Correct The Record Thursday November 13, 2014 Morning Roundup
Correct The Record Thursday November 13, 2014 Morning Roundup:
Headlines:
Politico: “The liberal media's not ready for Hillary”
“David Brock, a Clinton ally who runs both Media Matters and the pro-Clinton group Correct The Record, attacked Henwood’s story as a ‘liberal screed’ that would have ‘no effect other than bolstering the Republican case against her, and so we’re going to push back on them.’”
New York Times: “In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme”
"Mrs. Clinton has not laid out a specific climate change policy that she might pursue as president, but she has enthusiastically supported efforts to reduce carbon pollution — including Mr. Obama’s regulations. At a September conference on clean energy in Nevada she called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world,” and said that Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations put the United States in “a strong position” in international negotiations."
Business Insider: “George W. Bush Had The Perfect Response To Bill Clinton's Twitter Challenge”
“Bush responded on another social media site, Instagram. He asked why Clinton didn't have an Instagram account. His message included the hashtag ‘#BrotherFromAnotherMother.’”
U.S. News & World Report opinion: Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall: “The War on One Woman”
“Even before the names are officially thrown into the hat, and certainly before the former secretary of state has even announced whether she's going to run or not, the attacks on her have already started.”
Washington Post blog: The Fix: “64 percent say Obama is a ‘liberal’”
“By comparison, fewer Americans — 52 percent — see Hillary Clinton qualifying as a liberal, while 54 percent call Mitt Romney a ‘conservative.’”
New Republic: “The Big Question Democrats Need to Ask Themselves Before They Nominate Hillary”
“Democrats need to find a way to appeal to an older, whiter electorate as well. Specifically, they need to find a better way to appeal to the white working class, which is where they’re getting clobbered.”
MSNBC: “Robert Reich’s advice to Hillary Clinton: Ride the populist wave”
“Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is not running for president, but he thinks any Democrat who is – including his ‘old friend’ Hillary Clinton – should worry about Republicans outflanking them on populism.”
Huffington Post: “Elizabeth Warren Could Join Senate Leadership: Sources”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is under consideration for a leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucus, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.”
Politico: “The Rudy Giuliani guide to beating Hillary Clinton”
“Rudy Giuliani, the tough-talking former New York City mayor, has some advice for Republicans who want to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016: Don’t be mean.”
U.S. News & World Report: “Rand Paul Outlines a 2016 Game Plan”
“More than two dozen advisers to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul converged inside a boutique Washington hotel Wednesday to begin to form the skeleton of a 2016 presidential campaign.”
Washington Post: “Mike Huckabee rebuilds political team with eye on another presidential run”
“Advisers are already scouting real estate in Little Rock for a possible presidential campaign headquarters.”
The Daily Beast: “Is Ready for Hillary Ready to Fold—or Work With Candidate Clinton?”
[Subtitle:] “The group’s original purpose was to build up excitement and an email list of supporters for a possible campaign—then disband if and when she ran for president. Now it’s not so sure.”
Articles:
Politico: “The liberal media's not ready for Hillary”
By Maggie Haberman and Hadas Gold
November 12, 2014, 7:28 p.m. EST
[Subtitle:] She has no viable opponent, so progressive outlets are trying to create one.
Elizabeth Warren says she’s not running. Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar have said the same. Even Martin O’Malley has refused to take shots at Hillary Clinton.
So the liberal media is taking matters into its own hands.
Absent a strong challenge to Clinton from the left so far, progressive media outlets are trying to fill the void — propping up Warren, the Massachusetts senator, Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator who has made noise about running for president, and outgoing Maryland Gov. O’Malley, the only one laying any groundwork toward a run. Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who styles himself a “Democratic socialist,” is getting some play in an effort to avoid a coronation.
The fight is less about ideological purity than it is about motivating the Democratic base, especially after the party’s wipeout in last week’s midterms in which many of their voters stayed home.
The anti-Clinton drumbeat in progressive outlets picked up quickly as soon as the midterms were over.
“The Lesson from the Midterms: Elizabeth Warren Should Run in 2016,” read the headline the day after the elections from In These Times magazine.
“Bernie Sanders is the Presidential Candidate America Truly Needs,” added Mic.com, a relatively new site aimed at progressive millennials, on Monday.
The Nation, which has been flexing muscle after a wave of economic populism swept over the Democratic Party, has been beating the drums for a Clinton challenger for months. At times, The New Republic has chimed in about Clinton’s weaknesses. And in October, Harper’s Magazine ran a piece by far-left writer Doug Henwood that ripped Clinton as a hawkish centrist out of step with the spirit of the times.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and part owner of The Nation, is blunt about her motives: The magazine, still an influential voice on the left and an outlet experiencing renewed relevance in a populist Democratic Party, plans to play a role in shaping the primary — with or without Warren.
“We believe that there’s a kind of economic populism and an agenda … that we hope to drive into 2015 and 2016,” Vanden Heuvel said in an interview. “And Hillary Clinton, because of her history, because of her team, has not been part of that wing of the Democratic Party. … [E]ven the most ardent Hillary fans should understand that sometimes not only her party and the country — but her candidacy — would be better served if she has competition.”
The Nation played a key role in 2013 in New York City’s mayoral primary, endorsing little-known Public Advocate Bill de Blasio early and giving him momentum among the primary’s deeply liberal voters. In this year’s Democratic primary for governor in New York, the magazine endorsed Zephyr Teachout, a virtually unknown law professor who became a painful thorn in Andrew Cuomo’s side and kept his winning margin in the primary uncomfortably low.
Progressive media outlets are less attempting to prop up Warren as a potential candidate than to make sure her populist crusades — like cracking down on the banking industry — will define the debate. At times, that involves promoting Warren, but it also will mean looking at people like Sanders, who has started visiting early states and has said that Clinton will need to explain her relationship with Wall Street. Even Webb, who was Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary and claims to have told President Barack Obama that health care reform would be a “disaster,” has gotten some love on the left.
The various outlets’ focus on Warren and the field of potential anti-Hillarys has caught the eyes of Clintonland, which views the Massachusetts senator skeptically and is well aware that she has said little positive about the former secretary of state, including when the two appeared at the same political rally for failed gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley last month. Clinton insiders have said privately that they see Warren as trying to keep some small ember alive about her own future, even as she insists she’s not running for president.
