GATEMOUTH (1/27/10): The proof of the intellectual bankruptcy of Wall Street is their inability to learn. Rescued in the thirties from the depths of their own self-created degradation, they spent the next decade cursing the President who’d rescued them, and possibly capitalism itself, as “that man in the White House.”
What Wall Street cursed FDR for was his temerity in insisting upon setting up some rules to ensure that Wall Street’s man-made disaster would never occur again, and that the third-party victims of their depravity were allowed the basic sustenance necessary for survival. The rules Wall Street so objected to save them from disaster for more than a half century, until they were rendered obsolete by new technology and more advanced and clever forms of self-destructive avarice…
…Yes, there has always been an “enlightened” group of Wall Street Democrats, who accepted regulation and remediation, usually while trying to dilute both….
…At their best, they kept Democrats from overdosing on unworkable populist fantasies, while helping Wall Street swallow some bitter but necessary medicine. In exchange for accepting some unpleasant realities, and occasionally agreeing to some unspeakable favors, the Capitol Hill friends of the Wall Street Democrats were ensured of a continuing flow of funding.
And for all that, the Wall Street Democrats usually earned the scorn of both sides (OK, that, and a few million in bonuses).
But lately, the Wall Street Democrats seem to have abandoned this sometimes cynical, but usually useful pragmatism.
In Congress, the [personification] of Wall Street enlightenment [has] been New York’s senior US Senator, Chuck Schumer…While pretending to populism on the stump, [Schumer has] always carried Wall Street’s water in the backrooms, and [has] often been the [one] to hand Wall Street the bad news of “only this much and no more.”
Perhaps emblematic of a new trend, some Wall Street Democrats now seem intent upon killing [the] messengers and those close to [him]….
…The story is a similar one with Schumer, as well as his junior colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, who plays Madame to Schumer‘s Wayland Flowers….since assuming her seat in the Senate, Gillibrand, like any good former corporate lawyer with an Ivy League background, has realized that the financial interests of her state largely coincide with those of it’s money people, and she’s mostly acted accordingly.
Truthfully, Wall Street could not really ask for more…
…Schumer and Gillibrand are just liberal enough on issues affecting the financial sector to give them cover among their constituencies and their party, making them all the more effective in carrying that sector’s water when it really counts among Conferences that contain many members who are quite hostile to such objectives.
The problem is that …Schumer and Gillibrand all realize that Wall Street needs to swallow some new taxes and remedial remedies, but as of late, there is evidence that even the supposedly “enlightened” elements of Wall Street refuse to accept this…
…Suffice it to say that Wall Street’s support of Harold Ford’s Senate campaign, posited on the idea that Schumer and Gillibrand are insufficiently sensitive to the desires of Wall Street, legitimate and otherwise, is ingratitude of almost Brobdingnagan proportions.
It would be funny, were it not so much a product of a hothouse worldview so insulated from the cold air of reality.
It is a world of black cars, helicopters, junkets, breakfasts at the Regency and skyboxes at Giants games.
THE NEW YORK TIMES (2/4/10): Senator Charles E. Schumer has had a not-so-hot run recently… the city’s titans of finance at a recent closed-door meeting accused him of being insufficiently pro-Wall Street; one indignant fellow stood up and demanded his donation back……Wall Street’s current disaffection is intriguing, as Mr. Schumer served for 30 years as Horatio at the bridge, guarding against too many incursions against the financial industry. He artfully sidetracked an effort to tax hedge funds and pushed for repeal of legislation that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in risky investments like trading stocks or mortgage-backed securities. And he helped craft a bank-friendly bailout. In return, he has taken in more money from the securities and finance industry over the course of his career than any Democrat other than Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Of late, Mr. Schumer has put a little flannel in his pinstripe love. He favors an Obama administration proposal to tax large banks. He has spoken out about “outrageous” bank overdraft policies.
So the prevailing mood on Wall Street is of wounded innocence: Et tu, Chuck? The Partnership for New York City, a plutocratic chamber of commerce, recently met with the senior senator. “This disappointment was very high; he’s walked away from our industry and that’s unconscionable,” said a member, who nonetheless did not feel so emboldened as to want to be identified.
Mr. Schumer, by this account, took umbrage at their umbrage. Do you, he asked, really think it’s better to be rhetorically pro-Wall Street or anti-Wall Street? Be realistic. Financial institutions did much wrong, he suggested, but cautioned against getting vindictive.
“Chuck has been a champion for our financial industry and for our state,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, the partnership’s president. “But it’s a quarrel in the family with unrealizable expectations of unconditional love.”
A few, including that fellow who rumbled about desertion, talked privately of funding a challenger to Mr. Schumer. As Mr. Schumer could become Senate majority leader, and therefore the third most powerful Democrat in the nation, such militancy struck others as daft. “What are you going to do for a new king?” asked one.
