Correct The Record Thursday September 18, 2014 Morning Roundup
Correct The Record Thursday September 18, 2014 Morning Roundup:
Headlines:
New York Times: “In Debut, Benghazi Panel Leaves Sparring to Others”
“David Brock, a onetime critic of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is the central figure in the effort to protect Mrs. Clinton. He is the overseer of three groups that are teaming up in a new effort called the Benghazi Research Center. The groups are American Bridge, a Democratic ‘super PAC’ that is mostly focused on the November midterm races; Media Matters for America, a watchdog group that Mr. Brock created in 2004; and Correct the Record, a research organization that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media.”
Politico: “Democrats turn on Debbie Wasserman Schultz”
“Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said she has ‘the highest regard’ for Wasserman Schultz, calling her ‘a tireless advocate for Democrats and Democratic values, a strong leader in the House and an effective chairwoman for the Democratic Party.’”
MSNBC: “Why are college students ready for Hillary?”
“It’s a sentiment expressed by numerous college students in Iowa who spoke with msnbc, and it’s one that appears surprisingly common among young people nationally, considering how poorly Clinton did among the cohort in 2008.”
Politico: “Sen. Tim Kaine to host pro-Hillary Clinton fundraiser”
“The event will be held on Sept. 23 at the Kirkland & Ellis law offices in the capital.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Left blasts Clinton in secret emails”
“Emails sent by liberal activists and obtained by The Hill reveal significant dissatisfaction with Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016… The group includes prominent Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives, leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the president of NARAL.”
“The reporter who walked into this morning's first public meeting of the House Special Committee on Benghazi saw something shocking and unforeseeable: empty chairs.”
Washington Post column: Dana Milbank: “Trey Gowdy’s unexpected Benghazi twist”
“When the South Carolina Republican chaired his panel’s first public hearing Wednesday, Gowdy did something completely unexpected: He played it straight.”
The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Ready for Hillary? More like 'Ready for testimony,' Paul says”
“Paul made his comments as the first House select committee hearing on the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, got underway.”
MSNBC: “‘We need people to run against Hillary’”
“Zephyr Teachout, fresh off her strong second-place showing in the Democratic primary against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, pleaded for more Democratic candidates to challenge the presumed 2016 frontrunner.”
Wall Street Journal: “Why the Chickens Have Come Home To Roost This Campaign Season”
“The Republican National Committee pulled Mr. Diaz's squirrel costume from hibernation this summer to stalk Hillary Clinton's book tour, posting a YouTube video about where the critter had been for six years.”
Articles:
New York Times: “In Debut, Benghazi Panel Leaves Sparring to Others”
By Ashley Parker and Amy Chozick
September 17, 2014
WASHINGTON — The special House committee on Benghazi seemed determined to prove on Wednesday that it would not be the bickering, partisan panel that many expected. But the outside political class did not get the memo.
Behind-the-scenes maneuvering from the left and the right surrounding the committee’s restrained debut hearing offered an early glimpse of how the 2012 attacks on the United States diplomatic compound in Libya — which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — would play out as a divisive issue if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president in 2016.
On the Democratic side, a network of outside groups mobilized to defend Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state during the attacks, against charges that she mishandled the assault. The episode has dogged Mrs. Clinton since she left the State Department in February 2013 and as she contemplates another run for the White House.
David Brock, a onetime critic of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is the central figure in the effort to protect Mrs. Clinton. He is the overseer of three groups that are teaming up in a new effort called the Benghazi Research Center. The groups are American Bridge, a Democratic “super PAC” that is mostly focused on the November midterm races; Media Matters for America, a watchdog group that Mr. Brock created in 2004; and Correct the Record, a research organization that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media.
Throughout the hearings, the Benghazi Research Center’s website — whose mission statement says it will “shed light on the House Republicans’ efforts to use a terrorist attack against the United States for political gain” — will provide research and detailed responses to accusations that Mrs. Clinton could have done more to protect the Libya compound.
“Since early 2013, the Republicans have tried to pre-emptively disqualify Secretary Clinton from the presidency with unfounded allegations that need to be rebutted in real time,” Mr. Brock said in an interview. “That’s what we’ve set up to do.”
For their part, Republicans said they were determined to make sure that Mrs. Clinton remained inextricably tied to the Benghazi attacks, which she has called her “biggest regret” in her four years at the State Department.
The Republican National Committee sent out a six-page research document on Wednesday morning offering what it described as Mrs. Clinton’s vulnerabilities, including the State Department’s denial of requests for additional security at the Libya compound and reports that found the attacks were preventable.
The panel itself had a sleepy start. Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, the committee’s chairman and a former prosecutor known for his fiery (and occasionally teary) orations, began by acknowledging that some of his Democratic colleagues “question the need for this committee.” Then he vowed to honor the four Americans killed by keeping an open mind “in pursuit of the facts and justice, no matter where that journey may take us.”
Yet Mr. Gowdy’s promise that he would “rather run the risk of answering a question twice than run the risk of not answering it once” seemed to signal that the committee’s hearings were likely to extend well into next year — and well into the 2016 presidential cycle, in which Mrs. Clinton appears poised to emerge at the top of the Democratic field.
Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat, was also conciliatory in his opening remarks. He said that while previous congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks had “devolved into unseemly partisanship,” the committee faced a potentially transformational moment that could have “lasting effects even when we’re gone on to heaven.”
Two witnesses who were called before the committee — both members of the Independent Panel on Best Practices at the State Department, which was formed after the attacks — said that the department had put in place 30 of the panel’s 40 recommendations, and that it was working to carry out eight more. But they said that the department had ignored two of the recommendations, including one to establish an under secretary for diplomatic security.
“Now is the time — clear the smoke, remove the mirrors,” said Todd M. Keil, a member of the State Department panel and a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security. “Now is the time for the Department of State to finally institutionalize some real, meaningful and progressive change.”
As the hearing wore on, the questioning by some Republican members did become more heated. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, expressed concern that the State Department did not plan to establish the diplomatic security post.
“My question is real simple, Mr. Chairman,” Mr. Jordan said. “What’s it going to take? What’s it going to take for the State Department to put in place the practices that are going to save American lives?”
In some ways, the hearing — although held just days after the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks — was overshadowed by other world events. On Tuesday, the Senate heard testimony about the growing humanitarian crisis that the Ebola virus is causing in West Africa, and on Wednesday, the House voted to authorize the training and arming of Syrian rebels to combat the Islamic State militant group.
Mrs. Clinton was barely mentioned, and only as a supporting character. And while her Democratic backers remained on high alert to defend her after future hearings, Mrs. Clinton seemed a world away, fresh off her first trip to Iowa since she stumbled there in the 2008 Democratic presidential caucuses.
Politico: “Democrats turn on Debbie Wasserman Schultz”
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
September 17, 2014, 5:46 p.m. EDT
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in a behind-the-scenes struggle with the White House, congressional Democrats and Washington insiders who have lost confidence in her as both a unifying leader and reliable party spokesperson at a time when they need her most.
Long-simmering doubts about her have reached a peak after two recent public flubs: criticizing the White House’s handling of the border crisis and comparing the tea party to wife beaters.