• • •
If The Nation and The New Republic, which ran its own pro-Warren cover in November 2013, are all about encouraging reasoned, healthy debate on the issues, Harper’s Magazine is going in the opposition direction. In bright, shining neon.
“Stop Hillary!” blared the headline on the magazine’s cover this month.
“It was just commissioned to be critical, and they got what they asked for,” Henwood said in an interview about his article, in which he described Clinton as part of a “widespread liberal fantasy of her as a progressive paragon … in fact, a close look at her life and career is perhaps the best antidote to all these great expectations.” (David Brock, a Clinton ally who runs both Media Matters and the pro-Clinton group Correct The Record, attacked Henwood’s story as a “liberal screed” that would have “no effect other than bolstering the Republican case against her, and so we’re going to push back on them.”)
The Clinton-questioning chorus isn’t just lefty magazines, either. Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” has repeatedly encouraged Warren to go for it, and she was critical of Clinton’s gaffes about her wealth during her book tour. On Wednesday, Brzezinski said Warren challenging Clinton in a primary “would be great.” Her MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes has publicly questioned Clinton in recent months, including what he called her “bizarre” silence on the police shooting in Ferguson of an unarmed black teen.
The questioning of assumptions about Clinton’s march to the White House — and not just on the left — is partly a story of journalists looking for sharp angles on a Democratic primary race that threatens to be deadly dull. The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, for instance, recently took a sober, straightforward look at the “trap” Clinton could fall into assuming inevitability, writing that the midterm election results could lead to “a Republican Party that overinterprets its mandate in Congress and pushes its presidential candidates far to the right, freeing Democrats to gamble on someone younger or more progressive than Clinton.”
But the doubt among progressives is real, even though Clinton may be better positioned with the base of the Democratic Party now than in 2008. Back then, her media critics had more alternatives to work with — a slew of sitting senators were openly running for the Democratic nomination, including Barack Obama and John Edwards, a progressive favorite until his marital troubles came to light.
Clinton’s record, particularly her vote for the Iraq War in 2002, was also more unsettling to the left in 2008 — a weakness that Obama skillfully exploited. Now, most of the debate over social issues such as same-sex marriage has been settled within the Democratic Party, and the new frontier is economic populism — the very cause that has fueled Warren’s rise.
So Clinton still has to guard her left flank, but she also has influential defenders among progressives, too.
In the past two years, the Daily Kos, a hub of progressive online activism that was a thorn in her side in the 2008 primary, has been far more positive about her prospective candidacy this time around — and critical of outlets that try to bolster anti-Clinton narratives. Its founder, Markos Moulitsas has refused to engage in the speculation that Warren might change her mind and run, and has described Clinton as the party’s best hope for a second history-making victory after electing a black president in 2008.
“It’s a distraction,” Moulitsas, who wouldn’t comment for this story, wrote in a February Daily Kos editorial. “With Clinton’s commanding general election trial heats, not to mention demographic shifts shoring up our electoral picture, we’ll have the luxury to look beyond the presidential and take a more holistic approach to the cycle.”
Arianna Huffington also has been positive about Clinton since last year, despite some Clinton allies recalling bitterly how the site she founded, The Huffington Post, handled her in the 2008 race. In April of that year, during the thick of the campaign season, Huffington Post ran a story that called into question whether Clinton was the champion of working-class, white voters that she claimed to be at the time.
Though Huffington has yet to express such full-throated support for Clinton, she made an open plea for her to return to public life shortly after she left the State Department. And when asked about a Clinton candidacy, Huffington told talk show host Wendy Williams in June she thinks “it would be fantastic to have a woman president.” (Huffington declined to respond to a POLITICO request for comment.)
Salon writer Joan Walsh has repeatedly written favorably about Clinton, and was set to appear at a panel for the pro-Clinton super PAC, Ready for Hillary, on Nov. 21, though conference organizers say Walsh pulled out to avoid appearing partisan.
Of all the anti-Clinton narratives, the Warren bubble remains the most sustained. It swelled late last year when TNR, which enraged many on the left when it endorsed Joe Lieberman over John Kerry in 2004, profiled her. The reported essay by writer Noam Scheiber was headlined, “Hillary’s Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren.”
Warren gave a rare interview for the story, in which Scheiber concluded that “if Hillary Clinton runs and retains her ties to Wall Street, Warren will be more likely to join the race, not less. Warren is shrewd enough to understand that the future of the Democratic Party is at stake in 2016.”
Warren aides insisted at the time that nothing had changed and she wasn’t planning to run. And the Warren intrigue seems to have passed fairly quickly there — seven months later, Scheiber and TNR ran a follow-on story about Clinton headlined, “How Hillary Won Over the Skeptical Left,” that acknowledged the degree to which the party has coalesced around the former secretary of state.
Yet the Clintons often have a way of keeping the longer goal in mind. A year after that Warren piece set off alarm bells in Clintonland about whether the senator was pushing the story — Warren aides reached out to Clintonland at the time to soothe concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions. And Bill Clinton is set to be the featured speaker at a TNR gala to mark the magazine’s 100th anniversary in Washington next month.
Still, the progressive outlets remain a potential force against Clinton — their publishers have shown a willingness to lob a grenade in her direction, and get attention doing it.
“You don’t have to be ‘left’ to object to stasis in politics,” said John MacArthur, the president of Harper’s.
“Anytime you challenge the received wisdom, the people who benefit from the received wisdom are threatened,” he added. “She’s happy with the situation where people think it’s inevitable, she can’t lose … and somebody suddenly raises the possibility of a challenge or the wisdom of a challenge. So yeah, it has to make them somewhat nervous because it gives people ideas.”
Michael Tomasky, the Daily Beast columnist who has covered Hillary Clinton as a candidate since her 2000 race for U.S. Senate, predicted the noise against her will be more about trying to get the potential White House candidate to embrace progressive economic issues like student loans and ending tax breaks for the wealthy than genuine attempts to drum up a strong primary challenger.
“There’s going to be a lot of anti-Clinton [sentiment] in the Democratic, liberal left end of spectrum,” Tomasky told POLITICO. “Some of it will be genuinely against her, and some of it will be for the purpose of trying to push her in that direction.”
It gives Clinton an opportunity, he said, and she should view it that way – and craft positions that appeal to the left accordingly: “She’ll have a galvanized Democratic Party behind her, versus half a party which felt only a little enthusiastic.”
