Warren’s ascendancy, and the donor class freakout over her, have been the two biggest stories of the POTUS Democratic primary campaign thus far.
Governor Patrick’s entry into this fray today has caught quite the buzz — more than I honestly expected, and could very well mix things up.
The media is covering it, of course — and much of the left on Twitter is simultaneously having its own freakout, and rushing to cast Patrick as anyone other than the progressive that he was, stripping away all context of a legislature that McConnell’d him and forgetting that Democratic Party politics in 2006 were quite different than they are in 2019. (Patrick helped pave the way for some of those differences, FYI.)
There’s also been a rush to paint Patrick as just another desperate act of the billionaire class — but the tea leaves are saying something very different, IMO.
Here are some good questions to ask to understand the state of the primary today:
- Why is Joe Biden struggling to raise money — and has been, from the start?
- Why has Joe Biden struggled to hire top staff?
- Why do so many people in the donor class and establishment view Joe Biden as a paper tiger ready to be crushed?
- Why Deval Patrick, why now?
A hint: It’s probably all the same answer. If we were to put it on a Wheel of Fortune board, there’d be two words and I’ll give everyone a free B and O.
From that person’s POV: Warren made her Senate bones blocking his Wall Street nominees, and she wants fundamental changes the establishment, and he, can’t accept. The Zuckerberg campaign (Pete Buttigieg) is also out. Sanders is a non-starter, and zero percent of anyone else in the race has a chance.
But a candidate with real progressive achievements that could appeal to today’s party, who ran a state starting with some of the lowest job growth in the country and left office as one of the hottest job markets in the world? Someone who’s oratory skills and message discipline are among the best in the party? That sounds like someone who could be a good consensus pick, win a primary with a little help, and reform a winning general election coalition.
Anyone who thinks Patrick’s strictly running a vanity campaign should be careful. There isn’t any way he’d be running like this without some serious backing.
It’s still a long shot starting on November 14th, but some people, including one person in particular, really doesn’t want Elizabeth Warren to be President — and doesn’t think Joe Biden has the chops, either. They’re going to be motivated to help Patrick.
If Patrick gets any kind of traction and Biden continues to falter, that certain someone may just give Patrick a rather large endorsement going into NH.
The Warren wing of the party ought to be prepared for that.
Welcome back to BMG!
Fun fact: Patrick’s entry into the race means that every living former Governor of MA has run for President.
Thanks.
Re: MA Govs running for President…. almost, but Jane Swift is still very much alive š
A big welcome back from me as well!
Perhaps Christopher meant every living former ELECTED Governor of MA.
I deliberately worded it that way to see if anyone would pick up on the technicality. Yes, Jane Swift is alive, but she was never elected to be Her Excellency, the Governor. When Paul Cellucci resigned to become Ambassador to Canada per our constitutional norms she remained Her Honor, the Lt. Governor – Acting Governor.
I’d be curious why you downrated that one, Judy.
Biden has struggled to raise money since the 80s. He’s just not good at it. I’m not sure I’d ascribe it to the same thing as the others. But that inability to raise is feeding other concerns.
Re: his oratory skills and message discipline. He’s rusty.
Here’s an interesting story coming up today about Patrick. Yikes.
Maybe, and that’s probably the only way Patrick gets a top 3 finish in the first two contests. That move would probably shatter the party, but it’d probably be worth it to the people interested in never seeing a more leftist candidate win.
It’s clear Biden has received absolutely no behind-the-scenes help in this campaign raising money, etc., from that certain someone. He was left to sink or swim on his own..
If “certain someone” is President Obama I’m pretty sure he has committed to not endorsing pre-nomination.
I’ve worked for campaigns where the retired incumbent “chose not to make an endorsement.”
It’s totally weird that the entire nexus of that candidate’s support came behind us, and that helped us to win.
I don’t see anything wrong with this, BTW. It’s healthy politics. And some of it is actually organic.
But it’s also political reality.
Obama did not enthusiastically move his ‘nexus of support’ behind Biden.
I’d suggest, given how well he knows Biden, this is because he was skeptical of a Biden campaign’s chances and the capacity Biden has to do the job.
I think we’re going to see Patrick get some of that behind the scenes support now — and if Patrick builds on that support and gains ground, and Obama thinks it could go be between Patrick or Warren/Sanders, I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t enthusiastically come out for Patrick.
That’s just my tea leaves, though. Feel free to dismiss it. š
I’ve said elsewhere that I had a very similar reaction to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Patrick — I loved their campaigns, I loved their oratory, and I was disappointed in their governance.
The two are friends from way back — both from struggling families in Chicago, both graduates of Harvard Law.
I expect Elizabeth Warren to do fine in a primary battle against Mr. Patrick. I don’t think Ms. Warren expected a primary-season endorsement from Mr. Obama, and I don’t think Mr. Obama’s endorsement will make much difference in Mr. Patrick’s campaign other than to perhaps improve his campaign financing. Mr. Obama is an astute politician, and I think an endorsement of any candidate before the nomination will be correctly viewed as a blunder.