Some have seized on a passive-aggressive way of torturing the senior senator. They want to finance a Democratic primary challenge by Harold E. Ford Jr., whom they happen to admire, to Senator Gillibrand, whose patron is Mr. Schumer…
And yet, and yet, if Mr. Schumer were a racehorse, you’d be hard put to find anyone willing to place a bet on his losing. Republican leaders tend to view Lawrence Kudlow, the conservative television commentator and champion of Wall Street who has talked of running, as a highly verbal and entertaining lamb to the slaughter.
And Park Avenue cannot offer a plurality to anyone.
“Let me get this straight: The public is infuriated with the banks, so the way to beat Chuck Schumer is to run a right-wing, pro-Wall Street economist against him?” said Bob Master, political director of District 1 of the Communications Workers of America.
It would be a lie to say I hate being smug, but the Times article echoing almost every point I made about Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and Wall Street came after a 1/31/10 Ben Smith piece noting, without credit, a similarity I first pointed out (in the same article dealing with Schumer) between the campaigns of Harold Ford and Reshma Saujani and was later followed by a 2/6/10 New York Post Editorials, also making the Ford/Saujani connection.
To be fair, the Times notes other issues, including the whispers of some Democrats that Schumer “plays the too-aggressive kingmaker,” especially with regard to his junior colleague, Senator Gillibrand.
I once said that if an incumbent votes right and is productive to the legislative process and/or a community asset, it is a rebutable presumption that they deserve re-nomination. Chuck Schumer goes even further; he apparently does not even consider the presumption to be rebutable–unless the incumbent is being challenged by a former member of his staff.
This attitude, along with other aspects of Schumer’s personality, have gotten under a lot of people’s skins. Lately , Kings County Democratic Leader Vito Lopez has loudly expressed his disdain for the ingratitude Schumer’s shown him for Lopez’s favor of letting Schumer give an early endorsement to Lopez’s Chief of Staff Steve Levin, when Levin was running for the City Council. Lopez is now beating the drums for Harold Ford.
But the truth is that dozens of others Democratic polls have also been hit in the head with (to borrow a term from Wall Street) Schumer’s big swinging dick. And they are lying in wait to slap him around should an opportunity ever occur.
Surely, this would seem an opportune time; a recent Marist College poll suggested that Mr. Schumer’s favorability ratings had fallen to 47 percent.
But, those who want to make Schumer miserable, including the denizens of Wall Street’s alternative reality, fail to understand where that challenge should come from if it is to deliver maximum annoyance to its target. A friend writes:
Chuck is so vulnerable to a populist anti-Wall Street primary challenger. See today's Times. But, it would take a lot of money to deliver the "voted for Iraq war, DOMA, Wall Street money, deregulation, flip-flop message. I keep buying lottery tickets—the "I'll take money from no one, serve only one term, therefore not spend my term fundraising, work only for the people" with $25 million behind it would slaughter him. Absent my hitting the lottery, any ideas about who would be crazy enough to do this?
It seems clear that there is a constituency in the Democratic primary receptive to an anti-Schumer challenge.
The first element of the anti-Schumer coalition are those who, because of the war, FISA, DOMA, same sex marriage (where Schumer’s conversion is somewhat less recent than Ford‘s, but more recent than Gillibrand’s), capital punishment and the one-way Verrazano toll, consider Schumer a real life (albeit somewhat less subdued) version of Bulworth (if one can picture Iris Weinshall in the place of Annette Bening).
The second and arguably larger element of the anti-Schumer coalition are those who don't like Schumer's looks or his voice or his big swinging dick.
As a friend once said about Al D'Amato's Schumer critique: "Bad semantics; Schumer's not a putz; he's a prick."
But who to tap this resentment?
How about lunatic “progressive” Jonathan Tasini? Tasini is currently challenging Gillibrand from the left, but the threat of a Ford victory has caused Tasini’s potential base to storm away in droves. Perhaps Tasini could be persuaded that his campaign against Gilly only makes her vulnerable to a possible Ford Wall Street/125th Street Coalition.
But I think Tasini labors under the delusion that with Gilly and Harold splitting the conservative vote, he will sail to victory. And anyway, Tasini might actually prefer Ford, who shares his opposition to Health Care Reform. Still, I think Tasini’d do better against Schumer.
But there are surely some other left firebrands out there: Former Brooklyn Assemblymen Frank Barbaro and Joe Ferris come to mind.
And surely there are legions of Schumer enemies from every decade of his career; not all of them are ideologically compatible to a left wing challenge, but surely among them is one person looking to have a good time staging a debate with themselves, Larry Kudlow (who would surely jump to cooperate) and an empty chair. Off the top of my head I can think of:
Caroline Kennedy, Mark Green, Gerry Ferraro, Liz Holtzman, Steve Solarz, Marty Connor, Eliot Spitzer, Howie Golden, Una Clarke, Susan Alter, Teddy Silverman, Adele Cohen, former Judge Jerome Cohen…
This is a parlor game as nearly as much fun as handicapping the Oscars. Should such a challenge emerge, I will likely be voting for Schumer, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be enjoying it.