) Empowering the Postal Service to offer basic banking services, which makes such services available to more people throughout the country, including low-income people who lack access to checking accounts.
5) Ending the loophole that allows large profitable corporations to defer taxes on income stashed in offshore tax havens to avoid paying less taxes.
6) Using the revenue from ending that deferral loophole to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs.
Okay, folks. While being credited to Sanders, this far more likely is a blunt-force impact of Warren, since every one of these points concerns Warren’s particular area of interest: financial industry regulation.
But there are, I believe, clear Sanders hallmarks in there, too: particularly item 4, empowering the Postal Service to offer basic banking services, which makes such services available to more people throughout the country, including low-income people who lack access to checking accounts.
In other words, Warren is the intermediary between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns. And in exchange for her unbridled campaigning for and with Clinton has combined her own top priorities—precise legislative ones that Warren has the deep expertise to demand and to draft, e.g., items 1 and 3—with one very specific one of Sanders and with more generic ones of his as well, e.g., items 2 and 5.
This will be an unbeatable platform and team. During the campaign, and in the four years that follow.
Game on.
Update added 7/1 at 3:34 p.m
“[Small]-business regulations are entirely state and local ones and are not of the sort that the federal government even could address.”
Obviously, small businesses are subject to regulation by the U.S. government, too, not just to State a local governments. Small businesses must pay the U.S. Minimum Wage, for instance. Owners of small businesses can be prosecuted for hiring immigrants, legal or illegal, who do not have work permits.
The question is, can U.S. government regulations nullify some burdensome State and local regulations, such as requiring several hundred hours of training before one can get a license to braid hair?
Yes, re the minimum wage, that’s true, but that, and the hiring of undocumented immigrants, and compliance with EPA regulations, and the like, aren’t business regulations, as such. They apply to individuals who don’t own businesses, for example. And they are incidental to the startup or running of a small business.
OCEA and other worker-safety regulations are per se business regulations, but also are incidental to running a business, like proscriptions against driving while intoxicated are incidental to driving.
As for state and local government licensing regulations, you’ve actually hit upon one of my pet peeves. George Will and I don’t agree on much, but I love his several columns on that.
And, you bet it would be great to see a federal law circumscribing the permissible requirements for entry into a type of business or profession. I think Sanders discussed this at some point.
Platforms mean nothing.
Zilch.
Nada.
Zero.
Waste of time.
Oh, I forgot bupkus.
Well … sure, normally. And since you’re a baby boomer you can’t even imagine that this time is not normal. To you and most other boomers, there is no such thing as an actual, sudden and unexpected, significant change in the political climate and it’s potential or already-occurring consequences.
But here’s what’s happening: The Sanders/Warren tail is wagging the centrist dog. Both Sanders and Warren are senators. They now have a major national profile. If this is largely their platform, then after the election, the Dem-controlled Senate and House, ushered in largely thanks to them–and that platform–with its by-then-dominant progressive wing, will hold hearings and publicize these bills and enact them.
This is what this election is about. It’s clear now. Trump has made it much easier for this to happen. Which most baby boomers still don’t get, although surprisingly David Brooks of all baby boomers does seem to, judging from his column today.
Here’s another pundit who gets it, although he’s a Gen-Xer, not a boomer: http://theweek.com/articles/633389/how-donald-trump-turned-republicans-smoldering-resentments-into-dumpster-fire
Such a dreamer.
You have firmly placed the cart in front of the horse.
It is not what you want to do it is what you can do.
Platforms mean nothing until you get to 218, 60 and the Presidency.
To worry or discuss or talk about what you want to do without first spending all of your time getting to the point where you can actually do it is just mental masturbation.
And if your efforts are focused on where you want to go as opposed to how you can get there, you are wasting your time and efforts.
Bernie is good at that.
He has done it for decades.
Made a living out of it.
He has done zilch.
Nada.
Zero.
Bupkus.
And his actions the last month should be looked at as him putting his own personae ahead of his policies.
And he continues.
As much as I love most of his policies, he is an ass.
“Platforms mean nothing until you get to 218, 60 and the Presidency.”
Platforms are there to convince people they should get your party to 218, 60, and the Presidency.
Ok, I’m going to jump in on one thing I know quite a bit about – Postal Banking.
Postal banking could be a good idea, it could be an excellent way to utilize the existing postal network (which is quickly and quietly being dismantled) to provide basic banking services which right now are sources of huge rent seeking through check cashing companies, payday lenders, and various outlets that offer bill pay.
However I have yet to see anyone offer a practical plan, including Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders, that incorporates this service into the existing infrastructure and capabilities of the Postal Service. Given the existing postal law, the existing postal management, and the way in which the Postal Service is being treated as not quite a government service the idea of simply laying banking service over the current system without properly integrating it into a reoriented postal mission designed to serve average citizens and consumers rather than advertising mailers and logistics companies like UPS and Amazon (yes Amazon is a logistics company not a book seller or retailer) will end up causing a mess. The most likely outcome is that postal management will turn this into an opportunity for fee extraction.