The perception of critics is that Wasserman Schultz spends more energy tending to her own political ambitions than helping Democrats win. This includes using meetings with DNC donors to solicit contributions for her own PAC and campaign committee, traveling to uncompetitive districts to court House colleagues for her potential leadership bid and having DNC-paid staff focus on her personal political agenda.
She’s become a liability to the DNC, and even to her own prospects, critics say.
“I guess the best way to describe it is, it’s not that she’s losing a duel anywhere, it’s that she seems to keep shooting herself in the foot before she even gets the gun out of the holster,” said John Morgan, a major donor in Wasserman Schultz’s home state of Florida.
The stakes are high. Wasserman Schultz is a high-profile national figure who helped raise millions of dollars and served as a Democratic messenger to female voters during a presidential election in which Obama needed to exploit the gender gap to win, but November’s already difficult midterms are looming.
One example that sources point to as particularly troubling: Wasserman Schultz repeatedly trying to get the DNC to cover the costs of her wardrobe.
In 2012, Wasserman Schultz attempted to get the DNC to pay for her clothing at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, multiple sources say, but was blocked by staff in the committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters and at President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign headquarters in Chicago.
She asked again around Obama’s inauguration in 2013, pushing so hard that Obama senior adviser — and one-time Wasserman Schultz booster — Valerie Jarrett had to call her directly to get her to stop. (Jarrett said she does not recall that conversation.) One more time, according to independent sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, she tried again, asking for the DNC to buy clothing for the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Wasserman Schultz denies that she ever tried to get the DNC to pick up her clothing tab. “I think that would be a totally inappropriate use of DNC funds,” she said in a statement. “I never asked someone to do that for me, I would hope that no one would seek that on my behalf, and I’m not aware that anyone did.”
Tracie Pough, Wasserman Schultz’s chief of staff at the DNC and her congressional office, was also involved in making inquiries about buying the clothing, according to sources. Pough denies making, directing or being aware of any inquiries.
But sources with knowledge of the discussions say Wasserman Schultz’s efforts couldn’t have been clearer. “She felt firmly that it should happen,” said a then-DNC staffer of the clothing request. “Even after it was explained that it couldn’t, she remained indignant.”
This story is based on interviews with three dozen current and former DNC staffers, committee officers, elected officials, state party leaders and top Democratic operatives in Washington and across the country.
Many expect a nascent Clinton campaign will engineer her ouster. Hurt feelings go back to spring 2008, when while serving as a co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Wasserman Schultz secretly reached out to the Obama campaign to pledge her support once the primary was over, sources say.
Meanwhile, the Obama team was so serious about replacing her after 2012 that they found a replacement candidate to back before deciding against it, according to people familiar with those discussions.
Obama and Wasserman Schultz have rarely even talked since 2011. They don’t meet about strategy or messaging. They don’t talk much on the phone.
Instead, the DNC chairwoman stakes out the president of the United States at the end of photo lines at events and fundraisers.
“You need another picture, Debbie?” Obama tends to say, according to people who’ve been there for the encounters.
Chairing the DNC should be a political steppingstone — Ed Rendell, Terry McAuliffe and Tim Kaine all went on to bigger things, and even Howard Dean used the post to rehabilitate himself from the man who yelped his way out of a presidential campaign.
And without a doubt, the Florida congresswoman has had plenty of successes. She has overseen the integration of key elements of the Obama campaigns, including its voter file and data programs. After being left with $25 million in bills from the Obama campaign, the DNC enters the fall with the debt cleared and over $7 million on hand. She’s started new efforts to build relationships with labor and small business leaders and prioritized the DNC’s outreach to female voters.
“My tenure here is not about me,” Wasserman Schultz said in an interview with POLITICO at DNC headquarters. “I like to help build this party. That’s what I love and that’s what I focused on.”
She rejects the idea she is over-extended.
“I have always taken on a lot. It’s what I love to do. I don’t do anything halfway,” she said, dismissing any worries that she’s overextended. “In some cases, it’s sniping; in other cases people are worried about me. I have a lot of Jewish mothers out there that I think very kindly say, ‘My god, she’s doing so much.’ It’s OK.”
SPLIT WITH OBAMA
The White House is staring at two years of life under a GOP-controlled House and Senate. The DNC chair, however, isn’t involved in the strategy talks with the president.
They don’t want her there.
For even the occasional Obama briefing by the heads of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, she is not invited. That includes a key session on July 31, the last day the House was in town before the August recess, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), DCCC Chair Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC executive director Kelly Ward sat on the couches in the Oval Office running through the political landscape for the president.
Wasserman Schultz described her relationship with the president as speaking to him on an “as-needed basis, whenever I have a need to talk to them or give them a sense of what’s going on, but also, as it happens, as we connect on the trail.” She declined to provide details of how often, where or when.
When Kaine was DNC chairman during the president’s first year in office, he had a monthly lunch with Obama on the calendar (although not all of the lunches actually occurred as planned). Wasserman Schultz demurred when asked if it would be fair to characterize her as speaking “regularly” with the president.
“The best way to describe it is: as often as we need,” she said.
According to multiple people familiar with the president, Obama’s opinion of Wasserman Schultz was sealed back in 2011. Shortly after becoming chairwoman, she pushed hard for a meeting with the president that she kicked off by complaining that she had been blocked from hiring the daughter of a donor — who’d been on staff in her congressional office — as a junior staffer to be the DNC’s Jewish community liaison.
Obama summed up his reaction to staff afterward: “Really?”
Asked about the relationship between the president and Wasserman Schultz, the White House issued a statement praising the chairwoman and DNC staff.
“The president’s foremost political goal is helping Democrats do well in the midterms — and Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is doing a great job in that effort,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “The president is grateful for all of the hard work being done by the entire team at the DNC. He fully recognizes the value of their work, and that’s why he has worked so hard to support them.”
Last summer, Wasserman Schultz and the White House clashed again.
Wasserman Schultz resisted Obama circle favorites Marlon Marshall and Buffy Wicks replacing Patrick Gaspard as executive director. When Jarrett found out that Wasserman Schultz had had her daughter sit in on the interview with Wicks at the end of July 2013, she called to register her dismay, describing Wasserman Schultz’s behavior, according to people familiar with the conversation, as “completely unprofessional and rude.”
Shortly thereafter, the DNC chairwoman spoke at length to POLITICO about how she planned to leverage the donors she’d met as DNC chairwoman into fundraising to build chits for her own political future. Jarrett was infuriated and called Wasserman Schultz.
Jarrett had always been a defender, she reminded Wasserman Schultz, according to people familiar with the call, but now she delivered a clear message: She was disappointed by the narrative in the story the chairwoman herself had fed, and cautioned her to remember that Obama is head of the party.
Obama’s team came very close to replacing Wasserman Schultz after the 2012 race.
At the Charlotte convention, Wasserman Schultz’s DNC staffers assembled a collection of perks — entry to her skybox, access to the chairwoman’s lounge — for House members and candidates she was hoping to attract for her leadership run and DNC voting members she would need to retain her DNC post should Obama replace her. She also had her DNC staff explore and plot how she could remain chairwoman if Obama lost the race.
A DNC official said Wasserman Schultz denies she ever made or directed staff to make such inquiries in the event the president was going to lose, but sources say White House and Obama campaign staff were furious.
