The Morning After | What Does Goldman Get For All That Money?

Only Hillary Knows For Sure, But No One’s Betting It's a Lecture on Greed.

As usual, after televised national debates and town halls, social media is all a-twitter this morning with one burning question: Who “won” last night’s Democratic debate?

Leaving aside the simple-mindedness of our collective preoccupation with framing political processes as horse races, rather than the competitions of ideas and governing philosophies that they are, at least, supposed to be, I’ll go way, way out on the elliptical limb I’m currently pedaling  —  as I one-finger jab my way through this note on my iPhone  —  and say simply this:

Ditzy Damage Control: When in doubt, shrug and make something up. Pretend everybody picks on you unfairly.

Bernie Sanders “won” because he actually answered the single most-important question put before both candidates by the debate’s moderators.

The reason I say that he won an entire debate simply by answering a single question is this: Because his answer plainly revealed the starkest stark contrast between the Senator from Vermont and the former Secretary of State in anything other than judgment, which may only impact future war and peace, perhaps. 

It's a question of integrity and potential (if not real) conflicts of interest.

And it also happens to involve an issue that’s right smack dab in the heart of his candidacy: He’s got nothing to hide. And Hillary seems to have plenty.

Hillary’s response was her typical angry campaign retort, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,”  other than trying to deflect attention away from her inability to explain why Goldman Sachs would dispense such large “speaker fees” repeatedly to the same, politically well-connected speaker. 

If Mrs. Clinton’s “fees” were meant as a gift, why didn’t Goldman Sachs offer and report it as a charitable contribution to the Clinton Family Foundation? I hear they burn through lots of money, and always have their hand out.

And if it’s not a form of charity (as it certainly does not appear to be) doesn’t Lloyd Blankfein, as CEO of a publicly traded corporation, have a fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders to expect (or extract) something in return for their $675,000?

What no one but Bernie Sanders seems to understand is this: Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, health insurers, and crony capitalists do, indeed, get something in return for keeping Hillary’s “tip jar” full: VIP treatment at the highest levels of Clinton and Clinton, Inc.  —  both now and in the future.

And influence pedaling (or the continual appearance of it, which seems as bad, particularly in this campaign, which many view as a contest for the very soul of the Democratic Party and the republic itself) raises many, many questions that Mrs. Clinton seems to prefer to answer with a wink and a nod — and an angry outburst aimed at Bernie Sanders.

And such clumsy avoidance inevitably leads to the ultimate question: Why are Wall Street investment banks and Fortune 100 firms so chummy with the Clintons? 

What does Goldman (and all the others), get for all that money?