As the field becomes clearer and Republicans ratchet up their attacks against Clinton, those who might not be too happy with Clinton will quiet down, David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, said in an interview.
“It’s easy to gripe about Hillary. It’s a lot harder to find a solution.”
New York Times: “In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme”
By Coral Davenport
November 12, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut greenhouse gas pollution is a bet by the president and Democrats that on the issue of climate change, American voters are far ahead of Washington’s warring factions and that the environment will be a winning cause in the 2016 presidential campaign.
A variety of polls show that a majority of American voters now believe that climate change is occurring, are worried about it, and support candidates who back policies to stop it. In particular, polls show that majorities of Hispanics, young people and unmarried women — the voters who were central to Mr. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 — support candidates who back climate change policy.
But Republicans are betting that despite the polls, they can make the case that regulations to cut greenhouse pollution will result in the loss of jobs and hurt the economy.
“This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double-down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole,” said Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the soon-to-be majority leader, was no less critical. “This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs,” he said in a statement.
Mr. McConnell’s remarks were a hint of a line of attack Republicans are certain to use on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016. The architect of Mr. Obama’s climate change plan is none other than his senior counselor, John D. Podesta, who is likely to leave the White House next year to work as the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
The climate plan that Mr. Podesta has drafted for Mr. Obama is expected to serve as a blueprint for Mrs. Clinton’s climate change policy, should she run.
Since the deal Mr. Obama made with China calls for the United States to cut its planet-warming carbon pollution by as much as 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, he has effectively placed the obligation on his successor to meet that goal.
That dynamic sets up climate change as a potentially explosive issue on the 2016 campaign trail, which may pit Mrs. Clinton against a field of Republican candidates who question and deny the science that human activity causes global warming. A number of prospective Republican presidential candidates have already attacked what they say is Mr. Obama’s “war on coal.”
Mr. Obama has muscled through his climate change agenda almost entirely with executive authority, bypassing a Congress that has repeatedly refused to enact sweeping new climate change laws. In addition to the agreement with China announced Wednesday in Beijing, Mr. Obama has used the 1970 Clean Air Act to issue ambitious Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to cut pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power-plant smokestacks.
Mr. Podesta, a political veteran who was also President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, devised the 2025 targets to ensure that they could be reached without new action from a future Congress. Abandoning them would require the next president to overturn them. From the Republican point of view, a Democratic candidate who might instead issue still more environmental regulations would be a ripe target for 2016.
“They’re giving Republicans fertile ground for attack,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist. “Overregulation is clearly a job killer and jobs and the economy and middle-class wages are going to be a huge issue in the 2016 presidential. And it does seem like an inside job, with Podesta setting up Hillary’s position. Politically, they’re going to put themselves in a weak position on this.”
As evidence, Republican strategists point to their recent wave of victories in this year’s midterm elections, when they campaigned aggressively against Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations.
But Democrats are increasingly emboldened by polls showing that in national elections, candidates who push climate change policies will win support from voters.
According to a 2013 poll by Stanford University, 73 percent of Americans believe that the earth has been warming over the past 100 years, while 81 percent of Americans think global warming poses a serious problem in the United States. In addition, 81 percent think the federal government should limit the amount of greenhouse gases that American businesses can emit.
Twenty-one percent of Americans think producing electricity from coal is a good idea, while 91 percent of Americans think making electricity from sunlight is a good idea.
A 2014 poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, meanwhile, found that majorities of women, minorities and young people support candidates who strongly endorse climate action. That poll found that 65 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 53 percent of unmarried women support candidates who back climate change action.
It found that 44 percent of people in their 20s favor candidates who support climate change action, compared with 17 percent who oppose climate action.
“These groups were hugely important in the 2008 and 2012 elections,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale project. “And they will be more important in 2016, because they are starting to make up a greater portion of the electorate.”
Mrs. Clinton has not laid out a specific climate change policy that she might pursue as president, but she has enthusiastically supported efforts to reduce carbon pollution — including Mr. Obama’s regulations. At a September conference on clean energy in Nevada she called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world,” and said that Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations put the United States in “a strong position” in international negotiations.
Democrats also believe that Wednesday’s announcement weakens at least one crucial Republican argument against climate action. For years, Republicans have argued that the United States should not take unilateral action on climate change because it would hamstring the economy while China, the world’s largest carbon polluter, failed to act. But the agreement with China undercuts that argument.
For Republicans, the issue of climate change, like immigration and same-sex marriage, is one that potential candidates and their advisers are starting to grapple with as they try to carve a path to the presidency, while winning support from a new generation of more diverse voters.
Republicans who seek to win their presidential nomination will have to win support from their conservative base — white and older voters, who, polls show, are less likely to believe that climate change is a problem. More important, Republicans do not want to be targeted by conservative outside groups like Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group funded by the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, has said that his group intends to aggressively attack any Republican candidate in the 2016 primaries who endorses carbon regulations.
But some Republican strategists worry that the position on climate change that could help win them their party’s nomination could hurt them in a general election, particularly in a contest with a larger number of young and minority voters.
Business Insider: “George W. Bush Had The Perfect Response To Bill Clinton's Twitter Challenge”
By Hunter Walker
November 12, 2014, 8:21 p.m. EST
Former President George W. Bush sent an incredible reply after another ex-president, Bill Clinton, asked why he wasn't on Twitter Wednesday evening.
Clinton questioned Bush with a tweet saying he received his copy of "41: A Portrait of My Father," Bush's biography of his dad, former President George H.W. Bush.
In the message, Clinton asked why Bush had not joined Twitter.
Bush responded on another social media site, Instagram. He asked why Clinton didn't have an Instagram account. His message included the hashtag "#BrotherFromAnotherMother."
This is almost certainly the first time two former presidents have referred to themselves as brothers from another mother.
Both Bush and Clinton could find themselves involved in the 2016 presidential race. Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton, is widely considered the Democratic frontrunner and there is mounting speculation Bush's brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, could run on the Republican side.
U.S. News & World Report opinion: Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall: “The War on One Woman”
By Leslie Marshall
November 12, 2014, 4:30 p.m. EST
[Subtitle:] Attacks on Hillary Clinton will be about everything but her real qualifications.
The midterm elections are over, and in January Republicans will officially have a majority in the Senate. With that behind us, it's time to start hearing future presidential hopefuls announce their plans to run for the Oval Office.
On the right, we'll perhaps see Rep. Paul Ryan, Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, or even the last GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, to name a few.
