A New Word For You: "Mekhutonim"-- Who Is Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky And Why Is She Unfit For Congress 2 Decades Later?

Hoyer will do Margolies-Mezvinsky as much good next year as he did for another corrupt conservative hack, Tim Holden, last year

The campaign for the Northeast Philadelphia/Montgomery County congressional seat being vacated by Allyson Schwartz is starting to heat up. You're probably aware that Blue America has endorsed state Senator Daylin Leach, the liberal lion of the state legislature. This new video explains why we're so enthusiastic about his candidacy. He's one of 4 candidates running, a cast of characters that includes state Rep. Brendan Boyle an ambitious and virulent anti-Choice fanatic, the choice of the corrupt Philly Machine and of the forces trying to dismantle public education in Pennsylvania; physician Val Arkoosh who knows a lot about medicine and public health policy and... nothing else; and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, an increasingly loopy one-term congresswoman from 1992 whose son, a Goldman Sachs investment banker, married Chelsea Clinton.

Conventional wisdom-- relentlessly stoked by Margolies herself-- is that she was defeated in 1994 by Republican Jon Fox (who she had narrowly beaten in 1992) because of her heroic vote for Clinton's 1993 budget. She was the "deciding vote." But that isn't the full story. Margolies is a liberal on women's issues but, for a Democrat, a raging conservative on issues of economic justice. A few days ago she told the Philadelphia Daily News why she almost didn't vote for the Clinton budget. She claims President Clinton asked her "What would it take?" to get her to vote for the budget. "I said I wanted to talk about entitlements, I wanted further cuts, and I'll only be your last vote-- if you need it. And he did." Cutting entitlements and screwing working families is the kind of Democrat Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky has always been-- and that's one old dog that is definitely not learning any new tricks.

If you go to http://www.margoliesforcongress.com/ you come upon a Phildadelphia Inquirer story from June, 1994, "Social Security Curbs Proposed Marjorie Margolies-mezvinsky Is Touting Major Changes. Her GOP Foe, Jon Fox, Opposes The Plan." Voters in PA-13 should read it carefully. This is a candidate who is eager to cut Social Security and other benefits for working families. She sounds like a garden variety Republican, although the Republican that beat her in 1994 was more a defender of Social Security than she was-- and the way she disappointed the Democratic base and kept voters away from the polls is why she was really defeated that year. Her proposal to cut back on Social Security for retired Americans was even too conservative for Bill Clinton, who pointedly told her that "we do not deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly."

Calling it the first fruit of last year's conference on entitlement spending, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky announced legislation yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Social Security recipients and limit their cost-of-living adjustments.

Margolies-Mezvinsky, who is seeking re-election, said the proposals would ensure Social Security's solvency and keep her pledge to control the costs of politically sensitive entitlement programs.

Social Security officials predicted in April that the trust fund would go broke in 35 years because of demographic shifts that would leave fewer workers supporting more retirees.

Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal is a political gamble for the freshman Democrat, who is already in the doghouse with many constituents because of her 11th-hour switch last year in favor of President Clinton's budget bill and tax increases.

The current legislation, which Margolies-Mezvinsky is sponsoring with Minnesota Democrat Timothy J. Penny, would raise the retirement age to 70 by the year 2013-- beginning in 1999 and increasing the age by four months annually.

The retirement age currently ranges from 65 for those born before 1938 to 67 for those born after 1959. Those who retire earlier get reduced benefits.

The proposal would give only the bottom 20 percent of Social Security recipients the full cost-of-living adjustment, which is tied to the Consumer Price Index. Other recipients would receive a flat cost-of-living adjustment equal to that for recipients at the 20th percentile.

Margolies-Mezvinsky had made Clinton's attendance at December's entitlement conference at Bryn Mawr College a condition for her support of his budget. The budget increased taxes for affluent workers and for single Social Security recipients with incomes over $34,000 and couples with incomes over $44,000.

Although Clinton attended the conference, he said there should be only minor unspecified changes in Social Security. "We do not want to deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly," Clinton said.

White House officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Social Security is among the touchiest issues for Congress, due in part to the lobbying strength of the American Association of Retired Persons, which claims 33 million members.

"They're not opposed to this," Margolies-Mezvinsky said. "We've been working with them so that we get their input."

But Martin Corry, AARP's director of federal affairs, said he was unaware of any contact between his group and Margolies-Mezvinsky since December.

He said AARP would oppose any form of "means testing" such as Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal on cost-of-living adjustments.

"Changing the retirement age to age 70 is really premature," he added. ''There may well be changes in the retirement age, and they can be done gradually. I've seen nothing to suggest it needs to go to 70."

Republican Jon D. Fox, who will face Margolies-Mezvinsky in November, said he opposed her proposal, as well as another Democratic plan to increase payroll taxes.

Fox said he would have to study the issue further before making a proposal of his own.

"I'm going to be coming out in this campaign with proposals dealing with the protection of Social Security," Fox said in a telephone interview. "I'll be getting back to you on them."

Margolies-Mezvinsky said she did not know how the proposals would play in her largely Republican Montgomery County district.

"My feeling is it's the right thing to do. I think that what happens when you get to Washington is you see people saying to their constituents what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear."

Boyle, the other conservative in the race has been pounding her relentlessly, fearing they will split the conservative vote. He's been all too eager to point out that she's not just a little senile, she's a lot corrupt. She finally filed her financial disclosure forms last week-- from 1992 and 1994!

State Rep. Brendan Boyle, one of three opponents for Margolies in the 2014 Democratic primary election, was waiting to pounce on her financial details.

Boyle's reason: He wants to remind voters of a very messy financial situation Margolies, now the front-runner for her old seat after declaring her candidacy May 30, went through 12 years ago.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge rejected a Chapter 7 filing from Margolies in 2001 because it conflicted with financial statements she filed in 1999 and 2000 for a brief run for the U.S. Senate.

In those statements, Margolies said she and her now ex-husband, Ed Mezvinsky, held assets worth at least $1.3 million.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Diane Weiss Sigmund, in a 33-page ruling, said Margolies was "an intelligent, highly educated and sophisticated person" who handled budgetary issues in the U.S. House.

She flatly rejected claims from Margolies that, "like many women of her generation," she let her husband handle money matters.

"Her deference to her husband on financial matters, especially with knowledge that he was not managing them well, is at best puzzling, and her attempts to justify her continued ignorance of her finances as gender-related are inconsistent with her clear competency to discover the surrounding facts," the judge wrote.

Margolies on June 19 sought a 60-day extension from the U.S. House's Committee on Ethics to file her financial disclosure form.

She missed her deadline to file the form on Aug. 30. Her campaign told Clout it meant to file for a 90-day extension.

"Marjorie Margolies has been dogged for the last 20 years with questions about finances, statements of financial interests and lawsuits," Boyle spokesman Ken Snyder said yesterday. "A court even rejected Margolies' claim of bankruptcy. We hope going forward Margolies will be more transparent with her finances." Mezvinsky, a former U.S. House member from Iowa, served five years in federal prison for defrauding banks and investors out of $10.4 million. Margolies was never accused of wrongdoing but was caught up for a time in a series of lawsuits.

