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The first task facing John Podesta, the departing White House official who is slated to become chairman of the Clinton campaign, will be to gather together the various Democratic fund-raising groups and persuade them to coöperate. Until the Brock story broke, few people in the political world had believed that these objectives would present a major issue. One way to do that is to put together a formidable campaign apparatus and a big war chest. First, though, she will need to reinforce her defenses against the attacks that are sure to come from the left and the right. Perhaps Clinton can recapture the spirit and message she displayed in the summer and fall of 2008. After falling behind Obama in the campaign of 2007 and 2008, when she seemed to lack a defining theme, she did a pretty good job of reinventing herself as a scrappy fighter for the working stiff, even if, ultimately, it wasn’t enough to save her campaign. Hillary, too, has already shown some aptitude in this regard. That didn’t prevent him from running as an agent of change, and as someone who was willing to take on vested interests. In 2008, and, to a lesser extent, 2012, Barack Obama’s campaign received a lot of cash from Wall Street. And, although some people, myself among them, will never be wholly persuaded that he who pays the piper doesn’t call the tune, the average voter doesn’t seem to judge candidates by their financial backers. One way of seeking to answer that question is to point out that, in politics (and philanthropy, too), cultivating donors and raising a lot of money are unavoidable parts of the business.
HILLARY CLINTON SPENT MONEY TRYING TO BUILD A BARRIER HOW TO
But, at a moment when Hillary is reported to be consulting with numerous experts about how to tackle rising inequality, the articles raise anew an awkward question: How far will the Clinton family’s ties to moneyed interests complicate Hillary’s efforts to fashion a populist campaign built around the theme of defending the middle class? Outside of the political bubble, I doubt that one likely 2016 voter in twenty noticed either of these articles, or the follow-ups.
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“The HSBC records suggest Caring’s $1m donation was paid in return for former president Bill Clinton’s attendance at a lavish costume charity ball organised by Caring in St Petersburg, Russia.” One of them, Richard Caring, a British entrepreneur, “used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation,” the newspaper reported. (According to Politico, it had less than half a million dollars in the bank at the end of 2014.) The Guardian story, which was based on leaked documents from H.S.B.C., identified seven rich donors to the Clinton Foundation who had bank accounts at H.S.B.C.’s Geneva branch. The upshot of the Brock story was that Hillary’s money guys and gals are squabbling, and that Priorities USA Action, the political-action committee that spent seventy-five million dollars supporting Barack Obama, in 2012, is off to a slow start this year.
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Then, the Guardian revealed that a number of wealthy donors to the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization set up by Bill Clinton, were clients of the Swiss division of H.S.B.C., a big bank that is embroiled in a tax-avoidance scandal. First, David Brock, the conservative activist turned liberal activist, resigned from Priorities USA Action, a big money-raising group that is supporting Clinton, and accused the group of taking part in an “ orchestrated political hit job” on two other pro-Clinton groups that Brock is involved with. This week, as the Democratic National Committee was preparing to announce that Philadelphia will host the Party’s 2016 convention, Hillary Clinton’s still undeclared Presidential campaign was running into a media squall about money-two of them, actually. How far will the Clinton family’s ties to moneyed interests complicate Hillary’s efforts to fashion a populist Presidential campaign? Photograph by Ramin Talaie / Bloomberg via Getty