“She was trying to figure out what the protocol was,” said a DNC staffer at the time. “What was the exact length of her term, what would it take to run.”
After the election, Obama’s top political operatives — strategist David Plouffe, reelection campaign manager Jim Messina and then-DNC executive director Patrick Gaspard, now U.S. ambassador to South Africa — debated the decision of retaining her as DNC chair so intensely that there was already a replacement in mind: R.T. Rybak, the former mayor of Minneapolis and a DNC vice chairman.
But there was nervousness about the optics of Obama dropping a woman from the party leadership. Plus, the sense internally was that they had originally picked her largely to help win the women’s vote and avert problems with Jewish donors, and both had indeed happened, whatever the other problems.
The focus in Obama’s political orbit at that moment was on transforming the campaign apparatus into Organizing for America, a 501(c)4 nonprofit group led by Messina that would exist solely to back the White House agenda. The DNC got stuck with $25 million in leftover debt from the Obama campaign, while OFA started fresh and has raised $36 million of its own since, although with limited political and policy victories to brag about.
The decision to stick with Wasserman Schultz is, according to a person familiar with Obama’s thinking, part of his “benign neglect” of the DNC overall.
This year, Obama has taken a somewhat more active interest in the DNC, appearing at 20 fundraisers so far compared with only a handful previously, with two more planned in Washington this week and an “intimate dinner” event next month at Gwyneth Paltrow’s home in Los Angeles.
In mid-June, he attended two in one afternoon in New York, including the DNC LGBT Gala. Wasserman Schultz waited until the end of the photo line to swoop in.
“Mr. President,” she said, according to people familiar with the encounter. “I just want you to know, the DNC has retired its debt.”
Obama looked at her.
“Debbie, you think I don’t know?” he said. “I’m the president of the United States.”
FUTURE AMBITIONS AND DIVIDED LOYALTIES
Being DNC chair is a major political opportunity.
“Unless you do something or say something stupid — which Debbie hasn’t — unless you do something illegal— which Debbie hasn’t — it’s nothing but pluses for your career,” said Rendell, who served as DNC chairman between being mayor of Philadelphia and governor of Pennsylvania, and credits in part his television exposure, new donor connections and expanded relationships with elected officials he got.
But the knock on Wasserman Schultz isn’t that she’s taking advantage of these relationships but that she appears to be planning her personal political rise while also trying to lead the party.
According to multiple people who have been in the room for DNC donor meetings, Wasserman Schultz regularly finishes a pitch to donors by asking them to give money to the DNC and her leadership PAC, or her congressional committee, or both. There’s nothing illegal about this, but donors often grumble privately that this sends mixed messages about her priorities and why she’s interested in meeting with them.
“I usually don’t — hardly ever do I have a conversation with someone where I’m having to ask them for support for all three at the same time,” Wasserman Schultz said. “There are times when I have spoken to donors who are donors to me in my reelection, donors who give to the party, sure.”
DNC policy is not to accept donations from lobbyists. However, her own DWS PAC accepts lobbyist money. Wasserman Schultz says this has never been a problem. “DWS PAC is a separate entity,” she said, denying that the initials have any relation to her name, although her father used to be its treasurer and it’s run day-to-day by Jason O’Malley, whose salary is split between the DNC, DWS PAC and Wasserman Schultz’s congressional campaign committee. He works out of a cubicle in the finance department at DNC headquarters.
“It stands for Democrats Win Seats,” she said. “And that’s important. It stands for Democrats Win Seats. It is a political action committee that exists to elect Democrats.”
Anyone with any political sense who’s interested in running for House leadership positions keeps track of favors to and commitments from colleagues. Wasserman Schultz’s list, cataloging everything from fundraisers to flowers sent after a parent’s death, is kept by DNC staff. Some versions of the spreadsheet, according to people familiar with the document, lay it out very simply, with “The Plan” handwritten across the top. As one document notes up top, there are about 100 members “with more seniority than DWS.”
“They never tried to hide what they were doing. They were tracking what she had done for other members and how likely they were at the moment to support her in a leadership race,” said a former DNC staffer.
Wasserman Schultz has traveled to 99 cities in 37 states as of September, according to DNC figures, for everything from state and local party fundraisers to a press event in front of the George Washington Bridge last week to needle New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
What that accounting does not show is how many of those trips were, according to people familiar with the decisions, guided largely by Wasserman Schultz’s interest in appearing at events for very safe members of Congress whom she’s hoping to count on for a leadership bid or to pitch meetings for her PAC or stops on her book tour.
“We say the big ‘D’ is for Democratic,” one member joked to others at the House Democratic retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February, according to one of the members. “For her, the big ‘D’ is always for Debbie.”
“People know she works hard,” said another House colleague. “But there’s this sense that she only works hard for herself.”
Wasserman Schultz has brought in four senior staffers to the DNC, including, for four months in 2013, a ghostwriter for her book, “For the Next Generation.” All four are now on the DNC payroll full-time or split between her congressional office, PAC and congressional campaign committee.
Public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker also has a large contract with the DNC through which consultant Hilary Rosen works directly with Wasserman Schultz, though Rosen says she does so only as “a friend.”
“I spend time with the chair, but we think of it as outside of that piece,” Rosen said.
Many longtime DNC officials distance themselves from her leadership.
“Debbie is the leader of the DNC. She’s the chief spokesperson and, along with the staff, she manages the resources of the Democratic National Committee,” said vice chairwoman Donna Brazile, formerly Al Gore’s campaign manager. “As vice chair, I’m not involved in the day-to-day decisions, the budget or anything else.”
Even when there is a state Democrats can use her in, there have been problems.
In Milwaukee earlier this month for a women’s roundtable, Wasserman Schultz said that Gov. Scott Walker has given the “back of his hand” to women. “I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality,” she said. “What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”
Walker’s campaign pounced, and it became a running segment on Fox News and even a Republican talking point in the governor’s race in Florida. His Democratic opponent, Mary Burke (who wasn’t at the event), quickly distanced herself from Wasserman Schultz’s remarks.
Wasserman Schultz explained to POLITICO that the comment was “the result of my very intense, passionate feelings about Scott Walker or any other tea party Republican whose policies have done harm to women, and that’s what I was trying to highlight. … In the heat of the moment, sometimes that’s going to happen, especially with as often as I have to be doing what I’m doing.”
Wisconsin is one of the few spots in the country where there’s an endangered Republican in blue territory — and Walker is someone the Democratic base locally and nationally, especially unions, would love to see gone or bruised significantly ahead of a possible 2016 White House run. That’s all prime territory for a DNC chair, especially with a female candidate for governor. But people say Wasserman Schultz would only be a liability if she returned.
“Her ineptitude during her last visit makes it impossible to go back before the election,” said a person familiar with the Burke campaign.
Women’s issues are central to Wasserman Schultz and one of her priorities at the DNC. Though there was a women’s group at the DNC before her — the Women’s Leadership Forum, which was co-founded by then-first lady Hillary Clinton— Wasserman Schultz sought to expand the work by starting a larger umbrella group called the Democratic Women’s Alliance.
“Ironically, women through the Women’s Leadership Forum were treated like an ATM. The Women’s Leadership Forum is exclusively a finance arm,” Wasserman Schultz said. “There was no institutionalized, organized outreach program for women.”
