Clinton’s reaction when Anderson asked if she had to take so much $ from Goldman https://t.co/HXAn6r1gJk pic.twitter.com/NAZLC9fiAF
— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) February 4, 2016
Hillary Clinton spent an hour talking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper and a handful of New Hampshire voters in a town hall on Wednesday night. For 59 minutes of it, she was excellent — empathetic, engaged and decidedly human. But, then there was that other minute — really just four words — that Clinton is likely to be haunted by for some time to come…. “That’s what they offered,” Clinton said in response to Cooper’s question about her decision to accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in the period between serving as secretary of state and her decision to formally enter the 2016 presidential race. The line is, well, bad…. But, the line when combined with her body language when she said it makes it politically awful for her.
Whatever one might think of Hillary Clinton’s close and very lucrative relationship with Wall Street, there can be little doubt but that the optics are horrible for someone trying to claim the Progressive mantle from Bernie Sanders.
I’d submit we all need to exercise at least a modicum of honesty in our reaction to the large sums Sec. Clinton garnered from speaking engagements before Wall St. firms. If someone offered me several thousand dollars to speak to a gaggle of investment bankers, I’d be hard-pressed to say no…and I suspect most Americans would be. The fact that the vast majority of us are unlikely to ever be faced with such a “dilemma” hardly renders the point invalid.
Sec. Clinton took the money because others were offering it, something any of us would have done. Then again, she’s the one running for President and trying to convince Americans that she can reign in Wall Street and control their collective predilection for greed, avarice, and all manner of excess. It’s like claiming to be vegan just as the server approaches your table with the thick, juicy Porterhouse steak you ordered.
I’m not sure there is a great answer, politically speaking, for Clinton on the question of her acceptance of huge speaking fees from all sorts of groups — from colleges and universities to investment banks. She took the money because these groups were willing to pay it. And who wouldn’t do the same thing in her shoes?
The problem is that you can’t say that if you are the front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination, a front-runner facing a more-serious-than-expected challenge from a populist liberal who has made your ties to Wall Street a centerpiece of his campaign.
Sec. Clinton is trying to figure out how to credibly tack to the left without losing credibility among her corporate sponsors. It’s a case of trying to have her cake and eat it, too. Even as she claims to be the “real” Progressive in the race, she’s accepting large corporate donations and trying to spin having accepted $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.
Her justification- “That’s what they offered,” combined with her body language makes it look as if she’s what many on the Left have believed her to be all along: someone who talks the talk about being a Progressive but can’t walk the walk.
I can’t begin to conjecture on what impact this faux pas will have on Sec. Clinton’s campaign…but it’s certainly not going to burnish her claim to be the true Progressive in the race for the Democratic nomination.