And on the left: Hillary Clinton.
Even before the names are officially thrown into the hat, and certainly before the former secretary of state has even announced whether she's going to run or not, the attacks on her have already started.
That's not a surprise. And, as a woman, I can tell you what else is coming: Nonstop attacks on her personal life, rather than an assessment of her record as an attorney, first lady of Arkansas and the United States, U.S. Senator for New York and secretary of state.
And Paul's first up on the dance floor of sexism. He wasted no time with the personal attacks on his would be opponent. In an interview with Politico's Mike Allen, Paul said, “I think all the polls show if she does run, she’ll win the Democrat nomination ... But I don’t think it’s for certain. 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.” Obviously, Paul was referring to Clinton's age, which is 67.
And this is small potatoes compared to what others have said about Clinton. In the past, whether it be in blog posts and articles or on radio or television, she's been criticized for the way she dresses, the way her hair is styled, her weight, her breasts; she's been called bitchy, catty, shrill and ugly, and was even accused of looking awful while secretary of state. Fortunately, Clinton has a sense of humor. She has often joked about her hair, and calls her supporters "the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits." When I met Clinton for the second time, before one of then President George W. Bush's state of the union addresses, she joked about her pantsuit and not wearing heels, and noted how crazy it is that people care so much about what she wears, her height and her hair.
And I get it. As a woman who is on national television about three times per week, I know what it's like to be judged on my appearance. I have the "eat more Haagen Dazs" emails from people telling me how fat I was (when I was eight months pregnant).
Television is a visual medium, so it comes with the job. But should a woman's appearance matter when running for office? Any office? This is clearly where there is a double standard.
Does anyone talk about the level of attractiveness of a man running for president? Does anyone ask about, talk about or write about his choice of ties, suits, shirts or shoes? About his hair or lack thereof?
When Hillary was first lady, she was attacked for being too tough because she didn't want to bake cookies. When she got emotional in New Hampshire during the 2008 primary and tears fell, she was accused of not being tough enough. Later, when Clinton truly showed her anger; she was accused of having a meltdown. (That's code for hormonal, folks.) But when a man's angry, he's strong, aggressive, in command and a leader.
If you ever questioned whether there was a "war on women," the answer is yes. But it's not just in legislation that tries to reverse decades of progress for women's rights; it's alive and well in the campaign arena, too.
In the upcoming presidential election, it will be a War on One Woman. And to paraphrase Margo Channing in "All About Eve," "fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy race."
Washington Post blog: The Fix: “64 percent say Obama is a ‘liberal’”
By Aaron Blake
November 12, 2014, 3:36 p.m. EST
President Obama's losses in the 2014 election come as an increasing number of Americans view him as a "liberal," according to a new post-election survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.
The poll shows 64 percent of Americans view Obama as a "liberal" — up from 57 percent after Obama's reelection two years ago. Another 19 percent say Obama is a "moderate," while 12 percent label him "conservative" or "very conservative." (Back in 2012, 27 percent viewed Obama as a moderate.)
By comparison, fewer Americans — 52 percent — see Hillary Clinton qualifying as a liberal, while 54 percent call Mitt Romney a "conservative." Obama is also seen as slightly more ideological than former president George W. Bush, whom 61 percent of Americans define as a conservative.
But for Bush, just 12 percent say he's "very" conservative; for Obama, about one-third of Americans — 34 percent — say he's "very" liberal.
In fact, Obama scores more liberal than than the Democratic Party as a whole (62 percent "liberal," including 24 percent "very") and about as ideologically extreme as the tea party (60 percent "conservative," including 36 percent "very").
Obama's record in the Senate was one of the most liberal in the chamber, but he campaigned as a uniter who could bring together Republicans and Democrats.
Six years later, the former is the prevailing image of his presidency.
New Republic: “The Big Question Democrats Need to Ask Themselves Before They Nominate Hillary”
By Noam Scheiber
November 12, 2014
By most accounts, Hillary Clinton had a good election night. Or at least her 2016 chances did. The New York Times reported that voters and operatives woke up the next day counting on her to “resurrect the Democratic Party.” And that “the lopsided outcome … makes it less likely she would face an insurgent challenger from the left.” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went even further, asserting that the past two midterms have so decimated the Democratic ranks Clinton is no longer simply the party’s best hope, “She is its only hope.”
I’m inclined to agree with this analysis, as far as it goes. Last week’s results certainly make me pine for a Democratic nominee with the political experience, organization, gravitas, and fundraising potential to crush whatever candidate emerges from the GOP clown show set to play out over the next year-and-a-half. There don’t seem to be many Democrats other than Clinton who fit all those criteria. It’s possible that there are none.
On the other hand, if there’s one thing the past two midterms have taught us, it’s that it’s not enough to build a coalition that wins the presidency. Democrats need one that also turns out in non-presidential years to have any hope of enacting an agenda (or, for that matter, even staffing their cabinet). And, at this point, it’s far from clear that Hillary Clinton is a candidate built for both 2016 and 2018. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine an Obama-like coalition of young people, Latinos, African-Americans, and single women electing Clinton to the White House, then taking a breather two years later.
So Democrats need to find a way to appeal to an older, whiter electorate as well. Specifically, they need to find a better way to appeal to the white working class, which is where they’re getting clobbered. In last week’s midterms, whites without a college degree accounted for 36 percent of voters; Democrats lost them by a 30-point margin. In 2012, the margin was 26 points.
At first blush, the white working class would appear to pose a real dilemma.1 The set of issues on which the Democratic Party is most coherent these days is social progressivism. It’s very difficult to find a Democratic politician that doesn’t support immigration reform, LGBT rights, women’s reproductive rights, affirmative action, steps to reduce climate change, etc. (It’s even more difficult after last Tuesday’s election.) But while these issues unite college-educated voters and working-class minority voters, they’ve historically alienated the white working class.
True, Democrats could theoretically appeal to the white working class with a more populist economic agenda—a recent Pew study turned up a group of voters who typically lean Republican nursing a deep frustration with the economic system. They might call for breaking up big banks and limits on CEO pay, for example. Or a tax on financial transactions to rein in speculation. But this strategy has its own problems—namely, that populism has historically alienated college-educated voters.
So we have a situation in which the issues that hold together the Democratic coalition appear to be anathema to the white working class; and the issues that could appeal to the white working class are a deal-breaker for part of the Democratic coalition.