Thursday, the Women’s Leadership Forum will gather in Washington for its annual National Issues Conference, featuring a blockbuster guest list that includes both the president and first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, and, in her 2014 DNC event debut, Hillary Clinton.
Clinton will speak to the group in the morning and then head to New York for a separate DNC fundraiser, while Obama is expected to speak in the afternoon. Wasserman Schultz, though, is listed as another headliner for the New York event, though she’s hoping not to have to rush out on Obama to appear with Clinton.
SPLIT WITH CLINTON
Wasserman Schultz says she and Hillary Clinton have “a special relationship.”
Asked to explain what that entails, she said, “I’ll just leave it at that.”
As with the Obama White House, the DNC chairwoman’s relationship with the Clintons is fragile.
Back in 2008, Wasserman Schultz was a co-chair of Clinton’s presidential run and one of the campaign’s most active surrogates. In the rough final weeks of the primaries, when the Obama campaign was looking for every pressure point to force Clinton to quit, Wasserman Schultz gave them one.
Wasserman Schultz reached out to the Obama campaign to let them know she knew Clinton’s campaign was over, even though it would take a few more weeks. And she wanted them to know she was ready to be there for Obama as soon as it was. Through back channels, according to people connected to the discussions, Obama aides promptly let Clinton aides know that one of her last allies was backing away.
This has not been forgotten.
Through a spokesperson, Wasserman Schultz denies that she ever made a call herself to the Obama campaign but declined to address what her staff might have done. The spokesman said Wasserman Schultz’s first substantive contact with the Obama campaign came after Clinton dropped out.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said she has “the highest regard” for Wasserman Schultz, calling her “a tireless advocate for Democrats and Democratic values, a strong leader in the House and an effective chairwoman for the Democratic Party.”
Merrill did not get into the question of whether, should Clinton run, she would commit to keeping Wasserman Schultz as DNC chairwoman.
There’s ample reason to suggest this won’t happen. At some point Clinton will have to admit she’s running, and the Clintons have always been more interested in party politics than Obama has. Reshaping the DNC would be a natural early priority.
“When you think about their operation and the operation they like to run, she will not be running it,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with both the Clintons and the DNC. “Someone will clean that house.”
DNC Executive Director Amy Dacey — who’s won accolades in the White House and among the other Democratic campaign committees for her work to get the internal budget in order and increase coordination — predicted that Democrats in the midterms and the next presidential race will benefit from the DNC’s efforts, and from having Wasserman Schultz there.
“I know that she’s serving until ’16 and is involved in all the strategic conversations we’re having to build to that,” Dacey said. “Her time and devotion to the DNC is certainly there.”
Officially, Obama’s still the one who’ll get the say. The White House also did not address the question of keeping her as chairwoman past November.
Wasserman Schultz said she’s not going anywhere.
“I am focused on doing this job. I was elected to a four-year term. And I fully expect to be in this job through January 2017,” she said.
Speculation is already rampant that Stephanie Schriock, an experienced political operative who’s now the president of EMILY’s List — where she’s a big booster of Clinton’s candidacy in addition to being part of the working group of outside people supporting a run — would be a natural fit to come in as chairwoman. Through a spokesperson at EMILY’s List, Schriock said there have been no discussions and she was not aware of the possibility.
Other potential replacements include Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore and secretary of the DNC, and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, currently the co-chair of Clinton-supportive Priorities USA Action.
In April 2013, shortly after she left the State Department and was beginning to reconnect with old political friends and allies, Clinton invited Wasserman Schultz for coffee at her house near Embassy Row in Washington. Wasserman Schultz herself came with a pitch, asking Clinton to write the foreword to her own upcoming book.
Clinton considered the decision. It wasn’t personal, said a person familiar with the secretary’s feelings, but Clinton turns down 99 percent of book asks, particularly then, as she was writing her own.
Clinton said no.
MSNBC: “Why are college students ready for Hillary?”
By Alex Seitz-Wald
September 18, 2014, 12:12 a.m. EDT
Pierce Fieldsend was in eighth grade when he discovered politics, thanks to an Illinois senator named Barack Obama. His friend’s parents took him out of school to see the Democratic presidential candidate speak in Des Moines, and, like a lot of young people in 2008, Fieldsend was blown away by what he heard.
“I immediately attached to his message and his policies,” he recalled Tuesday.
Now a sophomore at Iowa State University, he tells the story while standing in front of a giant bus advertising Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Democratic rival who lost the critical Iowa Caucuses thanks in part to an unprecedented outpouring of support for Obama from college students.
Fieldsend is organizing a student chapter of Ready for Hillary – the Clinton shadow campaign super PAC – on campus and has no reservations about jumping in early for the former secretary of state.
After helping more than 180 students Sunday attend the Iowa Steak Fry, where Bill and Hillary Clinton spoke, Ready for Hillary’s campaign-style bus embarked on a tour of six Iowa colleges and universities to build support. Iowa State was the first stop and the group is on track to sign up more than 1,000 students this week.
In Clinton, Fieldsend sees the strongest possible Democratic nominee and another chance to make history. “I want to say I was part of a movement to elect the first female president in 240 years of this country’s history,” he said.
It’s a sentiment expressed by numerous college students in Iowa who spoke with msnbc, and it’s one that appears surprisingly common among young people nationally, considering how poorly Clinton did among the cohort in 2008.
According to a recent Harvard University survey, 80% of young Democrats have a favorable view of Clinton. Sixty-nine percent said they would vote for her if the primary were held today, according to another poll. In the 2008 Iowa Caucus, 57% of voters in the same age range supported Obama, compared to between just 10% and 15% for Clinton, according to exit polls. The gap was smaller in the larger set of Super Tuesday states, but Obama still bested Clinton among the demographic 57% to 41%.
Rachel Schneider, Ready for Hillary’s Young Americans director, who held a similar role for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, said she’s consistently surprised by the support she finds on the campuses she visits.
Schneider and the super PAC have been quietly touring the country, helping to incubate new Students for Hillary chapters. So far, they’ve set up groups on more than 80 campuses, heavily concentrated in the early primary and caucus states.
It works like this: Before Ready for Hillary arrives at any university, they identify potential supporters on campus from existing organizations (Democratic clubs, women’s’ groups, LGBT groups, etc.) and among people who have already signed up on the group’s website with “.edu” email addresses or under the group’s student section.
“They’re miles ahead of any other campaign or any other person,” said Zoe Kustritz, the president of the Iowa State College Democrats, who is remaining neutral on 2016, though she has helped Ready for Hillary navigate her school’s bureaucracy to set up a local chapter.
The goal is to make the groups self-sustaining, so they can continue to do events and build the super PAC’s mass list of supporters on their own. Schneider works with the team leaders on each campus to set goals for the number of sing ups. If they meet their fall semester numbers, the teams get a cardboard cutout of Clinton. One day, the organizers could be folded into an official Clinton campaign, much as Obama’s 2008 campaign did with the Students for Obama group started independently in 2006, long before he declared.
“Students for Obama was huge, and I think that Students for Hillary will be just as big, if not end up being bigger,” Schneider said. For the student organizers, many of whom want to work in politics, it’s a great opportunity to get a foot in the door early.
