Correct The Record Tuesday November 11, 2014 Roundup
Correct The Record Tuesday November 11, 2014 Roundup:
Headlines:
BuzzFeed: “Rand Paul Takes Shot At Hillary Clinton’s Age”
“Adrienne Elrod, the communications director for Correct the Record, a research group backing Clinton, said, ‘It’s pretty funny that Rand Paul is lecturing on the ‘rigors’ of a presidential campaign, given that last I checked, he’s never been a presidential candidate, or even a candidate for re-election to any office.’”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC hits 'high-flying Hillary' over travel expenses”
“The pro-Clinton group Correct the Record released its own report on Monday using polling data to argue that Clinton's campaign visits boosted support for Democratic candidates among women. The report fights back against Republicans who have been seeking to link Clinton to Democratic losses last week.”
MSNBC: “Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?”
“Correct the Record, Clinton’s main defenders in the press, noted that while Paul lectures on the rigors of a campaign, the freshman senator has never run for president himself or even reelection. ‘The excitement and enthusiasm Hillary Clinton will generate on the campaign trail should she run for president will be far more than Rand Paul can handle,’ said spokesperson Adrienne Elrod.”
BuzzFeed: “Democratic Candidates Spent At Least $700K To Fly In Clintons”
"The millions the pair raised at fundraisers far surpassed any travel expenses candidates had to cover. Every rally with a Clinton also garnered attention from the national press — valuable earned media for campaigns."
The Reflector: Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy grows with support network in place
[From Burns' #1 Ranked Mississippi Bulldogs]
"She is a lawyer, mother, first Lady of Arkansas and the United States, U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of State and grandmother; could she now be President? Hillary Clinton... has broken down many barriers in her lifetime. What is next for her remains a mystery. Hillary Clinton would be the first woman president if she decided to run and was elected. Although historic, it is not the only thing to make her appear the most qualified for the presidency..."
BuzzFeed: “The Clintons Were Not The Losers Of The Midterms”
“The idea of the Romney spreadsheet actually throws into perfect relief the mad logic in the idea that the Clintons lost last week. The entire notion obscures the real value of surrogates: mostly fundraising, plus earned media.”
Washington Post: “Mitt Romney filling post-midterm role as key behind-the-scenes GOP player”
“In the days after the election, a group of Romney supporters began circulating a memo that compared the success of his midterm endorsements with those made by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. The documents — which were obtained by The Washington Post — concluded that two out of three Romney candidates won their elections, compared with one in three for Clinton.”
Washington Post: “The tricky Obama-Clinton handoff begins”
“If she becomes the nominee, Clinton will have to unlink herself from Obama over the next two years, while positioning herself to inherit the coalition of young people and minorities that helped put Obama in the White House.”
MSNBC: “Rand Paul broaches the subject of Hillary Clinton’s age”
“What’s irksome, though, is the fact the chiding is coming from Rand Paul, of all people, who probably hasn’t thought this one through. In 2008, a Texas congressman by the name of Ron Paul launched his second presidential campaign. He was, at the time, 73 years old.”
Capital New York: “Rangel now ‘Ready for Hillary’ too”
“Rep. Charles Rangel said he doesn't see any realistic challenger to Hillary Clinton in 2016. ‘I'm ready for Hillary,’ said Rangel in an interview on HuffPost Live. ‘But, you know, I don't like coronations. I don't see where anyone is gonna challenge her, on the Republican side or the Democratic side.’”
Washington Post column: Richard Cohen: “Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ only hope”
“She [Sec. Clinton] is not the Democratic Party’s best hope. She is its only hope.”
Los Angeles Times column: Jonah Goldberg: “Democrats' loss is not a win for Hillary Clinton”
“The notion that this monumental rebuke of Clinton's party, and the administration she served in, amounts to an unambiguous Clinton win invites many to ask, ‘What you talkin' 'bout, Hillary?’”
Bloomberg column: Francis Wilkinson: “Hillary Needs a Primary Challenge”
“The crushing Republican midterm victory is good for Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions. Or bad. I'm not much swayed either way. All I know is that, if she runs, Clinton desperately needs a credible primary opponent.”
Talking Points Memo: “How Can Hillary Make Obamacare Her Own?”
“Early hints at Clinton's 2016 message, themes that have been repeated throughout her recent public speaking appearances, signal that it will focus heavily on income inequality, the middle class, and growing wages. That could then be her opening for health care, too: Obamacare initially addressed insurance coverage, but its cost containment provisions were more back-loaded and how effective they ultimately will be is still an open question.”
The New Yorker: “What the Bushes and Clintons Agree On”
“Given the new mood in Republican circles, one thing is clear: He won’t win the nomination simply by telling Republicans they need someone to take on Hillary.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Walker blasts Clinton's 'old, tired' approach to government”
“Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Tuesday decried Hillary Clinton as embodying an ‘old, tired’ approach to government.”
Washington Post blog: Jennifer Rubin: “Inside the Republican ‘oppo’ research operation”
“In a nondescript building in Arlington, Virginia, a few dozen 20 or 30-somethings sit in an office with some GOP campaign posters on the walls, eyes glued to their computer screens. If not for the GOP artwork, you would think this was a trading floor or a technology firm. But it is America Rising PAC…”
Articles:
BuzzFeed: “Rand Paul Takes Shot At Hillary Clinton’s Age”
By Ruby Cramer
November 10, 2014, 2:29 p.m. EST
[Subtitle:] The likely Republican presidential candidate suggests that Clinton, who is 67, may not be able to handle the “rigorous physical ordeal” of the campaign trail.
He brings her up in stump speeches. He freely attacks her in interviews with the national press. He hammers her again and again for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and for a line she botched last month on the campaign trail.
Sen. Rand Paul’s latest knock on Hillary Clinton — his potential rival in the next presidential race — came in a Politico article, published on Monday, in which he appeared to take a shot at her age and health. Clinton just turned 67.
In the interview, Paul questioned whether Clinton would be able to physically handle running for president. “It’s a very taxing undertaking to go through,” he said. “It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency.”
Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, is 51 years old.
Asked if he wanted to clarify the remark, a spokesman for Paul said, “Nothing to add here.” A Clinton spokesman did not respond to an email about the comment.
Adrienne Elrod, the communications director for Correct the Record, a research group backing Clinton, said, “It’s pretty funny that Rand Paul is lecturing on the ‘rigors’ of a presidential campaign, given that last I checked, he’s never been a presidential candidate, or even a candidate for re-election to any office.”
The “excitement and enthusiasm” for Clinton on the campaign trail, Elrod said, “will be far more than Rand Paul can handle.”
When Clinton campaigned for Democrats during the midterms this fall, she kept a demanding schedule. In a 54-day period, she appeared at 45 events in 20 states, stumping for at least 26 different candidates, according to her office.
If Clinton were elected president in 2016, she would be 69 on inauguration day — the same age as Ronald Reagan when he took office in 1981.
The chair of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, has said he considers Clinton’s age and health “fair game” in a possible presidential race.
“What I do know is that the issue is going to come up as it does for any person running for president,” said Reince Priebus NBC’s Meet the Press earlier this year. “It was fair game for Ronald Reagan. It was fair game for John McCain.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC hits 'high-flying Hillary' over travel expenses”
By Peter Sullivan
November 11, 2014, 10:23 a.m. EST
The Republican National Committee hit Hillary Clinton on Tuesday over her travel expenses, reprising a theme of trying to make Clinton's expenses appear extravagant.
The RNC seized on an article by BuzzFeed using financial filings to report that Democratic candidates spent at least $699,000 this year to fly the Clintons on private jets to campaign events.
"High-flying Hillary" is the title of the email sent by the RNC highlighting the BuzzFeed report.
"The Clintons were already under fire for their lavish campaign travel tabs for weeks," the email continues. It points to a Bloomberg report that it cost more than $50,000 to fly the Clintons to the Harkin Steak Fry in September, when Hillary Clinton made her high profile return to the state.
The RNC also points to controversy over Clinton's $225,000 speaking fee for an event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas earlier this year. "It's not just political events where Hillary Clinton prefers to 'travel in style,' "the RNC said.
Clinton has also come under fire from Democrats for her paid speeches, particularly to Goldman Sachs, which could reinforce Democratic concerns that she is too close to Wall Street.
The pro-Clinton group Correct the Record released its own report on Monday using polling data to argue that Clinton's campaign visits boosted support for Democratic candidates among women.
The report fights back against Republicans who have been seeking to link Clinton to Democratic losses last week.
MSNBC: “Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?”
By Alex Seitz-Wald
November 10, 2014, 8:29 p.m. EST
Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?
He won’t say it outright, but that’s the question Sen. Rand Paul is getting at. “It’s a very taxing undertaking to go through. It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency,” the likely Republican presidential candidate told Politico Monday.
And he’s hardly alone among Republicans in wielding Clinton’s 67 years against her. Rick Santorum called the former secretary of state “old,” Sen. Mitch McConnell compared her to a cast member from “The Golden Girls,” and Bobby Jindal called her an “old, tired candidate.” Meanwhile, longtime Clinton foe Matt Drudge accused Clinton of using a walker during a magazine cover photoshoot, and the conservative Free Beacon has had plenty of laughs at the expense of Clinton’s age.
It’s obvious why a relatively young field of Republican presidential hopefuls see benefit in painting Clinton as old, but it’s unfamiliar territory for Republicans, who are used to defending their own nominees’ advanced ages.