How to square this circle? Well, it turns out we don’t really have to, since the analysis is outdated. The white working class is increasingly open to social liberalism, or at least not put off by it. As Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin observed this summer, 54 percent of the white working class born after 1980 think gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, according to data assembled from the 2012 election. (This tolerance diminishes as people get older, but even middle-aged working class voters are relatively open-minded on this issue.)
Teixeira and Halpin also cite a recent Center for American Progress poll that asked people about their views on racial and ethnic diversity. In that poll, 64 percent of white working class voters (overall, not just Millennials) agreed that “Americans will learn more from one another and be enriched by exposure to many different cultures.” Sixty-two percent agreed that “diverse workplaces and schools will help make American businesses more innovative and competitive.” A slight majority even agreed that “the entry of new people into the American workforce will increase our tax base and help support our retiree population.”
For their part, college grads are increasingly sympathetic toward economic populism, according to recent polling from Pew. The percentage of college grads who believe “[t]here is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies” has jumped 16 points since it bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 59 percent. The percentage who believe “corporations make too much profit” has jumped eight points since its low of 42 percent in the late ‘90s. The percentage who believe “Wall Street makes an important contribution to the American economy” has dropped 12 points since 2009 (when Pew first asked the question), to 66 percent.
Long story short, there’s a coalition available to Democrats that knits together working class minorities and college-educated voters and slices heavily into the GOP’s margins among the white working class. (As Teixeira and Halpin point out, Democrats don’t need a majority of the white working class to hold their own in the midterms. They just need to stop getting crushed.) The basis of the coalition isn’t a retreat from social progressivism, but making economic populism the party’s centerpiece, as opposed to the mix of mildly progressive economic policies (marginally higher taxes on the wealthy, marginally tougher regulation of Wall Street) and staunchly progressive social policies that define the party today. The politics of this approach work not just because populism is a “message” that a majority of voters want to hear. But because, unlike the status quo, it can actually improve their economic prospects, as Harold Meyerson recently pointed out.
Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton. It’s possible that Clinton has it in her to channel people’s frustration with big business and Wall Street and figure out how to spread corporate profits more evenly across workers. She’s certainly had her moments of late. On the other hand, it’s also possible that Hillary’s extensive ties to the one percent will strangle the populist project before it ever gets going, in which case some of those unnamed lefty challengers the Times wrote off start to look pretty attractive. However you feel about it, though, it’s the question for Democrats to consider once they realize they need a lasting majority, not just control of the White House.
1 Hillary Clinton partisans will point out the Clinton did very well among white working-class voters during the 2008 presidential primaries. This is true, but it's not at all clear that support would translate to a general election. These were working-class voters who vote in Democratic primaries, after all, meaning they're already pretty loyal to the party. And she was running against a candidate who, for all his virtues, has performed historically badly among white working class voters. (It's hard to believe race wasn't at least part of the story.)
MSNBC: “Robert Reich’s advice to Hillary Clinton: Ride the populist wave”
By Alex Seitz-Wald
November 12, 2014, 8:31 p.m. EST
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is not running for president, but he thinks any Democrat who is – including his “old friend” Hillary Clinton – should worry about Republicans outflanking them on populism.
Reich, now a professor at the University of California Berkeley, first met Hillary Clinton when she was a freshman at Wellesley and they marched in civil rights demonstrations together. He met Bill Clinton around the same time at Oxford, when they were both Rhodes Scholars. He went on to work on both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, and joined the administration.
In the Clinton cabinet, he was seen as the ideological counterweight to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs before joining the administration and then returned to Wall Street afterward.
So, if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, will she be more in the Reich or Rubin schools? “It’s not clear yet. We’ll find out. I think she has that choice,” Reich told msnbc.
If she wants to ride the populist wave, Reich said, she needs to focus on growing economic inequality, wage stagnation, and the decline of the middle class. While he said her husband could get away with “alluding” to those issues, “now the situation has changed. It’s got to be central.”
His suggested platform includes some ideas Clinton already supports (paid family and medical leave, increasing the minimum wage, reforming student debt), some she might come out for (a tax hike on the top sliver of income earners), and some she’s unlikely to ever endorse (reinstating the Glass-Steagall banking regulation).
The Democratic Party’s favorability rating reached a record low after last week’s election, but progressives are doubling down on their calls for the party to embrace the kind of economic populism championed by people like Reich and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Reich insists these issues are neither progressive nor populist, but simply “mainstream.” “I’ll help anybody. If Rand Paul calls, I’d be happy to help him,” Reich says.
In fact, he says Democrats should worry about Republicans assuming the anti-establishment mantle. “Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have been talking about these issues, if maybe not exactly in ways that Democrats would always appreciate. The frontline in American politics, maybe not in 2016, but over the next 5 to 10 years, is not Democrat versus Republican, it’s establishment versus non-establishment,” he explained.
“If Democrats don’t understand this dynamic, they are going to be on wrong side of history,” he said.
This message has earned Reich heaps of praise on the left, where the economist stands among a rarefied pantheon of progressive thought leaders.
Some have even called on Reich to run for president himself. Democracy for America, an organization which grew out of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, included the former labor secretary on a list of potential candidates it might support in 2016. And in a recent email to supporters making “the progressive case” for why each should make a run at the White House, the group called Reich “a strong progressive leader who has experience in the federal government taking on income inequality.”
Reich has heard the talk, but dismisses it offhandedly. “I’m too short and too outspoken to run,” he says. “I hear it from people, but I don’t take it seriously.” What if he were drafted? “I don’t know what it means to be ‘drafted.’ I really don’t think there’s any serious possibility.”
And Reich doesn’t see Democrats’ wipe-out in last week’s election as a setback for his cause. “The message from the White House was that the economy is better. That’s the wrong message when most people are feeling the economy is worsening,” he said. “That message sounds like Democrats are out of touch.”
Instead of papering over the weak economic recovery, Democrats should have been calling attention to chronic underlying problems for the middle class. “There was no reason for the White House or Democrats to be defensive about inequality widening and people being on a downward escalator, because it’s been the Republican Party that’s been the most adamant opposition to every proposal” to address the problems, he said.
“I think the Democrats have an opportunity over the next two years to sound the alarm and come up with a powerful message for saving the middle class, for taking on the forces the have kept most Americans down,” he said.