I think that an endorsement from Mr. Obama will, on the other hand, be the death knell of the already foundering Joe Biden campaign.
I expect the final stages of the primary to be between Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Buttigieg, and perhaps Mr. Patrick. I don’t expect either of the two billionaires — Mr. Bloomberg or Mr. Steyer — do go much further.
I continue to prefer Ms. Warren.
Perfect – thanks
I appreciate these very kind words.
much of the left on Twitter is simultaneously having its own freakout, and rushing to cast Patrick as anyone other than the progressive that he was.
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/06/25/bernard-sigh-sentencing-deval-patrick-massachusetts/
“Progressive”
I have a lot of family in ābattlegroundā states, and it seems to me that the primary is starting to seem like a contest to be President of the Oberlin student council, rather than POTUS.
Biden would be great, except that it has been clear for awhile that he has lost the hop on his fastball. Patrick and also the Mayor Pete surge, and renewed interest in Klobuchar are coming from that.
@a contest to be President of the Oberlin student council:
We can only choose from the candidates that run.
I wonder which candidates you think are strong, if any. I also wonder how your family in the battleground states compare these candidates to Mr. Trump.
As we speak, Donald Trump is live-tweeting direct threats and attacks on the former Ukrainian ambassador. Is your family (or yourself) ok with a President who behaves like a mob boss while advancing the agenda of Vladimir Putin?
It seems to me that the very heart and soul of America is under attack right now. What do you think happens to America ā including the battleground states ā if Donald Trump and the Trumpists remain in power?
I don’t know anyone who is “okay” with that. But the issue is that Trump’s awfulness doesn’t necessarily translate into popularity for the Dem nominee, whether that nominee be from the moderate wing or the left wing of the Dems.
I would also say that a great deal of the discussions and arguments among the candidates in this primary are probably healthy long-term, but aren’t particularly meaningful in 2020. MFA, no matter how detailed the plan or how catchy the slogan, absent a significant and long-term shift in both houses of the Congress, and within the Dem caucus itself. I’m not sure that the proposal is as popular as people seem to believe among people who actually vote in the general in PA, OH, MI, and WI. I guess we shall see.
The Dem response to the Republican shift to the hard right has been a pretty hard shift to the left. While this makes sense for simple “balance,” especially after traditional political compromise failed Obama, it leaves a huge swath of the electorate politically homeless. That’s just a recipe for even more volatility from, election to election.
As for 2020, I expect that volatility to make it hard to predict. I also think that assylum/immigration is a MUCH bigger issue there than it is here, which does not cause me to feel much in the way of optimism.
I appreciate your thoughtful response, and I agree with much of it.
I feel that Donald Trump and his thugs are literal criminals who must be removed from office as soon as possible ā hopefully before their calls for retribution against these various witnesses are carried out.
I therefore hope that the 2020 election will be about who is the best candidate ā regardless of who the GOP nominee is.
I also agree with you that MFA is unlikely to happen in 2020. I think the value of the MFA discussion is to provide insight into how each candidate views the question and the approach each candidate takes towards difficult questions like this.
I therefore think that any change to our health care system that actually happens will likely be very different from the various proposals being debated today. I think that each candidate is likely to approach that change in a way similar to their approach to MFA today. Some candidates appeal to the past. Some candidates offer platitudes that I find deceptive. I like Elizabeth Warren because she has sincerely engaged the issue and offered her best effort about how to address it.
I am sorry to say that I agree with you that asylum/immigration has become an important issue in that region. I see this as evidence of how much damage the hate, prejudice, and lies of Donald Trump and his Collaborators have already done. I think scapegoating and bigotry is the issue, not immigration policy.
In my view, the plight of the “politically homeless” is the direct result of their willingness to allow the GOP to be hijacked by the extreme right. Democrats did not create the Tea Party nor did Democrats nominate Donald Trump. Democrats did not spend the entire eight years of the prior administration attempting to personally destroy the elected president.
My sense is that the policy proposals of Elizabeth Warren are very different from those Richard Nixon or Dwight Eisenhower. Her wealth tax is, of course, new ā the extreme wealth concentration that it addresses is equally new. In fact, the last time America faced such a stark gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us was just before and during the Great Depression. I’m not sure any of the Democratic candidates ā with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders ā is more “leftist” than FDR was in his day.
I also note that today’s income tax that we take for granted as a normal and accepted part of everyday life was a radical and threatening “revolutionary” idea when FDR proposed it, as was today’s Social Security system.
I think America faces an existential challenge in the 2020 election. I think we need a president who is more like FDR and less like any other president we’ve had since FDR. We have deep and fundamental issues to address. We have pervasive suffering ā both economic and personal. We have a current administration and Senate majority whose actions are indistinguishable from those of Russian assets.
I think we need a candidate who is able to rise to these dramatic challenges. Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate I see who meets that criteria.
I do think she is likely the nominee, but I don’t think she will win– a little like how I think that the Tories are about to win a majority in UK, notwithstanding their forthright vandalism to the well being of the people that live in UK– because Corbyn. Thankfully, EW is not Corbyn, and carries none of his considerable ugly baggage, but the dynamic could prove similar.
