Maybe the populist "drain the swamp" could be taken as a vague direction on this issue, but in any case he seems to have done the opposite.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/trump-dodd-fr...

He provided many examples and cited data showing how the number of small banks has drastically shrunk since the regulation has passed, and directly related to it, causing the US banking market to further consolidate.

Ironically, there are now 5 major banks who control most of the market now largely as a result, while competition from smaller firms has declined drastically. So much for ending "too big to fail". Like most well intentioned democratic policy during the last decade intended to punish the larger banks for their destructive behavior, if anything they've come our stronger. Not to mention the bail outs with completely neutered terms in terms of bonuses and other potential disincentives for bad behavior.

It's one thing to say you want to restrict the power of banks to manipulate markets and generate risk, it's another to actually do it.

The fact this bill only benefitted small firms and kept the major banks under check sounds completely consistent with the Mnuchin's promises during his congressional hearing. He's on of the few Trump cabinet that seems highly competent and well suited for the job. I'm happy he has stuck around.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?421858-1/treasury-secretary-no...

This is just passive aggressive nonsense echoing the meme that the Dems represent citizens' interest any better than the GOP.

You can't realistically ask a population to vote a party or politician forever. The real solution is to reform the U.S. political system so that people don't have Republicans as their only alternative to Democrats when the Democrats become too corrupt, as well, or people just grow tired of some of their policies.

Historically in the US, parties undergo radical change: FDR's party is very different from Wilson and even more so than Andrew Johnson; Harding's is very different than Lincoln's. We are in what is called the 6th party system if I'm not mistaken.

So practically speaking it could be that the primaries are more important than the actual elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

Sometimes a party goes away in name but continues in spirit, at other times an existing name is retained but the core philosophy of the party changes enormously.

For example the ordinary term for members of the Conservative and Unionist Party in England is "Tories" but legally Tories are a different and much older political party. The allegiances and policies shifted, those who opposed Whiggs in parliament hundreds of years ago and those today arguing about how exactly to leave the EU have almost nothing in common beyond being vaguely "centre-right".

Remind me who was President when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed? That’s at the heart of all of this. And the so-called Community Reinvestment Act.

False equivalencies do not make both parties the same.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernizat...

After his policy agenda got derailed (especially healthcare which he hoped would be one of his signature achievements) and his party was wrecked in the midterms, and then he got dragged into years of frenzied investigations into nothing, he ended up signing a lot of the legislation that the GOP-controlled legislature put on his desk over the coming few years, because he thought that would help him out politically. It didn’t really work, but we got a lot of terrible policy out of it.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame “Democrats” in general for a GOP-driven policy agenda though, just because Clinton didn’t veto every bill that came across his desk.

Also, in comparison to the administrations either before or after him (or if we compare their Supreme Court picks, ugh) Clinton looks positively dreamy.