Of course, there are plenty of college students who are not ready for Hillary this time, and her current sky-high poll numbers are likely artificially inflated thanks to her universal name recognition and the lack of a clear alternative.
Many, if not most, of Ready for Hillary’s own junior staffers supported Obama in 2008.
At an event Sunday night in Des Moines for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is also eyeing a presidential run, some young voters dismissed Clinton as a “corporate Democrat” too friendly to Wall Street. Others took issue with her hawkish foreign policy views.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, has also captured the enthusiasm of many young liberals, though she is unlikely to run for president if Clinton chooses to.
But in the absence of another Howard Dean or Barack Obama, both of whom built their campaigns on youth enthusiasm, Clinton looks capable of far outperforming her 2008 numbers with the group. Before Ready for Hillary visited tiny Cornell College this week, they had just one supporter on campus in their database. They left two hours after they arrived with more than 10% of the student body signed up.
Young people are a crucial demographic in the Democratic coalition, and the retirement-age Clinton has been working hard to make gains in the group ahead of a potential presidential bid.
Clinton has appeared on “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” spoken at more than half a dozen universities (earning hackles at some for her exorbitant speaking fees), expanded her social media platform, and takes every opportunity she gets to laude young people.
In June, she rolled out a new plan to boost youth employment via the Clinton Global Initiative, with 10 major companies signing on to hire young people.
There’s no single reason why so many young people have come around on Clinton, and much of it reflects Democrats’ larger reconsideration of the once-defeated candidate.
But the most common response from students whom msnbc put the question to was the opportunity to be inspired by another candidate who can make history – even if Clinton can’t quite capture the same lightning in bottle that was Obama’s moment in 2008.
“I think that the Obama campaign touched so many people and was such an emotional experience that people want that again,” Kustritz said. “A few of the people I went with [to the Steak Fry] were like, eh, she’s not Obama. But you know, you can only get one Obama.”
Politico: “Sen. Tim Kaine to host pro-Hillary Clinton fundraiser”
By Maggie Haberman
September 17, 2014, 5:16 p.m. EDT
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine will host a fundraiser for the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC Ready for Hillary in Washington this month, according to an invitation.
Kaine, who was an early backer of then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, committed to Clinton months ago at an event in South Carolina, but this is the first time he is fundraising for the group.
The event will be held on Sept. 23 at the Kirkland & Ellis law offices in the capital.
The low-dollar super PAC has become the vehicle through which a number of elected officials have backed Clinton.
She says she hasn’t made up her mind yet about running for president in 2016, but she would be the prohibitive Democratic frontrunner if she does run.
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Left blasts Clinton in secret emails”
By Alexandra Jaffe
September 18, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EDT
Emails sent by liberal activists and obtained by The Hill reveal significant dissatisfaction with Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
The critical messages about the former first lady show that she has a long way to go to assuage skepticism from influential voices on the left.
The Hill reviewed hundreds of emails from a progressive members only Google group called the “Gamechanger Salon,” a forum where nearly 1,500 activists, strategists and journalists debate issues and craft messaging campaigns.
The group includes prominent Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives, leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the president of NARAL.
In the emails spanning nearly a year — starting in June 2013 through July of this year — frustration with Clinton is evident.
Clinton’s too much of a hawk, too cozy with Wall Street, hasn’t spoken out enough on climate change, and will be subject to personal questions and criticisms, members of the group stated in the emails.
The existence of the group was reported earlier this year by the conservative outlet MediaTrackers.org, but this is the first time the emails have become public.
“[A] Clinton presidency undos [sic] all our progress and returns the financial interests to even more prominence than they currently have,” Melissa Byrne, an activist with the Occupy Wall Street movement, said in a November 2013 email.
The progressives expressed an appetite for an alternative to Clinton to teach her — and those from the centrist wing of the party — a lesson.
Liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has repeatedly said she won’t run for president, but some on the left aren’t convinced.
“The establishment Dems need to be punished, and the best way for that to happen is for Warren to beat Hillary in the primary on a populist message,” Carl Gibson, a progressive activist and writer for Occupy.com, wrote in one email.
Even though months have passed since the emails were sent, the sentiment remains.
Mike Lux, a prominent strategist and an active member of the group, told The Hill that the concerns haven’t changed and operatives “are probably more worried at this point rather than less.”
Conversations with a half-dozen of the members of Gamechanger Salon this week confirm that the angst within parts of the progressive movement has only grown.
“There’s good reason to believe the discontent remains the same,” Neil Sroka, spokesman for Democracy for America and another group member, told The Hill.
Much of the exasperation with Clinton hinged on the former New York senator’s vote for the Iraq War, which is still toxic for many progressives. Clinton has since said her vote was a mistake.
Charles Lenchner, a progressive operative and executive director of Organizing 2.0, said Clinton — and anyone else who voted for the Iraq War — is “tainted.”
“And personally, I would like to see a Democratic Party where folks who enabled George Bush to drag the country into a permanent war are punished at the ballot box,” he said in an interview.
Ryan Clayton, a left-leaning commentator and strategist, wrote in a July 2013 email, “The more Progressives I talk to, the more people tell me that they’ll never forgive her for voting for the Iraq War… and won’t even vote for her in the general.”
Another area of irritation is the economic policies instituted by her husband, former President Clinton, that some progressives say contributed to the financial collapse. Lux, a former Clinton administration aide, wrote in an email that while he didn’t think she was involved in crafting economic policy as first lady, he’s concerned about her relationship with Wall Street.
“I also came to know how close she was to the pro-Wall Street forces inside the administration and out, and the downsides on foreign policy are all very real. So I will hesitate for a long time before jumping into her campaign,” Lux wrote in a group email.
Byrne, the Occupy activist, later declared in an email this year: “I have little respect for decisions Sec. Clinton has made in her career and I have a different value set from her.”
One of Clinton’s biggest critics among the group is Guy Saperstein, a major Democratic donor and part owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team.
In emails, Saperstein called a report out in December of last year that Clinton offered a “reassuring” message to Goldman Sachs executives “horrific,” and slammed her for “ducking a lot of issues, like the Keystone pipeline.”
He also raised questions about her leadership at the State Department and referenced “the type of intimidation the Clintons want to quietly promote [in the velvet glove, of course].”
Saperstein expressed concerns that voters would begin to speculate over her personal life and relationship with her husband.
“None of that would be helpful to her candidacy,” he wrote.
Saperstein did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
New members of the group have to be sponsored by a current member. Participants were put on notice in a document outlining the rules of the group: While “you are not allowed to forward emails without permission of their author ... on a list with 1,000+ people, it’s a good policy not to write things on the list that you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying publicly.”
The email messages show how intensely leaders in the progressive movement want Warren to run. Lux, who has called Warren a friend and offered effusive praise of the freshman senator, was nevertheless a consistent voice warning against the effort.
“She represents most of what I have been looking for in a Presidential candidate for my entire career in politics and who is besides a dear friend. I am not expecting her to decide to make the race, though- she certainly hasn’t given me much indication she is considering it,” he said in an August 2013 email.
Others raised flags about Warren’s focus on environmental issues.