In 1984, it was Ronald Reagan – still the oldest president in American history – who had to contend with age questions, especially after he stumbled in his first debate with Democrat Walter Mondale. “Sigh Ronald Reagan sigh,” was all former Clinton aide Tracy Sefl said when asked to respond to Paul.
Ed Rollins, who managed Reagan’s campaign that year, said Republican attacks on Clinton’s age could prove counterproductive. “Republicans will obviously try to make it an issue but I think those attacks won’t work and may backfire. If she loses it won’t be because she is too old, and maybe because she and her policies are too familiar with Obama,” he told msnbc.
Reagan neutralized the age issue by being “very vigorous, athletic” and looking younger than his 73 years, Rollins said. “In the case of Mrs. Clinton, the only issue will be her health and was she more seriously ill then she let on during her secretary of state tenure,” he said.
“The fact that she won’t have a really serious primary challenge allows her to control the tempo of her campaign,” Rollins continued. “Limited stops, and less rigorous days will be the rule and she will not have to do as much campaigning until she is the nominee. If she doesn’t stumble or misspeak too often she will be fine. A major stumble and the game may change.”
Reagan pushed the age issue aside for good in a second presidential debate with Mondale with a classic quip. “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” he said.
That’s essentially the tack Clinton’s allies have taken in responding to Paul.
“A wise man once told me, ‘Champions don’t punch down.’ I believe that man was former boxer Ed Rollins. So forgive me if I decline to engage Sen. Paul,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton strategist who now advises the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.
Correct the Record, Clinton’s main defenders in the press, noted that while Paul lectures on the rigors of a campaign, the freshman senator has never run for president himself or even reelection. “The excitement and enthusiasm Hillary Clinton will generate on the campaign trail should she run for president will be far more than Rand Paul can handle,” said spokesperson Adrienne Elrod.
After Reagan, Republicans had contend with the age of their presidential nominees in 1996 with Bob Dole (73), and then again in 2008 with John McCain (72).
Hillary Clinton would be younger than any of them at the point they would have been inaugurated, and the same age as Reagan. And the National Journal argued that thanks Clinton’s gender and recent advances in life expectancy, he age is better compared to that of Gerald Ford’s (62 when he was sworn in) than Reagan (69).
In fact, Rand Paul’s father, Ron, was 77 – a full decade older than Clinton is now – when he ran for president in 2012. Rand Paul didn’t seem to have a problem with that.
While running against a youthful Barack Obama, McCain often poked fun as his seniority. “Usually, people watch my performance to see if I need a drool cup, or stumble around, or anything like that,” he said while stumping in Florida in 2007.
McCain’s allies were always on the lookout for perceived slights about his age, like when Obama said McCain was “losing his bearings” during the GOP primary. The campaign pushed back hard, and was sufficiently offended to send a fundraising email to supporters calling the “attack” a “not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue.” The campaign also trotted out science showing the cognitive abilities of 70-year-olds was up to snuff.
There concern was understandable. About a third of Americans said McCain’s age could interfere with his presidential responsibilities, according to numerous polls from the time. A similar portion expressed that concern about Dole and Reagan as well.
Ironically, it was the Team Clinton raising age as an issue in 1996. One top Bill Clinton White House aide called a Dole speech “tired, old, worn-out.” Another, who would a decade later play a senior role in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, called Dole’s rhetoric “disconnected and dysfunctional.”
“Age can be a factor. I think it was in my race, and it’ll be in hers,” Dole told Politico earlier this year while honoring World War II veterans.
But one big difference between the Republican candidates and Clinton is that the age of Reagan and Dole and McCain better matched the GOP base, which skews older. Clinton’s supporters, meanwhile, include many young people. Almost 60% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 say they would vote for Clinton if the election were held today, while Republicans typically do poorly among young voters.
Young people don’t even perceive Clinton as particularly old. According to a recent Pew survey, an incredible 69% of 18-29 year olds think Clinton is either in her 50s or younger. Just 27% accurately place her age as between 60 and 69, while only 2% say she’s older than 70.
That misconception will be quickly corrected if Republicans have anything to do with it. But as Rollins noted, they also run the risk of backlash if they go after her age too hard. Karl Rove was roundly condemned for attacking Clinton’s health this summer.
But Paul may have another goal in mind in addition contrasting his youthful 51 with Clinton’s 69 – getting in her head. In 2008, Clinton was easy to rattle and throw off course. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe took deftly took advantage of this trait then, and is warning her of it now.
Paul’s attacks on her age and also those on Monica Lewinsky – perhaps the two most sensitive areas of Clinton’s life – may be aimed at provoking a response more damaging than the attack itself.
So far at least, Clinton seems to be experienced enough not to take the bait.
BuzzFeed: “Democratic Candidates Spent At Least $700K To Fly In Clintons”
By Ruby Cramer
November 11, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EST
[Subtitle:] The first estimate of the costs of bringing in the Clintons to campaign. The final total will likely top $1 million by the time more filings become available.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were the most sought after surrogates in the Democratic Party this year. He campaigned for more than 47 candidates. She for more than 26. Supporters estimate that, together, the Clintons headlined 75 rallies and fundraisers — and logged roughly 50,000 miles jetting from state to state.
When the Clintons travel, they fly private. This year, their airfare cost candidates at least $699,000, available state and federal campaign finance reports show.
Payments from campaigns and party committees to Executive Fliteways, the independent charter company the Clintons use, could be found for just under half of the trips the former first family took on behalf of Democrats this year.
The costs of two Clintons trips — one to Iowa, the other to Kentucky — were reported earlier this fall by Bloomberg and Politico, respectively.
But the $699,000 figure is the first comprehensive estimate that establishes the scope of the costs associated with using the Clintons as surrogates. By the time the rest of the filings come in, the number will likely exceed $1 million.
The Clintons couldn’t have paid for their own flights. Legally, candidates are required to pay for surrogate travel or report the costs as an in-kind contribution.
But not every campaigner flies on private charter planes. Sen. Rand Paul, who was on the road nearly every week this fall on behalf of Republicans, often flies commercial — and in coach. He travels alone or with one aide. In contrast, Mike Huckabee, the former governor who sold himself as an American everyman, racked up thousands in private air travel bills, as Politico reported this year.
For the Clintons, flying commercial isn’t as viable an option.
Both fly with multiple members of their Secret Service security detail. (One person familiar with the former secretary of state’s travel arrangements said she is usually accompanied by about four people from the detail.) Staffers also typically accompany the Clintons on their trips. At rallies on the road this year, Hillary Clinton often appeared with at least three aides from her personal staff.
As of this week, filings showed there were 32 total expenditures, some made in installments of two, made this year by campaigns to Executive Fliteways. Most of the finance reports that show expenditures made after Oct. 15 — when the Clintons did a large share of campaigning — are not yet available to the public.
Only candidates and committees that the Clintons supported showed disbursements this year to Executive Fliteways, which is based in Ronkonkoma, New York, on Long Island. No other candidate or surrogate appeared to make use of the charter company. The 32 payments were each recorded in filings for a campaign or party just before, or soon after, a Clinton event for that entity.
The costs — which total $699,172.82 between both Clintons — are based on a review of 2014 filings to the Federal Election Commission and to secretaries of state, with use of the Congressional Quarterly Political MoneyLine database.
The millions the pair raised at fundraisers far surpassed any travel expenses candidates had to cover. Every rally with a Clinton also garnered attention from the national press — valuable earned media for campaigns.
But the Clintons benefited from the trips too. The former secretary of state, who is considering another run for president, reintroduced herself to voters this fall on the campaign trail and honed a new stump speech.
The average cost for each Clinton trip was roughly $21,000.
Most of the listings for the flights are recorded in finance reports under a memo like “travel expense” or “airfare.” A handful of the expenditures listed by the campaigns with more specific notes — like “Charter Flight - WJC” or “Flight - HC 10/16/2014.”
Bill Clinton, who campaigned aggressively for Democrats from the spring to Election Day, racked up the majority of the costs that are so far public. Filings for 25 of his events show he billed campaigns at least $610,370.30 for his air travel.
Because Hillary Clinton held most of her rallies and fundraisers in late October, only a fraction of the expenses associated with her travel are currently public.
Payments for the seven trips for which filings are available show her travel cost campaigns at least $88,802.52.
One joint event with her husband at the Iowa Steak Fry, an annual fundraiser hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin, cost $50,099.82 in airfare.
That bill was first reported by Bloomberg last month. The tab for another Clinton trip, an Oct. 15 visit to Kentucky on behalf of Alison Lundergan Grimes, who lost her race for Senate, was first reported earlier this month by Politico.
Executive Fliteways owns a fleet of private jets and has three bases across New York, including one at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains — a 15-minute drive from the Clintons’ home of 15 years in the hamlet of Chappaqua.
Public flight records show a Falcon 900 jet housed at Executive Fliteways charted the same course as at least two Clinton trips this fall. The company’s website features a picture and description of the plane, which seats 12 passengers.
Clinton has considered basing her possible presidential campaign out of White Plains, Politico reported this month. If she does put her headquarters there, the Westchester Airport could serve as a convenient travel hub for the campaign.
