While President-elect Donald Trump has struggled for several weeks to put together a cabinet – and failed initially to realize all the posts a new president needed to fill in the West Wing of the White House – Hillary Clinton reportedly had dozens of jobs already lined up for her anticipated administration before Election Day.
Mike Allen, one of the most well-connected reporters in Washington, wrote today on his new blog that team Clinton had “astonishingly specific, widely known/accepted roles” planned for her administration, including a likely spot for former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.
Granholm, who played a key role at a pro-Hillary Super PAC during the campaign, was considered for attorney general but more likely would have been nominated for secretary of education – the spot that goes to west Michigan charter school champion Betsy DeVos in the upcoming Trump administration, barring a confirmation derailment in the Senate.
For Michigan political junkies, that is a head-spinning contrast – DeVos under Trump; Granholm under Clinton.
Allen, who has joined with his old Politico buddy Jim VandeHei to create a new political site called Axios.com, wrote that sources who worked at the Clinton campaign HQ in Brooklyn shared with him a full-scale organizational chart of “what would have been” if Hillary had won the election.
The names of those under consideration (with names in bold as likely choices) included:
Secretary of State: John Podesta, Bill Burns, Joe Biden
Treasury Secretary: Sheryl Sanderg, Lael Brained
Defense Secretary: Michèle Floury
Attorney General: Loretta Lynch retained, Jennifer Granholm, Jamie Gorelick, Tom Perez
Commerce Secretary: Gregory Meeks, Sheryl Sandberg, Terry McAuliffe
Labor: Howard Schultz
HHS: Neera Tanden
Energy Secretary: Carol Browner
Education Secretary: Jennifer Granholm, John Sexton
White House Chief of Staff: Ron Klain
Deputy Chief of Staff: Huma Abedin
All of this seems so Clintonian, but there’s more. The EPA secretary was slotted for an African-American – no names, just a demographic label. In contrast, certain “Big Jobs” – no specific slots, just names – were tagged for ardent Hillary supporters such as former Iowa governor and outgoing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. And for Jen Palmieri, longtime Clinton loyalist, the upcoming job was going to be “whatever she wants,” according to Allen.
Most of the names above are well-known in political circles, and the revelations brought forward caused quite a tizzy over at the liberal website Slate, which suggested the proposed Clinton cabinet would have “enraged” the Democratic Left.
Slate’s Ben Mathis-Liley expressed disgust that Clinton was ready to disregard the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren crowd by nominating a series of moderates for key economic posts. He singled out the “corporatist centrists” – McAuliffe, the Virginia governor and one of the Clinton’s closest allies; Sandberg, the COO of Facebook who was Larry Summers chief of staff during his tenure as a centered treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton; and Schultz, founder of Starbucks, who is an outspoken Democrat but has an employer track record that does not appeal to the left-wing of the party.
The reaction to all of this could-have-been stuff only exacerbates a post-election dissension roiling within the Democratic Party that suggests the lefties still remain less than dismayed that Hillary lost.
Photo: WZZM-TV, Grand Rapids, screenshot