“I love Elizabeth Warren. She’s great on holding Wall Street accountable and many pocketbook issues I care about, but she hasn’t talked about climate change publicly since she was elected,” Marc Weiss, a climate activist and lobbyist, wrote in an email from the group.
But still, the “Warren wing” of the party pressed on. The emails reveal an adamant conviction that, essentially, if they built the movement, she would come.
Billy Wimsatt, the founder of the group, stated in a September 2013 email, “I’m ready for something better and Warren is the only person on the radar who might be significantly better. Warren doesn’t need to appreciate it. Leadership isn’t fun. She doesn’t get to tell people that we can’t want something better.”
Gibson, of Occupy.com, in an email from December of last year, lauded Warren’s “ovaries of steel.”
And Lenchner, of Organizing 2.0, told The Hill this week that the other potential candidates in the race don’t have the “symbolism of Warren.”
Wimsatt, along with dozens of others in the group, declined to comment for this article. But a few talked with The Hill about their thoughts on Clinton.
In interviews and emails, members of the group expressed a near-universal concern — that still prevails — that if Clinton doesn’t take steps to appease the progressive wing of the party, it could be damaging to her chances in 2016.
Gibson wrote in an email, “another establishment pick from a political dynasty family will drive folks to the green party.”
Clayton suggested in an email from January of this year that without a more liberal alternative to Clinton, the party would splinter: “if we have no Progressive candidate with legitimate street cred about taking effective bold action to face the vital issues we’re confronting as a country today (which is pretty much Warren and ... cricket, cricket...) in the race for Presidency, that means the abandonment of the Democratic Party by the reemerging and resurgent Left in America.”
Even as Clinton is dipping her toe in the 2016 waters with a return to Iowa this past weekend, Lux told The Hill that if she doesn’t take steps to assuage some of the angst on the left, “there’s a danger of progressives tuning out” if she wins the nomination.
Indeed, Gibson said in an interview that might be the plan.
“They’ll either vote for the Green Party of just sit out. That’s a really big aspect of progressive voters’ strategy” to have their voices heard, he said.
A Clinton spokesman didn’t comment for this article.
EMAILS FROM THE GROUP:
ON HILLARY CLINTON:
“The more Progressives I talk to, the more people tell me that they’ll never forgive her for voting for the Iraq War... and won’t even vote for her in the general.”
— Ryan Clayton, progressive commentator and strategist
“Repeat after me: [Hillary] Clinton, like Obama, but unlike DeBlasio, is not actually a progressive. With no serious progressive candidate fighting a primary, we, and the big we of all Democrats, are weaker - not stronger.”
— Charles Lenchner, executive director of Organizing 2.0
“All of a sudden now Hillary Clinton is not progressive enough, too establishment. Well, how else is a woman going to get into the position? Some people are kidding themselves. The double standard is obvious and expected, but let’s not pretend it’s not there.”
— Taylor Marsh, progressive commentator and writer
“The fact that [Hillary] says soothing words to bankers and takes money from them doesn’t make her a monolith or mean that they own her. It’s not a good thing; it’s not a harmless thing; it’s a bad thing; it’s perfectly fine to trash her for it; but it is not an all-determining causation story; it doesn’t mean that they own her and therefore pressure is futile.“
— Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy policy director
ON ELIZABETH WARREN:
“It doesn’t matter whether Warren likes it or not. Hillary opponents need a flag to stand under. This flag will do for now. Hillary endorsed the Syria bombing. She hasn’t learned her lesson.”
— Robert Naiman
“We need to fight for what we want. Warren isn’t a messiah. She ain’t perfect…But in terms of someone who is already an elected official with national name recognition, Warren might be the best shot we have in 2016.”
— Billy Wimsatt, founder of the group-
“The Clintons are political creatures of the highest order. You’re either with them or against them. They and Obama have a lot of people scared to challenge them. This is one of the worst aspects of Clinton (and all too often Obama) culture.”
— Billy Wimsatt
By David Weigel
September 17, 2014, 5:06 p.m. EDT
The reporter who walked into this morning's first public meeting of the House Special Committee on Benghazi saw something shocking and unforeseeable: empty chairs. Staffers had given the media a couple of dozen chairs on both sides of HVC-210, one of the more accessible rooms in Congress, but there was no queue to see the hearing and no great bustle among the press. Halfway through the hearing, one reporter packed up and left. A careful eye, scanning the room, could see more than a few people yawning or waging unsuccessful battles against their heavy eyelids.
This was sort of the point. South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy had made the first public meeting focus on one of the least juicy aspects of the Benghazi story: "Implementation of the Accountabilty Review Board recommendations." Rather than handing Hillary Clinton a subpoena, rather than airing new accusations from the "scapegoated" whistleblower Raymond Maxwell, Gowdy was going to focus on the issue Democrats always brought up first, the one that sounded like a dodge.
Remember when Hillary Clinton blew up at Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's questions about Susan Rice's talking points and asked, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"? Her point was that the government should focus on preventing future Benghazis. That seemed to be the point Gowdy, his Republican colleagues, and the minority Democrats agreed on.
The result was two hours of slow-building arguments about whether the State Department's crowded org chart prevented quick action or accountability when it came to diplomatic safety. Only after that did Gowdy take back the mic and set a trap for Gregory Starr, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security who worked briefly under Hillary Clinton and returned to State last year. Gowdy read from an unnamed document full of promises to fix up embassy security.
" 'We praise the ambassador for seeking security enhancements long before the attack,' " said Gowdy. "Do you know what that's from?"
"I believe it’s part of the ARB report," said Starr.
"From nineteen-ninety-nine," said Gowdy, drawing out each number.
Starr cheerfully tried to recover from Gowdy's throat-punch. "After Nairobi, correct?" he asked.
Gowdy moved on. "That was the ARB from 1999, and you can lay it almost perfectly on Benghazi," he said. "They were disappointed that the recommendations after the bombing in Beirut were not implemented."
The Republicans on the panel, from ambitious Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo to the ever-shirtsleeved Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, did not manage to hide their grins as Gowdy dug into the 1999 report.
"'The Secretary of State should personally review the security situation of diplomatic facilities, closing those which are threatened,' " said Gowdy, quoting the report. "Why do you think the 1999 ARB went out of its way to use the word personally?"
Starr paused. "No comment, sir," he said.
Gowdy was temporarily stunned. "Is the answer privileged?" he asked. "That’s a recommendation from the 1999 ARB. The secretary of state should personally review. I’m asking you, with all due respect—we’re not going to get to the word review. We’ve got to get past the word which modifies review, which is personally."
Starr had an answer, finally. "I think ultimately the secretary, who bears responsibility, has to be brought the information necessary for him to make decisions," he said. "That is my job."
Starr went over a few ways that staffers needed to, and did, keep the secretary abreast of security issues. "Your answer mirrors what the 1999 ARB further said," countered Gowdy, "which is first and foremost that the secretary of state should take a personal and active role in carrying out the responsibility of securing the safety of U.S. personnel. Is that being done now, and was it being done prior to your tenure?"
"I have heard every secretary talk about the importance of security," said Starr. "I have heard every secretary state the personnel department that security is their function. That goes for Secretary Albright, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Rice."
Not good enough. "I think words have consequences, and they have meaning, and that people use words intentionally," said Gowdy. "A personal review is not simply talking about it."