Huffington Post: “Elizabeth Warren Could Join Senate Leadership: Sources”
By Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim
November 12, 2014, 5:15 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is under consideration for a leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucus, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
Senate Democrats will be holding their leadership elections Thursday morning. A source saw Warren coming out of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) office Wednesday.
A spokesman for Reid declined to comment on why Warren was there, and Warren's office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Having Warren in a leadership position would give the Senate's most high-profile progressive member a voice in setting the caucus' policy agenda. She recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed, reflecting on the party's midterm losses, that called on Congress and the administration to push forward with progressive proposals instead of cutting deals with Republicans simply for the sake of doing so. From her op-ed:
“Before leaders in Congress and the president get caught up in proving they can pass some new laws, everyone should take a skeptical look at whom those new laws will serve. At this very minute, lobbyists and lawyers are lining up by the thousands to push for new laws -- laws that will help their rich and powerful clients get richer and more powerful. Hoping to catch a wave of dealmaking, these lobbyists and lawyers -- and their well-heeled clients -- are looking for the chance to rig the game just a little more. [...]
“Yes, we need action. But action must be focused in the right place: on ending tax laws riddled with loopholes that favor giant corporations, on breaking up the financial institutions that continue to threaten our economy, and on giving people struggling with high-interest student loans the same chance to refinance their debt that every Wall Street corporation enjoys. There’s no shortage of work that Congress can do, but the agenda shouldn’t be drawn up by a bunch of corporate lobbyists and lawyers.”
Although Democratic candidates suffered severe losses in the midterm elections, progressive policy issues that were on the ballot -- such as the minimum wage -- performed well. Reid's office has already said it will be pushing progressive policies in the new year, when Democrats are in the minority.”
Many Democratic activists are already looking forward toward the 2016 elections, when the party facesa much friendlier landscape than it did in 2014. In two years, just 10 Democrats will be facing re-election, compared with 24 Republicans -- many of whom are in blue states that voted for President Barack Obama.
Politico: “The Rudy Giuliani guide to beating Hillary Clinton”
By Kyle Cheney
November 12, 2014, 5:59 p.m. EST
Rudy Giuliani, the tough-talking former New York City mayor, has some advice for Republicans who want to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016: Don’t be mean.
“The wrong way is to be too aggressive, and be too mean, and to ever get personal,” he said Wednesday in an interview with POLITICO. “The right way to do it is on policy and on true contribution.”
In a wide-ranging, blunt and occasionally expletive-laden interview, Giuliani — whose own 2008 bid for the White House fizzled quickly — said Clinton’s central vulnerability will be what her allies have long argued is a strength: her policy résumé. He compared President Barack Obama’s political charisma to Ronald Reagan’s and had a few choice words for former ally Charlie Crist.
But he reserved his sharpest comments for Clinton, who represented New York in the Senate toward the end of Giuliani’s second term at City Hall and who has yet to announce whether she’ll make a second run for the White House.
“She’s a candidate who, with her baggage, can be beaten by the right candidate who handles it the right way and by the right campaign who handles it the right way,” he said.
“As a first lady she tried one thing and failed,” he continued, referring to her drive to pass a national health reform agenda, an effort Giuliani noted provided at least some of the underpinnings of Obamacare. “As a secretary of state, she traveled the world, and I would argue every place she traveled, maybe an exception here or there that don’t mean very much, is in worse shape today than it was then.”
Although he was unsparing in his criticism of Clinton and Obama, her former boss, on policy matters, Giuliani made it clear that he sees the president as a rare political talent.
That opinion was informed in 2007, when Giuliani was in the middle of his bid for the GOP presidential nomination and Hillary Clinton was considered the front-runner on the Democratic side. At the time, his wife urged him to watch the tape of Obama’s first speech as a candidate, predicting that the then-Illinois senator would be the Democrat to beat. Giuliani said he scoffed.
“I said, ‘Honey we’re running against Hillary. He’s a nice guy. He’ll run for a little while. He’s going to make a point, move Hillary a little bit to the left,’” Giuliani recalled saying. But at his wife’s insistence, he watched the tape anyway and came away with a different attitude.
“I said, ‘Holy s—-! This guy could win,” he said. “I mean this is special. This is Reagan. This is [Bill] Clinton.’”
Asked about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a longtime Giuliani ally who also may run for the White House in 2016 on the Republican side, the former mayor offered both praise and caution.
“Chris has some of what we were talking about with Obama — Reagan, Clinton,” he said. “I don’t know at that level, but he’s got — if you’ve ever watched him speak, he’s got a charm and a thing that draws you to him that’s terrific.”
Giuliani called Christie decisive, smart and a fast learner. He said the Bridgegate scandal that plagued the governor early this year (in which his aides and allies are accused of engineering traffic jams in an alleged political retribution scheme) was unlikely to harm Christie politically.
“He’s innocent,” Giuliani said. “I think it’s going to come out that way, and I think it will not hurt him.”
But he also said the New Jersey governor has to broaden his focus — and that he still needs to learn to alter his confrontational demeanor.
“I think the donors like him. The donors are establishment Republicans who like tough guys … and I think an antidote to this present president who’s too mild might be a strong president,” Giuliani said. “But I think Chris has to start thinking whole country rather than just what appeals to New Jersey.”
Giuliani, who’s now a security consultant, operates a law firm and is on the international speaking circuit, told reporters he briefly considered running for president again in 2012 before deciding to stick to the private sector.
He recalled with bitterness an episode from his 2008 bid in which then-Florida Gov. Crist — a Republican at the time, but now a Democrat — had planned to back his candidacy only to endorse Sen. John McCain days before the Florida primary.
So Giuliani took no small pleasure in Crist’s narrow loss to incumbent Republican Rick Scott in last week’s gubernatorial election. Footage of Giuliani savaging Crist’s integrity was featured in a pro-Scott ad in the final days of the campaign.
“I do have a little bit of an obsession with Charlie after the way he screwed me,” Giuliani told POLITICO. “Everything I said in that ad, I defend under oath, and I could defend it before St. Peter.”
U.S. News & World Report: “Rand Paul Outlines a 2016 Game Plan”
By David Catanese
November 12, 2014, 5:32 p.m. EST
More than two dozen advisers to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul converged inside a boutique Washington hotel Wednesday to begin to form the skeleton of a 2016 presidential campaign.
