Bernie Sanders met with the New York Daily News editorial board is a state where he had focus a significant amount of attention. The results have been ugly, even with all the spin that his surrogates have been trying to push over the past day filling in the blanks on questions that Sanders was too clueless to answer for himself. From what I have read in the transcript the NYDN was one of the first publications who pushed Sanders to actual explain how he would accomplish his goals. Sanders failed miserably, we see it and have discussed it during debates. Sanders gives the same lines “Too Big To Fail”, “Speeches”, “Goldman Sacks” and on and on. What we haven’t heard is how any of this would be accomplished. Now we got our answer, Sanders doesn’t know either.
Sanders has had a free pass as he has been always viewed as a message candidate similar to the role that Dennis Kusinrch has played in the past. Media has not placed much attention to his past positions, it’s been more of a feel good story of a 3 decade DC outsider (cough, cough), a prolific fund raiser for the DNC, but I digress.
Some highlights to what has been called a disaster, being openly questioned on policy knowledge and running a substance free campaign.
How he would break up big banks? shorter version: No idea
Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing it?
Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?
Sanders: Well, I don’t know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, “Now you must do X, Y and Z?”
Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.
Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?
Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.
That’s just painful, but it gets worse, more on breaking up banks:
Daily News: So if you look forward, a year, maybe two years, right now you have…JPMorgan has 241,000 employees. About 20,000 of them in New York. $192 billion in net assets. What happens? What do you foresee? What is JPMorgan in year two of…
Sanders: What I foresee is a stronger national economy. And, in fact, a stronger economy in New York State, as well. What I foresee is a financial system which actually makes affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses. Does not live as an island onto themselves concerned about their own profits. And, in fact, creating incredibly complicated financial tools, which have led us into the worst economic recession in the modern history of the United States.
Daily News: I get that point. I’m just looking at the method because, actions have reactions, right? There are pluses and minuses. So, if you push here, you may get an unintended consequence that you don’t understand. So, what I’m asking is, how can we understand? If you look at JPMorgan just as an example, or you can do Citibank, or Bank of America. What would it be? What would that institution be? Would there be a consumer bank? Where would the investing go?
Sanders: I’m not running JPMorgan Chase or Citibank.
Yes, why would Sanders should have even the slightest clue, really people. Damn establishment!
On prosecuting Banks, oh god, this is a train wreck:
Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?
Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.
Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?
Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don’t. But if I would…yeah, that’s what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that’s illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.
Yes, Bernie, legal statutes.
Foreign Policy? Not so much.
Daily News: Do you support the Palestinian leadership’s attempt to use the International Criminal Court to litigate some of these issues to establish that, in their view, Israel had committed essentially war crimes?
Sanders: No.
Daily News: Why not?
Sanders: Why not?
Daily News: Why not, why it…
Sanders: Look, why don’t I support a million things in the world? I’m just telling you that I happen to believe…anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?
There are many, many more. The video would make some great clips. But for the first time in his candidacy Sanders was actually treated like a real candidate and he failed miserably.
which kind of undercuts the point, but she walks right into a gaffe.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/04/clinton_agrees_with_sanders_we_now_have_power_under_dodd-frank_to_break_up_big_banks.html.
I’m disappointed she didn’t get slammed for that after the debate, when she revealed her complete lack of understanding of the financial sector she so earnestly courts. She said, essentially, it wasn’t just the banks, it was also the investment banks, the insurance companies, etc. Um. Those are all banks, now, and have been since your husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall. That’s the point.
Anyway, I’m glad to see her go negative. That’s how she tanked her candidacy in 2008. When you have record-breaking negatives, nobody wants to see your rage-face.
Writing at the Upshot (at the NY Times) Peter Evis concludes,
I think you have to be predisposed against Sanders to find anything like a smoking gun in that interview.
I’ll be glad when this whole thing is over with and people come to their senses.
. . .not only renounce violence, but also to renounce non-violence.
Bob-G, can you explain this? I follow the middle-east press pretty closely but do not grok your reference.
. . . since he won’t support litigation at the International Criminal Court. For Clinton, I’m referring to her speech at AIPAC, where she, like Ted Cruz, went out of her way to attack the BDS movement.
First let me say he definitely botched the “how” questions in the interview. Bernie, as he often does, mostly went into “why” instead. When he did say something about how, his answers were so dismissive as to be incomprehensible. This was exacerbated by the NYDN asking leading questions that were in several cases factually incorrect. Still, I agree: he should have well articulated answers ready for not only why, but by what mechanism(s) he could and would initiate a break-up.
It’s certainly not clear to me exactly what powers Dodd-Frank gives whom with regard to acting on banks deemed TBTF. I would think the century old Anti-Trust Act is sufficient, but I don’t know the legal details. Senator Sanders did say in this interview that it lies with the Secretary of the Treasury. Ms. Clinton has stated that “we” have the power, but not exactly which part of the executive branch or the Fed or some combination thereof. Senator Sanders has focused on that he would use that power, and rightly so, because that’s the difference between them.