A list of the costs associated with the 32 campaign trips is included below:
Feb. 25, WJC: Alison Lundergan Grimes fundraiser in Louisville, Kentucky
Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $28,670.00 (made in two payments: $25,000.00 and $3,670.00) on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21, respectively, for “Transportation”
April 5, WJC: James Lee Witt rally in Hot Springs, Arkansas
James Lee Witt’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $21,831.66 on April 3 for “Flight for President Clinton”
April 6, WJC: Pat Hays fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas
Pat Hays’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $10,726.33 for “Airfare”
April 10, WJC: Marjorie Margolies fundraiser in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Margolies’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $6,610.50 on Apr. 10 for “Travel”
April 26, WJC: Michigan Democratic Party fundraiser in Detroit, Michigan
The Michigan Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways $37,919.61 on April 28 for “Travel expense”
May 3, WJC: Mike Ross fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas
Mike Ross’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $7,119.80 on May 4 for “Travel Expenses”
May 13, WJC: Anthony Brown fundraiser in Potomac, Maryland
Anthony Brown’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $10,581.00 on May 21 for “Charter Flight - WJC”
June 13, WJC: Ohio Democratic Party fundraiser in Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio Democratic Party paid Executive Fliteways $28,414.00 on June 22
June 20, WJC: Rahm Emanuel fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois
Rahm Emanuel’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $25,635.00 on July 1 for “Event Costs - Travel Chicago for Rahm Emanuel”
June 28, WJC: Florida Leadership Blue Dinner fundraiser in Hollywood, Florida
The Democratic Executive Committee of Florida paid Executive Fliteways $47,088.77 on June 25 for “Air Travel”
Aug. 6, WJC: Alison Lundergan Grimes fundraiser and rally in Lexington, Kentucky
Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $23,265.00 on Aug. 11 for “Transportation”
Aug. 15, WJC: Arkansas Democratic Party fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas
The Democratic Party of Arkansas paid Executive Fliteways $20,366.89 on Sep. 2 for “Fundraising Event Speaker Travel”
Aug. 27, WJC: Seth Magaziner fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island
Seth Magaziner’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $14,418.00 on Sept. 2 for “Travel & Lodging”
Sept. 2, WJC: Dan Malloy rally in New Haven, Connecticut
The Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways $14,901.59 on Sept. 5 for “Airfare”
Sept. 2, WJC: Mike Michaud-Maine Democratic Party rally in Portland, Maine
The Maine Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways $14,901.59 on Sept. 4 for “Travel”
Sept. 5, WJC: Charlie Crist rally in Miami, Florida
Charlie Crist’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $41,072.52 on Sept. 5 for “Travel Expenses”
Sept. 6, WJC: Mary Landrieu fundraiser in New Orleans, Louisiana
The Big Easy Committee paid Executive Fliteways $41,072.52 on Sept. 8 for “Travel”
Sept. 13, WJC: Michelle Nunn fundraiser in Atlanta, Georgia
The Nunn Victory Fund paid Executive Fliteways $34,831.86 on Sept. 12 for “Fundraising Event Expense”
Sept. 14, WJC: Harkin Steak Fry fundraiser in Indianola, Iowa
The Harkin Steak Fry 2014 committee paid Executive Fliteways $50,099.82 on Sept. 10 for “travel expenses”
Sept. 16, WJC: Fred DuVal fundraiser in Scottsdale, Arizona
Fred DuVal’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $38,000.00 on Sept. 18 for “Event Expenses - Other”
Sept. 30, WJC: Anthony Brown fundraiser Potomac, Maryland
Anthony Brown’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $7,770.00 on Oct. 6 for “Event expense”
Sept. 30, WJC: Kay Hagan fundraiser in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The Hagan Forward NC committee paid Executive Fliteways $29,230.00 on Sept. 26 for “Travel”
Oct. 2, HRC: Charlie Crist fundraiser and retail stop in Miami, Florida
Charlie Crist’s campaign and the Charlie Crist for Florida committee paid Executive Fliteways $20,000.00 on Sept. 29 ($10,000 each) for “Travel/Airfare” and “Travel Expenses,” respectively
Oct. 6, WJC: Arkansas Democrats rallies in Arkansas
The Democratic Party of Arkansas paid Executive Fliteways $10,000.00 on Sept. 19 for “Event Speaker Airfare”
Oct. 8, WJC: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fundraiser in California
The DSCC paid Executive Fliteways $23,372.50 on Oct. 9 for “Travel Expenses”
Oct. 13, HRC: Mark Udall fundraiser and retail stop in Denver, Colorado
Mark Udall’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $4,339.00 on Oct. 14 for “Airplane charter”
Oct. 15, HRC: Alison Lundergan Grimes rally and fundraiser in Louisville, Kentucky
The Kentucky State Democratic Central Executive Committee paid Executive Fliteways $17,192.50 on Oct. 14 for “Air Travel”
Oct. 16, HRC: Gary Peters-Mark Schauer rally/fundraiser in Rochester, Michigan
The Michigan Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways $25,940.00 on Oct. 14 (Made in two payments: $20,233.20 & $5,706.80) for “Travel Expense” and “Flight - HC 10/16/2014,” respectively
Oct 21, HRC: Mark Udall-John Hickenlooper-Andrew Romanoff rally in Aurora, Colorado
Andrew Romanoff’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $542.38 on Oct. 14 for “Travel”
Oct. 24, HRC: Gina Raimondo rally/fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island
The Rhode Island Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways $10,394.32 on Oct. 23 for “Travel & Lodging”
Oct. 24, HRC: Mike Michaud rally/fundraiser in Scarborough, Maine
The Maine Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways $10,394.32 on Oct. 24 for “Travel”
Oct. 26, WJC: Charlie Crist rally in Tampa, Florida
Charlie Crist’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $22,471.34 on Oct. 27 for “Travel/Airfare”
The Reflector: Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy grows with support network in place
By Frank Bradford
November 11, 2014, 7:00 A.M. EST
She is a lawyer, mother, first Lady of Arkansas and the United States, U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of State and grandmother; could she now be President? Hillary Clinton is a polarizing public figure who has broken down many barriers in her lifetime. What is next for her remains a mystery. Hillary Clinton would be the first woman president if she decided to run and was elected. Although historic, it is not the only thing to make her appear the most qualified for the presidency; she brings a great amount of public service experience to the table. She has recently written a memoir titled “Hard Choices” after leaving her post as head of the U.S. Department of State about her time spent there.
After many decades in politics, many see her presidency as an opportunity to keep the White House in the hands of the Democratic Party once President Barrack Obama’s term is complete. Once a member of the Republican Party while growing up, she decided to switch parties because of the different directions the parties were taking in the era of Vietnam and civil rights. Sitting as perhaps the most well-known potential candidate for presidency, Hillary Clinton was viewed by many as the next democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential elections; even before the recent Republican power surge in the U.S. Congress.
In the days since the 2014 midterm elections, there has been a spike in articles from major news outlets, such as MSNBC, Huffington Post and Politico looking ahead at the next election and a possible Clinton White House run.
If Hillary Clinton does indeed decide to run, she would have a lot of support in her corner. A super political action committee, called Ready for Hillary, which is already responsible for raising millions of dollars and has only been operating for nearly two years. According to Hans Goff, the organization’s southern regional organizing director, this organization is the kind of grassroots support Clinton would need to win the presidency.
“Ready for Hillary is a national grassroots movement encouraging Hillary Clinton to run for president,” Goff said. “From the very beginning of this effort, we’ve sought to show Hillary that if she decides to run for president, she would have millions of Americans standing behind her, ready to help her win. What we are building is the type of early, grassroots support that is necessary for a successful presidential effort.”
Goff said the organization is ready to mobilize at a moments notice.
“To date, our national grassroots network is nearly three million supporters strong, and growing. Those are supporters we can engage the moment she makes a decision,” Goff said.
This past summer I had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of Ready for Hillary outside of Washington D.C. and was astonished by all of the interns and staff members working there. I felt a sense of creativity and innovation in the air while touring the office. Everyone seemed to be from different places and enjoyed working on issues they saw as important to the democratic platform. Ready for Hillary also uses a bus, The Hillary Bus, which travels state to state to different communities and college campuses building more support.
Another political organization called American Bridge is led by a group of former Clinton advisers, including Mississippi native Burns Strider. American Bridge and another organization called Correct the Record, are helping fight for Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates from the Democratic Party by correcting attacks from the right wing media and pundits and conducting opposition research. Each of these groups are taking advantage of the popularity of social media, which has become a growing tool during election season.
The world of politics seems to be neverending. After each election, it’s almost time to prepare for the next one. Almost everything candidates say and do is analyzed and looked at as fair game for the opponents waiting for the other to falter. All we can do now is just sit and wait for candidates to start officially preparing and declaring in the coming months.
BuzzFeed: “The Clintons Were Not The Losers Of The Midterms”
By Katherine Miller
November 10, 2014, 6:11 p.m. EST
[Subtitle:] Mitt Romney has the stupidest spreadsheet. We must stop surrogate madness.
Mitt Romney called 80 candidates last week after they won their elections. He campaigned for almost as many. He campaigned for so many people, actually, that the people around him kept a spreadsheet with wins and losses tallied in it:
“In two spreadsheets circulated last week, Romney’s ‘winning percentage’ is contrasted with Clinton’s. After listing the candidates that each of them endorsed, the analysis claims that 66% of Romney’s picks emerged victorious in the GOP midterm wave compared with 33% for Clinton.
“Clinton is marked down as having backed 39 candidates, while Romney endorsed 76 candidates. There are descriptions of Clinton’s activities on behalf of a candidate, whether it was a rally, a fundraiser, a robocall or just an endorsement.”
