Subject: Readout of upcoming Glenn Thrush piece
From: Brian Fallon <[email-masked]>
To: Joel Benenson <[email-masked]>, Jennifer Palmieri <[email-masked]>, Dan Schwerin <[email-masked]>, Maya Harris <[email-masked]>, "Ann O'Leary" <[email-masked]>, Jake Sullivan <[email-masked]>, Kristina Schake <[email-masked]>, Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>, John Podesta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2015 16:12:54 -0400

Glenn Thrush is doing a deep-dive story for late Thursday or Friday on
HRC’s economic policy development activities. The story is premised on the
notion that she is a true wonk who likes to dive deep into policy, gorging
on briefing memos and attending meetings with experts and always asking
lots of questions. She has been engaged in thinking through her platform
for the last several months, with an eye on using the summer to roll out a
bunch of proposals in key areas of economic policy. These rollouts will go
beyond box-checking exercises of putting her on the record on issues of
interest to primary voters, but rather will comprise the raison d’etre of
her campaign. These policy announcements have the potential to go beyond
motivating the base, and speak to a general election audience. Thrush views
her ability to stake out suitably bold positions on these issues—and most
importantly, to project how deeply in her bones she cares about confronting
these issues—as the key to HRC’s electoral success. And, if she wins, this
agenda could usher in a Roosevelt-ian moment (here, he will note the fact
of the launch taking place in Four Freedoms Park) where the Democratic
party uplifts a generation of middle-class Americans into prosperity in a
way that Obama, whose job was to stop a recession and whose energies were
sapped by other distractions, never could.

That’s the lofty setup. In sketching this out, he is seeking info on who
she is talking to during the policy development process, what policies she
is developing ideas on, and what the political tripwires are.

WHO SHE IS TALKING TO

Thrush rattled off these names: Summers, Sperling, Tanden, Stiglitz,
Gensler. With Summers, he said he is unaware of him directly speaking with
HRC, but believes he has def spoken to WJC and to Podesta. His sense is
that Summers very badly wants to be involved/heard out, but Glenn is unsure
of any specific ideas that Summers is directly pushing or to what extent
the campaign truly considers him an adviser versus just another voice in
the mix. On Gensler, he intends to note that he is a darling to the Warren
wing, but it is unclear how involved he will be on policy involvement.
Beyond these names, he will invoke the CAP report on inclusive prosperity
and Roosevelt report as the two big tomes currently influencing the
conversation.

WHAT ISSUES SHE IS DEVELOPING IDEAS ON

He mentioned college affordability, pay equity and family leave as things
he expects her to do announcements on, but he is most obsessed in where she
is leaning on Wall street reform and tax reform. This leads to …

POLITICAL TRIPWIRES

TAXES. He said he is hearing that she is definitely interested in stuff
like expanding the EITC, but mostly, he says he assumes she is not going to
lean big into tax increases on the individual side (or at least, certainly
not an increase in the individual rate) and that she is wary of trying to
tackle corporate tax reform as well. His theory here rested on two
premises: (1) She does not want to be tarred as a traditional tax-and-spend
liberal, and (2) it would be inauthentic for her because, though she has
long championed government programs as a mechanism for social change, she
has not viewed the tax code in similar terms. I tried to muddy the waters
here. I did not over-do it and hint that she would be putting a major tax
increase at the heart of her agenda. But I said there was still political
space to pursue revenue raisers to pay for stuff, and pursued that way
(everyone doing their fair share in order to give everyone a fair shot, as
opposed to soaking the rich for its own sake) would not at all be untrue to
her record.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE/EXECUTIVE PAY. He has heard she is developing a plan
on this. He does not know what it will include, but his instinct is that
this will be a tough one for her to navigate. He suspects there will be
some stuff in the Roosevelt report that she will just not want to
entertain. Specifically, he said he doubts she will endorse reforming the
performance pay exception. She will not want to provoke Wall St too much.
In fact, he went so far to say he suspects HRC will try to copy what he
thinks Schumer has always tried to do when it comes to navigating the
demands of the left with Wall St being his backyard: that is, endorse a
little pain for Wall St, while simultaneously trying to justify it to the
industry as something more fair-minded than the alternative,
pitchfork-style proposals coming from the far left. I said I didn’t think
her approach needed to be that cynical. There is plenty of space for
policies that both restore fairness/accountability and that even
business-minded folks believe is smart and savvy. To this, he said, you may
be right, and invoked Steve Rattner as an example of someone to whom HRC’s
hypothetical proposals on corporate governance could appeal.

BOTTOM LINE: I think his starting premise is good. But I think Glenn
believes that despite our ambitions to put these bold, progressive economic
issues at the heart of HRC’s campaign, we will necessarily bump up against
some limits of what HRC personally believes and/or could seem inauthentic
in advocating. I think we should try to dissuade him of this point by
suggesting that there is plenty of running room in these policy areas for
HRC to be both bold/aggressive and true to herself/not pandering. I also
think we should consider throwing some more progressive names out at him in
terms of experts we’ve consulted in order to ensure the names he checks in
the article gives off the right vibe.

NEXT STEPS: Joel has agreed to talk to Glenn. He has also reached out to
Dan in recent days, but he has understandably been busy with the speech. I
think it would be good if either Maya or Ann would talk to him on
background.