(ANTIMEDIA) Fifty-six percent of voters dislike Hillary Clinton, but that hasn’t stopped establishment figures from aligning behind her. From President Barack Obama and Sen. Harry Reid to Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Clinton has enjoyed the support of powerful members of the Democratic party, as well as hegemonic industries and the media.
While this is predictable, more unexpected is the recent support ‘progressive,’ anti-bank lawmaker Elizabeth Warren threw Clinton’s way earlier this month. That’s right. The progressive darling of the Democratic party is supporting Clinton, who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech to Goldman Sachs — the same Clinton who has taken millions of dollars from big banks.
“I’m here today, because I’m with her, yes her,” Warren said while campaigning with Hillary in Cincinnati, NPR reported.
Senator Elizabeth Warren endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.#Maddow https://t.co/jYz1y2WNW4
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) June 10, 2016
However, her stance may leave some wondering how a senator known for railing against big banks and establishment abuses of power came to outspokenly support a candidate who represents these very ills.
Many Bernie Sanders enthusiasts expected — or at least sought — support for the Vermont senator from Elizabeth Warren, considering the anti-big bank rhetoric they often both display seemed to indicate he was her only option. Ironically, a post from the Facebook page, Ready for Warren to Endorse Bernie 2016, asked in January:
“Rest assured, Warren won’t endorse Clinton, but will she endorse Bernie?”
Elizabeth Warren’s decision to back Clinton, instead, runs in stark contrast to her purported progressive ideals. One of Clinton’s biggest blocks of support comes from millionaires, which is nowhere near representative of the “progressive” demographic Warren often inspires. In fact, it’s antithetical to it.
Further, the actual policy positions Clinton’s campaign espouses violate progressive principle. Though Warren has long opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal — which has been wholly condemned across the spectrum, by both progressives and libertarians — she has now thrown her support behind Clinton, who championed the deal early on. Clinton called it “ground-breaking,” “exciting,” and “innovative.” Once the political climate revealed TPP was unpopular, she backtracked — but support for the anti-free trade, pro-corporatist global policy has remained in the Democratic party’s platform thanks to the efforts of pro-Clinton members of the platform drafting committee.
By aligning with Clinton, Elizabeth Warren has also, by default, endorsed perpetual war and nation-building, the prison-industrial complex, and in general, a lying, manipulative candidate who has shown her main priority is power, not people.
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However, Elizabeth Warren’s support for Clinton may not be as shocking as it appears. Though Warren has enjoyed the admiration — and often deification — of liberals seeking a politician with true principle, even she has supported corrupt bankers. Warren was an advocate of the Import Export Bank, yet another bank known for its corruption. As USA Today noted in 2014:
“In principle, the bank is supposed to help all exporters — big and small — equally. In practice, over 75 percent of its activities have supported a handful of large corporations. In 2013, as in previous years, Boeing got 30 percent — or $8.3 billion — of its total financial assistance — earning the bank the nickname of ‘Boeing’s Bank.’”
But Warren supported it:
“Her office recently released a statement noting not that the bank is a hotbed of corruption (given that four of its employees were recently removed for allegedly accepting bribes and kickbacks), misgovernance (the bank has numerous times doled out financial assistance to companies filing fraudulent applications) and a taxpayer rip off whose time is up. Rather, it said that Warren ‘looks forward to reviewing the reauthorization’ of the bank because it ‘helps create American jobs and spur economic growth.’”
Though she later withdrew support for the bank, her refusal to support an audit of the Federal Reserve bank, yet another notoriously corrupt, oligarchic financial institution casts doubt on whether or not she abides by the rhetoric that has made her so popular.
Disdainful as Donald Trump may be, a statement released by his campaign aptly criticized her support for Hillary. “Warren’s campaigning for Clinton stands in stark contrast to the liberal ideals she once practiced,” his statement said. “This sad attempt at pandering to the [Bernie] Sanders wing is another example of a typical political calculation by D.C. insiders.”
Since Clinton all but secured the Democratic nomination in early June, a popular narrative has emerged: vote for Hillary because Donald is worse. Elizabeth Warren, who has had an ongoing feud with Trump, easily adapted to this angle. When she announced her support for Clinton on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show on June 9, she said, “I’m ready. I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States — and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House.”
She has continued peddling this narrative. Conveniently overlooking Clinton’s own pandering to the rich, Warren said Monday:
“When Donald Trump says ‘great,’ I ask: ‘great for who, exactly?’ When Donald says he’ll make America great, he means greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump. That’s who Donald Trump is. … And you have to watch out for him, because he’ll crush you into the dirt.”
Politicians once thought of as progressive and principled are falling in line with the Clinton narrative. For his part, Sanders has attempted to influence the Democratic party platform, though he dropped his feigned concern for military spending in a list of demands he published in the Washington Post last week. At best, perhaps lawmakers like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren believe they can wield influence by succumbing to Clinton’s steamroll forward.
But as they align behind Hillary, the ideals these so-called progressives advocate will undoubtedly be lost in the crosshairs of a Clinton campaign that has, against its best efforts to control media narratives, always shown where its loyalties lie.
“The problem is not that I don’t understand the global banking system,” Warren told the Huffington Post’s “So That Happened” podcast one year ago. “The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that’s what they don’t like about me.”
Considering her recent endorsement of Clinton, bankers may soon take a liking to her.
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