This is the consultant’s version of yelling “SCOREBOARD, BITCHES.” But it’s also insane. Who in America walked into a middle school gym or whatever and thought, “I’m here today to vote for a Republican because Mitt Romney did a fundraiser”?
The reasons given so far for the Republican wave have included: the widespread unpopularity of President Obama, good Republican candidates and campaigns in key races, bad Democratic candidates and campaigns in key races, a failure to turn out core Democratic constituencies that left the electorate significantly older and more conservative. No one has really argued that Mitt Romney’s surrogacy drove the Republican wave, as though he were Ursula at the end of The Little Mermaid.
And yet, the reverse idea has been applied to the Clintons.
The Clintons, together, campaigned about as much as Romney did, individually. These ranged from people like Martha Coakley — who by the time Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton got to her was already expected to lose to a Republican in Massachusetts — to people in closer races like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (winner) and Rep. Bruce Braley (loser). Their top target was Alison Lundergan Grimes, the daughter of a prominent Clinton ally, the beneficiary of a lot of Hollywood money, especially from a top Clinton fundraiser, and the subject of polling that made the race look closer than it ultimately was.
The idea of the Romney spreadsheet actually throws into perfect relief the mad logic in the idea that the Clintons lost last week. The entire notion obscures the real value of surrogates: mostly fundraising, plus earned media.
A great example of this is Kay Hagan, a center-left Democrat with a whisper of a public personality. She won in 2008 on the ballot with Obama. Despite a working theory that she could not possibly win reelection in a redder North Carolina that disapproves of the president, she held a polling lead over Thom Tillis all fall. Ten days before the election, Hillary Clinton did a drive by appearance in Charlotte, and gave a version of her October speech (focus on families, wages, and women) tailored to North Carolina. At no point during the event did Hillary Clinton stand on Kay Hagan’s shoulders and shout, fire emanating from her eyes, A vote for Hagan is a vote for meeeee. This, top to bottom, is about as generic as you get.
And as it turns out, the polls were terrible: Hagan lost.
Rand Paul trolled the hell out of these losses (why not?), posting an entire album of #HillarysLosers on Facebook. Paul himself had campaigned for Tillis; the album included one featuring Hagan and Clinton.
Earlier this year, though, a few days before North Carolina’s Republican primary, Paul also stumped once for Greg Brannon, the libertarian doctor who once ran a conspiracy website, running a long-shot bid against Tillis, the speaker of the North Carolina House. Brannon got blown out by Tillis. Was that Paul’s fault? No. He was there once — and Brannon was going to lose.
Scott Walker actually told the truth a few weeks ago, in a public shot at Chris Christie and the amount of money the Republican Governors Association had given his campaign, days before the New Jersey governor flew to Wisconsin.
“[Christie] is coming because he asked if he could come and we weren’t going to say no,” Walker told Politico. “But we’re not looking for surrogates. The people that have been campaigning with me are by and large from Wisconsin.”
Money. We are looking for money. Who cares about surrogates?
Washington Post: “Mitt Romney filling post-midterm role as key behind-the-scenes GOP player”
By Robert Costa
November 10, 2014, 2:20 p.m. EST
Mitt Romney is not running for president. But since last week’s GOP midterm-election romp, he has cemented his role as one of the Republican Party’s key behind-the-scenes players, nurturing relationships with members of Congress and keeping in close touch with longtime consultants.
According to several top Republicans, Romney made more than 80 phone calls to GOP candidates last Tuesday and Wednesday to congratulate them on their victories, including Senate candidates Joni Ernst of Iowa and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He spent election night in Boston watching returns at the home of former aide Ron Kaufman, stopping in later at the Seaport Hotel to congratulate Massachusetts governor-elect Charlie Baker (R) on his win.
Some longtime allies also continue to prepare the ground for another Romney presidential campaign, despite his continued disavowals of interest. In the days after the election, a group of Romney supporters began circulating a memo that compared the success of his midterm endorsements with those made by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
The documents — which were obtained by The Washington Post — concluded that two out of three Romney candidates won their elections, compared with one in three for Clinton.
According to three Republicans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, Romney’s associates are convinced that if former Florida governor Jeb Bush does not run, Romney could consider another White House bid. He has told friends that he feels positive about the likely GOP field, but also worries that many of the contenders may not have what it takes to beat Clinton.
In two spreadsheets circulated last week, Romney’s “winning percentage” is contrasted with Clinton’s. After listing the candidates that each of them endorsed, the analysis claims that 66 percent of Romney’s picks emerged victorious in the GOP midterm wave compared with 33 percent for Clinton.
Clinton is marked down as having backed 39 candidates, while Romney endorsed 76 candidates. There are descriptions of Clinton’s activities on behalf of a candidate, whether it was a rally, a fundraiser, a robocall or just an endorsement.
The Republicans familiar with Romney’s inner circle said the medium is part of the message. To nudge the data-driven Romney, they are deliberately charting returns and his recent political activity in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, knowing that numbers are the best way to win his attention. In chats with him, they also are talking up his standing in the party, which they argue has been bolstered by his work for the party this year.
Romney, who was in Washington on Friday to speak at the Israeli American Council’s national conference, has seen a resurgence of sorts in recent months, as dozens of campaigns asked for his assistance. He spent the final days before Tuesday’s election in Alaska, where he stumped for Republican Senate candidate Dan Sullivan.
At Friday’s event, Romney sharply criticized President Obama’s foreign policy. “It’s tempting to think he’s just inept,” Romney said, “but the reality is, he does have a foreign policy” — one that is “weakening our military and distancing us from our allies.”
A poll by Democracy Corps, a Democratic group, showed that those who voted in Tuesday’s GOP-leaning elections favored Romney over Clinton by 52 percent to 46 percent. A Des Moines Register-Bloomberg News poll released last month showed Romney as the only potential 2016 candidate who would beat Clinton among likely Iowa voters, 44 percent to 43 percent.
In an interview with Fox News on election night, Romney dodged 2016 questions but noted that he campaigned in 27 states this year. “I am going to continue to fight and campaign for people who I believe in, that can get the country going in the right direction,” he said.
Washington Post: “The tricky Obama-Clinton handoff begins”
By Juliet Eilperin and Anne Gearan
November 11, 2014, 10:42 a.m. EST
As the presumptive Democratic front-runner to succeed President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton has many of the same goals as the president, starting with the need to reassemble and reenergize the coalition responsible for Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012.
But if she becomes the nominee, Clinton will have to unlink herself from Obama over the next two years, while positioning herself to inherit the coalition of young people and minorities that helped put Obama in the White House.
“Young people want to be inspired by someone and something,” said Stephanie Cutter, a partner at the Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies and Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012. “The president can and will help energize them over the next two years, but he’s not on the ballot in 2016. The next nominee must also reach and inspire them.”
The poor showing by Democrats in last week’s midterm election means Obama must reboot his second-term agenda and restore the Democrats to political health as his own star as party leader begins to fade and Clinton’s is on the rise.
Over time, the interests of the country’s two leading Democrats will not always align.
For now, a prevailing view among Democrats holds that the Republican Congress will make it easier for Clinton to define herself and blunt the need to criticize or draw comparisons with Obama.
“President Obama’s legacy is now entirely dependent on the election of a Democratic successor as president who will protect and extend it, not demolish it,” said David Brock, a Clinton ally and chairman of the pro-Democratic super PAC American Bridge. “Should she run, they both now have a common enemy in a Republican Congress that will define politics through 2016.”
As Clinton seeks to differentiate herself ahead of a presidential election in which Obama will not be on the ballot, strategists said she probably would try to show voters what she would do differently in key areas in which Obama has disappointed many Democrats, such as immigration policy, and would move even more aggressively on environmental issues.
“I would underline the fact that they have very, very different and separate roles,” said Geoff Garin, a Clinton adviser and pollster in 2008. “While there will be plenty of times when it will be in each other’s interest to kind of reinforce the issues and messages of the other, I think more frequently the imperative will be to stay out of each other’s way.”
One longtime Obama adviser said the president is well aware that Clinton will have to distance herself from him, and complain publicly about things he does. Obama is unconcerned about that, the adviser said, citing Clinton’s somewhat pointed criticism of Obama this year over U.S. policy in Syria.
“He didn’t care,” the adviser said. “He’s a pretty confident guy.”
In an interview, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer took the long view of Obama’s common cause with Clinton and future Democrats. “If the Obama coalition can become the Democratic coalition, it will shape the contours of the debate for years to come and pave the way for a lot of things we feel strongly about, that may not get done in our last two years,” Pfeiffer said.
Although Obama is deeply invested in having his party hold on to the White House, there may be times that he will pursue policies at odds with the next nominee’s interests.
“History would say that the fortunes of other Democrats is not what drives Barack Obama’s decision-making,” said Jamal Simmons, a principal with the Raben Group, a Democratic consulting firm.
Republicans view Obama as a doubled-edged sword against Clinton, because he is both unpopular at the moment and the one who has been able to turn out voters.
“When the Obama campaign won in ’08, it was a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party,” said Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “With two historic back-to-back midterm defeats, all of their operations, their technology, have proven to be ineffective when Barack Obama is not on the ballot.”
But Democrats do not believe that Republicans have won over those voters, or can.
Mo Elleithee, communications director of the Democratic National Committee, said that Democrats cannot “be complacent,” but that they had held onto key groups even in off-year elections.
Still, on Saturday DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said she was starting a review of “what went wrong” with the party’s performance, saying, “The electoral success we have when our presidential nominee is able to make the case to the country as a whole doesn’t translate in other elections.”