Margolies responded by questioning Boyle's courage, since he had a campaign staffer take his shots at her and would not be interviewed yesterday.

"My campaign is about asking voters of the 13th congressional district to send folks to Washington who have the courage to stand up for what they believe-- no matter the political consequences," Margolies said via email. "I am confident the voters of the 13th understand the difference between courage and cowardice: a personal attack from a decade ago made from behind the trousers of a campaign spokesperson is no profile in courage."

We have enough congressmembers from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party already. Margolies-Mezvinsky had her day and blew it badly. She's not just part of the past; she's a bad part of the past.




UPDATE: Q4 was a disaster for Margolies-Mezvinsky

Despite a big push from Hoyer and his grotesquely corrupt K Street contingent, the conservative Democrat who was too scared to show up for the district's debate with the other candidates, only raised $209K. Only? Well, she spent $224K in the quarter.

Could Marjorie Margolies' Sordid And Unbridled Corruption Derail Hillary Clinton's Presidential Run?

Disaster in the making?

Three weeks from Tuesday is election day in PA-13. Yes, it's the primary for the seat Allyson Schwartz is giving up to run for governor. But the district is such a healthy deep blue-- PVI- D+13; Obama won against Romney with 66%-- that no one doubts that the winner of the primary will be the next Member of Congress from northeast Philly/Montgomery County. Blue America endorsed state Senator Daylin Leach last year-- you can contribute to his Get Out The Vote effort here-- and we've been warning all cycle that his best-known opponent, Marjorie Margolies (AKA- Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky) is a lot worse than just a garden variety corrupt conservative Democrat. We've made the case so many times about her career of corruption and her conservative positions on the most basic issues that I don't know how to be clearer. So… Simon Van Zuylen-Wood and Politico to the rescue.

The profile of Margolies and the peek at her excruciating relationship with the Clinton family in their magazine is absolutely devastating. My heart goes out to the poor son, Marc, whose horrid mother is dragging his wife's family through the slime for her own out of control, monstrous ego-trip. "In interviews with me and other publications," writes Van Zuylen-Wood when he meets her at a fundraiser, "she’ll insist that her candidacy is not premised on her relationship with the Clintons. But tonight, it’s her entire pitch."

Her decision to run puts the Clintons in a difficult spot. Do they risk their political capital by publicly supporting a flawed congressional candidate in the sensitive run-up to Hillary’s likely presidential run, or do they turn their backs on a family member—and one to whom the former president owes a considerable political debt at that?

Sure enough that is exactly the theme of Margolies’s riff at the fundraiser, when she refers to the time Bill phoned from the Oval Office to beg for her vote. “When he called and said, ‘What would it take?’” she tells her well-heeled donors, “I did not say, ‘Your first-born.’”

She’s joking. Sort of.

Margolies’s career in electoral politics lasted only one term, but it ended twice. The first death occurred on Aug. 5, 1993, when Clinton was one vote short of passing a budget bill and convinced Margolies to change her mind… A couple hours before the vote, she had appeared live on Philadelphia television to explain her opposition to the bill. “I felt the budget cuts didn’t go far enough,” she wrote in her 1994 book A Woman’s Place: The Freshmen Women Who Changed the Face of Congress. “Especially in our out-of-control entitlements programs.” Then the president called. “I picked up the phone and said hello, then heard his voice, which sounded tired and drained,” she wrote. “‘What would it take, Marjorie?’” Clinton asked her.

…Her career ended for a second time in 2000. She had lost her bid for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 1998 and was in the midst of a run for Rick Santorum’s Senate seat when her husband, Edward Mezvinksy, a former congressman who represented Iowa in the 1970s, declared bankruptcy. Three weeks later, she declared bankruptcy too and dropped out of the race; creditors were asking the two of them for more than $7 million. It turned out a solid portion of the family’s money-- they owned a 15-room mansion in Narberth, Pa.-- belonged to other people. In 2002, Ed would plead guilty to 31 counts of bank fraud-- he had bilked more than $10 million from unsuspecting investors, including $309,000 from his 86-year-old mother-in-law. As one of the swindled told the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time, “Who expects to be taken to the cleaners when you’ve got an ex-congressman whose wife is running for the Senate?” Mezvinsky eventually got in so deep that he fell for one of the original Nigerian-guy-needs-cash email scams, losing up to an estimated $3 million just to try to feed the scheme.

By the time Mezvinsky went to prison in 2003, the conventional wisdom in Philadelphia political circles was that Marjorie’s political career was over. (The two divorced in 2007; Ed was released from prison a year later.) She was never charged with anything, and nobody I spoke with, from sympathetic former colleagues to bitter ex-friends, seems to think she was in on the fraud. Still, she was named in several lawsuits and her bankruptcy claim rested on the argument that she was too ignorant of the family’s finances to be held responsible for them. “What could she say?” one political operative told Philadelphia magazine in 2002. “I had no idea what was going on in my own household, but I’m equipped to vote on a $2 trillion budget! Vote for me!”

...A former friend of Margolies’s poses the question in a different way. “Can you really think the Clintons were happy to have their only daughter caught up in this complicated and not fully ethical family?” The degree to which the Clintons dive into-- and quite possibly make the difference-- in Margolies’s campaign might depend on the answer to that question.

…“There’s a sense of entitlement,” says one politico who used to work with her. “She asks a lot. I don’t know if there’s a lot of giveback.”

In this vein, the harshest indictment of Marjorie I hear comes from Mezvinsky’s former doctor Brad Fenton. Fenton and his wife were close family friends who often watched over Margolies’s son Andrew when she and Ed were away. Mezvinsky never asked Fenton to invest, and Fenton does not suspect Margolies was involved in his schemes. Rather, the fallout came after Mezvinsky was charged. In a last-ditch attempt at an insanity defense, he sued Fenton for prescribing him an anti-malaria drug that he said exacerbated his ostensible bipolar disorder, resulting in bouts of manic-depressive behavior, which in turn caused him to rob people.

The suit didn’t stick, and Mezvinsky eventually went to prison. What devastated Fenton, however, was not the outcome of the trial, but the fact that Margolies, who maintained that she was oblivious about her husband’s dealings, signed onto the lawsuit as well. The implication of this, Fenton tells me, is that “nothing is as important as what she needed personally, politically, and therefore she would have no problem conscience-wise to sign onto this lawsuit. It was sort of like that was the final affirmation that you know there couldn’t have been truly heartfelt, deep personal relationships.”

Dating back to the time Margolies invited him and his wife to Renaissance Weekend for the first time, the lawsuit confirmed his nagging feeling that everything she did was driven by political calculation. “It was a way you were indebted to her,” Fenton says. “And she would seemingly do something for you, but then call in the obligation at another time. You would feel used.”