Seems to me that a bigger issue is solving the widening gap between the wings of the Democrats. In 2016, they nominated a moderate, and lost. Moderates blamed the left wing, and the left wing blamed the moderates. Now, it seems that they will nominate a left-wing candidate. If she loses, and the left blame the moderates, and vice versa, then I would be REALLY gloomy.
If the Bernie voters continue to hate Clinton more than they do Trump, and vice versa, we are effed. I have been disappointed in the tone of the primary thus far in this regard (not the tone of the candidates, but the tone of the coverage of the campaign by supporters and media that exist in one of the camps).
Nate Cohn put it well in a recent post, her plans, especially her healthcare plan, are examples of ātechnocratic populismā. Itās something that wins the day over on Vox but alienates the Bernie and Obama/Trump voter alike with its complexity and cost while also alienating the establishment Democrats. I have not soured on her as a person or as a potential president, but I am starting to feel like she cannot beat Donald Trump and nobody in this primary can beat her.
@technocratic populism:
I think that phrase and meme is rubbish.
I think there is, sadly, a growing number of people who are unwilling and./or unable to follow a logical chain more than two steps and are similarly unable/and or unwilling to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. I don’t know what this has to do with “populism” unless populism is being used as a synonym for pure ignorance.
I certainly agree that Donald Trump’s supporters are like this. I reject the meme that a significant number of supporters of Barack Obama switched to Donald Trump.
The “complexity” that too many Bernie Sanders voters reject is an insistence that there are objective standards for correct and incorrect, better and worse, more and less likely to succeed, and so on.
The objection of Wall Street to Elizabeth Warren has nothing to do with complexity, populism, or anything similar. They oppose her because they correctly see that she is a real threat to their unrestrained acquisition of wealth. I think Wall Street didn’t worry about Ms. Warren so long as their chosen pawn — Joe Biden — led the field.
I think the collapse of Joe Biden is causing the rise of Elizabeth Warren, and I think that is absolutely terrifying to Wall Street.
If the American electorate truly does refuse to face the facts of just how reprehensible Donald Trump and his Collaborators are for America and for themselves, then they deserve to live in the resulting dystopia.
Uprated with the caveat that calling Joe Biden Wall Street’s pawn is neither accurate nor necessary.
Itās both Christopher.
Supporting businesses in one’s own state does not make one a pawn. It’s both good politics and at least part of what one is supposed to do IMO. I long ago stipulated that Biden did this, but fully expect that from a DE Senator. It is not an appropriate line of attack and should not be presumed to be his issue profile once he represents the whole country.
@not appropriate:
I think it’s perfectly appropriate.
Mr. Biden is running for an office that demands that he represent all of us, not just the privileged denizens of Delaware boardrooms and executive suites. Mr. Biden is running at a time when unrestrained wealth concentration is arguably our single most pressing social, economic, and political issue. The boardrooms and executive suites that Mr. Biden has courted his entire life are at the center of that wealth concentration.
Mr. Biden is not just representing businesses in his own state ā Delaware is not just any old state when it comes to business. Delaware has been wooing companies for its entire history, and Joe Biden enthusiastically embraced that role.
What prior Democratic presidents or candidates have a similar record of corporate representation? I note that zero Presidents were born in Delaware (Joe Biden was born in PA). I can’t remember any President who has been a Senator, Representative, or Governor of Delaware.
A requirement of being a successful elected official in Delaware is an affinity for and loyalty to the corporate culture that is so dominant in that state. No other state is comparable.
You haven’t offered any reason other than your own feeling about why it is “inappropriate” to talk about Mr. Biden’s long history with Delaware corporations.
You just made exactly my argument in your penultimate paragraph! It IS practically a requirement for a DE politician to have such affinity, but as you say toward the beginning he is now running for national office. This is exactly why I think we should ask him about his views in THIS context rather than assume he will carry forward the same views as he had when he was representing DE. Unless, of course, you are saying we should just hang a sign on the White House (or at least outside the Dem convention) saying, “Delaware elected officials need not apply…”
Not everyone in Delaware sides with the credit card companies against working people. One of the GOPs favorite Democratic Senators is now getting a viable progressive primary challenger.
@Requirements for Delaware senator:
We agree that Joe Biden has enthusiastically and effectively represented his corporate constituents ā especially the credit card and lending industry.
We differ in how we interpret that. I do, in fact, agree with you about hanging out a virtual sign saying that elected officials from Delaware need not apply. We Democrats have always followed that policy, for reasons that I agree with and that I’ve enumerated above.
Each of us has values and priorities that drive our decision making and choices. Those values and priorities transcend issues, time, and place. While they do evolve and change, they do so slowly and often painfully.
In my view, the values and priorities of being an effective governor or national elected official from Delaware for more than a term or two are inconsistent with the values and priorities of being a Democrat in the 21st century.
I can’t imagine myself voting for a man or woman who so enthusiastically engineered and celebrated the economic plundering of millions of working- and middle-class Americans. That career-long stance (the 2005 legislation was neither his first nor his last such behavior) reflects personal values and priorities that are no different in 2019 than they were in 2005.
