Will Obama anger the left again by hiring Bill Daley?
Will Obama anger the left again by hiring Bill Daley?
By Holly Bailey
In 1999, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney declared Daley to be “squarely on the opposite side of working families.”
When word leaked yesterday that President Obama might be considering former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley as his next chief of staff, the reaction was immediate: Obama was about to start another war with his most liberal supporters.
Left to right: Richard M. Daley, John Daley, George W. Bush, William Daley, Michael Daley
After all, Daley, a hard-charging pro-business centrist, has a long history of clashing with those on the left. As President Clinton’s Commerce secretary, Daley earned the wrath of the labor movement by pushing for the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well as trade with China. In 1999, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney declared Daley to be “squarely on the opposite side of working families.”
More recently, Daley alienated the left by being one of the few Democrats to publicly urge Obama and Democrats to move back toward the center. “Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come,” Daley argued in a Dec. 2009 Washington Post op-ed.
Add to that Daley’s most recent employment history as a top Wall Street executive with JPMorgan, and it would seem that Obama was virtually asking for a fight with his most liberal supporters, who have already charged the president with selling out to Wall Street on issues like bank reform and last year’s financial bailout.
“If the party’s liberal base didn’t like Rahm Emanuel, it will hate Daley,” Politico’s Ben Smith opined Monday. “A Daley appointment would be an early signal of Obama’s confidence that the party’s left ultimately will have no choice to show up and vote for him in 2012.”
The unusual thing is: The left isn’t exactly hopping mad about Daley—at least not yet.
Update:
From Obama recruits Wall Street mandarin Daley as chief of staff
[…]
“This is a strong appointment,” said Tom Donahue, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Bill Daley is a man of stature and extraordinary experience in government, business, trade negotiations and global affairs.”Donahue’s endorsement of Daley is significant because the U.S. Chamber has opposed Obama on virtually every major issue, from health care reform to Wall Street regulation. In a further sign of a thaw in the relationship between Obama and big business, the U.S. president has announced plans to speak to the Chamber in February.
But while the U.S. business community was applauding Obama’s selection of Daley, activists on the left wing of the Democratic Party were condemning the choice as further evidence the president is abandoning his political base.
“Why in the world is President Barack Obama selecting as his chief of staff a person who comes from the very Wall Street that wrecked the economy and who is an ardent supporter of the job-offshoring, NAFTA-style trade agreements that have hollowed out the industrial heartland?” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
[…]
“The Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make,” Daley wrote in 2009, one year before the devastating, for Democrats, 2010 midterms. “Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.”
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