There’s no question that the scandal and its messy fallout were damaging to Margolies as well. When she filed for bankruptcy, a judge rejected her assertion of ignorance in a scathing decision that, depending on how you read it, either calls her feminism into question or suggests she knows more than she’s letting on. “Her consistent response to questions asked by her creditors about the disposition of her assets is lack of knowledge or ‘my husband handled it,’ a mantra that is completely at odds with her public persona, background, and accomplishments,” the judge wrote.

…The night after the fundraiser I attended with Margolies, Hillary Clinton arrived in Philadelphia to give a speech to the Pennsylvania Conference for Women. Margolies was sitting in the audience and exchanged hellos with Clinton at the event. But when Hillary took the stage to praise a woman running for elected office in Pennsylvania, it was gubernatorial candidate Allyson Schwartz, the congresswoman Margolies is vying to replace.

…Perhaps the question to ask is not whether the Clintons will come—but whether it’ll make any difference if they do. Margolies is already being painted as the right-wing candidate running in her newly redrawn district, which is now considerably less suburban than it was 20 years ago. State representative Brendan Boyle is thought to have a lock on the urban part of the district, and state senator Daylin Leach is the favorite among progressive voters. While an internal poll showed Margolies as the frontrunner in August, it’s unclear what her natural voter base is. Indeed, if you scroll through her campaign donations, you’ll find that most of them come from tony suburbs like Bryn Mawr and Bala Cynwyd that are still located in her old district—not middle- and working-class Northeast Philadelphia, which now comprises more than half of the new seat. (When I float the possibility that some of her donors don’t know their district has moved, Margolies belts out a deep-throated laugh and says, ‘Thank God!”) And although she has gamely begun to Etch-a-Sketch—she told me President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus wasn’t big enough, a stark contrast to her “no” vote on Clinton’s $16 billion version in 1993—it might yet be her tony Main Line persona that does her in.

And the story, of course, doesn't stop there. Yesterday, Daylin Leach filed a complaint with the FEC noting that Margolies spent over $71,427 in general election funds from January 15th through the end of the reporting period on March 31. "Marjorie Margolies has broken the law and cheated in this race," said Leach. "She has broken the basic trust that all elected officials, or aspiring elected officials must have with the voters. That is why I am calling on Margolies, if she cannot explain how we are wrong about her finances, to finally, at long last, step down from this race and allow those who follow the rules to have an important debate about our country's future."

PA-13 Primary Is Less Than A Month Away-- What Happens To The Money We Contribute?

Pennsylvania state Seantor Daylin Leach was one of the first congressional candidates Blue America endorsed this election cycle. He's right up our alley: thoroughly progressive-- and aggressively so-- compassionate, smart, persuasive… and with a record of accomplishment in the legislature that goes beyond promises. So far this cycle 943 Blue America members have contributed $22,462.68 to Daylin's grassroots campaign-- an average of $23.72. And he needs that kind of support to compete with the candidate of the Philly Machine, anti-Choice/anti-education fanatic Brendan Boyle, and against the ethically-challenged Beltway Establishment candidate Bill Clinton and Steny "K Street" Hoyer are raising boatloads of cash for, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.

The end of the quarter FEC filing shows that Daylin has $654,202 on hand for the May 20 primary. Although most of that money is committed to Daylin's Get Out The Vote effort, his campaign has reserved $272,000 in cable and broadcast buys in the two-week run-up to the primary. The video above is the first of a series of ads and almost one in ten of those ads are being paid for by Blue America contributors. (Thanks and please keep that coming!) In PA-13, the Democratic primary will determine who goes to Congress. And what progressives want to hear is messaging like Daylin's:

"I've never been afraid to take on bullies like Governor Corbett and the NRA. In Congress I'll protect Social Security and a woman's right to choose. I'll fight for good schools and great jobs and to put Wall Street crooks in jail."

So, aside from reminding voters that he's been an unwavering champion for Choice and for women's rights in the legislator, he is also subtly reminding voters that Boyle has been fanatically opposed to Choice. And, by bringing up Social Security, he's not only reminding voters that he wants to expand Social Security and protect cost of living adjustments for retired people, he's also reminding voters that Marjorie Margolies not only lost her seat in 1994 because she tried raising the retirement age and cutting back on cost of living adjustments, but that it was Bill Clinton himself who slapped her down in no uncertain terms for trying that typical GOP trick.

If you go to http://www.margoliesforcongress.com/ you come upon a Phildadelphia Inquirer story from June, 1994, "Social Security Curbs Proposed Marjorie Margolies-mezvinsky Is Touting Major Changes. Her GOP Foe, Jon Fox, Opposes The Plan." Voters in PA-13 should read it carefully because Margolies is a candidate who remains eager to cut Social Security and other benefits for working families. She sounds like a garden variety Republican, although the Republican that beat her in 1994 was more a defender of Social Security than she was-- and the way she disappointed the Democratic base and kept voters away from the polls is why she was really defeated that year. Her proposal to cut back on Social Security for retired Americans was even too conservative for Bill Clinton, who pointedly told her that "we do not deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly."

Calling it the first fruit of last year's conference on entitlement spending, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky announced legislation yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Social Security recipients and limit their cost-of-living adjustments.

Margolies-Mezvinsky, who is seeking re-election, said the proposals would ensure Social Security's solvency and keep her pledge to control the costs of politically sensitive entitlement programs.

Social Security officials predicted in April that the trust fund would go broke in 35 years because of demographic shifts that would leave fewer workers supporting more retirees.

Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal is a political gamble for the freshman Democrat, who is already in the doghouse with many constituents because of her 11th-hour switch last year in favor of President Clinton's budget bill and tax increases.

The current legislation, which Margolies-Mezvinsky is sponsoring with Minnesota Democrat Timothy J. Penny, would raise the retirement age to 70 by the year 2013-- beginning in 1999 and increasing the age by four months annually.

The retirement age currently ranges from 65 for those born before 1938 to 67 for those born after 1959. Those who retire earlier get reduced benefits.

The proposal would give only the bottom 20 percent of Social Security recipients the full cost-of-living adjustment, which is tied to the Consumer Price Index. Other recipients would receive a flat cost-of-living adjustment equal to that for recipients at the 20th percentile.

Margolies-Mezvinsky had made Clinton's attendance at December's entitlement conference at Bryn Mawr College a condition for her support of his budget. The budget increased taxes for affluent workers and for single Social Security recipients with incomes over $34,000 and couples with incomes over $44,000.

Although Clinton attended the conference, he said there should be only minor unspecified changes in Social Security. "We do not want to deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly," Clinton said.

White House officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Social Security is among the touchiest issues for Congress, due in part to the lobbying strength of the American Association of Retired Persons, which claims 33 million members.

"They're not opposed to this," Margolies-Mezvinsky said. "We've been working with them so that we get their input."

But Martin Corry, AARP's director of federal affairs, said he was unaware of any contact between his group and Margolies-Mezvinsky since December.

He said AARP would oppose any form of "means testing" such as Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal on cost-of-living adjustments.

"Changing the retirement age to age 70 is really premature," he added. ''There may well be changes in the retirement age, and they can be done gradually. I've seen nothing to suggest it needs to go to 70."