Several of the groups that backed Obama in large numbers when he was on the ballot — young people, Latinos and single women — either came out in lower numbers on Nov. 4, or shifted somewhat away from the Democrats.
Latinos — who composed 10 percent of the electorate in 2012 and favored Obama 44 points over Romney — backed Democrats by a 26-point margin this time, according to exit polls. Asian Americans split evenly between the two parties in the midterm election, compared with the last presidential election, in which they supported Obama by 47 points.
Some of the president’s critics believe that Democrats abandoned their base voters, who then returned the favor.
“If this November was any indication about what happens when you try to toy with your principles and your beliefs, what did you get? Nothing,” Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said recently, questioning why the White House delayed issuing an executive order on immigration. “You lost the Senate and you angered and disillusioned a community that has always been so loyal to you as a party.”
Many inside and outside the White House are particularly concerned about how the party can reconnect and recapture voters between the ages of 18 and 29, who had once been so much more enthusiastic about the president. Those voters made up 19 percent of the electorate in 2012, but 13 percent this year.
The White House and a potential Clinton campaign would have natural common cause in bolstering Democrats’ traditional advantage among women over the next two years, strategists said, whether rhetorically or through new administration initiatives. Both Obama and Clinton are likely to draw contrasts with the GOP Congress, and particularly anything it does on abortion or contraception coverage.
An emphasis on reproductive rights did not save Democratic Sen. Mark Udall’s reelection bid in Colorado on Tuesday. But Marcy Stech, spokeswoman for the Democratic group Emily’s List, credits the themes of women’s economic security and empowerment — which Clinton would be likely to carry forward now — as reasons more women turned out this year compared with the 2010 midterms.
“That conversation will live on, especially when it comes to raising the minimum wage, ending gender discrimination in pay, and women’s access to health care,” Stech said.
However, Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, warned in a memo Friday that last week’s results mean the playing field has become much more difficult for Democrats.
Party officials, he said, need to acknowledge the new structural challenges now that the GOP will control not only the House and the Senate but 32 governorships and 66 of the 99 state legislative chambers. Republicans’ wins outside the presidency “may even leave the GOP a stronger national party” by virtue of its “strength of candidates, bench, staff and consultant talent, fundraising capacity, use of technology and of course control over government and policy.”
To the extent that that assessment is true, it is a shared problem for Obama and the next Democratic nominee. The consequences of failing to rebuild, however, are more dire for the 2016 nominee, and therefore many expect that much of the rebuilding will fall to Clinton.
The GOP is eager to link Clinton to the Oval Office’s current occupant. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski sent reporters a scorecard noting Democratic losses that said, “After a historic rebuke, the Obama-Clinton policies will be on the ballot again in 2016.”
Major Obama donors already are lining up for Clinton, lessening worry among Clinton advisers that very loyal Obama backers would be nonplussed by a second Clinton candidacy.
The morning after the midterm election, political organizers working for Hollywood mogul and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg began securing promises for future donations to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that would serve as the big-money advertising vehicle for Clinton.
“We will be reaching out in the weeks ahead to set up one-on-ones and meet-and-greets to talk about the urgency of the task ahead,” said Andy Spahn, a political strategist who advises Katzenberg and other clients. Meanwhile, Clinton is quietly setting up meetings with potential supporters and advisers. A 10th anniversary celebration for the William J. Clinton Library and Museum in Arkansas next week is expected to provide a setting for sideline strategy sessions for a Hillary Clinton campaign. One key tactical question will be how much distance she should put between herself and Obama, particularly in light of last week’s dismal results. Rosenberg argues that even those results suggest that the answer is not too much.
“Looking ahead to 2016, I think it would be wise for the entire party, but particularly its presidential aspirants, to learn the lesson of [Al] Gore 2000 and the 2014 midterms,” Rosenberg said. “You cannot run away from the president of your party.”
The grass-roots Ready for Hillary PAC, meanwhile, plans a major meeting of donors and financial strategists in New York on Nov. 21. The group sent out a fundraising appeal via e-mail to supporters last Wednesday.
“Don’t let last night’s results discourage you,” it said. “Now more than ever, we need to show Hillary that we’re ready for her to get in this race.”
MSNBC: “Rand Paul broaches the subject of Hillary Clinton’s age”
By Steve Benen
November 11, 2014, 9:27 a.m. EST
For reasons that should be obvious, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seems a little preoccupied with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lately. Last week, Republicans scored big election victories on Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning, the Kentucky senator was running around calling the results “a repudiation of Hillary Clinton.”
Yesterday, he went just a little further.
“Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president? He won’t say it outright, but that’s the question Sen. Rand Paul is getting at.
“‘It’s a very taxing undertaking to go through. It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency,’ the likely Republican presidential candidate told Politico Monday.”
Politico added that in context, the senator was “none too subtly raising the issue of her age.”
Asked about possibly clarifying the comments, a Paul spokesperson told BuzzFeed, “Nothing to add here.”
At a certain level, it’s hard for even Clinton’s most ardent supporters to get too worked up about stuff like this. It’s a certainty that Hillary Clinton has heard more insulting comments than these, and Rand Paul’s willingness to throw verbal jabs in her direction is only going intensify as the process unfolds.
For that matter, the chatter itself is inevitable. Reagan, at age 69, faced questions about his age in 1980, as did John McCain in 2008 at age 72 and Bob Dole in 1996 at age 73. Clinton is 67 now, she’ll be 69 in 2016, and if she runs she’ll have to talk about this. I rather doubt this will be a problem for a possible Clinton campaign, but we’ll find out soon enough.
What’s irksome, though, is the fact the chiding is coming from Rand Paul, of all people, who probably hasn’t thought this one through.
In 2008, a Texas congressman by the name of Ron Paul launched his second presidential campaign. He was, at the time, 73 years old.
In 2012, Ron Paul, launched his third bid for national office, and ran an even more competitive presidential campaign. He was 77.
Rand Paul, Ron Paul’s son, has spent a good chunk of his adult like campaigning on his father’s behalf, promoting his father’s strange beliefs, and urging voters to support his father’s presidential campaigns.
So maybe the senator should leave questions about Hillary Clinton’s age to others?
As for the question on the merits, BuzzFeed’s report noted, “When Clinton campaigned for Democrats during the midterms this fall, she kept a demanding schedule. In a 54-day period, she appeared at 45 events in 20 states, stumping for at least 26 different candidates, according to her office. “
It’s not unreasonable to think she’s prepared for “a rigorous physical ordeal.”
Capital New York: “Rangel now ‘Ready for Hillary’ too”
By Conor Skelding
November 10, 2014, 5:39 p.m. EST
Rep. Charles Rangel said he doesn't see any realistic challenger to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
"I'm ready for Hillary,' said Rangel in an interview on HuffPost Live. "But, you know, I don't like coronations. I don't see where anyone is gonna challenge her, on the Republican side or the Democratic side."
"Is she unbeatable?" asked host Marc Lamont Hill.
"Put it another way, Marc. Unbeatable against whom?" replied Rangel, shrugging. "I mean, I can't say that, it's just that there is nobody, Republican or Democrat, that has reached a level of confidence or ability that could challenge her."
"I mean, anytime you're talking about Elizabeth Warren, then it means you have a lot of respect for Elizabeth Warren, but has nothing to do with becoming president," he said. "But, I could not believe that a guy named Obama from Chicago was gonna beat [Hillary]. With all the work I had done in New York State, and all the work she had done as a senator, and this guy comes from Illinois."
Rangel touted Clinton's strength in 2000 too, when he rallied the state's Democratic establishment around her ability to clear a crowded race that, at the time, included Rudy Giuliani.
Rangel has continued to promote Clinton's credentials for a future presidential race, even as he worried at this time last year that it was "premature" to endorse her hypothetical candidacy.
But Democrats have expressed a newfound urgency for Clinton to plan her 2016 run since the disastrous midterms last week, and Clinton has reportedly begun a listening tour to start the process.
Rangel said the Republican wave wasn't based on any affirmative message.
"The Republicans who clearly won—the bright spot is that they didn't win on any issue that I would be proud to be associated with," Rangel said.
"It was negative. They took advantage of the lack of popularity of the president," he said. "I don't remember any Republican talking about, 'Elect me because something good is what I'm supporting.'"
He also rationalized the behavior of Democrats who distanced themselves from Obama.
"Candidates for public office are not always mentally acute ... when we say we're running, we're not reasonable people," he said. "And, if someone says, 'Standing next to Mother Teresa in this election is going to be difficult for you to win,' some people would say, 'And who is Mother Teresa?'"
Washington Post column: Richard Cohen: “Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ only hope”
By Richard Cohen
November 10, 2014, 7:52 p.m. EST
Hillary Clinton looms over the Democratic Party like Evita from her balcony. She is the presumptive presidential nominee, the likely one, the inevitable one, the one and only, the one before all others run in awe and panic. Behold the biggest and, in a sense, only thing in the Democratic Party. All she lacks is a song.
In contrast, the GOP is like a preschool class before nap time: seemingly dozens of potential presidential candidates crawling all over each other. Some, such as Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, we have seen before. Others, such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have not yet run for president, but they probably will. So might Rob Portman, John Kasich, Scott Walker and Mike Pence — solid Midwestern types all. And then there’s Paul Ryan, who was on the ticket last time, and Mike Huckabee, who has done this sort of thing in the past (won Iowa, remember?) and also Chris Christie and Rand Paul. It will be a banner season for political consultants.
