Elizabeth Warren: When it counted most, Hillary sided with the vultures

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Moyers and Company host Bill Moyers sparred on Friday after Moyers replayed comments Warren made 10 years ago regarding Hillary Clinton and her policy shift on a bankruptcy bill that Warren opposed.

"Isn't it time to get real ideologically?" Moyers asked. "The neoliberal movement of the last 30 years has run itself into the ground. And you know as well as I do, it still, nonetheless, has a hold on establishment Democrats. To be frank, Mrs. Clinton, for all the admiration and respect she commands for her years in public life, is the embodiment of that establishment, that movement. Do you think the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party can put the country back on a path away from corporate and plutocratic control?"

"The way I see this is that we change as a people," Warren replied. "The issues that face us are more visible than they were before the 2008 crash."

In a 2004 interview, the two discussed a meeting between Warren and Clinton, then First Lady, toward the end of Bill Clinton's presidency regarding a bill that would have made it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy from credit card debts. Following the meeting, President Clinton killed the bill with a pocket veto, at his wife's urging.

"Mrs. Clinton took credit for that veto, and she rightly should," Warren said at the time. "She turned around a whole administration on the subject of bankruptcy."

But after being elected to the Senate, Hillary Clinton voted for the bill when it was re-introduced.

"As Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different," Warren told Moyers in the 2004 interview, adding, "She has taken money from the groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency."

On Friday, Moyers asked Warren how people can trust their legislators are more likely to "pay more attention to the donors."

"I think this is one of the hardest questions in democracy, the hardest questions that we face as a country right now," Warren said. "The government runs for those who can make their voices heard. And they mostly make their voices heard through their lobbyists, through their campaign contributions. And that means over and over and over the tilt is in favor of the rich and the powerful."

Every rule that gets written just has, you know, just a little more, a little twist, a little opening, a little loophole for those who've already made it big. And it's taken the legs out from underneath our middle class, our working families, it's taking hope away from our next generation. This is the problem we've got to solve and we've got to solve it now.

The full interview, as posted online, can be seen below.