The first-term GOP senator hasn't definitively settled on a White House run, and a potential formal launch remains at least five months away. But the meeting of Paul's political brain trust under one roof for a daylong marathon of strategy sessions marks a significant indication of his ambitions to become a top-flight contender for the Republican nomination.
Paul's team gathered at The Liaison hotel off Capitol Hill in Washington, where rolling private meetings in conference rooms touched on a laundry list of subjects, from communications and fundraising to technology and the early state primary map. The confab came just a week after sweeping GOP victories in the 2014 midterm elections, for which Paul campaigned in 35 states.
It was the first time his emerging political team from across the country came together, allowing an opportunity to familiarize each other with their goals, priorities and challenges. Doug Stafford, Paul's top political lieutenant, served as master of ceremonies, highlighting the team's past accomplishments and outlining goal posts and benchmarks for 2015.
“A lot of different people were sharing pieces of the puzzles they’ve been working on. So many of them are dependent on each other for things to work," says one Paul confidante who attended the gathering but was not authorized to speak about it publicly. "It's black, it's white, it's mostly young. It's male and female. It's tech-savvy, smart, mission-oriented. A lot of campaigns are three people in the room. These people are going to leave this place empowered."
Paul, who was personally engaged in the meetings throughout the day, appeared at a 9 a.m. session to welcome his troops and reiterate his call to create a "bigger, bolder Republican Party."
After his remarks, he fielded questions and posed his own, creating a give-and-take atmosphere that quickly turned into a pseudo-brainstorming session.
"What are you doing in your area of expertise? What suggestions do you have? This is what I'd like to see," Paul said, according to an attendee.
Paul has assembled a network of allies and advisers in all 50 states, including veteran political hands in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as in Michigan. Since 2013, he's made 15 trips to the first three early primary states, according to a U.S. News tally of his travels.
Washington Post: “Mike Huckabee rebuilds political team with eye on another presidential run”
By Tom Hamburger and Robert Costa
November 12, 2014, 10:46 p.m. EST
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who turned his stunning victory in the 2008 Iowa caucuses into a thriving talk-show career, is reconnecting with activists and enlisting staff to position himself in a growing field of potential Republican presidential candidates.
This week, Huckabee is leading more than 100 pastors and GOP insiders from early primary states on a 10-day overseas trip with stops in Poland and England.
Huckabee’s newly formed nonprofit advocacy group, America Takes Action, has begun to serve as an employment perch for his political team, recently bringing on a number of experienced campaign operatives.
Advisers are already scouting real estate in Little Rock for a possible presidential campaign headquarters.
Huckabee is scheduled to spend part of this month holding private meetings with powerful GOP financiers in Las Vegas, New York and California, gauging their interest in being bundlers for his possible campaign and asking for pledges of five-to-six-figure donations to his aligned organizations. And he is planning two strategy sessions next month, in Little Rock and Destin, Fla., near his new Gulf Coast home, to discuss timing, potential staffing and an opening pitch to voters.
In January, Huckabee will publish “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” his latest manifesto on politics and culture.
Huckabee, 59, who was governor of Arkansas for a decade, is one of the more enigmatic candidates in a potential Republican field. He has kept a relatively low political profile since 2008, largely staying out of the internal debates that have animated his party in the past few years. Nevertheless, Huckabee maintains a connection with many conservative voters and regularly polls along with former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) at or near the top of a potential Republican field.
An ordained Southern Baptist preacher with an easygoing demeanor, Huckabee presents himself as both a social conservative and an economic populist. He would be a potent draw for the bloc of religious conservative voters that plays a big role in choosing Republican nominees. His entry would complicate matters for other potential GOP candidates, such as Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who have each sought to win over religious conservatives as a core base of early support.
Huckabee’s “heart is into it,” daughter and political confidante Sarah Huckabee told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday. “He is personally engaged and more aggressive in taking on meetings. He can’t wait to get back to South Carolina and Iowa.”
For the elder Huckabee, host of a weekly Fox News show that bears his name and a regular commentator on the network, exploring another presidential bid requires finesse: Fox News, as a policy, terminates its relationships with commentators who create exploratory committees or otherwise show serious intent to run for office.
“I have to be very careful about this,” Huckabee said in an interview Tuesday with The Post.
He noted that he has “obligations in broadcasting,” and that, when it comes to running for president, “I am not doing anything official at this point.”
On Wednesday, after The Post story about him appeared online, a Fox News executive said the network would review Huckabee’s status.
Asked about potential competition in pursuit of evangelical Christian voters, Huckabee said: “That’s part of the whole process of having a primary election period. . . . It provides an opportunity for comparisons.”
Huckabee declined to say whether he admired the pugnacious approach taken by Cruz, who favored a government shutdown last year and takes a more militant approach than that taken by GOP congressional leaders.
“I wouldn’t want to evaluate his direction or tactics,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee’s shift from semi-retirement to being on the cusp of another presidential run began in July 2013, said Republicans close to him who requested anonymity to speak freely.
As Huckabee sat on the beach one day with his family, he was joined by Chip Saltsman, the longtime political strategist who had managed his 2008 campaign.
Saltsman asked Huckabee whether he was interested in running again. Huckabee shrugged and said he was not sure. Saltsman replied that if he had any inclination to do it, he needed to start mapping out a run as soon as possible in order to keep up with his potential rivals. Saltsman’s parting message: Call me when you’re ready. A couple days later, Huckabee rang Saltsman and said, “Let’s go.”
Since then, Huckabee has checked off a list provided to him by Saltsman and another strategist, Bob Wickers, said people familiar with his deliberations. First, Huckabee talked it over with his family, who encouraged him. Next, he began calling donors, just to talk, so that those relationships were warmed.
A startling moment for Huckabee came when he reviewed polling of GOP voters in Iowa and South Carolina. One survey, commissioned by allies, showed him running ahead of other possible GOP candidates by double digits.
“There were polls done that surprised me and got my attention — and led my friends to urge me to think of this again,” Huckabee said.
An additional key move came in the formation this year of the nonprofit advocacy group to serve as a landing spot for staff and money. The group, formed as a “social welfare organization” under a provision of the U.S. tax code, employs Saltsman, Wickers, Sarah Huckabee and a communications director, Alice Stewart, who is also a veteran of the 2008 Huckabee campaign. Chad Gallagher, another Huckabee aide, will continue to run Huck PAC, a political action committee separate from the nonprofit outfit. All would probably be players in a Huckabee campaign.