Actually fixing the Postal Service raises some of the fundamental issues that Warren and Sanders both want to get at. The problem at this point is that Congress is intent on serving the constituencies that can either contribute the most money or hire the best lobbyists.
It’s good to have big ideas. It’s good to articulate important goals, to talk about ideas of fairness, of making government work. But it is also essential to understand that we have a complex structure with many competing interests so the actual changes are going to have to be, by necessity, incremental. Getting the SEC to work better, getting the CFPB to function properly and to fund it properly, improving anti-trust enforcement (which might include finding ways to empower labor), and finding ways to make sure the existing Federal bureaucracies are strengthened against capture (closing the revolving door would help) are all things that would go a long way towards furthering a Progressive agenda.
I’ve heard Liz warren in some settings where she is discussing the specifics of policy and she is very good; Bernie not so much, he’s good on the general but the deeper into the weeds he gets the less he really seems to know.
How about tack not tac (tack: changing the course of a sailboat).
Warren, when I read your comments I am reminded of the moment in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy looks at the warden and asks, “How can you be so obtuse?”
Yes, there is Federal minimum wage but a majority of states have their own. Yes, business owners must (often don’t) comply with elements of the Federal E-Hire system, and yes they must fill out taxes. But by and large, whether it’s local licensing, zoning restrictions, city business regulations or various inspections the bulk of regulation and demand for compliance on a small business, especially 50 or fewer employees, is imposed by state and local authorities. It is true that in some instances state and local authorities are enforcing Federal mandates like FLSA laws but for the most part small businesses deal with local authorities – ask a small retailer his biggest regulatory fear and it will likely be the state or local depart of revenue enforcing sales tax requirements.
The consolidation of business is as old as business. J.P. Morgan was famous for his views that his most important role in creating big trusts was getting rid of “wasteful and unnecessary competition”.
Okay, tac is now tack. But tic and toe are still tic and toe.
http://postalmuseum.si.edu/collections/object-spotlight/postal-savings.html
I know of the Postal Savings because it was a longstanding punchline in my family growing up. My grandmother, absolutely convinced that “the banks” would fail again one day like they did in the Depression, refused, for decades after the Depression ended and interest rates at “the banks” rose, to close out her Postal Savings account. It was her nest egg, should “the banks” fail, including the one where she also had an account and where my uncle quietly managed to finally transfer her savings from the Postal Savings so she would get more than the 2% interest the Postal Savings paid.
So my family had a list of jokes that ended with punchlines about someone so worried about safety over risk that they still kept their money at the Postal Savings. Long after the Postal Savings was closed.
My understanding of the current Postal Savings proposals is that it would be a bank, like the old Postal Savings, and be run separately from the Postal Service. Post offices, or at least some of them, would have a separate operation like small branches of regular banks, but just for savings and checking accounts and just for small amounts. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t actually be run by the mail service folks and administration.
And if it happens, somewhere in heaven my grandmother will be smiling. And so will I. Right down here on earth.
Hey, wait. 2% interest looks great now! Everyone should open a Postal Savings account.
My grandmother was onto something, after all!
Bernie hasn’t “missed his moment,” he is capitalizing on it. He has amassed real power in the process of campaigning 1) by winning more than 20 states, 2) by energizing a movement, and 3) by raising more than $230 million without taking PAC money, something that makes every politician sit up and take notice. He has now pivoted from one center of action – the public campaign – to the next – the platform committee and the convention. And it doesn’t matter how things finally turn out with the platform, we will hear Bernie say at the convention that he endorses HRC. We will see him campaign hard for her and, most importantly, for a slew of Progressives running for Congress.
Bernie has broken open the minds of the Democratic party to the political benefits of running on truly Progressive issues of the kind that Greenberg has been arguing for and demonstrating that people want. When Congress next convenes – the next center of action — he and Warren, no matter which office she holds, are going to be setting the agenda for the Democrats on income inequality and regulation of Wall Street and the banks. Only a dolt would say that amounts to having accomplished nothing.
Beverly Mann, you are distinctly the anti-dolt.
Hear! Hear!
Especially that anti-dolt part. 🙂
I think you might have been played, and so has Gunnels and/or Sanders, and Warren -0 if she actually was involved in any way – should have noticed.
“Ending the loophole that allows large profitable corporations to defer taxes on income stashed in offshore tax havens to avoid paying less taxes.”
See here:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/19/elizabeth-warren-blasts-tax-plan-giant-wet-kiss-corporate-america
“Using the revenue from ending that deferral loophole to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs.”
For example, through creative accounting to “pay” for student loan debt forgiveness for entrepeneurs.
I have no idea what Sanders’ endgame will be, but even Trump appears to understand that TPP looks a lot like the “Hill” to die on. If Sanders wants the “movement” to look like an unstoppable force, he better focus on the unmoveable objects.
Amazing how well the revolution is progressing in here(course it is all talk), while it seems to be dying in the real world.