Not mentioned yet — but here he comes — is Jeb Bush. His brother, the former president, put Jeb’s chances of running at “50-50.” Continuing in that vein, George W. told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that his brother “is not afraid to succeed” nor, he said a moment later, “is he afraid to fail.” He might be afraid of the impact that a campaign and the presidency could have on family life, but the former president said even all this can be overcome. Their father, George H.W., did it.
The prospect of another Clinton-Bush presidential race has to fill many Americans with dread. It’s not that either one is unacceptable. It’s rather that their candidacies will mean countless stories about political dynasties and why they are, for some reason, bad. We will hear comparisons to the Roosevelts, the Adamses, the Tafts, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys and even lesser dynasties such as the Cuomos of New York — Mario, the father, Andrew, the son, and, had Andrew stayed married to Kerry Kennedy, just about every office in the land.
Dynastic politics has, in effect, become the American way. Udalls run in the West, Carters and Nunns in Georgia, a Brown is inevitably the governor of California and a Daley mayor of Chicago, just not at this moment. But none dominates their party as Hillary does the Democrats. You could see her as the consequence of dynastic politics — her husband was the president, after all — but right now her dominance is more a product of what has happened to the Democrats than anything she has done as a politician. As my colleague Dan Balz has pointed out, the past two midterm elections have done to the Democratic Party what World War I did to the French political elite — decimated it. What was lost was not just individual races but the future. Republicans will now control 23 states — the governorship and the legislature — while the Democrats will have just seven. States, in the coinage of Justice Louis Brandeis, are the laboratories of democracy. They’re where both interesting ideas and personalities often come from.
I have grave doubts about Hillary Clinton’s viability. She still has no resounding message, and in an anti-Washington era she is the very personification of the loathed capital city. Her credentials, her experience, her marriage to Bill and her association with President Obama will be used against her. By many measures, she may be the best candidate, but this is a country that punished George W. Bush for an unnecessary war by inexplicably electing him to a second term. He was, as they say, likable.
At this point in the election cycle of 2008, Obama was a very junior senator from Illinois. By the end of that year, he was the president-elect. We are in a dizzying era of dizzying change. The United States is now at war with the Islamic State, which seemed to come out of nowhere. Netflix, Amazon and the smartphone were mere rumors, it seems, just yesterday. We are psyched on the juice of change. Somehow Clinton needs to embody that zeitgeist — to be an insider with an outsider’s revulsion for what she’s seen.
It’s not possible that Clinton is actually mulling over whether to run. Not only does she have a moral obligation to do so — she’s repressing other potential candidacies and vacuuming up their funds — but the sooner she drops the standard political pose and exudes genuine feelings, the better a candidate she will be. She is not the Democratic Party’s best hope. She is its only hope.
Los Angeles Times column: Jonah Goldberg: “Democrats' loss is not a win for Hillary Clinton”
By Jonah Goldberg
November 10, 2014, 4:25 p.m. EST
In the old Soviet Union, Kremlinologists would read the state party newspaper Pravda not so much for the news it contained, but to glean what the commissars wanted readers to believe the commissars were thinking. The closest we have to that in America is the New York Times. Obviously, it's not a state organ and there are many fine journalists there, but it does play a similar role for the Democratic Party, often reporting less on what Democrats actually think and more on what Democrats want readers to believe is the current state of Democratic thinking.
Two days after the midterm Democratic Gotterdammerung, Team Clinton let it be known that it thinks the election was good news for it. "Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren't All Gloom," proclaimed the understated headline in the Times. "A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party's midterm defeats," reports Amy Chozick. There's no mention of any advisors seeing a downside. Indeed, a few sentences later, Chozick tells us there is a "consensus … among those close to Mrs. Clinton that it is time to accelerate her schedule."
"In many ways," Chozick continues, "Tuesday's election results clear a path for Mrs. Clinton. The lopsided outcome and conservative tilt makes it less likely she would face an insurgent challenger from the left."
Maybe it's true that that there is a silver lining for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the shellacking her party took last week. Maybe her ineffective stumping for Democrats means nothing. Maybe a 17-percentage-point loss for putative Clinton Democrat Mark Pryor in Clinton's home base of Arkansas is a blessing in deep, deep, deep disguise. Maybe the staggering indifference of the Democratic coalition of young people and minorities on display last week is proof that they are really just husbanding their voting energies for 2016. And maybe the fact that the "war on women" shtick proved as stale as a 1980s sitcom catchphrase is irrelevant for a candidate so invested in her gender.
But the notion that this monumental rebuke of Clinton's party, and the administration she served in, amounts to an unambiguous Clinton win invites many to ask, "What you talkin' 'bout, Hillary?"
You can always tell you're being spun if the opposite facts would yield the same result. Does anyone doubt that if the Democrats Clinton vigorously campaigned for had held on to the Senate that the same people would be telling the New York Times that the election results were a boon for Clinton? If the midterm results are scaring away potential left-wing insurgents, why is Clinton Inc. expediting its schedule? Shouldn't the lack of a challenger make it easier for Clinton to lay low for a while longer?
Not according to this alleged consensus among her brain trust.
Chozick quotes from a "Ready for Hillary" fundraising email: "Now more than ever we need to show Hillary that we're ready for her to get in this race." "America needs Hillary's leadership."
Ah, so at a time when an unpopular president — in profound denial about what the voters were saying on election day — is tarnishing the whole Democratic brand, it makes irrefutably good sense for Clinton to further merge her own brand with her party's?
How will President Obama respond to the notion that Clinton must now assume the mantle of leader of her party, never mind the nation? What, exactly, can an out-of-work politician do that will actually provide tangible proof of her "leadership"? How will it help Clinton to distance herself from an incumbent president still popular among the base voters she will inevitably need in 2016? Frankly, I have no idea.
Although Obama and much of the media establishment are convinced that the midterms were a revolt against, variously, Washington, incumbents, gridlock, obstructionism and/or a deep-seated desire among Americans for Washington to "get stuff done," the actual election returns were almost uniformly about throwing out incumbent Democrats, reelecting "obstructionist" Republicans or electing a new generation of Republicans who vowed to stand up to Obama.
I think it's obvious Democrats could use a fresh face or at least a politician more adept navigating such problems. The consensus thinks differently — or at least wants you to think it does.
Bloomberg column: Francis Wilkinson: “Hillary Needs a Primary Challenge”
By Francis Wilkinson
November 11, 2014, 8:35 a.m. EST
The crushing Republican midterm victory is good for Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions. Or bad. I'm not much swayed either way. All I know is that, if she runs, Clinton desperately needs a credible primary opponent.
The subtext -- and too often substance -- of Democratic national politics since 2010, when Republicans scored a midterm landslide that stopped the Democratic agenda cold, is that Democrats are tethered to reality and their opponents are not. This argument has gone through a series of phases, from highlighting the intellectual blight of Palinism and the fetishes of Tea Partyism to discrediting the Republican mainstream in the form of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and the bulk of the House Republican conference.
The results speak for themselves. In effect, Democrats have twice proven that the nation's expanded presidential electorate does not trust Republicans with executive power. And Republicans have twice proven that their base is sufficiently large and motivated to dominate midterm elections and stymie a Democratic executive's initiatives.
Two midterm debacles in a row should drive home just how precarious the Democratic hold on the electorate is. Yet it's easy for Democrats to feel superior when their opponents approach the age of climate change and rising inequality by promising to burn more fossil fuels and hand additional tax advantages to the wealthy.
It's possible that the Republican presidential primary could be similar in form and content to the madhouse of 2012. But Clinton has no cause for complacency. The overall quality of Republican candidates in 2016 should be dramatically better than the 2012 crop; one or more of the contenders could even wriggle out of the party's straitjacket and start talking sense. In any case, Republicans appear firmly committed to quashing the kinds of debates that make their candidates sound especially unhinged.
As E.J. Dionne and others have pointed out, the Democratic agenda looks good only by comparison. A Democratic presidential candidate won't be able to generate a fresh agenda by trashing Republicans; new policies, energy and language are far more likely to emerge from a spirited internal debate. That's especially true for Clinton, who is too innately cautious (over the next two years we can argue whether that's driven by prudence or insecurity) to reach for a more ambitious agenda without provocation. Whether it's Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Senator James Webb, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren or a player to be named later, a capable Democrat should challenge the nomination -- for Clinton's sake if no other. (It turns out that running for president is often a pretty good career move for the losers.)
There are tactical benefits, as well. By engaging in an intraparty fight, Clinton can focus on a positive message and sidestep more of the ugly Washington slugfest that is certain to bleed into 2016. A Democratic sparring partner would enable Clinton to concentrate on an economic agenda while helping her shake off the rust that inevitably has accrued since her last run for office. And no one in U.S. politics -- the news media least of all -- likes a coronation, especially one that is as heavily dependent on family inheritance as Clinton's would be.
The best reason for a primary challenge, however, is that it would spur Clinton to plot an economic agenda that's more ambitious than raising the minimum wage and protecting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion for the poor and subsidies for the middle class (provided the latter survives the Republican ward heelers on the Supreme Court).
This is a fitting role for one of President Bill Clinton's most influential advisors. Clinton's husband arguably did more than anyone to convince American workers that they could compete in a rapidly globalizing economy where prevailing wages for the unskilled were (and remain) a fraction of what it takes to sustain a middle-class American family.
