Hillary Clinton is Humpty Dumpty
Will Elizabeth Warren push Hillary off the wall?
If Hillary Clinton runs for President, she’s still the odds-on favorite because she has the Democratic machine behind her.
The conventional wisdom is that the nomination is Hillary’s to lose. If Hillary’s disastrous book rollout and tone-deafness about her wealth are any indication, Hillary might just accomplish the unthinkable of imploding a second time as presumptive nominee.
Hillary’s worst enemy is Hillary. There’s only so long you can pretend to be something you are not.
Enter Elizabeth Warren.
We have been arguing for years that Warren is a unique political talent, someone who can demagogue the national victim narrative better than anyone in recent memory.
Do not underestimate the power of a politician whose entire reason to be is to convince people that the problems in their lives are not of their own doing, but of a rigged system in which they are abused by powerful, if unseen, forces.
Put aside all the hypocrisy’s of Warren’s own life. There are many people willing to overlook how Warren tried to rig the system to her own advantage if that is what is needed to believe in their own victimhood.
In a nation suffering from an unending decline in workforce participation rates, in which every month hundreds of thousands of people give up hope of finding a job and drop out, blaming a rigged system is a powerful message.
Jonah Goldberg calls Warren The Obama of 2016:
Paging Elizabeth Warren: This is your moment….
Senator Warren owes her left-wing hero status to the Democratic version of this kind of populism. She’s been talking for years about how the well-connected “rig the system” for their own benefit. Now, I find many of Warren’s proposed solutions — more regulation, more taxes, more government, etc. — abhorrent. But, believe it or not, I am not a Democratic-primary voter. Those who are love what Warren is selling.
Which is why Warren is perfectly poised to be the Obama of 2016. And the role of Hillary Clinton will be played by Hillary Clinton.
Warren would be able to defuse Clinton’s greatest asset (her gender) and exploit Clinton’s greatest liability (her wealth and how she came by it) while in the process generating huge excitement from the status quo–weary grassroots.
Even The Fix at The Washington Post is pushing the improbable meme that Warren has cross-over appeal, Elizabeth Warren says the U.S. economy is rigged. Many conservatives agree:
Although Warren seems an outlier in the legislative branch for her fiery discontent with inequality — and the role she says Wall Street plays in exacerbating it — the Pew survey suggests that the vast majority of Americans are at least open to her underlying premise.
Warren’s demand to leave her opponents’ blood and teeth on the floor is just the type of fiery rhetoric that would spark a fire in the Democratic base — the same base that embraced Occupy Wall Street, of which Warren claimed to lay the intellectual foundation.
Let’s revisit the premise that the race is Hillary’s to lose. In reality, maybe it’s Elizabeth Warren’s to lose.
I stand by my prediction that Elizabeth Warren would crush Hillary, and they both know it.
Hillary Clinton is Humpty Dumpty. The question is, will Elizabeth Warren push Hillary off the wall.
(Featured Image: Hillary Clinton concession speech 2008)
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Comments
“She’s been talking for years about how the well-connected ‘rig the system’ for their own benefit.”
You mean like siccing the IRS on your political opponents? THAT kind of rigging?
A fine analysis, Professor Jacobson.
In my own opinion, neither of these unannounced candidates would be worth too hoots in a hurricane as President of the United States. They’re far too much like Obama was in 2008 – leftist ideologues with no executive experience, nor any record of private-sector competence at successfully providing goods or services to voluntary customers.
Hillary’s experience at State is only indicative of her lack of competence at foreign relations and lack of understanding of world history. And Warren’s abuse of racial preferences to achieve academic preferment shows a cynical concept of the rule of law as normally practiced by honest citizens.
Nevertheless, a contest between the two for a nomination would furnish us Democrat-weary Red-Staters the entertainment of a splendid catfight, so let the wild rumpus start.
Mostly I’d prefer to see Warren get the nomination, because I’d think the majority of Americans would see her for the nut case that she is. Then again it took over six years for most Americans to come to that realization about our current president. And unfortunately just as many overlooked questionable facts on Obama’s resume because he was black (I’m saying this based on black conservative friends that voted for him and now regret it), many will also overlook Warren’s flaws because she is a woman. I still think she’d be easier to defeat than Clinton, but if she did actually get elected our nation really will be transformed into something terrible. Clinton may not be much more moderate, and she’s clearly incompetent, but at least she’s sane.
