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Readout of upcoming Glenn Thrush piece

Glenn Thrush is doing a deep-dive story for late Thursday or Friday on HRC’s economic policy development activities. The story is premised on the notion that she is a true wonk who likes to dive deep into policy, gorging on briefing memos and attending meetings with experts and always asking lots of questions. She has been engaged in thinking through her platform for the last several months, with an eye on using the summer to roll out a bunch of proposals in key areas of economic policy. These rollouts will go beyond box-checking exercises of putting her on the record on issues of interest to primary voters, but rather will comprise the raison d’etre of her campaign. These policy announcements have the potential to go beyond motivating the base, and speak to a general election audience. Thrush views her ability to stake out suitably bold positions on these issues—and most importantly, to project how deeply in her bones she cares about confronting these issues—as the key to HRC’s electoral success. And, if she wins, this agenda could usher in a Roosevelt-ian moment (here, he will note the fact of the launch taking place in Four Freedoms Park) where the Democratic party uplifts a generation of middle-class Americans into prosperity in a way that Obama, whose job was to stop a recession and whose energies were sapped by other distractions, never could. That’s the lofty setup. In sketching this out, he is seeking info on who she is talking to during the policy development process, what policies she is developing ideas on, and what the political tripwires are. WHO SHE IS TALKING TO Thrush rattled off these names: Summers, Sperling, Tanden, Stiglitz, Gensler. With Summers, he said he is unaware of him directly speaking with HRC, but believes he has def spoken to WJC and to Podesta. His sense is that Summers very badly wants to be involved/heard out, but Glenn is unsure of any specific ideas that Summers is directly pushing or to what extent the campaign truly considers him an adviser versus just another voice in the mix. On Gensler, he intends to note that he is a darling to the Warren wing, but it is unclear how involved he will be on policy involvement. Beyond these names, he will invoke the CAP report on inclusive prosperity and Roosevelt report as the two big tomes currently influencing the conversation. WHAT ISSUES SHE IS DEVELOPING IDEAS ON He mentioned college affordability, pay equity and family leave as things he expects her to do announcements on, but he is most obsessed in where she is leaning on Wall street reform and tax reform. This leads to … POLITICAL TRIPWIRES TAXES. He said he is hearing that she is definitely interested in stuff like expanding the EITC, but mostly, he says he assumes she is not going to lean big into tax increases on the individual side (or at least, certainly not an increase in the individual rate) and that she is wary of trying to tackle corporate tax reform as well. His theory here rested on two premises: (1) She does not want to be tarred as a traditional tax-and-spend liberal, and (2) it would be inauthentic for her because, though she has long championed government programs as a mechanism for social change, she has not viewed the tax code in similar terms. I tried to muddy the waters here. I did not over-do it and hint that she would be putting a major tax increase at the heart of her agenda. But I said there was still political space to pursue revenue raisers to pay for stuff, and pursued that way (everyone doing their fair share in order to give everyone a fair shot, as opposed to soaking the rich for its own sake) would not at all be untrue to her record. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE/EXECUTIVE PAY. He has heard she is developing a plan on this. He does not know what it will include, but his instinct is that this will be a tough one for her to navigate. He suspects there will be some stuff in the Roosevelt report that she will just not want to entertain. Specifically, he said he doubts she will endorse reforming the performance pay exception. She will not want to provoke Wall St too much. In fact, he went so far to say he suspects HRC will try to copy what he thinks Schumer has always tried to do when it comes to navigating the demands of the left with Wall St being his backyard: that is, endorse a little pain for Wall St, while simultaneously trying to justify it to the industry as something more fair-minded than the alternative, pitchfork-style proposals coming from the far left. I said I didn’t think her approach needed to be that cynical. There is plenty of space for policies that both restore fairness/accountability and that even business-minded folks believe is smart and savvy. To this, he said, you may be right, and invoked Steve Rattner as an example of someone to whom HRC’s hypothetical proposals on corporate governance could appeal. BOTTOM LINE: I think his starting premise is good. But I think Glenn believes that despite our ambitions to put these bold, progressive economic issues at the heart of HRC’s campaign, we will necessarily bump up against some limits of what HRC personally believes and/or could seem inauthentic in advocating. I think we should try to dissuade him of this point by suggesting that there is plenty of running room in these policy areas for HRC to be both bold/aggressive and true to herself/not pandering. I also think we should consider throwing some more progressive names out at him in terms of experts we’ve consulted in order to ensure the names he checks in the article gives off the right vibe. NEXT STEPS: Joel has agreed to talk to Glenn. He has also reached out to Dan in recent days, but he has understandably been busy with the speech. I think it would be good if either Maya or Ann would talk to him on background.