For progressives, now's the time to reserve a seat at the table.

A couple of good articles about the cabinet process already being shaped, but not in stone. The takeaway from these articles is to fight for positioning now, nothing is set in stone with coalition building, and by inauguration, in-fighting will be too late and a wasted political effort to course correct. In other words, the fights during confirmation hearings won't tolerate inner party dissention as it's already an us v. them mentality.

Democrats are more prone to caving in as they're more a consensus coalition party than their counterpart. With Republicans more willing to hold their breath and watch **** break down, the fight for favorable cabinet members is right now. Treat Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Fink and or Wall Street execs as a future proxy.

It might be easy for Bernie or Elizabeth to fight your battles for you, but voting under their banner demonstrates numbers and consistency for the '18 elections both sides are already marking in their calendars.

New Republic
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Many liberal pundits have talked about the need to focus exclusively on Donald Trump, and the existential threat he presents, in the critical period before Election Day. And there is a logic to that idea: Trump would legitimately be a terrifying leader of the free world. But there are consequences to the kind of home-team political atmosphere that rejects any critical thought about your own side. If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.

Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.

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The “Bob Rubin school” is named for the former top executive at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and first Clinton administration Treasury secretary. It is composed precisely of the kinds of Democrats that the Warren wing opposes on domestic policy, particularly on financial matters. In the Obama administration, that school won out. Froman, chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, gave options for Treasury secretary that ranged from Rubin himself to Summers and Geithner, two of his key protégés. In another 2008 email Rubin imagined for himself a “Harry Hopkins” position in the Obama administration, referring to Franklin Roosevelt’s top adviser.

The Rubin school dictated the Obama administration’s light-touch policy on bank misconduct (which resulted in no serious legal or fiduciary consequences for the major players) and its first-term approach to the financial crisis (which was defined by a stimulus package that even at the time was criticized for being woefully inadequate, as well as a premature turn to budget-cutting). These are exactly the flaws that Geldon, Warren’s emissary, stressed. According to Schwerin, he “spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.”

Around the same time as that meeting with Geldon, the Clinton campaign wassetting up a dinner meeting with its economic policy team, Geithner, Summers, and members of the investment firm Blackstone (along with Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement security researcher).

This is a fight over who dominates the Democratic Party’s policy thinking in the short and long term. In 2008 the fight was invisible and one-sided, and the fix was in. In 2016 both sides are angling to get Clinton to adopt their framework. Those predisposed to consider Clinton some neoliberal sap might not agree, but this is actually a live ball. Presidents lead coalitions, and they have to understand where their coalition is and how things change over time. Peter Orszag this week suggested a trade-off: Give the Warren wing its choices on personnel, in exchange for more leeway to negotiate an infrastructure package with Republicans that gives big tax breaks to corporations with money stashed overseas. While that deal needs more detail, it reveals the power the Warren wing has, relative to the Obama era, to make significant strides on appointments.

Which side will win? The rank and file can actually have a voice in this, to make it known what personnel decisions would be acceptable or unacceptable. They can’t do it by ignoring evidence or sitting on their hands. The demand to only hold one thing in your head at a time—that Trump must be stopped—would squander this opportunity.


Another from politico.
Donald Trump is pointing to a stream of hacked emails as proof that Hillary Clinton would be a compromised president, but a surprising number of progressives are drawing similar conclusions — albeit for totally different reasons.

Some of the left’s most influential voices and groups are taking offense at the way they and their causes were discussed behind their backs by Clinton and some of her closest advisers in the emails, which swipe liberal heroes and causes as “puritanical,” “pompous”, “naive”, “radical” and “dumb,” calling some “freaks,” who need to “get a life.”

There are more than personal feelings and relationships at stake, though.

If polls hold and Clinton wins the presidency, she will need the support of the professional left to offset what’s expected to be vociferous Republican opposition to her legislative proposals and appointments.

But among progressive operatives, goodwill for Clinton — and confidence in key advisers featured in the emails including John Podesta, Neera Tanden and Jake Sullivan — is eroding as WikiLeaks continues to release a daily stream of thousands of emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account that is expected to continue until Election Day.

Liberal groups and activists are assembling opposition research-style dossiers of the most dismissive comments in the WikiLeaks emails about icons of their movement like Clinton’s Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders, and their stances on trade, Wall Street reform, energy and climate change. And some liberal activists are vowing to use the email fodder to oppose Clinton policy proposals or appointments deemed insufficiently progressive.

“We were already kind of suspicious of where Hillary’s instincts were, but now we see that she is who we thought she was,” said one influential liberal Democratic operative. “The honeymoon is going to be tight and small and maybe nonexistent,” the operative said.

The emails, which also show Clinton praising Wall Street in a manner that’s discordant with her tough campaign rhetoric, have made many progressives less inclined to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt on nominees with more centrist backgrounds or ties to Wall Street, said the operative. “Some of the first fights that she is going to be dealing with are going to be personnel fights like about who she’s going to pick for Treasury, Securities and Exchange Commission, Education and Labor, and for regulatory agencies like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Progressives are going to be on guard.”

The WikiLeaks revelations have not influenced the hierarchy around Clinton or her feelings about trusted advisers like Podesta, Sullivan and Tanden, according to a source close to the campaign. Podesta and Sullivan helped Clinton prep for Wednesday’s debate here and traveled aboard the campaign plane with her to the debate, while Tanden is still listed as a co-chair of Clinton’s transition team.

But it could pose a major problem for Clinton’s efforts to fill out a transition team and a prospective administration if Sullivan, Tanden, Podesta or other close advisers became widely seen on the left as unwilling to work in good faith with the Democratic Party’s left flank, which largely aligned behind Sanders during his bitter Democratic primary campaign against Clinton.

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My intention for this thread isn't to Nader the election. It's not even to tell people to sit at home, but rather if/when they vote, use that power to write to their special interests in Washington that you have their back when Hillary sandbags or stonewalls "those radiacal, naive, dumb freaks" with her mysteriously already planned appointees.

It's more like if you didn't like getting Obama'd again with Wall Street friendly economic appointees, now is the time to speak up about it.

It's an open table right now, and you won't know until you ask for changes. The problem is that it'll be too late to ask for them in three months.

 

Them first. Considering the lengthy history the Clintons have with Republicans...I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah, Hillary did show she was willing to compromise in her Senate term, but the way she outright dismissed those certain basket of deplorables, she's probably grizzled and hardened when it comes to some issues.

At least this time, you might not have some useless geriatric Kentucky shitbag declaring his intent to make Hillary the first one-term female President by any means necessary.