Given the number of people in this country and we have such a pathetic choice for presidential candidates. It’s time for the political parties to go.
And replace them with . . . what, exactly?
Politica parties are fine, let’s just pull down some of the barriers for entry for additional political parties through election reform. One of the big issues that keeps coming up, is third party candidates ‘taking’ votes from one of the two big candidates. We’ve even seen primary candidates that don’t get the nomination, run as write-ins even though their views are fairly similar to the party nominee. And as much as I identify with many third party candidates, I will almost always vote for the R because, I’d rather the establishment Republican than the establishment Democrat. But the system doesn’t need to be this way. Why not use run-off elections?
God save us all if she is the nominee……I’m afraid she will be elected. If she is the nominee, the Republicans will have to put someone up who is truly conservative if they want any chance.
The problem Hillary had with Obama was that she could not attack him all out without appearing to be racist. Bill, could and did, act as a proxy, but there is only so much he would and could do attacking Obama.
In this case Hillary can attack all she wants without looking misogynistic. If Warren gets in I expect a big cat fight where they both wind up topless.
After seeing what dried up old prunes they are, I think that the people will decide they don’t want a woman president. At least they won’t want one of these women as president.
You just HAD to go there, didn’t you. Not an image that I wanted in my mind.
Sorry. Didn’t realize.
I can see the Dem campaign ads now…
“PRUNES ARE GOOD FOR YOU!”
“PRUNES ARE GOOD FOR THE COMMUNITY!”
“IT TAKES A COMMUNITY TO RAISE A PRUNE!”
It wasn’t so much that she would appear racist – although the Obamabots certainly tried to portray Bill that way – as that even if she won by exposing his lack of any qualifications, it would have discouraged black voter enthusiasm, which is necessary for Democrats to win nationally.
There’s only so long you can pretend to be something you are not.
Enter Elizabeth Warren.
?????? Elizabeth Warren pretends to be an Indian.
I agree with Elizabeth Warren that the system is rigged in favor of the Ruling Class: government, corporations, and media. Let’s look at one example of each:
1) Government – Just yesterday we read that the IRS laughably paid a fine WITH TAXPAYER money for illegally releasing NOM’s tax return data. No charges were brought against the government employee who committed the crime.
2) Corporations – JPMorgan recently agreed to settle a case in which it was alleged to have engaged in mortgage fraud. It paid a $13 billion fine to settle. The $13B was confiscated from shareholders who had nothing to do with the alleged fraud. The individual executives who were responsible did not face charges and probably received bonuses. It has become standard practice in banking for regulators to levy enormous fines for alleged wrongdoing – while prosecuting neither the corporate entity nor the individuals. If wrongdoing did occur then someone needs to go to jail. A cynic could look at it in two different ways. Either: A) by not prosecuting, the government is effectively encouraging illegal wrongdoing by the bank and its employees. The government then comes along later to collect its share of the booty. Or B) the government could not make a case against JPMorgan and it’s employees stick. But its government regulator shook them down because it could. It’s corrupt either way.
3) Media – David Gregory was explicitly advised by relevant authorities that his televised stunt to turn public opinion against guns by waving around an ammunition magazine on TV was illegal. He did it anyway and was not prosecuted. Now, see what happens to people who are not in the Ruling Class by following Emily Miller’s excellent reporting about the cases of Mark Witaschek and Army Specialist Adam Meckler. The quick summary of Witaschek’s case is that based on a “tip” from his estranged wife, a SWAT team busted his door down, dragged his kid naked out of a shower, and ransacked his home for several hours. At the end, they found a grand total of ONE inoperable shotgun shell and some muzzleloading bullets (effectively BBs). No guns. No blackpowder. He was convicted and risks losing his business. Several million people see with their own eyes the Ruling Class guy violate the law in pursuit of Ruling Class approved propaganda. He gets a “stern” warning. The ordinary guy gets his door busted in, convicted, and possibly loses his business. For having BBs and no gun to shoot them.
