Progressive groups want all Democrats to take on the banks at tonight's debate — not just Sanders
Progressive groups want all Democrats to take on the banks at tonight's debate — not just Bernie Sanders
Dara Lind
Vox
In a series of letters to Clinton, O'Malley and Sanders in advance of tonight's debate, the "Warren wing" groups urge them to talk about enforcing bank regulations and giving criminal penalties to bankers who break the law — the issue that Warren's made her career on. They also want candidates to talk about expanding Social Security (not just protecting it from cuts) and eliminating college debt. And — in what appears to be a recent addition to their agenda, since it wasn't included in a recent Huffington Post op-ed by the PCCC's Adam Green — the "Warren wing" is adopting the cause of the Black Lives Matter movement, and calling for specific policies for racial justice.
But you wouldn't know that from reading the "Warren wing"'s letters to Sanders, Clinton and O'Malley. All three letters use very similar language. And all three praise candidates for stances they've already taken, rather than urge them to take more progressive stances in the debate. In fact, what the letters ask the candidates to do is simply to be proactive in bringing up their stances on these issues, rather than waiting for the moderators to ask the right questions. It's a clubby, us-vs.-them approach: We both know the CNN moderators can't really be trusted to bring up the issues that really matter to people, so you should make sure those issues get raised anyway.
This is similar to what the Tea Party did in 2012: rather than pick a "Tea Party candidate," they let every candidate try to court them and made it clear what it took to win their support. As a result, while no one would claim Mitt Romney was a Tea Party champion, he'd engaged with them more than he might have if they'd united behind Rick Santorum or Michelle Bachmann from the start.
Related:
Robert Scheer: Go Ahead, Back Hillary Clinton and Forget All About Her Record
Robert Reich: The Big Banks Need to Be Broken Up
Paula Dwyer: Clinton's plan on Wall Street protects husband's legacy
Sirota and Perez: Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Policy Being Shaped By Two Bankers
Yahoo Politics: Hillary Clinton doesn’t support revival of Glass-Steagall Act
Clinton: Cooperation, not speeches, is needed to regulate Wall Street
