Progressives draft staff blacklist for Clinton administration

[Geee]

Politico:

Still bruised by what they see as Barack Obama’s betrayals and anxious 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 Morgan Stanley, is “out of central casting for the Wall Street revolving door,” said one of the people involved with the discussions.

Brainard, currently on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and with a history stretching 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.”