Obama takes the money. Disaster for Democrats.

It sends a terrible message.

Almost nobody changes their minds by reading a policy white paper.  We understand who is who and what they stand for by big bold messages.  We profile people. We get a sense. We fit people into archetype categories.   

Who is somebody, really?  We don't read the fine print; we look at what the person does.

That is why it is a miserable shame that former president Barrack Obama is getting paid $400,000 to give a talk at a Wall Street health care conference.  Understand, that it is legal and commonplace for a  celebrity to get paid and a former officeholder is a celebrity who draws a crowd.  But the speech signals something damaging to Obama and Obama's policies.

If Beyoncé gets paid it means that people want a lovely singer and it signals that she is a star.  It burnishes her reputation.  If a person understood to be intelligent gets paid a big fee presumably for saying clever and useful things it burnishes that reputation.  Big fee isn't the problem.  The problem is that the Wall Street speech money is going to Obama.

Obama is known for being president, for being a Democrat, for having policies that involved Wall Street that saved the firms and did not prosecute people wholesale for fraud.  Wall Street mortgage loan practices were risky, shockingly stupid, and self-destructive.  In some areas there was rule breaking (procedures for signatures, verifications of appraisals) but more generally the whole system involved fraud.

Institutions knew what they were doing included deception--deception of one another and deception of their customers. There is a term for this.   Financial fraud.

The Obama administration chose to consider the whole mess stupidity and accident, not fraudulent theft of billions.  This policy by George W Bush and continued for 8 years by Obama fueled a populist revolt.  The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, Trump.

No amount of fine print subtle argumentation (including in this blog) matters when it asserted that Obama did what was right and necessary in 2009 and to save the financial system and its institutions meant giving a pass to malefactors by calling them foolish but not criminal.

How should voters think and feel about this policy?  This blog and other thoughtful, nuanced articles said it was smart and necessary.  We had to save financial institutions to save the financial system to save the economy.  If we arrested all the top malefactors the institutions would collapse because their counter parties would lose trust in them.  That message is a whisper.  Obama shouted a very different message by accepting this speech.  

The big message, shown with body language and action:Democrats are sold out to Wall Street. Democrats are in it for the money.  Democrats are corporate whores. It positions Trump as the antidoe.  Maybe the guy too rich to corrupt, So he will maybe drain the swamp.  

This is a disaster got Democratic messaging.   It will be hard for a Democrat to condemn Obama, but if the do not they will appear weak.  If they do they will appear disloyal to a man many people admire. It positions Democrats as friendly with corrupt elites, no better than Republicans.

It may be too late--but not necessarily.  IF Obama were to announce he was going there to give them hell, and if he said that every penny was being sent directly to some charity to help homeless vets and if he said he extracted a promise to give money there in future years, an if in fact his speech gives them hell, and if in fact the news stories are "Obama blasts fat cat lawlessness" in the headlines, then this will mitigate the problem.   But even that won't be enough.

The first impression is a big, bold, unmistakable message:  Obama was a sold out tool of the wealthy all along.