Republican Jon D. Fox, who will face Margolies-Mezvinsky in November, said he opposed her proposal, as well as another Democratic plan to increase payroll taxes.

Fox said he would have to study the issue further before making a proposal of his own.

"I'm going to be coming out in this campaign with proposals dealing with the protection of Social Security," Fox said in a telephone interview. "I'll be getting back to you on them."

Margolies-Mezvinsky said she did not know how the proposals would play in her largely Republican Montgomery County district.

"My feeling is it's the right thing to do. I think that what happens when you get to Washington is you see people saying to their constituents what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear."

In 1994 Democratic voters had no choice but to protect Social Security by sitting on their hands and letting a Republican defeat Margolies. This year, that won't be a problem because Daylin Leach is going to beat her in a primary less than a month away. "When we started this campaign, a little over a year ago," he told us "it was always my intention to tell my story, to let people know who I am and where I came from, and how that affects everything I have done in the state Legislature. I needed help once, and I fight for those who need help now… We have all seen what the far right is doing to working families across America. I've led the fight against these measures designed to create a greater rift between the rich and everyone else, to keep working families down, and to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the very fabric of our democracy. That is why elections like mine are so important. We need leaders in Congress who are not afraid to take on the tough fights, to take on the extremists and the corporate interests that fund them, and have a proven record doing just that."

Contributing here will help make sure that TV stays on the air between now and May 20. Canddiates like Daylin Leach don't come along everyday; candidates like Brendan Boyle and Marjorie Margolies-Mezkinsky, unfortunately, do.

Are You A Marjorie Margolies Democrat Or Are You A Daylin Leach Democrat?

This morning, Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed a Democrat running for a House seat in Pennsylvania. Senators don't often endorse in House races and almost never endorse in primaries in other states. Bernie is backing Daylin Leach because of his record of accomplishment in the Pennsylvania state legislature and because of the campaign he's running for Congress and for Daylin's unflinching focus on raising the minimum wage, making college more affordable, shrinking the gap between the rich and the poor and, most important in this particular race in PA-13, expanding Social Security benefits. "At a time when our country has more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth," said Bernie, "and when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider-- it is imperative that we send candidates like Daylin Leach to the U.S. Congress."

Unfortunately, there aren't that many candidates like Daylin Leach. Pennsylvania's "liberal lion" is a lot like Sanders, motivated by standing up for ordinary working families. Probably the issue that has made him stand out the strongest is the difference between himself as the corporate media/Beltway pundit front-running, Clinton in-law and ex-Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies. Compact explanation: Daylin wants to expand Social Security; Marjorie wants to shrink it.

We've covered this dichotomy in the past. Back in February we pointed out a Phildadelphia Inquirer story from June, 1994, "Social Security Curbs Proposed Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky Is Touting Major Changes. Her GOP Foe, Jon Fox, Opposes The Plan." As we said then, Voters in PA-13 should read it carefully. This is a candidate who is eager to cut Social Security and other benefits for working families. She sounds like a garden variety Republican, although the Republican that beat her in 1994 was more a defender of Social Security than she was-- and the way she disappointed the Democratic base and kept voters away from the polls is why she was really defeated that year. Her proposal to cut back on Social Security for retired Americans was even too conservative for Bill Clinton, who pointedly told her that "we do not deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly." Now her son is married to his daughter and he's selling out the American people by backing her campaign to get back into Congress. This candidate, of whom the Inquirer wrote "Calling it the first fruit of last year's conference on entitlement spending, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky announced legislation yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Social Security recipients and limit their cost-of-living adjustments… The current legislation, which Margolies-Mezvinsky is sponsoring with Minnesota Democrat Timothy J. Penny, would raise the retirement age to 70 by the year 2013-- beginning in 1999 and increasing the age by four months annually… The proposal would give only the bottom 20 percent of Social Security recipients the full cost-of-living adjustment, which is tied to the Consumer Price Index. Other recipients would receive a flat cost-of-living adjustment equal to that for recipients at the 20th percentile."

Predictably, Margolies has learned nothing from her electoral loss. Today she is still part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and still pushing the Chained CPI scheme to reduce Social Security payments for retired Americans. Last December, Daylin, pushed back against the Paul Ryan/Marjorie Margolies Chained CPI plank: "Social Security has literally lifted entire generations of seniors out of poverty. But at a time when pensions are shrinking or going away and people are living longer, we must do better if Social Security is going to fulfill its promise of a reasonable life for retirees." This morning he told us that "Making the wealthy pay their fair share is the right way to reform Social Security. Cutting benefits is the wrong way, and a clear difference in my Congressional race… It is important to occassionally assess our policies in the context of what is actually happening in the real world. For example, we see a dramatic decline in the availability of and value of private pensions. Yet Social Security benefits continue to stagnate at best and atrophy at worst. Given how seniors are actually living their lives, it is time we boldly call for not only protecting Social Security, but expand it and increasing benefits. We need to remove the cap on the FICA tax and use that money not only to ensure the stability of Social Security, but to start employing E-COLA to ensure the cost of living adjustments reflect what seniors are actually spending, and to start making reasonable lump-sum payments to new retirees to enable them to settle bills and begin their retirement in a financially healthy position."

That's why Bernie Sanders has chimed in on his behalf. Last week, the highly regarded PoliticsPA interviewed Daylin and he sounded a little frustrated that Margolies' entire campaign is based on one thing-- that her son married Clinton's daughter. She has steadfastly refused to join the other candidates in debates and has tried as best she could to cover up her conservative record.

“Marjorie has a 20 year record of trying to dismantle Social Security; [she] introduced legislation that would cut cost of living adjustments and raise the retirement age,” Leach said. “And recently, when she was asked about the fiscal health of Social Security she said that we could ask wealthy people to voluntarily contribute more.”

But in this election, Leach claims that Margolies has been absent on substance.

“I’ve taken controversial positions, Marjorie has no issue that she’s spoken about at all,” he said. (Margolies has yet to attend a candidates forum with the rest of the challengers.)

May 20 is primary day in Pennsylvania. PA-13 is blue enough so that whoever wins the Democratic primary is sure to go to Congress. The PVI is D+13 and Obama beat Romney two to one-- 210,902 (66%) to 105,024 (33%), an even stronger margin than the one by which he beat McCain there 4 years earlier. PA-13 can be the next home of a brilliant and innovative Representative who stands up for working families-- or they can back a hopeless relic from the past who is from the Big Business/Wall Street wing of the party. I'm very happy that her son married their daughter… but that has absolutely nothing to do with what's good for the families in Montgomery County and Northeast Philadelphia. If you'd like to help Daylin win this race, you can contribute to his campaign here.

Who Will Protect Social Security-- And Who Wants To Wreck It?