Warren is right that the system is rigged but I also agree with Goldberg that Warren’s proposed solutions are wrong. The government is WAY TOO powerful. More government and more regulation is NOT the answer. We need MUCH less government, less regulation, and especially a level playing in which the rules are strictly applied equally to us all. This current system of having a harsh system for the peasants while the Ruling Class pays a fine or isn’t charged at all isn’t going to work. They’re pacifying us now with “bread and circuses”, but eventually the pitchforks will have to come out in the name of justice if things don’t change soon.
Sorry, but this cannot stand…
“The $13B was confiscated from shareholders who had nothing to do with the alleged fraud.”
No corporation…or any other business entity…has the ability to “confiscate” anything from shareholders, owners, or anybody else. That is the SOLE province of government.
If you are a JP Morgan shareholder, you are that voluntarily. If your investment is in a crooked company, you pays your piper. If the company is shaken down by the government, you know who to blame (i.e., company leaders AND government). But nothing is “confiscated” that belongs to you. You could have baled out.
If the company is shaken down by the government, you know who to blame (i.e., company leaders AND government).
In this case, it’s the government, which committed TWO shakedowns. The first was the metastasization of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995 by Clinton’s unaccountable HUD, which shook down banks to lend money to bad-risk home buyers, and shook down Fannie and Freddie to buy up those poisoned mortgages so the banks would lend yet more for poisoned mortgages.
The second, of course, was the government/media shakedown of banks for complying with the first shakedown.
The shareholders never had a chance.
While I totally agree with a lot of your points, I disagree with your conclusion.
Shareholders had all kinds of choices, including simply selling their shares. Every day.
The problem with subprimes was that they were not required to be disclosed.
Mortgage securities, since their debut as a widespread form of secure investment in the ’80s, had a fairly standard breakdown of types of mortgages, with the overwhelming bulk being conventional 30-year instruments issued under standard credit procedures. The Democrat push for subprimes encouraged these poor credit risks to be included in securities – otherwise no one would buy them in the secondary market – but did not require disclosure.
This was the entire cause of the AIG crisis. Lehmann was more complicated, they constructed a web of derivatives which theoretically was supposed to be safe.
In neither case did investors have knowledge of these practices because the government did not require disclosure.
The sub-prime loans were disclosed as always. It was the advent of the CDOs and the lack of transparency with those instruments that ultimately triggered the collapse.
The root cause, of course, was government meddling in the housing market in the name of ‘fairness’ and ‘equal opportunity to the American dream of home ownership’ and other such drivel.
The point is that the employee perpetrators of the alleged fraud paid no personal legal price for their wrongdoing. Shareholder money was to negotiate, in part, a deal for them to avoid liability.
If you want to say that the shareholders are not entitled to benefit from frauds committed by their employees, then I agree. And that is partly, but only partly, what the settlement is about.
Two issues are at stake here. Disgorging ill gotten shareholder gains from the fraud is one issue. That’s legit. Bargaining with shareholder money so that employees who allegedly committed fraud can avoid liability is the other. That’s problematic. That seems like a confiscation of shareholder assets to me.
Yes, sure, a shareholder is free to sell his shares at any time. But the negotiated transfer of $13B in cash to the government is a reduction in shareholder wealth whether a shareholder sells his shares or not. It will be discounted and reflected in the market price of the stock whenever buyers and sellers agree to transact.
But all that assumes that shareholders are a fixed, static population.
They are not. Some of them took their gains and banked them years ago.
Some of the “shareholders” purchased shares day-before-yesterday.
IF anybody bought shares in JP Morgan…or hung onto them…since all this spit hit the fan, they did so knowingly (or in such blind ignorance nobody could have helped them). Nobody “confiscated” anything.
I don’t see how that assumes they are fixed … it doesn’t matter. If “the shareholder” is defrauded when an employee makes a deal to benefit both the employee and the government, how does it matter who the shareholder is at the time?
How is a CURRENT shareholder “defrauded” by a settlement they know has been coming down the pike for literally years?
Nobody represented to them anything that would suggest fraud.
The settlement might have been the very best thing JP Morgan could do for its shareholders. You and I might strongly disapprove of that, but I don’t hold any Morgan shares. You?
