The Chris Moeller Archives

The debasement of Elizabeth Warren

Autumn is lovely. It’s the beautiful season of falling leaves, important baseball games, and-- because it’s an even-numbered year, pandering Democrats. In 2016, the latter translates into the pushing of Elizabeth Warren into the national spotlight to make rousing anti-Wall Street speeches that carry no weight of action behind them whatsoever, but orchestrated to help drive progressives to the polls. This is that magical time of year when it's important to remind voters just exactly what you pretend to stand for.

Warren says she wants Wells Fargo’s CEO, John Stumpf, to resign from his job. She wants criminal penalties sought against the Wells Fargo agents and executives that created phony accounts to enrich the company's stock portfolios, and she wants golden parachutes returned to corporate coffers. But also, she wants Hillary Clinton to be president. And guess what? If you want the first part, you can’t have the last. Wells Fargo and its executives have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Secretary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. In 2011, Bill Clinton received $200,000 alone for giving a solitary speech to Wells Fargo executives and employees. They bought the Clintons. They have to share them with some other large banks, but they own them.

They also own President Obama, these “now much too much bigger to fail” banks. But Obama wanted to do more after the economic collapse, you plead. What could he do in the face of a do-nothing Congress? Well, Congress has shit to do with it. The Department of Justice, under the executive branch, has 100% authority to decide which criminal investigations to pursue, and which punishments to hunt in court. When Wall Street arsonists torched the housing and lending markets, one man and one man alone was responsible for letting the perps walk away scot-free-- Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton stands in now as even more compromised than her predecessor.

This you may label as conjecture, but Hillary Clinton will be president less than four months from now, and then we will find out exactly how illegitimate this anti-Wall Street and anti-corruption campaign message really is. We will still be well within the statute of limitations to pursue criminal penalties against, not only the low-level criminals at Wells Fargo, but the high-level ones that created and fostered the atmosphere of fraud that we now read about daily in media reports. In fact, nothing stands in the way right now. DOJ lawyers can step up any time they choose to pursue what Warren has been calling for on her pro-Hillary stump. Still waiting.

As for Senator Warren, she serves an invaluable role for the Democratic Party, a deeply cynical one for the voting public. She epitomizes what the party claims to believe in and to be working towards. She personifies the path by which Democratic voters internalize that they’re the good guys, and that they have a collective moral compass that Republicans lack, even when there is no difference at all in deed. She feeds an illusion. I don’t doubt her sincerity, but nearly every one of her actions is being manipulated to a cross-purpose. She serves that powerful make-believe progressive movement that works to snuff out the real one each new electoral season.

We were told by party hacks that she was a finalist to be Hillary’s vice presidential choice, when in reality, her name was floated only to assuage angry (and possibly litigious) Bernie Sanders voters. The actual pick for VP then was very purposefully an anti-Warren selection. Because real action must always serve the center-right coalition. This week, with Warren railing against bank corruption during Senate hearings, we have delivered to us specifically-timed think pieces written by Clinton loyalists opining that Warren would be “the second most important person” to the president inside a Clinton White House. There’s no real-world evidence to support this contention whatsoever-- unless we’re referring to the symbolic importance to the party explained above. Warren will be just as short of actual power within a Clinton administration as she is in the Obama one, a solitary, crying voice in the wilderness.

I'm sure that all left-wingers, regardless of party, would agree that the fundamental question at the very heart of Warren’s public service is “are you with her, or are you with Wall Street and the banks?” This question must ultimately be posed of both her colleagues and her constituents. And we already know who Clinton is with. She took millions upon millions from the group of them to rise to where she is today. There is no Candidate Clinton without Wells Fargo, without Citigroup, without Goldman Sachs. Elizabeth Warren’s role in the rigged game is to make you feel better about yourself, superior to the lumbering herd of Trump voters.

posted by CM @ 9:24 PM