In the new ad above, the DCCC-connected SuperPAC, House Majority PAC, quotes AARP about the dangers seniors face if conservatives ever get their way in regard to privatizing Social Security. And they point out that the Republican candidate in the FL-13 special election, for the remainder of Bill Young's term, David Jolly, was a lobbyist who worked to privatize Social Security and who still favors that approach. All true. What the DCCC will avoid at all costs, of course, is an discussion of how so many of its candidates (and incumbents-- primarily New Dems and Blue Dogs) also favor a conservative approach hated by AARP-- Chained CPI.

Most of Steve Israel's mystery meat candidates have received strict orders to not answer any questions about Chained CPI. Last year when I called Pete Aguilar to see where he stood on key issues-- and long before I found the newspaper interview where he endorsed Chained CPI and other Austerity measures-- I couldn't get past his campaign manager, Boris Medzhibovsky, a former campaign worker for Rahm Emanuel. He was friendly and said he would have Aguilar call me back but that they couldn't answer any policy questions yet because the DCCC hasn't told them what the answers are yet. I assumed I was talking to an inexperienced intern who didn't understand not to talk that way to strangers, but, no, Boris Medzhibovsky turned out to be the campaign manager. Unless there are two Boris Medzhibovskys. But the Pete and Boris Show isn't the only circus the DCCC is running. Israel's Jumpstart roster of mostly closet conservative Democrats like Aguilar-- Ann Callis (IL), Jerry Cannon (MI), Sean Eldridge (NY), Jennifer Garrison (OH), Gwen Graham (FL), John Lewis (MT), Suzanne Patrick (VA), Domenic Recchia (NY), Kevin Strouse (PA)-- are on the wrong side of the ideological divide within the Democratic Party. They are all from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Bit don't expect any Majority PAC ads touting their feel ins about Chained CPI. The DCCC knows better than to trumpet that position to voters.

The Democratic Party Establishment-- from the corrupt Philly Machine to Steny Hoyer and his K Street goons-- have come to the aid of the most conservative of the 4 Democrats running for the PA-13 seat Allyson Schwartz is giving up to run for governor. And that would be former congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who was defeated after she and her congressman husband got caught up in a multimillion dollar pyramid scheme that defrauded thousands of Americans. He went to prison and she settled comfortably into a life of obscurity… until their son married Chelsea Clinton and she decided to see if she could use the connection to catapult herself back into office so she could try-- once again-- to cut benefits for Social Security recipients.

Conventional wisdom-- relentlessly stoked by Margolies herself-- is that she was defeated in 1994 by Republican Jon Fox (who she had narrowly beaten in 1992) because of her heroic vote for Clinton's 1993 budget. She was the "deciding vote." But that isn't the full story. Margolies is a liberal on women's issues but, for a Democrat, a raging conservative on issues of economic justice. A few days ago she told the Philadelphia Daily News why she almost didn't vote for the Clinton budget. She claims President Clinton asked her "What would it take?" to get her to vote for the budget. "I said I wanted to talk about entitlements, I wanted further cuts, and I'll only be your last vote-- if you need it. And he did." Cutting entitlements and screwing working families is the kind of Democrat Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky has always been-- and that's one old dog that is definitely not learning any new tricks.

If you go to http://www.margoliesforcongress.com/ you come upon a Phildadelphia Inquirer story from June, 1994, "Social Security Curbs Proposed Marjorie Margolies-mezvinsky Is Touting Major Changes. Her GOP Foe, Jon Fox, Opposes The Plan." Voters in PA-13 should read it carefully. This is a candidate who is eager to cut Social Security and other benefits for working families. She sounds like a garden variety Republican, although the Republican that beat her in 1994 was more a defender of Social Security than she was-- and the way she disappointed the Democratic base and kept voters away from the polls is why she was really defeated that year. Her proposal to cut back on Social Security for retired Americans was even too conservative for Bill Clinton, who pointedly told her that "we do not deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly."

Calling it the first fruit of last year's conference on entitlement spending, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky announced legislation yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Social Security recipients and limit their cost-of-living adjustments.

Margolies-Mezvinsky, who is seeking re-election, said the proposals would ensure Social Security's solvency and keep her pledge to control the costs of politically sensitive entitlement programs.

Social Security officials predicted in April that the trust fund would go broke in 35 years because of demographic shifts that would leave fewer workers supporting more retirees.

Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal is a political gamble for the freshman Democrat, who is already in the doghouse with many constituents because of her 11th-hour switch last year in favor of President Clinton's budget bill and tax increases.

The current legislation, which Margolies-Mezvinsky is sponsoring with Minnesota Democrat Timothy J. Penny, would raise the retirement age to 70 by the year 2013-- beginning in 1999 and increasing the age by four months annually.

The retirement age currently ranges from 65 for those born before 1938 to 67 for those born after 1959. Those who retire earlier get reduced benefits.

The proposal would give only the bottom 20 percent of Social Security recipients the full cost-of-living adjustment, which is tied to the Consumer Price Index. Other recipients would receive a flat cost-of-living adjustment equal to that for recipients at the 20th percentile.

Margolies-Mezvinsky had made Clinton's attendance at December's entitlement conference at Bryn Mawr College a condition for her support of his budget. The budget increased taxes for affluent workers and for single Social Security recipients with incomes over $34,000 and couples with incomes over $44,000.

Although Clinton attended the conference, he said there should be only minor unspecified changes in Social Security. "We do not want to deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly," Clinton said.

White House officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Social Security is among the touchiest issues for Congress, due in part to the lobbying strength of the American Association of Retired Persons, which claims 33 million members.

"They're not opposed to this," Margolies-Mezvinsky said. "We've been working with them so that we get their input."

But Martin Corry, AARP's director of federal affairs, said he was unaware of any contact between his group and Margolies-Mezvinsky since December.

He said AARP would oppose any form of "means testing" such as Margolies-Mezvinsky's proposal on cost-of-living adjustments.

"Changing the retirement age to age 70 is really premature," he added. ''There may well be changes in the retirement age, and they can be done gradually. I've seen nothing to suggest it needs to go to 70."

Republican Jon D. Fox, who will face Margolies-Mezvinsky in November, said he opposed her proposal, as well as another Democratic plan to increase payroll taxes.

Fox said he would have to study the issue further before making a proposal of his own.

"I'm going to be coming out in this campaign with proposals dealing with the protection of Social Security," Fox said in a telephone interview. "I'll be getting back to you on them."

Margolies-Mezvinsky said she did not know how the proposals would play in her largely Republican Montgomery County district.

"My feeling is it's the right thing to do. I think that what happens when you get to Washington is you see people saying to their constituents what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear."

And Steny Hoyer is busy raising money for her campaign against Daylin Leach, one of the most aggressively progressive leaders in Pennsylvania-- or anywhere. If you want to see seniors starve, you can contribute to Steny and Marjorie. If not… Daylin Leach.

PA-13-- How Much More Mud Will The Mezvinsky Clan Drag The Clintons Through?

