Politico: Progressives draft staff blacklist for Clinton administration

Left-wing groups warn the Democratic nominee not to appoint Wall Street-linked Lael Brainard or Tom Nides to senior finance and economic jobs.

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

Still bruised by what they see as Barack Obama’s betrayals and worried that Hillary Clinton isn’t really one of them, progressives are preparing to move hard and quickly to force her hand if she wins the White House.

To start, progressive operatives say they’ve targeted two potential Clinton appointments — Tom Nides as chief of staff and Lael Brainard as Treasury secretary or trade representative — to lay down early markers against Clinton. Pick them, they warn, and progressives will punish her.

Nides, who was one of Clinton’s deputies at the State Department and is now back at investment bank Morgan Stanley, is “out of central casting for the Wall Street revolving door,” said one of the people involved with the discussions.

Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors whose career dates back to Bill Clinton’s administration, is seen by progressives as precisely the kind of establishment figure who wouldn’t represent the turn on trade policy that they demand, despite Clinton’s repeated insistence that she will oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“Putting Brainard in a position that would oversee anything about the administration’s trade policies would be a direct rebuke to a series of promises that Clinton and [campaign chair John] Podesta have made throughout 2016,” said another person involved in the discussions. “I don’t think that Brainard can be seen as a person that could implement in good conscience the trade views that Clinton has been talking about through this election season.”

Aides to Sen. Elizabeth Warren have been meeting regularly with Clinton’s campaign policy advisers. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are beginning to plan how they would lobby her White House on legislation. Activists are at the early stages of thinking through what community protests and digital organizing would look like to pressure a new Democratic president whom they’ve only ever grudgingly accepted.

Clinton, meanwhile, continues to take note of who is active on her behalf during the campaign, said a Democrat close to her, offering a little advice: If you want to have an impact in February, it helps to show up big in October.

Clinton acknowledges the atmosphere has shifted to make pulling to the left smarter politics, and she’s put out a detailed agenda that gets at much of what progressives are talking about. Yet some Clinton insiders also note that the ultra-progressive Democratic Party platform that activists argue should be a road map for a Clinton presidency was to them an easy but nonbinding way to get Bernie Sanders and his supporters off her back.

Many progressives, though, say they’ve moved past the debate over what’s in Clinton’s heart.

“That’s kind of the wrong question,” said Kurt Walters of the activist group Rootstrikers, which is involved with an effort to make Clinton rule out Wall Street bankers from top jobs. “Any political actor responds to incentives.”

They feel they trusted Obama too much, only to see him appoint Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers at the outset of his administration, and then spend the next eight years all too often starting from the middle in bargaining with Republicans.

“People are going into this with much more eyes wide open about how much of a movement we need to build,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change.

The early threats might be moot. Nides, though often talking to the candidate and top advisers, has told people he’s more interested in a national security or foreign policy job than what he and Clinton would have to go through to appoint him.

“He’s realistic about what the possibilities are,” said a friend. “I think he knows he’s not going to be chief of staff, and he doesn’t want it.”

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