Comments

1
This makes no sense, why wouldn't she release the transcripts if they are so boring?

I doubt they are any bombshells, but I'm sure they would make her look overly friendly to finance, which she obviously is and would continue to be as president.

I'd be willing to bet the rumors about her speeches were true: rah-rah, we're all in this together, the Great Recession wasn't your fault cheerleading. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/release-o…
2
Lesson of the day from Matt: Wall Street money potentially influencing our politicians is boring.
3
And, you would be shocked that when a person is hired by a company to make a presentation to their employees that they would make positive statements about said company?

Of course there are no bombshells.

Of course they're rah-rah morale boosting screeds. That's what the company wants it's minions to hear. That's what they paid for, and that's what she would give them.

4
Or someone’s sitting on videos of Clinton’s secret Wall $treet speeches, which are so amoral and greed-crazed that they’ll make Mitt Romney gasp and the monocle pop right off his face.

That person is now in waiting for precisely the ideal moment before the election to anonymously post them on the U-tubes for maximum impact.
5
Romney butchered the point he was trying to make in that speech: that 47% of the country would never vote for a Republican - and that's the statistical starting point of any campaign. Same for Democrats, within a few points. It's the flibberdigibbets in the middle, the "Undecided", that all the argy-bargy of the campaigns are directed at. Romney's mistake was to conflate those people with the "takers", instead of saying they support the policies that enable the takers.

@4: until then, your characterization of the content as "amoral and greed-crazed" is 100% speculation.
6
@ 5,

Sources reported that she ate an orphan on stage in a new dish called October Surprise to the thrill of the oligarchs in attendance. No one can prove she didn't.
7
A.) Bernie's been making the most vocal demands that she release the speeches. I wonder why... To prove how boring she is?
B.) If there is nothing to hide, why is she hiding it so carefully?
C.) If there is something to hide (even if it's just an embarrassing illustration of just how two faced she is), and anyone but Bernie knows it, why would they use it now when it would be so much more effective in the general (after the party is truly stuck with her)?

If they really are just boring pap, she should give them to Bernie, deflate one of his sails and inoculate herself against the issue later on. But I think we all know that as boring as they may be, they are also full of chummy pandering to the 1%... and that would be too embarrassing for Madam Secretary.
8
@5 Sure, we shouldn't portray Hillary as greedy, I mean she's only worth $31 million . You know greedy people are at a minimum worth $50 million. She works hard and just happened to acquire that much, she isn't at all in the pursuit of vast sums of money.
9
It's not hard to understand why she wouldn't release the transcripts, even if there's nothing particularly noteworthy in them: it would make her look weak, and it wouldn't change anything. The people who don't trust her would be mildly disappointed there wasn't anything there, and then move on to their next demand. It's exactly the dynamic that played out with Obama's birth certificate. He released the certificate, and it did exactly nothing. The idiots claimed it wasn't the right kind, that it had been altered, yadda yadda yadda. The lesson: don't release documents just because people who don't like you are demanding them. Giving into demands just advertises that you can be pushed around. Is anyone asking for the speech transcripts other than hard-core Sanders supporters? I'm not really seeing it.
10
@9 - True for tax returns also? How about medical records?
11
My guess is she doesn't want the transcripts to get out because it is very difficult to tell if the Republicans might be able to spin something in them to their advantage. One never knows what will get traction. Would anyone have guessed that Romney's 47% remark would have such a great impact? The amazing thing about that remark was how off base it was. A large minority of that 47%, who Romney's audience consider 'takers' are actually diehard Republican voters.
12
@10 - Releasing tax returns is so common now that most presidential candidates do it as a matter of course, including Hillary Clinton. So not releasing them is unusual, and makes people wonder why. Medical records are not commonly released, and are generally considered private, so if some group is demanding that someone release them they're generally going to be ignored unless they have some reason that seems fairly reasonable, such as a public history of medical issues or something. Releasing transcripts of speeches is sui generis. I've never heard of someone asking that the text of a private speech be released before during a political campaign, so it's an unusual request. I tend to think that Clinton isn't releasing them because she doesn't feel the demands are reasonable and she doesn't want to be seen as capitulating to unreasonable demands. Honestly, I can't begin to imagine what you could find out from the speeches that you can't find out better by looking at her voting record. There's no particular indication that she's any easier on Wall Street than other liberal politicians (now, whether that's still too easy is another conversation). The fact that people are fixating on these speeches tells me they don't have anything better, because "you haven't released the text of some speeches" is remarkably week tea, IMO.
13
Hilary's worried people will find out her speeches, her Goldman Sachs delivery especially, were mostly lifted from Emilio Estevez's stirring locker-room peptalk in The Mighty Ducks.
14
There are probably a few nuggets in the speech of the "rah, rah" mold that she doesn't want to see in an attack ad, but are probably not of much substance. Perhaps stuff as bad as 47%, but I doubt it. She just doesn't see the benefit of providing material for an ad along the lines of: "she said that Goldman Sachs, which killed our economy, was 'venerable institution with a proud history' and that 'we must work with Wall Street to fix the problems that the nation faces.' Tell Hillary Clinton that we don't want someone who'll work with Wall Street - we want someone who will take Wall Street down."
15
@9- There is a big difference between a birth certificate (which states when and where someone was born) which had always been available to the relevant people and a half hour speech (which contains a half hour of something) which has been kept hidden from all but those in attendance is pretty big. Not releasing the speeches in the first place makes Hillary look shady, which is a big problem for her. Her reputation is shady and she does things that confirm it.
16
@13,

