Buzzfeed, March 4, 2018: The lefty democratic shift on Wall Street is happening for real
Democratic presidential hopefuls are scrambling to come out against the first big bipartisan legislation of the Trump era, positioning themselves as hardliners on Wall Street regulation and free from the influence of banks.
It’s a sign that on a national political scale, many Democrats are betting there will no longer be any room with voters for nuance on the issue of Wall Street — or any appetite for bipartisanship. Ahead of a potentially bruising Democratic primary, some of the country’s top Democrats are apparently hoping to shed any perception that they are cozy with Wall Street donors.
A dozen moderate Democrats from red and purple states are using the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act — which rolls back some Dodd-Frank regulations for small and medium-sized banks — as a chance to burnish their bipartisan credentials. Eleven have signed on to cosponsor what is expected, after a vote this week, to be the Senate’s first major bipartisan bill in more than two years.
But virtually all of the Senate’s most high-profile Democratic politicians have taken the opposite route, sharply criticizing the bill and saying they’ll vote against it. That includes past recipients of large sums of financial industry money, like Sen. Kamala Harris, as well as Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, two East Coast politicians who have raked in Wall Street cash and have been seen as more friendly to the banking industry.