Gowdy was hanging Hillary Clinton with Starr's own words. In another context, Democrats might have suggested he was hanging all those other people, included two of George W. Bush's secretaries of state, who presided over attacks on embassies. But ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings and other Democrats stuck to sober promises that Congress wanted to prevent future disasters. They addressed some of those remarks to tourists, who'd shown up to see in person the drama that could decide who wins the next presidential election.
Washington Post column: Dana Milbank: “Trey Gowdy’s unexpected Benghazi twist”
By Dana Milbank
September 17, 2014, 4:24 p.m. EDT
When Trey Gowdy got the job to run the House’s new Benghazi select committee, there was good reason to fear bad things.
Gowdy, a former prosecutor, was known for theatrical outbursts in hearings, rank partisanship and a fascination with Benghazi conspiracy theories about talking points, stand-down orders and Hillary Clinton’s culpability.
But when the South Carolina Republican chaired his panel’s first public hearing Wednesday, Gowdy did something completely unexpected: He played it straight.
There was no discussion of talking points or stand-down orders, and only one of the seven Republicans on the panel — Jim Jordan of Ohio — even mentioned Clinton. Instead, Gowdy adopted as the theme of his first hearing an idea suggested by one of the committee’s Democrats, Adam Schiff of California: How well the State Department has been implementing recommendations to prevent future attacks on U.S. diplomats like the one in Libya two years ago that killed four Americans.
This is exactly what congressional oversight should be: a bipartisan effort by legislators to make sure executive-branch officials don’t repeat past mistakes. The resulting bonhomie was unprecedented in the two years of Benghazi bickering.
“I thank you for holding this hearing today,” Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel’s hard-nosed ranking Democrat, told Gowdy. “. . . I want to thank our colleague Representative Schiff for proposing the topic for today’s hearing, and, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for accepting that topic.”
Cummings’s gratitude flowed freely. He said the hearing was a “transformational moment — the kind of oversight that can be productive. It can be critical. It can sometimes even be tedious. But it can also save lives.”
Over three hours, there were so many thank-yous it could have been the Oscars.
“Honestly, I commend Mr. Schiff,” Gowdy said. “This was a wonderful idea.”
When Cummings asked the chairman whether he would have a State Department official return in a few months to report on progress implementing the new security recommendations, Gowdy immediately agreed.
“I want to thank the gentleman from Maryland for all of his help and . . . the cooperative nature with which he has always worked with me,” Gowdy said. “And I think it’s an excellent idea. . . . I will pledge to you: It will be done.”
All that was missing was a group hug.
The contrast with previous Benghazi hearings led by Rep. Darrell Issa of California could hardly have been greater. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (on which both Gowdy and Cummings serve) made investigations a show about himself — leveling unfounded accusations about high-level wrongdoing in the Obama administration, interrupting hearings to argue with Democrats, even shutting off the microphone (at an IRS hearing) when he didn’t like what Cummings was saying.
Gowdy let everybody else on the panel get a turn before he asked his questions. He didn’t enforce time limits strictly, and he abandoned the top row of the dais in favor of a seat closer to the witnesses. He didn’t quarrel, shout or ask gotcha questions.
Other members of the panel followed Gowdy’s example, with the exception of Jordan, who speculated about a conspiracy between Clinton and Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a way to discredit the State Department’s own report on Benghazi. Jordan, referring to the Democrats, grumbled that “this was a hearing they called.”
It is, of course, possible that Gowdy will later return to his incendiary ways. He may be building up credibility now before taking a more partisan approach later. But he deserves credit for defying expectations in his admirable debut.
The result was a fairly boring session, with arguments about obscure State Department policies and lots of discussion of “OSPB standards” and the like. The biggest bone of contention seemed to be whether the guy in charge of security at State should be an undersecretary or an assistant secretary.
But these are arguments worth having. Gowdy made a good case that the State Department hasn’t done all it should to prevent another Benghazi-like debacle, and there was agreement from Democrats to force the administration to do better. This is what congressional oversight is supposed to be about, rather than an exchange of political barbs.
As he wrapped up the hearing, Gowdy recalled the four dead Americans, one of whom had family in the audience. “I want to adjourn in memory of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty,” he said, “and pledge a process that is worthy of their memory and one that our fellow citizens can respect, regardless of their political ideations.”
Cummings embraced the theme. “We are Americans,” he said, “everybody trying to do the best they can to protect our people.”
For once, it really felt that way.
The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Ready for Hillary? More like 'Ready for testimony,' Paul says”
By Jesse Byrnes
September 17, 2014, 12:40 p.m. EDT
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) believes the "Ready." slogan that appeared on T-shirts, posters and billboards in Iowa over the weekend supporting a presidential bid by Hillary Clinton should indicate something else entirely.
"I think that maybe it should mean 'Ready for Testimony,'" Paul, himself a likely 2016 presidential contender, said Wednesday on Glenn Beck's radio show about the slogan being pushed by the Ready for Hillary Super-PAC.
Paul made his comments as the first House select committee hearing on the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, got underway.
"To those who believe it is time to move on, that there is nothing left to discover, that all questions have been asked and answered, that we have learned the lessons to be learned — we have heard that before," Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in his opening remarks.
"And yet the attacks and the tragedies keep coming," he said.
Paul has repeatedly pushed for the former secretary of State to testify on the attack that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, given questions raised since Clinton first testified early last year.
"There's still a lot of questions," he said Monday on Fox News after Clinton's high-profile trip to the Hawkeye State over the weekend to attend retiring Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-Iowa) final steak fry.
"It's funny, now reports have been coming out for about a year saying that she was the biggest and most eager to get arms out of Libya to send them into Syria," Paul said.
On Wednesday, Paul added that in general there needs to be a discussion on whether the Middle East is "more or less safe" than before the Libyan, Syrian and original Iraq wars.
"We'd love to hear from John Kerry on Benghazi, as well," he said.
MSNBC: “‘We need people to run against Hillary’”
By Ali Vitali and Anne Thompson
September 17, 2014, 5:59 p.m. EDT
Ready for Hillary? Not so fast.
Zephyr Teachout, fresh off her strong second-place showing in the Democratic primary against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, pleaded for more Democratic candidates to challenge the presumed 2016 frontrunner. “Please, we need people to run against Hillary Clinton because if she’s not debating anyone on education policy or on tax policy then we all lose,” she told MSNBC’s Krystal Ball on Wednesday.
“Not only does she need a challenger from the left, we should have 5 people—10 people—running for president,” she argued. “If we don’t have a Democratic Party challenger, that is a democratic tragedy.”
Armed with an “efficient” campaign staff and tiny war chest, Teachout won an impressive one third of the Democratic vote in last week’s primary against incumbent Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo– the best showing for a primary challenger to an incumbent governor in the state’s history. The Fordham Law professor mobilized the state’s populist Democrats, focusing on inequality, education, and the environment.
When asked what resonated with New York’s Democratic base that was representative of a national insurgency on the left, Teachout pointed to frustration with Cuomo’s “trickle-down” tax policy. “[Cuomo]’s basically a Republican when it comes to economic policy—all tax breaks for wealthy companies.” she told Krystal Clear.