That was pretty great, thanks.
17
@15 - What makes her speeches "hidden"? Have any steps been taken to "hide" them? Aren't private speeches only available to people who attended them, as a general rule? I think the general principle at work here is that people don't get to demand that any private documents be released without some kind of reason. Is there any indication, testimony, reporting or anything that suggests that these speeches are anything other than the usual kind of blather you get from paid speakers? I went to dozens of paid speeches by random celebrities and politicos while I was at Microsoft, because they have a speaker's program open to all employees. None of the speeches contained anything I couldn't have learned by reading the speaker's books or watching their speeches on YouTube. I basically went to "hear the band live." I have literally heard nothing to make me think there's anything different about Clinton's speeches, and thus I see these calls to "release the transcripts" as unreasonable fishing expeditions.
18
@15 - And also, to the extent that Clinton's reputation is "shady" it's because of a relentless parade of lies by right-wing outlets throwing mud as hard as possible. Every time I've tried to run down one of the many accusations made about her, I've found that it's either a baldfaced lie or a selective manipulation of normal actions to make them look bad. In all seriousness, the worst thing I can find is her whole story about having to duck and run because of potential sniper fire in Kosovo, which clearly didn't happen. I'm willing to give her a pass on that because it's exactly the kind of fish story that people tend to conveniently misremember until they really think it happened that way. Plus, it's not an important story. At worst it's embarrassing. Everything else comes up completely empty. Whitewater: nothing. Filegate: nothing. Vince Foster: less than nothing. Benghazi: nada. Private server: bupkis. Everything else I've seen people accuse her of is the usual kind of random political spin that is, to my mind, normal and common. Everyone spins. Bernie spins. Obama spins. There's a difference between lying and presenting the facts in the most positive light you can.
19
@7: "If they really are just boring pap, she should give them to Bernie, deflate one of his sails and inoculate herself against the issue later on."

If they are indeed boring pap (my assumption, but I have no more evidence than anyone else), why release now to deflate one of Bernie's sails? He barely has a chance at the nomination. Strategically, it makes more sense to wait for Trump to make an issue out of them and deflate one of HIS sails.
20
Has Bernie ever gotten around to releasing his full tax returns for this year and the past few years? I mean the whole thing - not just the Form 1040. If not, why not?
21
All this nefarious speculation. Here's some speculation.

Hillary has the transcripts - Who cares what's in them. She could literally have had the entire set of speeches written out, placed on her podium, and read verbatim from the written version.

Now for the speculation: "It's a lie, she needs to prove that's what she said"

Bernie Bots, Trump Trolls, Republithugs - all of them will say exactly that when the transcripts are released. Without an actual recording (and Romney proved how dumb that would be) - She will be accused of fabricating the transcripts. Why? Because that's what a-holes do, they accuse without foundation and know that dumb ass Americans' will believe their lies.
22
Don Musil: Everything you've said is of course accurate and well thought out, and based on the voting so far, reflective of the majority view of the general electorate as well. Unfortunately, and annoyingly, trying to bat down every loopy conspiracy fantasy that the Sanders people cook up is an endless game of Whack-A-Mole that will leave you feeling hopeless and depressed. Know that you are not alone. We feel your pain.

That said, it is kind of fun to get them all riled and roiled up, although I feel like a bad person for being so petty and will work on that in the future. So here we go again, whack whack...

In his 2010 campaign for the Senate, Sanders took $200,000 from Wall Street firms through the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Five of the top 20 givers to the DSCC were Wall Street firms, two law firms and the rest were senators’ political committees. The top giver that year was Clinton’s campaign committee, which gave $2 million. Goldman Sachs Group gave $685,050.

Sanders has also regularly attended the DSCC’s retreats, either during the winter in Florida or during summer on Martha’s Vineyard, including one as recently as July. Guests at the retreats are donors who have donated more than $100,000. Many attendees are lobbyists, lawyers and members of the financial industry. Donors who have attended the retreats said Mr. Sanders fully participated in the events, including socializing, and didn’t take the opportunity to tell Wall Street lobbyists that, as he says on the stump, their industry’s business model is fraud. And last year, he directly accepted about $55,000 in Wall Street contributions for his Democratic presidential campaign, FEC filings show.

The list goes on and on. Whack whack. Sorry. You can come back home now. We still love you.
23
Besides obsequious pandering to her oligarch drinking buddies, I would bet her missives are LOADED with plagiarism. Such transgressions have toppled politicians worldwide. Anyway, they are boring. So release the fucking things, you corrupt piece of shit! And Stranger shills, stop being such bitches for her cause, it makes the Trump assholes look principled.
24
As someone who has sat through more than his share of boring corporate speeches by politicians, I predict that they are full of lame jokes, shameless pandering, and vague statements of nothingness. I don't know why she doesn't release them. Maybe because they're just embarrassing. I mean, after all, she got paid big bucks to eat a banal hotel dinner and then get up and kiss up to rich old people for forty-five minutes. We should all be so lucky to get a gig like that.
25
Catalina: Luck had nothing to do with it. Clinton is an accomplished Ivy league attorney, wife and partner of the attorney general and then three term governor of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States for eight years, a twice elected senator from New York State, and the United States Secretary of State for almost five years. People pay real money to hear what someone like that has to say. Bernie, well, not so much. It has nothing to do with luck.
26
@23: And you're basing this one...what exactly?
Love her or hate her, Hillary Clinton is known for being well-prepared. She does a lot of reading. She does a lot of writing. The consummate policy wonk.

Please wait...

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