At the same time it is encouraging how accepting and honest he is about the limited power of the presidency. That itself is an improvement over any candidate in a long time.
While it is still unclear what specific power the president would have to mandate a break-up of a bank, his answer about how the break-up would be implemented is right on: Wall Street are the experts at merging, splitting, and restructuring businesses. They’ll figure it out.
Similarly for Wall Street prosecutions: his answer is somewhat incoherent, but generally correct. Some of the banks and their executives were investigated by the Justice Department and interrogated by Congress. This all ended in a very large settlement between JPMorgan Chase and the Justice Department which means the public, and probably the Senator, DO NOT KNOW what the charges or potential charges were, only that they justified a multi-billion dollar payoff to essentially drop. The public and Senator Bernie Sanders are justifiably angry that the executives were not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The result is that the illegal activities were still profitable despite a $5 billion fine, which is quite impressive, and means they would do it all again.
It would be nice if Sanders knew the particular statutes that were violated, but in the end that is the job of the prosecutors not the President, and Senator Sanders is one of few congressmen who is not a professional lawyer. Again, given the structure of the government, the core of his answer is right on: “a Sanders administration would have a much more aggressive attorney general…”
I think this interview, admittedly a poor one, was blown out of proportion by a media desperate to show they are “crazies on both sides”. Trump drops a seriously troubling goose egg with the Times editorial board that makes Herman “uzbekibekistan” Cain look like Dean Acheson, and Chris Cilliza and Jonathan Chait have to blow this out of proportion. How’s this interview any different than his speeches? Same style, same substance, same laser like focus on income inequality to the exclusion of all other issues. And that’s fine, this has always been a campaign about electing a message rather than a particular messenger
I’ve said since the first debate that Sanders isn’t serious about being President, this campaign is about a cause greater than getting elected to office. Just as Ron Paul made the GOP comfortable for libertarianism and non interventionists, so has Bernie’s campaigned revived the social democratic and New Deal liberal traditions within the Democratic Party.
Just as Goldwaters campaign was the culmination of a decades worth of movement creating from NR to the YFA, both farm teams for future policy thinkers and elected policy makers, so has Bernie’s campaign been the culmination of a decades worth of liberal revolt against the centrist establishment. Warren’s election, Occupy, Move On, Kos, Upworthy, and Jacobin are just some of the examples of the existing fruits of this effort.
Bernie’s campaign like Goldwater’s or Paul’s will end without a nomination or election of a radical President. But it will make these views mainstream enough that they become part of a future government. It is likely Sanders will have significant influence on who Clinton picks for her cabinet, for her Vice President, and on her platform. She should at least adopt $15/hr minimum wage which all her supporters on this site already back and an even more business friendly Democrat like Cuomo’s passed in New York State. Let’s stop
arguing past each other and appreciate the impact this campaign will have on future generations even when it fails to elect its candidate to the White House. His lack of preparedness and frankly interest in being President is part of the reason it was never going to happen, and that was never the point.
Barry Goldwater arguably created what became the Reagan revolution. In so doing, the GOP lost a landslide in the 1964 election. The then-radical ideas of Barry Goldwater did not become politically significant until the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan — sixteen years later.
A LOT happened during those sixteen years — civil rights legislation, the Vietnam war, “the sixties”, Woodstock, the Beatles, Watergate, the first Arab oil embargo, the collapse of our puppet regime in Iran and the subsequent hostage crisis, and more. None of those threatened the existence of the US or of the political order of the US (although the Arab oil embargo was the first salvo of what has become the anti-US Jihad). All of those had a great deal to do with ascendancy of the intellectually bankrupt ideology of the GOP and the ascendancy of the GE pitch-man who shilled them to the public.
Sixteen years sounds like about the right timeframe to accomplish the similarly radical restructuring of the economy that Mr. Sanders advocates and that many of us (including yours truly) support. If the “Goldwater model” is relevant, that means these radical proposals bear fruit in 2032.
I hope I’m alive and sentient enough to vote in 2032 (I’ll be 80 then). My question is what happens to America in the meantime.
One note – The #Fightfor15 movement I think is one example of the speed at which things can move now. The power and changes brought by that fight have been unbelievable and are only accelerating.
I think I view this year likes James does. The message is right and its time is now. The messenger is wrong. Unfortunately, Clinton seems wholly incapable of carrying the message (like the unbelievably tone deaf arguments this week against Sanders not being a good Democrat). We don’t know what her nomination and potential Presidency will do, but the current stance of many Democrats that people should “grow up and get with the program” is exactly the wrong approach (and could be dangerously wrong) at this time.
And isn’t that the best quality for a position of power?