In short, I agree with your summary of the difference between us regarding Mr. Biden. I agree that he effectively represented his Delaware constituents, and I agree with your summary of my position regarding Democratic presidential candidates from Delaware in general.
I cannot overstate how strongly I disagree with the idea that certain states are automatically disqualified, or that we should not look at context of one’s own state interests when judging an elected officials views. Biden is not currently in the Senate, so he is completely free to say what his current views are and how they will inform his presidential agenda without fearing repercussions from Delaware.
@Cannot overstate:
And I cannot overstate how strongly I disagree with the idea that any person with values and priorities aligned with today’s Democratic Party can so vigorously strive to destroy regular Americans one day and allegedly work on their behalf the next.
I care far more about Mr. Biden’s values and priorities than his “his current views are” whether or not he “fears repercussions from Delaware”. I don’t want another President who so eagerly throws me and other working-class and middle-class Americans under the economic bus ā no matter what excuses he offers for doing so.
A man or woman who is committed to the values and priorities I support would not have spent decades advocating the positions Mr. Biden advocated. Ms. Warren didn’t do that. Mr. Sanders didn’t do that (as a Representive, he voted “No” on the House counterpart in both 2001 and 2005). None of the other current candidates did that.
Elizabeth Warren observed during the 2016 campaign — long before she was a presidential candidate — that:
Joe Biden’s record as Senator reflects his values and priorities.
Has Mr. Biden recanted those votes since then?
I assume you understand what it means to represent? It’s not like these are big conscious-wrenching items. I don’t see these as values so much as just doing what’s in the best interest of the state. Not everything is a matter of conscience the way say, civil rights might be. Even Elizabeth Warren supported the medical devise industry because of their presence in MA. People with records as long as Biden’s are going to have votes that not everyone likes and may not age well, but for crying out loud CONTEXT matters. I wouldn’t ask him to recant those votes. They may very well have been the right ones for the time and for the political environment in which he was operating.
It has been a long time since I have seen something so offensive as Christopher’s two opening and his final lines in his last post:
1) “I assume you understand what it means to represent;” and
2) “Itās not like these are big conscious-wrenching items.;” and
3) “the right policies at the right times.”
WTF??? Clearly you have no idea what it means to “represent” with its attendant conflicts. I suggest the standard Edmund Burke definition followed by reading the Federalist Papers (again, I hope). Followed by
And on point #2, yes it is a BIG FUCKIN” DEAL, as Biden once said. Delaware chooses to destroy the tax and regulatory systems of other states and nations so it can reap benefits from companies that are not held liable when they poison other states or cheat them of taxes.
Finally, point #3. Sure, Biden’s policies were the right ones at the right times if you thought it was a good idea to sacrifice the USA in favor of a bunch of people who do not even live in DE.. So why did he not clean up his shit when he became VP? And how is your third point any better than Moscow Mitch saying that our children and grandchildren should pay our federal debts.?
Grrr.
@Itās not like these are big conscious-wrenching items:
Joe Biden championed an effort to make it impossible for working- and middle-class people to declare bankruptcy. This directly benefited MBNA — among the most predatory of the credit card issuers. MBNA consciously targeted high-risk borrowers, and made its profits by charging exorbitant fees on the inevitable late payments.
It was MBNA who pioneered the practice of imposing high interest rates on borrowers who were late or who defaulted on some other obligation. MBNA issued cards at lower rates to high risk borrowers, then changed those to exorbitant rates when those borrowers deferred other obligations in order to preserve their low MBNA rates. In any other market, it is called “bait-and-switch”.
It was also MBNA who strongly lobbied congress to make it impossible for their victims to declare bankruptcy after being plundered by MBNA.
That most certainly IS a moral issue.
It doesn’t stop there. MBNA was the first employer of Hunter Biden on his graduation from college.
Context certainly does matter. There is no context that excuses Joe Biden’s role in all this, and he most certainly should recant it.
You and I have very different ideas of representation and values. Let’s say for the sake of argument that money plays no role in politics. If I were a Senator from Delaware I would almost feel obligated to represent an industry that was such a huge presence in my state. They probably are responsible for a good chunk of the state’s economy and their well-being is closely tied to the states. I might be secretly glad that other Senators from other states with populations that struggle vote differently, but that is why we represent by states and districts. I vote for my state and you vote for yours. To me values that brook no compromise are those things I go full Edmund Burke, heck with my constituents because I otherwise would not be able to sleep at night. I’m sorry, but financial stuff just generally does not fall into that category for me. I’m sorry to see that you too have drawn Hunter into this.
@Drawing Hunter [Biden] into this:
I didn’t draw anybody into this. I’ve said from the very beginning of all this that Hunter Biden’s long history of selling his closeness to his father at a minimum created the appearance of corruption. Joe and Hunter Biden put this on the table, not me. Joe Biden was called “D-MNBA” more than a decade ago. I’m just the messenger, please don’t attack me for citing actual and relevant facts.
Occam’s Razor alone argues against your long series of assumptions about secret feelings and secret motivations.
