Politico - In a sign of their increased determination to shape both the national debate and the future of the Democratic Party, top liberals are coalescing around a campaign to derail President Barack Obama’s nominee of a top Wall Street investment banker for a senior administration job, setting up a showdown with moderates of their own party.
The campaign against Obama’s nomination of Lazard banker Antonio Weiss to be undersecretary of Treasury for domestic finance gained more traction on Tuesday as a national progressive group announced it had gathered 100,000 signatures on a petition opposing Weiss. But the campaign is about much more than who fills the relatively obscure number three post at Treasury in the closing years of the Obama administration.
Instead, it is a proxy fight in the larger war between the progressive left, led by Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, and more centrist, Wall Street-friendly Democrats who thrived in the Bill Clinton era but now find themselves in retreat. The fight over Wall Street complicates the potential presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who represented New York in the Senate and has many supporters in financial services. The Democratic rift is in many respects a mirror image of the fight on the right between establishment Republicans who remain close to the banking industry and pine for a Jeb Bush candidacy and conservative populists who rail against the ills of Wall Street and gravitate toward Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul.
No comments:
Post a Comment