Banks are still a crap shoot … as is most of the market thanks to ZIRP and QE. But despite the fervor against “too big to fail”, the big banks have been made bigger, intentionally. (as I understand it)
So our big banks that may have played in subprimes and derivatives, are bailed out by middle class savers. That has been largely praised as saving our banking system, others would say we have to let them fail, or it will be worse next time.
I don’t know about JPM specifically, but many will say Main Street was abandoned to rescue Wall Street. I know some sound smaller banks got bought out by the failing but bailed out big banks. That seems backwards to me. JPM was deep into using derivatives for profit, not just “safe” hedging, and were putting the system at risk. (tho Dimon said no, Volcker is just infantile and doesn’t understand capital markets)
I’m not sure the shareholders shared those profits, or if they went mostly to the “players” that traded with the bank’s assets. But it seems the traders (working at JPM) kept making the big bucks with bonuses, before and after the bailout. So they should have been prosecuted or fined, instead of the shareholders.
Stocks are known risk, so “confiscation” is not exactly the right word. But the CEO and traders that broke the exemptions to the Volcker rule should face penalties, not just transfer the fine to the shareholders.
IF they escaped prosecution by using company funds to satisfy government, that is essentially confiscation. But I’m sure that was papered over by the lawyers. The relationship between big banks and government is pretty murky after TARP, shareholders obviously took it on the chin.
Makes my head hurt to think I have to get back into that stuff to deal with Lizzie Warren. Sheila Bair (former FDIC chair) seems to like her.
“Confiscation” is a word with a meaning.
It implies a taking by an authority, as in government. It does not result from a settlement.
I think you mean “misappropriation” or “malappropriation”. Even then, you have an argument, but not a case.
You really think shareholders could find this info out and sell shares in advance? Perhaps a few daytraders could anticipate the news being released and play the stock, but most had little chance. And if an executive did wrong, maybe the shareholder pays a price for lack of “due diligence”, but certainly the criminal in the company should pay for his crime.
If the system allows the institutional players to cheat and get away with it, it encourages more cheating. If government and the JPM execs are essentially “in cahoots”, it amounts to confiscation.
Socialization of risk, privatization of profit. But the profits are not always to the stockholder … but to the tens of millions in bonuses and stock options as seen in Fannie, Freddie, or the VA. When they go bust, it’s the insiders that knew to cash out.
Generally in an efficient market, by the time the public has an inkling, the “news” (of corruption or whatever) is already “priced in”. When the news hit, normal folks sell and lose, only to miss the bailout or some other bounce back. Selling on the news is a loser. “Buy the rumor, sell the news” is the motto, or the reverse for bad news.
Investors could bail out of the stock market long ago, and be “right”. Yet the markets are up radically because of government manipulation, zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and insane $ trillion a year quantitative easing. The game is indeed fixed. The greatest confiscation is from fixed income savers that lose due to (not yet all that apparent in all prices) inflation.
Sorry, dude. That’s just nuts.
IF I bought JP Morgan shares any time AFTER the housing crisis…or I held onto them if I owned any, I would either know they had some HUGE LEGAL problems to face, or I’d be too stupid to have investment money laying around.
Nobody “confiscated” anybody’s anything in that settlement. No matter how you contort reality.
Geez, sometimes you guys…
Any time a shareholder sold based on news … that news was already priced in. Almost no one except insiders or some professionals can get ahead of the news. So you are “nuts” to say they had the chance to get out years ago … or whatever. Sure they could get out AFTER the stock took the hit.
MF Global actually did “confiscate” funds that were supposedly safe … Corzine took $1.6B and lost it … was not prosecuted, as far as I know. Even pro’s got caught in that one. They finally got their money back … but it was a BIG deal.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/JPM/charts?symb=JPM&countrycode=US&time=12&startdate=1%2F4%2F1999&enddate=6%2F30%2F2014&freq=2&compidx=none&compind=none&comptemptext=Enter+Symbol%28s%29&comp=none&uf=7168&ma=1&maval=50&lf=1&lf2=4&lf3=0&type=2&size=2&style=1013
People have been making money with Morgan, too.