I don’t think secret feelings, secret values, and secret priorities are a sound basis for choosing a President ā especially when cited to explain a long history of public statements, public votes, and public choices.
@financial stuff just generally does not fall into that category for me:
Really? So you don’t think there’s any sort of moral issue involved when major companies intentionally target desperate borrowers in order to plunder them?
A significant contributor to the Great Recession was the similar victimization of vulnerable homeowners by subprime lenders. Here’s how the scheme worked:
1. A predatory lender identified a neighborhood with equity values likely to increase
2. The lender selected homeowners in that neighborhood who were suffering economically.
3. The lender sold them variable rate second mortgages that the lender knew the homeowner could not afford ā for example, instruments with initial periods of interest-only payments, or even payments that did not even cover the accumulated interest, along with a balloon payment.
4. The lender suddenly demanded full loan payments, knowing full well that the lender could not pay.
5. The lender foreclosed on the property in order to immediately resell it at market value.
This is essentially the same racket that MBNA invented for plundering college students. MBNA needed the government to rewrite the bankruptcy regulations because the business model pioneered by MBNA was being limited by the ability of its victims to declare bankruptcy.
That problem had a straightforward solution ā enlist the aid of public officials like Joe Biden to rewrite the bankruptcy regulations so that its victims could not so easily escape its aggressive collection agencies.
You don’t think corporate practices like this are immoral? You don’t think the public officials who knowingly encouraged this were immoral? If that’s really the case, then I encourage you to reexamine your moral framework.
The predatory lenders did not put a gun to the head and force signatures. People contributed to their own demise because they wanted to live above their means. Maybe they learned their lessons.
The same get rich quick mentality is being used by most states now to fuel their budgets through state lotteries. And the Dems in Mass enthusiastically supported casinos to get even more money from the suckers than the lottery was getting. (I enjoy both the lottery and casinos, but always expect to lose.)
Florida is expected to implement a financial literacy course in their high schools. It is expected to teach mortgages, credit card debt and credit scores, balancing checking accounts and the lottery is a losing proposition. It should be required in all high schools.
Yes and no. There is also the matter of people reasonably thinking they could afford it at the time they signed, but economic circumstances changed. The lendees had to adapt, but the lenders did not.
Elizabeth Warren totally disproved that in her first book. It’s the reason she became a progressive Democrat in the first place. My first boss required us all to read that. Also 60% of our caseload came from medical bankruptcies which are down considerably thanks to Obamacare and won’t exist under single payer which Joe Biden continues to oppose.
It’s time to put an end to this notion that it’s people “living above their means” that is the problem, especially when we have a national minimum wage that can’t support an individual, much less a family, no health care as a right, and an economic model that transfers the bulk of our produced wealth to the .01%.
People go to predatory lenders because that it all they have left and it’s all part of the rigged system to keep us as virtual wage slaves to the .01%.
@The predatory lenders did not put a gun to the head and force signatures:
I apparently have a different standard of morality and responsibility than you.
There is well-established documentary evidence that MBNA not only knew but intentionally designed the product it sold newly-graduating men and women so that MBNA would earn top-of-market interest fees shortly after the introductory period. We know that MBNA hid that intent and information from those individuals. We know that MBNA — along with the rest of the industry — lobbied strongly and successfully to remove the usury caps that limited the top interest rate to an 18% annual rate. As a result, “top of market” rates immediately went from 18% to as high as 36%.
If a store offers you a “free” product knowing that the store will collect substantial revenue from your use of that product after a few short weeks, and hides that behavior from you, the store also doesn’t hold a gun to your head. Instead, it simply lies to you.
That’s what MBNA did. I think that’s immoral. You apparently don’t.
Yes, it was widespread fraud.
The people buying weren’t trying to live beyond their means, they were tricked into thinking what they were agreeing to was well within their means.
Do you buy or lease your cars? When I needed a reliable commuting car I bought and drove a Corolla. A friend came into work and for three years I heard how I could be driving an Avalon for the same payment. Then his lease was up.
Financial ignorance is rampant. It needs to be addressed in our school systems. If you’re a college graduate and can’t understand contracts you sign you should demand your money back
I do not disagree but its the credit companies themselves that oppose actual financial education. The credit counseling courses they force bankruptcy filiers to take basically advise them to take out credit cards as soon as they are eligible to ‘restore their credit’. AKA get back in the hole again. Our whole credit scoring system is immoral and totally backward compared to how Europe calculates it. It encourages taking on debt and discourages savings.
We seem to have built an entire consumer culture around living beyond our means.
@living beyond our means:
We have built an entire economy where an ENORMOUS number of men and women ā especially young men and women ā CANNOT live within their means.
Hundreds of millions of Americans are literally one paycheck away from poverty (more than 50%, according to most data sources).
When men and women cannot feed themselves or their children, cannot provide food and shelter, cannot provide health care for themselves or their children when they have even minor health issues, they are deservedly desperate.
Desperate people jump at ANY option that lets them get through the next day, next week, or next month.
In that deep water where at least tens of millions of men, women, and children are drowning in their economic pain swim sharks. Predators who have invented ways to plunder those drowning people.