Democrats signed onto globalization, but they never developed an effective way to mitigate the downward pressures on wages. (Republicans didn't try.) More than a generation of working-class Americans has paid the price for the globe's cheap shoes, toys and electronics. A higher minimum wage and subsidized access to health care matter a lot. But they're insufficient. If Clinton faces a challenge, it will most likely have a populist cast. Confronted by calls for wider redistribution, she will either have to capitulate to such arguments, co-opt them or present an alternative. That's the debate that Democrats and the nation need.
Talking Points Memo: “How Can Hillary Make Obamacare Her Own?”
By Dylan Scott
November 10, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EST
During the first Clinton White House, First Lady Hillary Clinton became the public face of the administration's push for health care reform. She testified at public hearings, headed a task force, and the policies coalesced under the moniker "Hillarycare." When those proposals died in 1993, it arguably set comprehensive health care reform back for more than a decade.
Then in 2008, the political environment was ripe for reform for the first time since. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, now running for president, laid out her plan, which per the Washington Post, would have sought "to build on the existing health-care system, but ... make it easier for adults without health insurance to buy it through tax credits." But she lost the Democratic primary to a senator from Illinois and, six years later, those policies have a different name ascribed to them: Obamacare.
More than 10 million have gained health coverage because of that law, the Affordable Care Act, with the second enrollment period set to start later this week. So if, as is almost universally expected, Clinton decides to seek for the White House again, what will there be left for her to do?
A lot actually, according to one of her closest former advisers: Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, who was policy director for the 2008 Clinton campaign, worked in the Clinton White House and worked for the Obama administration on health care reform.
Like most people close to the former secretary of state and first lady, Tanden refused to entertain any direct questions about Clinton's 2016 plans. But in an interview with TPM, she did talk about the role that health care might play in the coming presidential campaign and how potential Democratic candidates, and Clinton in particular, might approach it.
Early hints at Clinton's 2016 message, themes that have been repeated throughout her recent public speaking appearances, signal that it will focus heavily on income inequality, the middle class, and growing wages. That could then be her opening for health care, too: Obamacare initially addressed insurance coverage, but its cost containment provisions were more back-loaded and how effective they ultimately will be is still an open question.
With all the controversy over Obamacare, people forget that expanding insurance coverage was the easy part. It's good politics, people got a tangible benefit, and the health care industry received a boon of new paying customers. Cost containment -- even the term makes eyes sag -- is the heavier lift. The obvious political attack is "rationing" and "death panels." Consumers see no immediate benefits and industry has to grapple with less revenue and begins squabbling over exactly whose costs should be contained.
"I think that health care is an issue that she cares deeply about. There are still issues that remain, not coverage issues," Tanden said, "but there are still issues around health care costs that remain and those are important issues to voters."
"Health care expenditures have gone down, but people's individual costs are rising because out-of-pocket costs are going up because employers are shifting costs to employees, which was a long-term trend that started way before the ACA," she continued. "So I think the issues around costs are an area for her."
The problem is that there isn't a lot of consensus about what the next steps in cost containment should be. In May 2007, during her last campaign, Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University that outlined her vision for health care. The first priority was lowering costs. Insuring everyone was third. But a lot of the ideas that she proposed for cost control were adopted into Obamacare. Free preventive care, electronic health records, increased competition through bigger insurance pools (i.e. exchanges) were all part of her plan and are now being tackled through the law.
Tanden specifically cited medical-loss ratios -- which require insurance companies to spend a minimal percentage of premiums on health care costs -- as something that Clinton proposed during the 2008 campaign but Obama didn't that made its way into the ACA.
"It's really quite remarkable how many of the elements of the ACA can be traced back to what she and President Obama and the other candidates were saying back in the 2008 campaign," Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM of the 2007 speech. "The ACA contains some of almost all of what she talked about."
That leads to the dilemma, though: Nobody is sure what comes next. Health care costs have grown more slowly since the law took effect, but experts expect as the economy improves and more people get coverage through Obamacare, cost growth will pick back up.
"If health costs do start to accelerate and enter the political debate, it's hard to say where that debate might go," Levitt said, "since there's very little consensus about what approach to take."
Democrats might propose policies like adding a public option or a regulated system for setting payment rates for all health care payers like Maryland has, Levitt theorized, but each comes with political risk. And Clinton hasn't spent the last six years building a detailed domestic policy agenda.
So while health care costs might be opening, she'll also be starting largely from scratch in finding solutions in what could be politically treacherous territory.
"It is my view that health care costs will be a big issue for everybody," Tanden said. "But I don't know where Hillary is going to land on that or where Biden's going to land," ticking off some of the presumed presidential contenders.
Then there is the open question of whether Republicans will still try to wield Obamacare against Democrats as they have for the last three election cycles. The new GOP Congress seems intent on taking symbolic votes for repeal and then chipping away at the law in a more piecemeal fashion over the next two years. Conservative legal challenges are also still active against the law, and one is soon heading to the Supreme Court.
The Congressional Budget Office projected earlier this year that 36 million people will be covered under the law by private insurance and Medicaid in 2016. There were already signs in 2014 that Obamacare, while still a favored topic for the GOP on the campaign trail, was no longer viewed as the silver bullet that it might have been in 2010. Whether that political trend accelerates heading into 2016 is one of the major outstanding questions for Clinton and other Democrats.
"The big driver of the change in views on gay marriage is people came out and people knew someone. Knowing someone's who's gay is the big difference between supporting gay marriage or not, right?" Tanden said. "If we get to 20 million people who have health care, people are going to know somebody who got health care through the exchange."
"Two years from now," she concluded, "it could be a positive thing."
The New Yorker: “What the Bushes and Clintons Agree On”
By John Cassidy
November 10, 2014, 4:35 p.m. EST
The former President George W. Bush is taking some time out from painting and playing golf to promote his new book about his father, George H. W. Bush, which is being published this week. According to the promotional blurb, it is a “unique and intimate biography” of Bush the Elder, covering “his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S. Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice President, and President.”
The forty-first President has indeed led an interesting life, which included going from an eighty-nine per cent approval rating in the wake of the First Gulf War to packing his bags in the White House eighteen months later, after Bill Clinton defeated him in the 1992 election. But that’s considered ancient history now. As Dubya does the media rounds, what interviewers really want to ask him is whether his younger brother, Jeb, is up for taking on Hillary Clinton, in a dynastic rematch, come 2016.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer, fresh from interviewing President Obama, went at it this way: “If you had to make an estimate right now, what—what—do you think is going to happen?” To which Forty-Three replied: “I think it’s fifty-fifty. He”—Jeb—“and I are very close. On the other hand, he’s not here knocking on my door, you know, agonizing about the decision.”
That last bit is good to know. Nobody wants to elect a President who has to ask his big brother’s permission to use the bathroom, especially when said elder sibling blundered into a disastrous war in the Middle East from which, more than a decade on, there still doesn’t appear to be any escape, and then staged an Air Force One fly-by over a grand old American city that was drowning below him. Being viewed as a younger version of George W. would probably doom any candidate, and even the former President, whose grasp on reality was never the strongest, is well aware of this. While he talked up his little brother, he was also keen to put some distance between the two of them. “I know this about Jeb,” he told Schieffer. “He’s not afraid to succeed. In other words, I think he knows he could do the job. And nor is he afraid to fail.”
Another star on the former Florida governor’s report card. But what about those who say—regardless of what they may think of Jeb or Dubya or even George Senior—that two Presidents from the same family in twenty years is enough? Schieffer, whose courtly manner doesn’t prevent him from asking some awkward questions, reminded George W. that his mother, Barbara, had publicly declared herself a member of the “enough Bushes” crowd. (In an interview with Matt Lauer on the “Today” show last year, she said, “It’s a great country. There are a lot of great families…. There are other people out there who are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”) In response to Schieffer’s question about his mother, Dubya made one of his little jokes. “Sometimes her prognostications haven’t been very accurate,” he pointed out. Then, perhaps realizing that slapping down your mom on network television isn’t a great idea, he added, “And, no, no. I think you have to earn your way into politics. I don’t think anything is ever given to you.”
Even the former President surely realized that this was hardly a definitive answer to the dynasty question. In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” he took a different tack, pointing out that the Bushes aren’t the only prominent political family with a stake in the 2016 election:
So Jeb has to think about whether he wants to be President. Just like Hillary Clinton has to think about whether she wants to be President. Some guy at one time said to me, “You know, I don’t like the idea of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush.” I said, “Oh, O.K.” I said, “How do you like the idea of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton?” And the point is that these may be the two best candidates their party has to offer.
On his second try, Dubya had nailed the case that supporters of the Bushes and the Clintons will both be making. To Republicans: If you don’t support Jeb you’ll be letting in Hillary. To Democrats: If you don’t support Hillary you’ll be letting in Jeb. Either we beat the other team at its own game, or it wins. The arguments are urgent, symmetrical, and mutually reinforcing. But given the ugly realities of primary elections, Super PACs, disgruntled voters, and negative advertising, how plausible are they?
On the Democratic side, I would say that they are still holding up. Six months into Hillary’s undeclared candidacy, doubts persist about her abilities as a political campaigner. In addition to making a number of gaffes—most recently during a speech in Massachusetts, when she made the statement, gift-wrapped for makers of Republican ads, that corporations don’t create jobs—she has yet to spell out her message. Clearly, she’s going to talk about inequality and wages, and about getting a fair deal for ordinary Americans; that was what she was trying to do when she goofed in Massachusetts. But what does a rhetorical shift to the left mean in practical terms, and how does it jibe with the reputation she forged in the Senate as a pro-business, pro-Wall Street Democrat? As yet, we don’t know.