I hate the money game that American electoral politics has devolved into, drowning out ideas and, in too many cases, all agendas and even visions other than those of the donor class. But it's how the Beltway pundits and the mass media view momentum and electability. And, normally, the candidate with the most money wins-- not always, but most frequently. In the PA-13 (northeast Philly and Montgomery County in the clsoe-in Philadelphia 'burbs) race to replace Allyson Schwartz, the candidate long dubbed the "front-runner," a corrupt, conservative wretch and former failed congresswoman best known these days as Chelsea Clinton's mother-in-law, may have raised the most money-- with help from the Clintons-- but, through gross incompetence, a hallmark of her long, sordid career-- she has the least to spend in the primary. Cash-on-hand that can be used in the primary (as of April 1):

• Daylin Leach- $598,311
• Val Arkoosh- $577,225
• Brendan Boyle- $309,420
• Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky- $2,226

Years ago, when Margolies Mezvinsky and her husband, also a member of Congress (from Iowa), were caught up in one of the worst congressional fraud scandals in history-- he served 5 years in a federal prison while she walked away scott free-- she tried evading her debts by going to bankruptcy court. The judge was not amused and refused to grant her the discharge from her debts she was seeking. The court found Marjorie had failed to satisfactorily explain a significant "loss of assets" in the four years prior to her bankruptcy filing and the judge stated, in her published opinion, "I find that the Debtor has failed to satisfactorily explain the loss of approximately $775,000 worth of assets (the difference between the $810,000 represented in May 1996 and the $35,000 now claimed in her Amended Schedule B)."

Life just sort of happens around Marjorie. Money comes and goes, appears and disappears, and she is oblivious. She is either lying, or is someone we want nowhere near the federal treasury. Her claims that she had "no idea" where all the money went when her husband stole it was not credible. That may have been "a long time ago" but more recently she claimed she had nothing to do with raising her own salary at her charity, when the minutes show it was her idea and she voted on it. She has always been bad news for the Clintons but they continue supporting her. Now people are asking about the shady finances around the event Bill Clinton did for her a couple weeks ago. If the April 10 Clinton event cost $15,000-- does that include the secret service costs?-- and had to paid up front, which one would imagine the restaurant and the Warwick Hotel required, and its not on her campaign finance reports, then she is breaking the law in two ways:

1. She did not file an accurate campaign finance report

2. She used general election money for primary expenses.

Now comes the problem of her immense campaign burn rate, close to $75,000, mostly on a bevy of greedy, avaricious consultants and staffers-- no TV. She has been badly mismanaging her campaign funds and shouldn't be elected based on that alone-- even without getting into her refusal to answer voters' questions on policy or on her anti-family agenda of crushing retirees' dignity. One has to wonder why Josh Shapiro, Chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, is supporting a candidate with a clear pattern of ethical problems who is unable to manage money in a transparent way. This is what Philly area voters who read the Inquirer woke up to this morning: Margolies Seems To Be Losing Fundraising Race.

It turns out a visit from Bill Clinton isn't the only thing Marjorie Margolies needs to complete her political comeback. More money would help, too-- a lot more.

Campaign finance reports released this week show that Margolies, widely viewed as the front-runner to reclaim the congressional seat she lost two decades ago, was limping into the final stretch.

While most of her 13th District rivals boasted hundreds of thousands of dollars stored up by early March, Margolies had barely $5,000 left to spend on her campaign before the May 20 primary, according to reports she filed with the Federal Election Commission.

"I don't think Marjorie can do anything for the next couple of weeks. How's she going to pay staff? How's she going to pay rent? How's she going to buy postage?" said Dan Fee, a Democratic political consultant who is not affiliated with the race to replace Allyson Y. Schwartz in a district covering parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County.

Margolies' campaign had an additional $155,000 on hand, but it was designated for the general election, the reports show. Under federal law, candidates cannot spend or borrow general-election funds before the primary is over.

…[F]or the last two quarters, she spent more than she raised-- and she spent most of it in the office.

In the first three months of 2014, more than 77 percent of Margolies' expenses went to consultants and pollsters. Smukler, for example, has received $199,000 since June for media outreach, research, and general consulting.

Fee said that in a campaign of this size, candidates usually try to keep administrative costs to about 20 percent, and save the bulk of their cash for advertising.

"I would be shocked if [her campaign] can point to a single example of a nonincumbent winning when other people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV and they spend none," he said.

Lara Brown, associate professor at the graduate school of political management at George Washington University, said Margolies' spending patterns could turn off some donors.

"A burn rate like that starts to raise questions in donors' minds about why they should give you money," Brown said. "The first question that comes to mind is, how serious is this campaign? Does she really want to win, or does she simply want to essentially have her name out there again?"

Two of Margolies' opponents-- physician Valerie Arkoosh and State Sen. Daylin Leach-- have raised more than $1 million each and have more than $550,000 left to spend in the next month.

Both Arkoosh and Leach have reserved more than $400,000 worth of TV time in the two weeks before the primary. Margolies has not reserved any airtime, and would need a significant infusion of cash to do so.

State Rep. Brendan Boyle, running fourth in fund-raising, had $320,000 cash to spend on the primary in the first quarter. Boyle's fund-raising totals also appeared rosier on the surface than they were.

Nearly 15 percent of Boyle's total fund-raising came from in-kind donations, mostly from his staff and interns… No other candidates have listed a significant number of in-kind contributions, from themselves or others.

The primary is May 20th and Blue America has endorsed Daylin Leach. If you'd like to learn more about the substance of his campaign, here are a few posts we've run already. And here's the place where you can chip in to make sure he-- and not someone from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- is the nominee.

Momentum Continues To Build For Pennsylvania's Liberal Lion, Daylin Leach

Today two more important progressive groups, MoveOn and the Philadelphia Chapter of DFA (Philly for Change), joined Blue America and the PCCC in backing state Senator Daylin Leach in his bid for the open congressional seat (PA-13). In the May 20th primary Daylin will face a crowded field of garden variety Democrats, endorsed by Big Money interests. Republicans have no shot in this deep blue seat, so the bad players are backing conservative Democrats who will play ball with them.

It's a dynamic not unlike the one in the Silicon Valley high profile primary (CA-17) where Big Business interests are backing ConservaDem Ro Khanna against progressive champion Mike Honda because they know a Republican has no shot there either. Creeps like Wall Street predators Marc Leder (Romney's 47% host) and Peter Thiel appreciate Khanna's vow to cut Social Security-- which is very much like Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky's similar pledge. The most unsavory elements of the corrupt Philly Machine are backing her. This was the MoveOn vote.

• Daylin Leach - 55%
• Marjorie Margolies - 17%
• Valerie Arkoosh - 15%
• Brendan Boyle - 13%

The Matea Gold piece in the Washington Post exposing how the Koch brothers are trying to buy elections all over the country-- with millions of dollars in poisonous, inaccurate ads targeting Democrats, isn't about Democratic primaries, but the dynamic is similar. Big Business is playing against progressives and working to elect their own crooked conservative candidates like Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky in Pennsylvania and Ro Khanna in California.