Bank of America and similar banks do it by imposing automatic “over-draft protection” arrangements, enormous fees for those same overdrafts, enormous fees for late payments on those over-draft accounts and so on. Late payments on over-draft accounts at interest rates that were labelled “usurious” when we still had consumer protections ā rates higher than they were doing the periods of runaway inflation.
A major contributor to the Great Recession of 2008 was another breed of sharks, predatory lenders (including Bank of America) who intentionally pushed second mortgages on desperate and vulnerable people (especially people of color) with the explicit intent of taking their homes in anticipated foreclosures and reselling those “distressed properties” at great profit to themselves.,
Another breed of shark were the companies like MBNA had lured those victims into credit arrangements MBNA knew they couldn’t afford, so that MBNA could profit by collecting huge fees and interest rates ā similar to the plundering BoA.
As the water of this sea of tears grew red with the blood of the victims being chewed up by these sharks, the sharks grew impatient by the fact that many of the victims were economically dying. They were declaring bankruptcy. So the sharks redoubled their efforts to rewrite those bankruptcy laws so that they could suck even more blood from their already dying victims.
Your contention that this was or is about “people living beyond their means” epitomizes blaming the victim. NOBODY chooses bankruptcy. Most of those who are drowning in debt have no other choice.
Your preferred candidate led the charge to do the bidding of those sharks. Those sharks were, after all, his constituents. Of course, so were the drowning victims of those sharks, but those drowning victims don’t make campaign contributions. Those victims didn’t hire his son.
Joe Biden dedicated his political career to advancing the interests of the sharks at the expense of their victims. No number of endorsements or campaign appearances will change that.
A Democratic Party dedicated to working class and middle class men and women has many choices for our nominee that spent their careers working to save the drowning victims rather than helping the sharks.
Joe Biden is struggling in the polls because millions of Democrats recognize that.
You greatly misinterpreted something. I’m not blaming the victim at all. I am saying we’ve made it so we almost have to go into debt to live the life we expect. I for one try very hard not to. The only debt I really have is a graduate student loan which is actually less than I know a lot of people have. I do not have any credit cards, but by limiting myself to spending only cash on hand I have made a lot of sacrifices compared to what I sometimes feel society expects me to have.
Joe Biden was one Senator with a solidly Dem voting record, so I just wish we’d stop pinning this whole thing on him.
@you greatly misinterpreted something:
Perhaps. Here’s what I responded to:
In your last comment, it sounds as though you agree with me that the issue is that we have sucked so much wealth out of our consumer economy that it is not possible for most people to live within their means.
I also agree with you that Mr. Biden has a solid Democratic voting record. I think some of us here at BMG see that as a problem with the Democratic Party rather than an asset of Joe Biden.
I also agree with you that Joe Biden did not single-handedly bring all this about.,
I hope you’ll agree with me that Joe Biden is the ONLY candidate on tonight’s debate stage that advocated and then voted for the 2005 bankruptcy bill that dramatically worsened the the already grave situation.
We are discussing this issue because you seem to be making the claim that it isn’t a moral issue and isn’t even particularly important.
I argue that we are talking about wealth concentration and whether our nominee should be working to increase or decrease that wealth concentration.
I think that’s the most important issue of the 2020 campaign. Joe Biden has based his entire campaign about returning to the status quo before Mr. Trump’s election.
That means Mr. Biden intends to allow wealth concentration to continue to increase ā because THAT is what a status quo approach will do.
I mourn rather than celebrate that the line of mine you quoted seems to be true. The market has set prices for things like college tuition and vehicles such that most people can only afford them if they take on debt. (I have insisted on not doing that for my cars, which greatly limits my choices.) Even for everyday purchases our society tells us just put it on the credit card. Of course the market only works that way because we (abstract and collectively, again not blaming anyone) let it. If there were a mass reluctance to pay for things that way certain prices would fall to earth pretty quickly I suspect.
I do think this is a more important, or at least more obviously important issue, now than it was in 2005, but I think you misconstrue Biden’s nostalgia for the pre-Trump status quo. He’s not saying that the exact policies he supported in previous decades are the right ones going forward without any changes. I think he wants to return, as do I and I believe many Americans, to a time when a President did not disparage his fellow Americans or blow our foreign policy to hell with every tweet; a time when our allies and adversaries respected and knew what to expect from the United States; when the President’s party did not quite so much imitate a cult of personality that could not be reasoned with; when overt expressions of white supremacy were relegated to the margins; when a President did not use the office to enrich himself. Granted, I think these things would likely occur with any Democrat, but I just wanted to reconsider Biden’s intent specifically. I think there’s something to be said for just wanting to calm things down a bit.
Some advice, you will need a credit card if you travel and rent a car. Just pay the balance right away and you will be fine. Credit can be a useful tool but just like any tool you have to learn how to use it.
I was lucky and learned about credit when I was a paperboy at 12. I collected from my customers on Thurs. and paid for my 75 papers on Sat. The newspaper brought me the papers to deliver and expected full payment every week. Sometimes my customers couldn’t pay on Thurs. and I extended them credit for the week. One guy was gone often but when he came back he paid me and tipped very well. If he hadn’t I would have dropped him. Some people screwed me and moved owing me money.
