Snakes in the grass

The people who brought you the Republican Culture of Corruption are more than willing to turn the Democratic Party to their devices.

TPM Cafe

As progressive Democrats from California to New Hampshire hold their traditional Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners, they must pause for a groan at ex-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s April ploy for re-lionizing himself as the party’s top economic thinker. It’s a Washington-based bit of pretentiousness called – of all things – the Hamilton Project.

Rubin, now Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, the world’s biggest bank, co-chairs the HP with fellow Wall Streeter Roger Altman, in thinly disguised pursuit of moving party policymaking from the grassroots of voter primaries and caucuses to the golden financial roots of Manhattan. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who loathed Federalist Alexander Hamilton and what he stood for – using government to support the monied classes – must be rolling over in their graves...