One of the things that Hillary Clinton could do to appease the far left of her party would be to select one of their number as her vice presidential running mate. If that person is not Bernie Sanders, the far left would be perfectly happy with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. However, as Politico reports, Clinton is not likely to select the firebrand senator with pretensions to Native American ancestry. Politico notes that one constituency that Clinton values far more than actual voters, Wall Street, has warned her that she can have Warren as a running mate or their campaign contributions, but not both.
Clinton has inveighed against Wall Street, but the brokers and fund managers know that she is not serious. The presidential candidate has accepted millions from the financial industry, both to the Clinton Global Initiative and her campaign. Warren, on the other hand, is entirely in earnest when she attacks Wall Street as comprising a pack of vultures. The financial industry will respond in kind by vetoing her presence on the Democratic ticket.
Warren has helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has called for further, draconian regulations on the financial services industry. The banker, hedge fund managers, and stock brokers who have financed Clinton find the idea obnoxious, both from a macroeconomic standpoint and from the view of their bottom line.
They would much prefer a big infrastructure spending project, something that Clinton has called for and which the banking industry would benefit from along with the unions.
The spectacle of moneyed industries telling a Democratic presidential candidate what she can and cannot do is unedifying, to say the least. To be sure, Wall Street is right in this case.
Warren would be bad news for the American economy. But it would look better if Clinton could come to that conclusion on her own and not have to be told by the people who provide her money. The situation smacks of corruption, of a candidate who has been bought and paid for. In other words, it is just another episode in the long and sordid career of the Clintons.