It was an invaluable lesson in economics and human nature. These lessons aren’t available to kids nowadays, we have extended a protective bubble with helicopter parenting. At least have schools teach the terminology, balloon payment, variable rates, etc.
Well, if you do in fact need credit for renting a car this is exactly what I’m talking about. IMO you should never HAVE to use credit. We rely on that score too much too. As for your “valuable lessons” I say that never should be allowed to happen. Regarding your paper route your customers should be paid up or dropped, but never leave a kid holding the bag. That should not have been legal.
@Just pay the balance right away and you will be fine.:
Did you attempt to do this after 2005?
Our economy is structured to make this difficult or impossible today. There is simply NO wealth in circulation. The combined net worth of the three wealthiest people in the US exceeds the combined net worth of the bottom HALF of the entire population.
A consumer economy cannot survive this wealth starvation. As you observe, it is not possible to rent a car without a credit card. It is difficult or impossible to buy or lease a car without a credit card. For a great many Americans, it is not possible to get even a two-year degree without taking on enormous student debt.
The economic suffering of young people today has nothing to do with helicopter parenting. They suffer because there are no jobs for them. There are no starter homes for them to buy. For a great many of them, there is no way for them to attend even a two-year college.
For the first time in American history, the economic prospects of young people are far worse than that of their grandparents. The Americans most at risk of economic disaster today are babies under 24 months old.
You are attempting to blame the victims of more than three decades of plundering at the hands of the very wealthy for their resulting economic hardship.
@Did you buy or lease cars:
Your example is irrelevant to what MBNA did.
Your auto lease did not include a provision that said your monthly payment would double if you were late on a payment to department store credit card. Neither did the agreement signed by MBNA victims. Yet that is exactly what MBNA not only did but designed business around.
We are not talking about financial ignorance. We are talking about fraud. Bait and switch is not stopped by reading contracts more carefully. It is stopped by making the practice illegal.
I agree there are some cases of abuse and outright fraud. Bernie Madoff was successful because people are greedy. But don’t you also find a lack of basic understanding, especially among the under 30 set?
I’m not saying I like it, but it does not fall into lose sleep category that, say, voting against marriage equality just because that’s what my constituents want, would. I don’t believe I attacked you; just disagreed. Plus I still think we should ask him how he feels NOW and what he would do as President on these matters rather than hang his record like an albatross around his neck.
I had a lot of clients lose sleep, get depression, turn to gambling, and one even consider suicide because of the havoc these companies caused and the power they exerted over their lives.
Facts are facts. Warren as a Senator has tried making it easier for consumers to fight the credit bureaus, Biden as a Senator made it harder to fight the credit bureaus.
How many jobs have you had? IIRC you’re only about 30 and I think you have taught, been on staff for a new party, and worked for the State Dept., inter alia. This the first I remember you mentioning a job that would have involved clients.
I still think there’s a lot to be said for context and a lot of the Biden record looks worse post 2008-2009 than it would have when he was in the Senate. Plus there’s still the Delaware angle. Biden’s voting record puts him in the mainstream of the party at least when he had a voting record, and his “On the Issues” profile makes him left-liberal, including some specific examples progressives should like vis-Ć -vis corporations. I favor what Warren has done to, but what I’m pushing back on is this attempt to make a DINO out of Biden.
A lot! I’m a millennial. Not counting those internships at the State Dept or Mayor of Chicago, it’s been close to 12 jobs.
6 years as a paralegal at two different law firms (one a bankruptcy law firm) in Chicago supplemented by 2 different ACT tutoring jobs in the suburbs. 3 campaign jobs in 2016. 5 temp jobs in 2017. Then student teaching in 2017 and now a full time teacher since 2018.
In all honesty 2016 was a quarter life crisis in retrospect. Had to get out of Chicago and the legal field and wanted desperately to get back into policy and politics. After overdosing on both, was happy to settle into teaching history.
Thankfully I plan on teaching for the rest of my career, my only regret was not doing this from the start. My district has a solid pay scale and will reimburse me for any additional education I do. Stability in a job you enjoy is very nice, and sadly, hard to come by for a lot of people my age.
A good friend is still doing the campaign work and I honestly don’t know how he does it at my age. He got hired by Warren’s campaign and is going to couch surf the rest of the year. I couldn’t do it.
A very thoughtful post with which I take only minor disagreement. Biden’s dirty work did not benefit his constituents. It benefited the thousands of members of Corporate America, few of whom live in DE. They are the ones that evaded taxes and corporate liability in the states where they actually operate.
Sanders has simple slogans, Warren has detailed plans. I think it would behoove her to have more visible working class supporters and people of color rallying to her candidacy. I fear that what is happening in IA could happen across the country-a battle between her and Pete for the college educated white vote. Iām in that demo which is why I like both of their candidacies, but I worry as CMD does they these candidates are running for Cambridge city council seats and not the presidency.