Hillary still has a great deal going for her, though. She has an awful lot of support within the Democratic Party, she’s loaded with actual and potential donors, and, crucially, she doesn’t have a strong challenger. In this week’s issue of the magazine, my colleague Ryan Lizza has a must-read piece, in which he talks to three possible Democratic candidates: Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland; Jim Webb, the former senator from Virginia; and Bernie Sanders, the sitting senator from Vermont. All three of them have interesting things to say. But none of them, at this stage, looks like a future President, or even a candidate who could put a real scare into the Clintons.
On the Republican side, things are a bit different. A year ago, it could be (and was) argued that Jeb Bush and Chris Christie were the only plausible candidates for 2016. Since then, a lot has happened to expand the field. Right now, at least half a dozen people look like they could mount a credible campaign: Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. There’s also Christie (that’s assuming the Bridgegate investigation doesn’t offer up some evidence directly implicating him, which, so far, it hasn’t), Rick Perry, and maybe even Mitt Romney.
O.K., I’m stretching it, but you get the idea. History has moved on, and Jeb Bush no longer looks like Mr. Inevitable, or even Mr. Most Likely. At the online-betting sites, he’s now considered the second most likely person to get the Republican nomination, behind Rubio. In an opinion poll carried out for the conservative Web site Breitbart.com last week, almost seventy per cent of G.O.P. voters said that they would prefer “a new generation of Republican leaders” over Jeb Bush.
Doubtless, Jeb’s slipping poll ratings have something to do with the fact that he, unlike Hillary, has chosen to stay out of the limelight. However, they also reflect a growing self-confidence inside the Republican Party, which the midterm results will only have strengthened. Rather than looking over their shoulders at past disasters, many G.O.P. supporters are looking ahead. To many non-Democrats, politicians such as Rubio, Paul, and Walker, for all their quirks and limitations, have an appealing freshness and optimism about them.
With his surname and his reputation serving as a stolid administrator rather than a messenger of hope, Jeb, if he does decide to run, will face a challenge in adapting to this new environment. He’s not out of it—not by any means. He’s got money, he’s got a track record, and, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, he’s still running slightly ahead of other likely G.O.P. candidates on the question of whether he’d make a good President. But given the new mood in Republican circles, one thing is clear: He won’t win the nomination simply by telling Republicans they need someone to take on Hillary.
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Walker blasts Clinton's 'old, tired' approach to government”
By Peter Sullivan
November 11, 2014, 9:23 a.m. EST
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Tuesday decried Hillary Clinton as embodying an "old, tired" approach to government.
"I think the biggest loser a week ago was Hillary Clinton," Walker, a possible Republican White House conteder in 2016, said in comments on Fox News.
"She embodies Washington. She embodies that old, tired top-down approach from the government. I think in the states as governors, we offer a much better alternative and I think there's a number of us who would be good prospects out there."
Clinton is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic White House nomination for 2016 if she chooses to run, and Walker greatly enhanced his chances for a White House bid last week when he won reelection.
"Not only do I care about this great state, I care about this country," Walker said, echoing a line from his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Walker joins other Republican possible presidential contenders, including Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) in linking Clinton to Democratic losses on Tuesday.
After previously signalling he needed more financial support in his race, Walker also played down any feud with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and a possible presidential rival.
"In the end, Chris and I are good friends," Walker said. "He came in a week out and campaigned with me. The RGA played strong in my race. The difference was there's just a lot more money than anybody ever expected from the unions."
Washington Post blog: Jennifer Rubin: “Inside the Republican ‘oppo’ research operation”
By Jennifer Rubin
November 11, 2014, 9:00 a.m. EST
In a nondescript building in Arlington, Virginia, a few dozen 20 or 30-somethings sit in an office with some GOP campaign posters on the walls, eyes glued to their computer screens. If not for the GOP artwork, you would think this was a trading floor or a technology firm. But it is America Rising PAC, the Republican opposition (“oppo”) research firm founded in the wake of the 2012 defeat as a counterpoint to American Bridge PAC, its Democratic counterpart founded a few years earlier. America Rising PAC may have been, next to the NRSC (which recruited superb Senate candidates), the most important entity in the GOP’s 2014 sweep.
If you heard about Michelle Nunn’s strategy memo or saw her duck the question about whether she voted for President Obama; if you heard Sen. Mark Udall (D-Col.) proclaim that the Islamic State “is not an imminent threat” to the U.S.; if you heard about Sen. Kay Hagan’s use of stimulus funds to benefit her family; or if you learned about the extensive Democratic donor network supporting the supposedly independent Greg Orman in Kansas, you were receiving information that surfaced or was amplified in the media thanks to America Rising.
Maybe the most important gaffe of the cycle — Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) insulting Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as just “farmer from Iowa who never went to law school” – was not picked up directly by America Rising, but the group did elevate it, tie it to other gaffes (e.g. complaining about no towel service during the shutdown) and help confirm what many voters suspected, namely that Braley was a not-very-nice trial lawyer at odds with Iowans’ political sensibilities.
A separate entity, America Rising LLC overseen by Matt Rhodes, a veteran of numerous campaigns, has signed up over 40 clients, some outside groups, some individual campaigns and the NRSC. These clients receive voluminous research, which can be used in debates, ads, and a myriad of ways. America Rising PAC, on the other hand, is in the business of collecting and uncovering opposition research, which it then puts up on its Web site and sends through the media food chain
How they find, analyze, circulate and highlight Democrats’ self-inflicted wounds? Two experienced GOP hands, Joe Pounder and Tim Miller, sent out dozens of trackers all over the country, assigning them to one of 14 Senate races, one of nearly every competitive House race or one of eight gubernatorial contests. Pounder tells me these people are “young, from diverse backgrounds and [generally] working on their first job in politics.” Some of them have been political junkies or college Republicans, but one of the best in the field this cycle was a former manager at an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Their job is to follow the candidate to which they are assigned everywhere, trying to record every statement and encounter with voters or media. They listen to local radio and become experts in that race’s issues. They are trained to be professional, polite and not lie about what they are doing. Some campaigns tolerate their presence while others freak out, trying to bar them from events. “We just use different methods,” says co-founder Tim Miller. (Maybe a one-time tracker gets into an event unrecognized.) Ironically the campaigns that try to keep the trackers out often generate the worst moments, giving his or her opponents footage of the candidate running from the press or unleashing aides to manhandle pesky trackers. Nothing makes a candidate look more like he or she has something to hide than such scenes, and in fact some of these incidents get used over and over again in campaigns.
A team consisting of a tracker, a researcher and a person in the room in Arlington is assigned to each race. That puts three sets of eyes on mounds of material, scanning it for useful pieces. Together they learn all there is to know about a candidate, spotting inconsistencies and outright lies and flagging outlandish statements. Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia, for example, held a Google hangout with all of 8 people participating, two of whom were with America Rising. They captured his memorable remark that “two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico. And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.” Oops. His opponent Republican Carlos Curbelo will make a fine congressman, says Pounder.
The operation proved immensely successful and will only grow in 2016 when it will have a presidential race on top of contests for Senate, governorships and House. Because the group was just starting, America Rising did not get going as early in the 2014 cycle as its founders would have liked. That will not be a problem for 2016. And pushing material out early really does pay off. “We were correct in deciding to push out stuff early, ” says Miller. “Conventional wisdom is to wait until October.” But with early voting many ballots are already cast by then. Moreover, with an electorate awash in material it often takes time for information to percolate through the system, or for other events to occur that suggest a pattern of behavior.
Opposition research works best when it reinforces a pre-existing image. Sometimes it is hard to gauge what will “pop” and sometimes material comes up too late to use to great effect. But of course there is nothing to surface so long as the candidate does not lie, does not misrepresent himself and does not act like a jerk. “Phonies are the most susceptible,” says Pounder. Moreover, the quality of your own candidate matters. “You need a Joni Ernst candidate to be everything Braley was not,” Pounder tells me.
America Rising isn’t sitting on its laurels. It keeps adding to the mound of information on people they have previously tracked and tries to spot the likely Democratic candidates for 2016 races. They have already been out in force gathering information on Hillary Clinton, who created a treasure trove of oppo with her frequent gaffes on her book tour and then campaigning for others. Even her own book provided material, such as her false assertion that there were Marines based in Tripoli. America Rising is beginning to track other potential Democratic presidential candidates, but with a Democratic bench as weak as this one America Rising’s trackers and researchers can focus the lion’s share of their efforts on the presidential level on her, thereby gaining an advantage against Democrats who must follow a long list of potential presidential aspirants.
The key to America Rising’s success is simple: Good content. With weak Democratic opponents, the GOP had the opportunity to scoop it up, but until America Rising there really had been very little ability to do so and then to make sure the voters knew about it. In 2016, Pounder says, “We’re going to get bigger with even more trackers.” Miller adds, “Demand will be enormous.”
Calendar:
Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.
· November 14 – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton attends picnic for 10thAnniversary of the Clinton Center (NYT)
· November 15 – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton hosts No Ceilings event (NYT)
· November 21 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton presides over meeting of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Bloomberg)
· November 21 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the New York Historical Society (Bloomberg)
· December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton keynotes a League of Conservation Voters dinner (Politico)
· December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW)
· December 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton honored by Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (Politico)