Sanders is 1 for 3 in primary results so far in terms of candidates he supports. Another 3 to go. In the two losses Sanders was way late to the game(wonder where he is spending his time?) and in the other the candidate was supported by a whole slew of groups.
The idea is to get candidates he wants on the ticket, not that same ol’, same ol’ neo-liberal, corporation loving dem that is killing the country.
Doesn’t seem like it is happening, and it sure doesn’t seem like it is a priority for him.
I am a baby boomer and I clearly remember when the Democratic party stood up for the workers, for the poor and for the oppressed. I remember when the government worked for them, before it was changed into a vehicle to advance the interests of the rich and powerful.
I supported Bernie with my vote and with my tiny donations, because Elizabeth Warren won’t run.
There is no problem for a Democrat to run an inspirational champaign that is short on specifics. Lord knows that the Republicans wouldn’t have had any campaigns in the last twenty years or so if specifics were an absolute requirement to run for office. They have just presented a bare, unworkable outline with no costs of what they would replace ObamaCare with. They still haven’t presented any kind of a plan for privatizing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
The message that the Democrats need to run on is that government can once again work for the majority of the people. That government can make a positive contribution to the economy.
I personally believe that the Democrats should back off from the emphasis on identity politics by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. They should declare these battles all but won and instead we need to turn to solving the problems of poverty, income and wealth inequality, all of which are causing the gradual disappearance of the middle class.
This is the idea of ML King, and I think that it is a good one.
Thank you for this post. I agree with every word of it.
Hard to explain how strongly I agree with you re identity politics. I’ve written here at AB so many times about how harmful I think it has been for the Dem Party, progressive politics, and the country that for the last several decades Dem progressivism has been solely about identity politics.
The Sanders campaign and its strength has felt to me almost like an out-of-body experience, because it’s accomplished the seemingly impossible: The Democratic Party emphasizing economic population rather than identity/culture-wars politics. We have the millennial generation to thank for this; they made it possible.
Yeah, it is an ideas problem, not a math problem. Maybe some people should go back and look at the Dem platforms for the last 36 years. You just might find some interesting stuff in there.
I know that in exactly 6 of those years, Dems held the WH and both houses of Congress. And in the last year of those 6, they did not hold the new definition of majority in the Senate(and even that one year required thinking Lieberman was a Democrat in 2009 and 2010.)
It is not a rhetoric problem, it is a math problem.
Wow. You’re really missing the point which is odd because you’ve said repeatedly now that party platforms don’t mean anything.
They had some nice economic-populist ideas in the platform, I guess. But, like … who knew? They kept them secret, campaigning always, always on identity-politics/culture-wars stuff and nothing else.
Misprint.
5 instead of six. Scott Brown joined the Senate in Feb, 2010.
Bev,
I am not missing the point at all. Platforms mean nothing until the math is correct.
And I love the “campaign” on the platform thing. Perhaps you should spend some time looking at past campaigns. I see almost nothing new (other than shouting inequality real loud a lot of times) between the campaigns of Obama and Gore and Clinton over the years.
But I will ask you a question.
When exactly none of these exciting new sanders-style campaign goals are enacted in the first two years, what will be the reaction?
I’ll take a wild guess. HRC will be thrown under the bus in a NY minute. And if something totally unexpected happens and Sanders becomes POTUS, the same failure to enact any of these promises will happen and he will also be thrown under the bus.
Liberals are the worst team mates in the world.
Quiz:
Who said it and when?
” And everywhere I go, what I’ve been struck by is the core decency and generosity of the people of Pennsylvania and the American people.
But what I’ve also been struck by is the frustration.
I met a gentleman in Latrobe who had lost his job and was trying to figure out how he could find the gas money to travel to find a job. And that story, I think, is typical of what we’re seeing all across the country.
People are frustrated, not only with jobs moving and incomes being flat, health care being too expensive, but also that special interests have come to dominate Washington, and they don’t feel like they’re being listened to.
I think this election offers us an opportunity to change that, to transform that frustration into something more hopeful, to bring about real change.
And I’m running for president to ensure that the American people are heard in the White House. ”
“So what I have said is that we need to have a plan to fix NAFTA. I would immediately have a trade time-out. And I would take that time to try to fix NAFTA by making it clear that we’ll have core labor and environmental standards in the agreement.
We will do everything we can to make it enforceable, which it is not now.
We will stop the kind of constant sniping at our protections for our workers that can come from foreign companies because they have the authority to try to sue to overturn what we do to keep our workers safe.
This is a big issue in Ohio, and I have laid out my criticism; but, in addition, my plan for actually fixing NAFTA.
So I would hope that, again, we could get to a debate about what the real issues are and where we stand, because we do need to fix NAFTA. It is not working. It was, unfortunately, heavily disadvantaging many of our industries, particularly manufacturing. I have a record of standing up for that, of chairing the Manufacturing Caucus in the Senate, and I will take a tough position on these trade agreements.”