Warren did a nice job walking back her plan and focusing on the executive action she can accomplish in the first 100 days. Thereās now a transition period until private insurance goes away. These are wise moves to the middle that show she is learning and adapting very quickly to the changing political environment. She has the most nimble campaign too. So we will see. Agree with Joel sheās our best party builder-if she can win.
Regarding Mayor Pete in Iowa now, I think I saw some tweet about how in Nov 18 2003, the leader in Iowa was Howard Dean, which is good perspective. Also I found this on Biden and the banks.
As I recall Dean collapsed in IA in favor of Kerry at the very last minute.
Dean lost to both John Kerry and John Edwards in Iowa after being at the front of the wave during the summer and fall of 2003. Polls can be useful but they are not dispositive.
Still time for, I think, two new flavors of the month before Iowa. Patrick?
Warren did a nice job walking back her plan and focusing on the executive action she can accomplish in the first 100 days
It occurred to me that, perhaps, she did “a nice job” of trolling the pundits and her opponents, attacking her prematurely as an ideologue for what most people will understand as a pragmatic position.
Not asserting this is the case, but her campaign is clever enough to do something like that.
Her incremental steps would be essentially equivalent to the final steps of her rivals, so at this point the main difference is that she aspires to something much better.
Question: Which approach is more likely to get anywhere, firmness or timidity?
Met a friend who has a long history in MA state governance, worked for, and knows Deval Patrick fairly well. His take is that the people around Patrick want him to run much more than Patrick himself does. My friend does not believe that Deval Patrick has the sine qua non you need to run for President, the vaunted “fire in the belly.”
This would not surprise me, and I think he’d have to have at least a few very big friends who’ll support him, and who’s support would mean something beyond just the donor class – ie, would resonate among primary voters – to have been willing to jump in.
I think there’s a large chance Obama is supporting him.
(This is probably still a bit of a trial balloon and could be popped, even if I’m right, but we’ll see.)
Yeah….this reeks of desperation. It’s not a bad move from the anti-Warren camp — draft an Obama-adjacent retread who might split off some of Warren’s volunteer force in Massachusetts before the New Hampshire primary. Of course, it also means people who fear 21st century progressivism might have somewhere else to go if they’re not feeling great about Biden.
True, I was very negative on Deval when I was active on this site, and I was in large part wrong. He proved better than Tom Reilly would have been, though far from the leader he could, and in this state, should have been. I still can’t imagine this is going to have any real impact. Do people in Nevada even know who Deval Patrick is?
Who we gonna dig up next? Is Evan Bayh still alive?
I agree re: the desperation. A lot of people in our party are terrified of Warren. Terrified.
But I worry that the impetus for Patrick’s bid is coming from the Obama camp. Raising this prospect now…. even if it’s just tea leaves…. makes it harder to pull off.
I think Obama could have found someone better than this. Sebelius maybe?
The Democratic establishment’s problem is that they prioritized stopping Bernie over beating Trump. For example, Biden was pushed to run, because he was the only candidate who could replace Bernie at the top of the polls. This has allowed the press to give Bernie less attention, while giving lesser-known candidates the opportunity to introduce themselves. On the other hand, Warren was helpful in that she could take support from Bernie directly. And while Warren is certainly not Wall Street’s first choice, she is seen as someone they can work with (and therefore not the nightmare scenario that Bernie represents).
The anti-Bernie strategy has been reasonably successful. But only now are people coming to the realization that the expected Trump-killer never came to the fore. This explains why we now see Patrick entering, which is likely at the urging of big movers within the party.
Yeah. A former 2-term VP who had already run for president twice only did so a third time because someone with a sharply defined ceiling was running (again). Similarly, one of the most prominent Senators in the country with a clear message ran because of that. It also snows a lot in Vermont because Bernie lives there.
I voted for Bernie in 2016, but let’s not pretend the entire political world revolves around him.
100% of the policy debates of the 2020 primary do! lol.
I can guarantee that party leaders think differently. Snuffing-out schismatic progressivism is a top priority, whether it be from a frumpy old socialist, or an Iraq War vet with moral qualms about CIA-fueled violence.
Glad to see your comment, Ryan. To add to your point about Senator Warren blocking his pro-Wall Street nominees, it is clear from books like Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men that Obama was a little too deferential to Wall Street banks. I want to note that in recent interviews (like in The Wilderness podcast), President Obama admits one of his errors was in not “building the party.” Well, there are candidates who are building the party, and one of them is Elizabeth Warren. She is doing an excellent job of communicating a message: Washington is corrupt and works well for the connected and wealthy but not for everyone else. She is developing plans that will improve the lives of the majority of Americans by taxing 2 cents on every dollar of wealth over $50 million. She started early with her grassroots campaign, and grassroots takes time to grow. She giving the Democratic Party a mission to fight for. And I am all in.
If President Obama cannot see the tremendous positive contributions of Elizabeth Warren in recent years, then he is making the same mistakes as he made before: staying too close to big money donors, too far away from the people struggling to get by, and not encouraging the activists to build a strong party at the grassroots.
I want to live in a world where youāre right.