Teachout said attacks on public education are also rallying progressives across the country. “Since 2008 there have been all these attacks on public education, including attacks by Democrats,” she told Ball. “I hope it shows you can’t do this with impunity…You don’t want to be on the other side of parents and teachers.”
But despite her strong opposition to Cuomo’s “corporatist” agenda, Teachout didn’t rule out endorsing him. When asked whether she’d support Cuomo or Green Party Candidate Howie Hawkins in the general election, Teachout hedged, saying her current focus is squarely on winning back the New York Senate for Democrats.
Teachout is not shutting the door on another chance to represent New Yorkers herself, though. Ball asked her if she’d consider a 2016 primary challenge to New York’s senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer—known as “Wall Street Chuck” on Capitol Hill – and Teachout laughed, saying she hadn’t thought about it. But she did say this: “I am definitely going to run for office again.”
Wall Street Journal: “Why the Chickens Have Come Home To Roost This Campaign Season”
By Reid J. Epstein
September 17, 2014, 10:30 p.m. EDT
[Subtitle:] Midterm Elections Turn Off Voters, So Politicians Turn to Men in Bird Suits
The New Hampshire Republican Party had a simple point to make last month: Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat running for re-election, had been "too chicken'' to hold town-hall meetings where voters could question her.
So the party did the natural thing: It dispatched a man in a chicken suit.
When police arrested the bird man for disorderly conduct at a Shaheen event—he allegedly waved his wings too close to the senator—the flap only amplified the GOP's message as local news media broadcast the tale of the senator and the chicken.
An unusually large number of campaigns this year have turned to chicken-suited men—and they're mostly men—to distract opponents, steal press attention and, occasionally, make a point.
Chicken men have played a role in Senate contests in Iowa and Minnesota. They have clucked at Democrats running for governor in Wisconsin and Florida for declining primary debates and at the Republican running for lieutenant governor in Nevada.
The New Hampshire GOP said it has sent multiple staffers out in its chicken suit. The job isn't hard, said 23-year-old Michael Zona, the arrested campaign worker. "I can't say that it's too difficult to walk alongside someone and be a chicken."
Behind the fowl play: Chickens make good copy, drawing attention to candidates who often are underfunded and looking for free media coverage.
Mr. Zona got front-page play in the state's largest paper when prosecutors dropped charges last week after reviewing video of the offending episode.
"When you're in challenger races, you're always looking for ways to get into the news, and it's usually to make a story about your opponent," said Jay Byrne, a 1992 Bill Clinton campaign staffer who deployed a chicken that distracted President George H.W. Bush. "I can't see an incumbent sending a chicken anywhere."
The election-year bird isn't a spring chicken. Candidates have been compared unfavorably to the domesticated bird since the 1800s, when the medium was cartoons. The campaign chicken has taken flight regularly since Mr. Bush faced the 1992 Clinton fowl.
A human squirrel haunts Hillary Clinton's book tour, declaring that putting her in the White House would be 'nuts.' gop.com
But this year's election environment has especially found the bird coming to roost. With no overarching theme to galvanize voters, primary turnouts have been low, and surveys show interest in the fall polls lags behind the last two midterms, inviting more campaign gimmickry.
After Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat running for Senate this year, got into a dispute with a neighbor over chickens roaming onto his property, Republicans sent a chicken to trail him at the Iowa State Fair. The Iowa GOP said it sent the same bird to a Democratic steak fry on Sunday, where it mocked Rep. Dave Loebsak.
It isn't just for the birds. The Illinois governor's race features a cast of characters. A Monopoly man with top hat mocks GOP nominee Bruce Rauner's wealth. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, whose campaign sends the man, at public events faces Quinnochio, an amalgam of Mr. Quinn and the storybook marionette whose nose grew when he lied. The Rauner campaign deploys the character and a man dressed as Mr. Quinn's predecessor, the imprisoned Rod Blagojevich.
The Supreme Court has ruled clothing is protected speech. That includes chicken suits. But some states have drawn the line.
During the 2010 campaign in Nevada, Democrats branded GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden "Chicken Sue" after she suggested people barter poultry for health care. They sent chicken men to her events and ran spots starring actual chickens.
To block the threat of poultry picketing polls on election day, Nevada's secretary of state declared that "wearing a chicken costume, or similar attire, at a polling location satisfies the definition of 'electioneering' " and is illegal—unless the bird is casting a ballot.
The rule remains, but a Nevada official said there haven't been incidents "related to chicken suits and electioneering" at Nevada's polls.
Playing chicken can be sweaty. Ted Giannoulas, 61, a sports celebrity as the San Diego Chicken, said a feathered suit is usually 25 degrees warmer inside than out.
But, said Danny Diaz, a Republican operative, "it just so happens that politics is an industry that is full of young and eager individuals that allows for undertakings such as these."
He dispatched a human dolphin named Flipper to tail presidential candidates John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2008—evoking their shifting policy stances—and a squirrel to dog President Barack Obama for the Acorn scandal in 2008.
The Republican National Committee pulled Mr. Diaz's squirrel costume from hibernation this summer to stalk Hillary Clinton's book tour, posting a YouTube video about where the critter had been for six years. Its T-shirt declares people would be "nuts" to put Mrs. Clinton in the White House. Mrs. Clinton signed her book for the squirrel. "I'm told the squirrel was NUTS about the book," a spokesman for her said in an email.
Ms. Shaheen's campaign said she takes regular questions from voters and wasn't fazed by the chicken claiming she ducks questions. Ms. Shaheen, who declined to comment, told local media after the arrest that she was urging "civil discourse."
It wasn't the first winged heckler collared at her appearances. A man in a duck suit, working for then-Sen. John E. Sununu, was arrested for disorderly conduct at a 2008 Senate-election debate she attended.
The most famous chicken man in American politics is Derrick Parker, the 1992 Clinton staffer who egged Mr. Bush on for not agreeing to debate. The president flouted the cardinal rule for facing chickens in politics: Don't engage with the bird.
"Let this chicken back here tell you what's wrong about America," he said. "I'll tell you what's great about it."
That made national news. Mr. Parker got a congratulatory call from Clinton strategists James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. Now unemployed, Mr. Parker, 46, said he would do almost anything to help a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign—almost.
"I'll walk to the end of the earth for her," he said, but "I will not put the chicken costume on ever again."
Calendar:
Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.
· September 18 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton participates in a CAP roundtable (Politico)
· September 19 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the DNC with Pres. Obama (CNN)
· September 21 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton attends CGI kickoff (The Hollywood Reporter)
· September 22 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton at CGI (CGI)
· September 23 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton at CGI (CGI)
· September 23 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton headlines the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women CGI Dinner (Twitter)
· September 29 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton headlines fundraiser for DCCC for NY and NJ candidates (Politico)
· September 29 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton headlines another fundraiser for DCCC (Politico)
· September 30 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton keynotes Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Inc., conference (CHCI)
· October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network)
· October 6 – Ottawa, Canada: Sec. Clinton speaks at Canada 2020 event (Ottawa Citizen)
· October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation Annual Dinner (UNLV)
· October 14 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (salesforce.com)
· October 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for House Democratic women candidates with Nancy Pelosi (Politico)
· December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW)