Dear Commons Community,

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders yesterday criticized Hillary Clinton during a fiery Manhattan speech about Wall Street reform.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Most of Sanders’ barbs were directed at the banking world. The socialist senator from Vermont reiterated his call to break up the biggest banks, declared that “fraud is the business model on Wall Street,” and elicited a round of enthusiastic boos from the crowd by invoking JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as a villain of the 2008 financial crisis.

“To those on Wall Street who may be listening today — and I’m sure there aren’t many of them — let me be very clear: Greed is not good,” Sanders said, in a reference to the film “Wall Street.” “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

But some of Sanders’ harshest rhetoric was reserved for Clinton.

“Wall Street makes huge campaign contributions, they have thousands of lobbyists and they provide very generous speaking fees to those who go before them,” Sanders said, in a not-so-subtle reference to lucrative talks Clinton gave at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and private equity firms after finishing her tenure as secretary of state.

“My opponent says that, as a senator, she told bankers to ‘cut it out’ and end their destructive behavior,” Sanders said. “But, in my view, establishment politicians are the ones who need to ‘cut it out.’ The reality is that Congress doesn’t regulate Wall Street –“

Familiar with the line, the pro-Sanders crowd interrupted him to complete the slogan: “Wall Street regulates Congress!”

Sanders is striking a populist cord with many Democrats and will be in the presidential nomination race for the long run.  Clinton holds a 15-point lead over Sanders in Iowa, according to HuffPost Pollster’s average of presidential polls, while Sanders holds a narrow lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, which will host its primary the week after Iowa’s contest.

Tony