I see part of your problem; you think people should be punished under the law. You think regulators regulate. I learned long ago that is NOT what they do, and not to be disappointed when they fail to do what they PRETEND to do.
This is especially true in some sectors of the economy, as here.
“The greatest confiscation is from fixed income savers that lose due to (not yet all that apparent in all prices) inflation.”
On that we agree. And that, as Uncle Milton showed, is ALL government.
Jonah Goldberg calls Warren The Obama of 2016
At one time Obama reputedly gave a pretty decent speech. That gave him an unearned reputation as a sensible man, someone with some appeal to voters other than the socialists and control freaks. Warren has never done anything to make herself appear sensible – all she’s ever given us was a display of faux Affirmative Action and a feeble TV-ready version of Marxism. That implies that only the diehard progressives will find her shtick palatable, and her votes might be somewhere in the same range as Obama’s current approval ratings.
BTW, I watched part of the Communist Party USA convention on CSPAN last night. The anti-Republican rhetoric was indistinguishable from what you hear from the Democrat Party. In fact, Sam Webb, the CPUSA Chairman was praising the Democrat Party and talking about how important it was to help Democrats defeat Republicans in November.
For all intents and purposes the Communist Party USA is now part of the Democrat Party. Which is unsurprising to me. I’ve been calling Democrats neo-Communists since the New Left/progressive wing highjacked it.
Anybody who thinks Elizabeth Warren is too radical to win the Democrat Party nomination is not paying attention.
The Democratic Party is part of the Communist Party.
TFTY
She’s like Humpty-Dumpty in another way: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Hillary and Liz are two sides of the same broken record: Regulate, Redistribute and Rely on Big Government – the Village –for your daily bread.
Hillary is a lousy politician, unlike Bill who is clearly the best since Reagan (at least). [Obama,OTOH, is great at turning out his mindless low information voters, but not at building bridges or even appearing to].
But in her heart, hidden away like her college papers, she is just as leftist as Warren. Her only advantage is she has the cover of apparent reasonableness associated with Bill, who is not nearly so ideological.
Hillary’s vote for the Iraq War authorization, which may have proved her downfall among the party base in 2008 and again in 2016, was ironically cast to insulate her from accusations of irresponsible liberalism (at a time when, as people now forget, 90% of Americans favored stopping Saddam Hussein by any means necessary).
But we have to have learned from the campaigns of ’08 and ’12 and the personal destruction campaigns against McCain, Palin, and Romney, that we have to play down and dirty with whichever anti-American leftist the Democrats choose next time.
“In a nation suffering from an unending decline in workforce participation rates, in which every month hundreds of thousands of people give up hope of finding a job and drop out, blaming a rigged system is a powerful message.”
I don’t think you intended to compare Warren to Hitler but the similarity in the situation gave me chills. Tell me, where does Warren stand on the Jewish Question? (Note for the satire impaired: This question is not intended to be taken seriously)
Let’s see…Pow-Wow Warren or What Diff’Do It Make Clinton? What an amazing choice. Hhhhmmmmmmm….?
Okay, so “what difference does it make?”
I suspect that within the next year, no matter how bad the economy and other domestic problems, we may find that the first priority of the president may have to be cleaning up the foreign policy. The last thing we should put in office is a progressive anti-military bullshit artist — Clinton OR Warren.
I hope Warren tries to unset the “inevitible” Hillary and suddeeds. I think that would split the Democrats nicely. Because I doubt the “Clintonistas” would easily forgive her being brushed aside twice.
I have noticed some in the liberal media all ready being less than supportive of Hillary. That cannot be a good thing. Without the MSM adoration brigade the Dems are not the power house they like to think they are.
I have no idea why my spelling a grammatical corrections didn’t show up and I am left with a post that makes me look like a moron. Sorry about that.
Here’s my comment with corrections that makes a little more sense.
“I hope Warren tries to unset the inevitable Hillary and succeeds. I think that would split the Democrats nicely. Because I doubt the Clintonistas would easily forgive her being brushed aside twice.
I have noticed some in the liberal media already being less than supportive of Hillary. That cannot be a good thing. Without the MSM adoration brigade the Dems are not the power house they like to think they are.”