Subject: Warren staff meeting
From: Dan Schwerin <[email-masked]>
To: Cheryl Mills <[email-masked]>, Huma Abedin <[email-masked]>, Jake Sullivan <[email-masked]>, John Podesta <[email-masked]>, Robby Mook <[email-masked]>, Philippe Reines <[email-masked]>, Nick Merrill <[email-masked]>
Cc: Ethan Gelber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 21:37:38 +0000

As follow up to HRC's meeting with Warren, I spent about an hour and twenty minutes this afternoon with Dan Geldon, a longtime advisor to the Senator.  He was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical of the Obama administration's choices, and explained at length the opposition to Antonio Weiss.  We then carefully went through a list of people they do like, which EW sent over to HRC earlier.  We have already been in touch with a number of them and I asked if he would be comfortable introducing me to the others, to which he seemed reasonably amenable.  We spent less time on specific policies, because he seemed less interested in that.  (Although he did express some flexibility on Glass-Steagall, said too big too fail is the bigger issue, and was open to our ideas on addressing through the tax code assuming it actually works.)  He spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.  Starting with her speech at the AFL this week, EW will be pushing back against the President's message that the economy is getting better and urging us not to get distracted by metrics like GDP and unemployment when so much else remains wrong.
Over all, it was a polite and engaged but not exactly warm conversation.  They seem wary - and pretty convinced that the Rubin folks have the inside track with us whether we realize it yet or not - but open to engagement and to be proven wrong.  He mentioned that everyone will be watching carefully any leaks about who HRC is meeting and talking to.
We agreed to stay in touch and I'll follow up, including to ask for introductions to specific people he mentioned.
Dan