It’s been a long time since the left has found the will and the clout to do something that smacks of an ideological temper tantrum, but that’s how I feel about their successful effort to block the nomination of Antonio Weiss to be Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department.
It really does remind me of the excesses we see from the right on a daily basis, where scalps are sought without regard to specifics.
On the one hand, this strikes me as a Captain Renault-type moment, where progressives are “Shocked, shocked” that people with experience in high finance are running the nation’s finances. On the other hand, it does represent a major shot across the bow of the whole financial industry, indicating that leading members of the Democratic Party see them as illegitimate and almost as the enemy, and that they feel strongly enough about it to stand up to their own president and tell him to go pound sand.
And this was not just a tantrum on Sens. Warren and Sanders’ part, because a good part of the professional left got involved, including some of my friends and former employers.
Progressive group CREDO rallied its members against the nomination, drawing 160,000 signatures for one anti-Weiss petition sent to senators and coordinating more than 1,000 calls to the White House. Other progressive groups, including Democracy for America, also pitched in.
“President Obama did the right thing by listening to the demands of hundreds of thousands of supporters from his progressive base,” said CREDO deputy political director Murshed Zaheed. “He must fill this appointment with someone with a track record of fighting for Main Street, not Wall Street.”
I served as a strategic consultant for Democracy for America and I became friends with Murshed when he was serving in Harry Reid’s office, and later on when we closed down bars in Austin during the Netroots Nations conference there. But I wouldn’t have advised them to oppose this nomination for the simple reason that there really isn’t anything specifically objectionable about Mr. Weiss that hasn’t also been true about virtually every Treasury nominee since Alexander Hamilton ran the place. Why pick on this dude?
But, then, they picked a fight that they could win, and they did win. And they sent a message that is worth sending. Here’s how Sen. Sanders put it.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that while he has “no personal animosity toward Mr. Weiss … I am very glad he withdrew his nomination. The president needs economic advisors who do not come from Wall Street. In fact, he needs advisors prepared to stand up to Wall Street.”
Sanders doesn’t have any personal animosity towards Weiss because this wasn’t personal at all. Weiss was the victim of the left suddenly deciding to test out a principle, and he was just the unlucky card that came up out of the deck at the wrong time.
Now the White House will presumably go out and try to find a recruit to serve as the No. 3 at Treasury (on domestic finance) who has never worked in high finance. After all, that appears to be the only really essential requirement for this job now.
Meanwhile, Mr. Weiss will settle into the unconfirmed job as Secretary Lew’s counselor.
Mission accomplished?
Maybe.
But now what?