Republicans familiar with Huckabee’s efforts said the new advocacy group is designed to allow him to retain his Fox News contract, since the group is not overtly political.
On Wednesday, Bill Shine, Fox News vice president for programming, said the network would be “taking a serious look at Governor Huckabee’s recent activity in the political arena.”
Huckabee’s allies said that the Fox News show has been useful to Huckabee’s political brand, keeping him in front of Republican primary voters but not turning him into a political celebrity whose every move draws attention. He can counsel candidates, travel, and organize without much notice, all while keeping his name floating across the airwaves on Saturday evenings.
Surveys show Huckabee would be a top-tier contender should he decide to enter the race. He drew more favorable responses than any other potential candidate during an exit poll in Iowa, with 19 percent of Republican voters there saying they wanted Huckabee to be the next presidential nominee.
Yet Huckabee could face challenges engaging anew in the fractious, modern-day GOP. Huckabee said in 2013, for instance, that the Common Core State Standards, which have infuriated many tea party conservatives, were “near and dear to my heart.” He has since walked back those comments and called the program “toxic.”
Huckabee’s overseas trip this week is being organized by Christian political strategist David Lane as a tribute to three conservative icons and the role they played in the fall of communism. Called the “Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II tour,” it was billed to participants as a “spiritual awakening.”
The courtship of the crucial social conservative wing of the GOP — and the wide-open nature of the race — is evident in the comments of Brad Sherman, an Iowa pastor who backed Huckabee in 2008 and is joining him on this week’s trip. A year ago, Sherman traveled to Israel with Rand Paul on another trip financed by the American Renewal Project. Sherman has also heard from Cruz, Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — and he is open to all of them.
“I still think Huckabee would make a great president.” said Sherman, pastor of Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville, Iowa “At this point, it’s so early, I can’t say that he is the favorite.”
The Daily Beast: “Is Ready for Hillary Ready to Fold—or Work With Candidate Clinton?”
By David Freedlander
November 13, 2014
[Subtitle:] The group’s original purpose was to build up excitement and an email list of supporters for a possible campaign—then disband if and when she ran for president. Now it’s not so sure.
When Ready for Hillary was started by two Hillary Clinton superfans in a Washington, D.C., living room, its ambitions were modest: Build up an email list of dedicated supporters to convince Clinton that there was enthusiasm for a campaign. Then, once she hit the hustings, sell those email addresses to the Clinton campaign and shut down.
But that was before Ready for Hillary emerged as a pre-campaign powerhouse, raising more than $10 million and compiling more than 3 million email addresses, attracting big-time Democratic donors and big-name political operatives in the process.
Now, both outside and inside its sprawling network of organizers, some donors and operatives are wondering if Ready for Hillary could somehow live on after Clinton becomes a candidate in earnest.
“There is a view within the organization, and it’s getting louder, that it makes no sense to shut down when you have an organization and a brand that has so much momentum,” said one official with the group.
Sticking around would put the group at risk of criticism for reneging on its original and stated mission to fold up the tent at the appointed hour. But some Democrats say Ready for Hillary could provide a unique resource to an eventual campaign by building on the get-out-the-vote skills it honed during the midterms, when Ready for Hillary organizers worked to get every candidate that Clinton endorsed elected. (That endeavor, it should be noted, largely failed, with just one-third of Clinton’s chosen candidates winning. Whether that was due to Clinton, local GOTV efforts, or the Republican wave is a matter of a some dispute.)
In 2016, Ready for Hillary essentially could act as a super PAC field operation, much as Americans Coming Together did for John Kerry in 2004. Super PACs traditionally focus on messaging and advertising but are hamstrung by having to pay higher rates than the campaigns do to get on the air. A super PAC focused on GOTV efforts would free a campaign to target its resources and energy elsewhere or could work alongside a campaign’s field operation.
“What Ready for Hillary could do is stay ahead of the primary cycle,” said one Democrat. “No campaign manager [for Clinton] is going to say, ‘Let’s campaign and organize in South Dakota,’ but a Ready for Hillary could do that.”
If Ready for Hillary remained viable and outside the campaign infrastructure, the group could act as a scout team for the campaign, getting its supporters to rallies for her and signing up those who arrive on their own. It has some experience with that kind of thing, helping to bring crowds to locations on Clinton’s summer book tour and registering supporters in the process. Over the next three weeks, Ready for Hillary is planning more than a dozen events around the country, mostly at college campuses.
Ready for Hillary also has managed to do something the Clinton campaigns of the past have not been able to do: Excite young voters and turn the potential candidacy of someone who has been in public life for three decades into an event. Ready for Hillary fundraisers have often been fun—and packed, even at high-dollar New York City establishments like The Standard Hotel, where $18 signature cocktails had names like “The Ceiling Breaker.”
“I think those in the leadership [of Ready for Hillary] will look at the landscape and determine what the tools are at their disposal to help Hillary Clinton get elected president of the United States,” said Jeff Johnson, a communications specialist who has hosted Ready for Hillary fundraisers and who has performed outreach to the black community for the group. “Whether that means Ready for Hillary stays on as a super PAC or moves forward and gets absorbed by the campaign, it depends on what the other pieces are on the chessboard.”
Political operatives involved in the organization said the real question was whether an eventual Clinton campaign would want to take over the Ready infrastructure, with its email lists and its nationwide network of organizers, or whether it would prefer to build its own infrastructure.
And to be sure, there are risks associated with keeping the organization alive, not least of which is that an organization with Clinton’s name attached to it would be operating on her behalf but would be unable to coordinate with the campaign. Plus, even if the group focused narrowly on GOTV efforts, its inability to coordinate would mean it would not be able to narrowcast messages quite like an in-house field operation would be able to. Finally, many of the organizers who have signed on did so in the hopes that they would have the inside track to work on the official campaign and, later on, in the administration. Would they want to stay with an outside group?
“Ready for Hillary is remarkably simple. It has one mission—to build up a database of supporters for Hillary Clinton, and then one day be able to say, ‘Mission Accomplished,’” said Tracy Sefl, a senior adviser to the group.
Any speculation about what happens should Clinton announce a candidacy, Sefl said, is just speculation.
“It sounds like the kind of decision that a candidate and a campaign would be instrumental in shaping,” she said. “But because there is no candidate and no campaign, I know of nothing being planned.”
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 19 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the National Breast Cancer Coalition (Breast Cancer Deadline)
· 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)