This week Blue America is attempting to help raise some grassroots campaign funds to help Daylin fight back against this influx of corrupt money. The Hooters have customized and autographed a hooter for one lucky contributor on this page. Everyone who contributes to Daylin's campaign-- any amount-- is eligible to "win." In fact, if you want the hooter and find yourself strapped for cash, send a post card to Blue America at P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you'll have a chance to win too! We'll do a random drawing next week. One of Daylin's colleagues in the state legislature, Brian Sims, the first openly gay elected state legislator in Pennsylvania history, endorsed him in with as much enthusiasm as Blue America, the PCCC, MoveOn and DFA: "Daylin," he told us, "introduced Pennsylvania's first marriage equality bill (back waaaay before it was cool); Daylin co-chairs the LGBT caucus in the Pennsylvania legislature; and just last month stood with a Pennsylvania teacher who was fired just because he married his partner. That's why I'm supporting Daylin on his run for Congress. We NEED Daylin in Washington where issues (like ENDA) are currently being debated and will effect the lives of millions of Americans."

We agree-- and, if you wish, you can contribute here on the regular Blue America House candidates page or here on the special page that registers you to win the hooter.

Will Hillary Be The Official Candidate Of The Wall Street Plutocrats?

Hillary fans have been grumbling to me about the way I highlighted Mike Lofgren's phrase stuck on awful for the next decade to equate Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Rather than defend myself in a series of emails, I figured I'd say a few words about it, or around it, here at DWT, if you don't mind.

The worst thing-- the most ugly and dysfunctional thing-- about running for office in our democracy is that politicians have to spend most of their time on the phone personally begging campaign donors for money-- hours and hours a day, every day. So when a money machine like Bill Clinton-- and there aren't many like him-- agrees to help raise campaign cash for you, it's a godsend. It's hours of humiliating, frustrating calls you don't have to make in the life and death struggle for political survival. Tuesday, Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown had that loving' feeling as Bill Clinton announced 1- and endorsement and 2- that he'd be in Maryland in May to help him raise money.

Tomorrow he'll be in Philly raising money for, as ABC News indelicately termed it, "Chelsea Clinton’s scandal-plagued mother-in-law, Marjorie Margolies."

With the May 20 primary just six weeks away, Margolies will welcome President Clinton to the district for a fundraiser this Thursday. For $1,000, donors can attend an hors d’oeuvres reception and hear Clinton’s remarks. A little bit more-- $5000-- buys a private VIP reception and photo opportunity with Clinton. The event is not open to the public without a donation.

I can't find the photos of me and Clinton, one at a identical VIP reception and one at a state banquet at the White House-- although I know they're around here somewhere. I was so fat both times, I don't keep them handy. I always liked Clinton, not politically, of course-- way too corporate for me-- but personally. What a charming, fun guy! He always want dot talk about music and loved so many of the artists on my label, especially Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks and kd lang. But he asked me to bring Lou Reed to a state dinner in honor of Lou Reed fanatic-- and Czech President Vaclav Havel. How could you not overlook stuff like the passage of NAFTA, the gutting of Glass-Steagall, welfare "reform," Rwanda, the special dispensation for Australian neo-nazi Rupert Murdoch to own American mass media, DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell? And Robert Rubin, as bad as any Treasury Secretary any Republican could ever appoint? And Rahm.

Last May, Clinton was in Los Angeles campaigning and raising money for corrupt corporate careerist nightmare Wendy Greuel in her vicious-- and doomed-- race against Eric Garcetti. Clinton allies financed one of the ugly smear campaigns against Garcetti that backfired so beautifully and elected him mayor. Yes, Clinton's endorsement of the hideous Greuel was supposed to win her the election, but it didn't. Clinton almost always backs the worst possible candidate in Democratic primaries. If you don't know who the candidates are and you hear Bill Clinton is backing one, you can almost be 100% certain that candidate is a corrupt corporate hack. Almost 100%.

Never mind that both Anthony Brown in Maryland and Marjorie Margolies in Pennsylvania-- two more-of-the-same, garden variety hacks, have opponents, respectively Heather Mizeur and Daylin Leach, who are far better candidates and would make extraordinary, possibly transformative, leaders. Clinton isn't looking for extraordinary transformative leaders. In fact, leaders isn't ever what he's pumping for-- followers, in fact, is what he wants… zombies who will be cogs in the Clinton Machine.

Late last year Politico assigned reporters Ben White and Maggie Haberman to take at look at why the Wall Street plutocrats are grumbling ominously about both Obama and the Republicans-- and why so many of their warm remembrances of Bill Clinton are likely to help finance Hillary's run for the presidency. At a fat cat shindig Goldman Sachs put on for Hillary at the Conrad Hotel, she "offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy-- it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000)." One thing that was clear, Hillary Clinton is not Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, the kinds of senators who will hold them accountable for their avaricious and predatory systematic criminality. Before we start swimming around in this ugly swamp, here's a treat-- the brand new Rick Weiland 30 second spot for his populist campaign for the open South Dakota Senate seat:

To say Wall Street’s initial rosy expectations for its relationship with Barack Obama were dashed would be an understatement. Finance executives--a donor demographic traditionally loaded with Republicans who factored heavily in propelling George W. Bush into the White House-- gave Obama twice as much financial support in 2008 as they did his opponent, GOP Sen. John McCain. Obama established his prowess as a Wall Street fundraiser early in his battle for the Democratic nomination against the well-connected Clinton by cementing a relationship with Blair Effron, a young banker who bundled more than $200,000 for Obama. Effron was first invited into the Obama donor fold by the legendary investor and Democratic philanthropist George Soros in December 2006, when then-Senator Obama was on the verge of launching a presidential campaign.

Obama also secured help from investment executives who had not previously been a part of the Democratic money world-- csupporters like Mark Gallogly, the founder of the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners who inspired a slew of other new donors (“They all saw themselves in [Gallogly],” recalls a Democratic source involved in Obama’s fundraising efforts). Other backers had tough choices to make. For instance, Orin Kramer, the hedge fund manager and head of Boston Providence, had long-established ties to the Clintons. But he went with Obama instead.

In many ways, Obama’s fundraising team was helped by the fact that Clinton already had such a full roster of powerful backers. “In 2007, the Clinton table was set and full. So there were a lot of guys who’d made money between 2000 and 2007 who wanted to play [in politics], and there was no room for them,” says one Democratic source who was involved in Obama’s 2008 fundraising. “We offered this very sexy, very cool alternative for people to have a seat at the table.”

When financial markets crashed just prior to his election, Obama’s cadre of Wall Street supporters expected their donations had earned for them a measure of understanding from the White House. And in keeping with the practice of both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years, the finance executives also felt entitled to at least a couple of significant administration jobs going to one of their own-- not to mention fairly regular access to the president, either via White House visits or get-togethers in New York. After all, they had important policy recommendations to make on everything from financial reform to deficit reduction to trade policy and immigration; previous administrations had a record of being very interested in their views. But under Obama, very little of this happened. “It’s not that there weren’t any meetings. It’s just that nothing ever happened after the meetings, and people fell out of love,” said one senior Wall Street banker who gave to the Obama campaign in 2008 and attended many of the early confabs.

Disillusionment set in quickly as Obama’s disdain for extensive relationships with the Wall Street wealthy became clear. He had no use for the niceties and glad-handing that Bill Clinton elevated to an art form, aided by a Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, who came straight to the job from Goldman Sachs and his role as Clinton’s top Wall Street rainmaker. One senior Wall Street executive says his realization that the financial industry under Obama would instead become a regular punching bag dates to a meeting in early 2009 with then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. According to this executive, Emanuel told an assembled group of financiers that the administration did not plan to “waste” the financial crisis-- a common refrain of his in public and private-- and would push for the strongest Wall Street reform measures possible, including having the White House respond swiftly and brutally to any industry efforts to water down the final product.

“I knew right at that moment, standing in Rahm’s office, that they did not really have any interest in understanding Wall Street or working with us in any significant way,” says the executive, who, like most interviewed for this article, spoke on condition that they not be identified by name or by firm to avoid possible political retribution.

Despite Emanuel’s own foray in banking (he earned more than $18 million in a two-and-a-half year stint as a managing director in the investment firm Wasserstein Perella) there was a prevailing sense among these Wall Street Democrats that nobody in the White House understood the industry. Bankers could certainly present their arguments to first-term Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whom many knew from Geithner’s tenure as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but they believed that was as much of a hearing as they would get. “Tim was someone everyone knew and could talk to, but beyond him it’s fair to say the business community was uniquely without influence,” one senior Wall Street executive says of the early days of the Obama administration. And besides, while Geithner had deep relationships on Wall Street and pushed Obama hard to follow through on the Bush-initiated Wall Street bailout, he also worked hard to push tough financial reform and was not inclined to be seen as going soft on banks receiving those huge federal checks.

Elsewhere in the New York investment community, private equity and hedge fund officials who had backed Obama quickly and publicly turned on him over White House attempts to raise the tax rates on their investment returns and their profits from sales on investment management partnerships. They argued they were being targeted unfairly.

Instead of turning to an insider like Bill Clinton had with Rubin, Obama put his close friend and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett in charge of managing relationships with Wall Street and corporate America more broadly. From the start, the feeling across the financial industry was that while Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman and attorney, was smart and friendly and for the most part accessible. But she knew almost nothing about how the banking and finance industry worked and was interested only in pushing the administration’s agenda, rather than engaging in any kind of dialogue about how to foster better economic growth in the wake of the financial crisis.

…[T]he president’s Wall Street donor class felt stung again in September 2010, when Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and doubled down on his disdain for the rich guys, saying he “did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” Obama said “nothing had been more frustrating to him” than to “salvage a financial system at great expense to taxpayers” from a calamity “that was caused in part by completely irresponsible actions on Wall Street.” What’s more, he thundered, “People on Wall Street still don’t get it.”

Many in the financial sector saw the interview as the end of their relationship with the Obama administration. “The ‘fat cat’ and ‘throw everyone in jail’ stuff pretty much did it,” says one executive who later supported Mitt Romney. The White House was never inclined to apologize. “Sure, the rhetoric got hot,” one administration official who worked with the financial industry told us. “We were trying to pass financial reform, and they didn’t want it.”

The disappointment in the White House wasn’t just politics; it was personal, adds one senior Wall Street banker who had supported Obama: “A lot of people began to feel attacked and singled out in inappropriate ways they did not feel were fair.” The sour feelings festered through the 2012 campaign, when Wall Street all but abandoned Obama, pouring more than $20 million into Romney’s failed effort, compared with the $6 million the president got.

…Ordinarily such dissatisfaction with one political party would redound to the benefit of the other. But Wall Street donors have been equally turned off by the GOP for much of 2013. Even when Romney, a corporate executive like them, ran for president in 2012, he failed to earn the adoration of the donors who twice had helped propel Bush to the White House. Romney was, in the words of one former Bush campaign bundler, “the worst messenger in the world. … I can’t believe the shit that comes out of his mouth.”

Even before he’d lost the 2012 presidential election (indeed, even before he’d won his party’s nomination), Romney was thought of as a bad bet by some on Wall Street, who were instead falling fast for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie-- the candidate with the best chances at winning the support of bankers in the next presidential election. In July 2011, Christie ventured across the Hudson to the exclusive Racquet and Tennis Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan, where he found roughly 40 of New York’s wealthiest men waiting for him.

The meeting, called by club member and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, was held in a private wood-paneled dining room and stuffed with eager business leaders urging Christie to jump into the 2012 race. The disembodied voice of David Koch, the co-owner of Koch Industries and a major GOP benefactor, was piped into the room by conference call, as was that of hedge funder Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliott Management, an attendee told Politico Magazine. Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, stood and pleaded with the governor to enter the presidential race for the good of his country. Christie would, of course, resist their pleas, becoming perhaps even more alluring to those on Wall Street as a prospect for 2016.

…But a shift back to Wall Street’s historic Republican roots is by no means a given, especially if the Democratic nominee is local favorite Hillary Clinton-- and the former New York senator has been shrewdly tending to would-be donors for much of the last year, whether in the form of speaking engagements like the one at Goldman this fall, or by glad-handing as she helps to raise $250 million for her family’s foundation. Lasry, fresh off a fundraising tour of duty on the Terry McAuliffe campaign for governor in Virginia, figures to be a critical component of an expected Clinton run; he is described as a likely contender to fill the role of Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, McAuliffe’s post in her 2008 bid.

The worry on Wall Street is about how far to the left Clinton might have to drift to appease what’s been proclaimed the “Warren wing of the Democratic Party”-- the vocal populists buoyed by Elizabeth Warren’s tough critiques of Wall Street greed, as well as by the recent election of liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio on their New York home turf. According to people in Clinton’s extended circle, John Podesta-- the former White House chief of staff under her husband who this week joined the Obama White House for a year-long stint-- was poised to work with Hillary Clinton on her messaging on income inequality, a role he seems less likely to fill while he's in government. Still, some say fears that Clinton will end up alienating financial sector donors the way Obama has, even if she tacks left, are overblown. “Wall Street folks are so happy about [having Clinton run] that they won’t care what she says,” says one well-placed Democrat.

And if the banking class is delighted with Clinton lately, the feeling appears mutual. In Manhattan last week, Clinton sat down with the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein for their second question-and-answer session in the last two months. Unlike the first one, held for his private equity firm’s investor conference, this was a more public appearance, part of a program honoring the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Clinton easily regaled the well-heeled crowd with stories from her past before Rubenstein ended their half-hour chat with a joke about her future: Would she be interested in joining a private equity firm?

“Is that an offer?” Clinton asked, laughing as the audience knowingly joined in. She may soon need many things from the titans of finance, but a job is probably not one of them.

Yeah… so stuck on awful for the next decade. Or more. Blue America has never endorsed anyone in a presidential election and you can rest assured that Hillary Clinton won't be the first. Instead, we ask our readers to contemplate a simple question, Why Settle? Really, why? The lesser of two evils, as we like to say, is still evil.