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Correct The Record Monday September 15, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:
Tweets:
Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton @HillaryClinton: Congratulations California on winning #PaidSickDays, which will help 6.5 million workers.#WeAllGetSick http://nxg.is/1uIMLBv [9/15/14, 8:20 a.m. EDT]
Headlines:
Washington Post: Dan Balz: “In Iowa, it’s steaks and high stakes for Hillary Clinton”
“Defenders of the Clinton record, who are pouncing on anything that smacks of criticism of her from Republicans or even the media, also were in evidence throughout the weekend.”
Washington Post blog: The Fix: “How the political press may be doing Hillary Clinton a favor”
“But in trying over and over to locate Clinton's big 2016 Achilles heel -- Remember Iowa? What about Sen. Elizabeth Warren? -- we may have created something else: Clinton, the underdog -- or, at the least, Clinton the hurdle-clearer.”
NBC News: Perry Bacon Jr.: “Can Anyone Really Challenge Hillary Clinton?”
“Some Democrats in Iowa and nationally want a very competitive Democratic primary, not one where Hillary Clinton has the overwhelming advantage. For now, that looks unlikely.”
Politico: “Hillary Clinton dodges questions from DREAMers”
“Hillary Clinton dodged questions from an immigration reform group on the rope line at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa on Sunday when pressed on whether she supports President Barack Obama’s delay on immigration-related executive actions.”
CNN: “In Iowa, DREAMers confront Clinton”
“Hillary Clinton was confronted by immigration reform activists in Iowa over the weekend. The activists accused President Obama of breaking promises to immigrants and wanted to know what Clinton would do about the issue.”
Slate blog: Weigel: “So 200 Reporters Walk into a Field in Iowa ...”
“Hillary 2016 is a far bigger problem for the media, which simultaneously is ready right now to cover her like a nominee—200 reporters!—and yet so palpably bored with how she talks, and runs.”
USA Today: “Pro-Clinton super PAC plans November strategy meeting”
“Ready for Hillary super PAC is hosting a Nov. 21 strategy summit in New York for its 900-member national finance council. Clinton has said she will decide on another White House campaign early next year.”
Politico: “N.H. poll: Rand Paul ahead but field open”
“Among potential Democrats running for the presidential seat, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is holding a clear lead, with 60 percent of those polled saying that they would most likely support Clinton.”
“As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”
Talking Points Memo: Scarborough: “Hillary, Stop Being A Robot And Say If You're Going To Run”
“MSNBC's Joe Scarborough went on a bit of a rant on Monday saying that Hillary Clinton has been too much of a robot as she hints plans to run for president in 2016.”
Articles:
Washington Post: Dan Balz: “In Iowa, it’s steaks and high stakes for Hillary Clinton”
By Dan Balz
September 15, 2014, 8:50 a.m. EDT
DES MOINES — Hillary Rodham Clinton came to Iowa on Sunday amid outsize hype and modest expectations. She met them in the middle.
The former secretary of state made just enough references to a second presidential campaign — all obliquely, of course — to satisfy the 10,000 activists who had come to see her. She said just enough politically to meet the demands of her party, whose leaders and rank-and-file members are worried that, if Democrats produce only their normal midterm-election turnout in November, they will lose control of the Senate.
Clinton was in Iowa with her husband on Sunday ostensibly to pay tribute to retiring Sen. Tom Harkin at his 37th and final steak fry. Bill Clinton has now been to the event four times, and by protocol was the last speaker of the day. But on this day, the former president was window dressing, “the man who accompanied Hillary Clinton back to Iowa,” as Harkin put it.
Bill Clinton’s speech meandered into some strange territory — including references to Woodstock and marijuana, “black bag jobs” by Republican super Pacs and a comment about his pink-checkered shirt, which his wife had given him for his birthday and which he said looked like “a tablecloth at a diner.”
But he did his assigned job. He did not overshadow the prospective candidate — at least not onstage. Earlier, he held court with reporters long after his wife had stepped away from the horde but in those settings he cannot help but entertain. The man loves to talk politics.
Harkin referred to the atmospherics around this year’s steak fry as “the hubbub.” It follows Hillary Clinton wherever she goes. An estimated 200 members of the media were at the balloon field outside Indianola on Sunday, including a contingent from the foreign press. They did not come for the steaks.
Members of the political press corps may be obsessed with a Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. They parse every word, looking for signs of this or that, and interpret every move as meaning something. Along with Democratic insiders, they speculate about every aspect of a possible campaign.
Clinton has fed this media pack plenty of morsels over the past few months, with stumbles on her book tour about her wealth and a testy exchange with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross about her evolution on same-sex marriage. She did recent a backflip after a tart comment in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg about President Obama’s foreign policy seeming to lack an organizing principle.
The constant and sometimes microscopic coverage — and cable commentary — drives Clinton’s advisers wild. For months they have attempted to claim that she is simply a private citizen, or merely an author on a book tour, as though she, her husband and those around them aren’t weighing what a 2016 campaign would look like and how it could and should be different from her unsuccessful effort in 2008.
The party activists at the Harkin steak fry seemed more than pleased with what they heard and constrained in any demands for something more. Brent Paulson, a state employee, surveyed the restless press scrum waiting to watch Clinton and Harkin do the obligatory photo op of taking a turn at the grill and holding up steaks for the cameras.
“Unlike the media,” he said, “I don’t care if she announces anything. I can wait.” Minutes after Clinton ended, Glenn Camp, a retired middle-school principal, had heard enough to say, “I think she indicated that she is going to run.”
All the apparatuses are ready. Ready for Hillary, which has morphed from a disorganized draft movement into something resembling a grass-roots campaign-in-waiting, was out in force here over the weekend.
There was a big billboard near the exit of the airport with the now-famous photo of Clinton as secretary of state, in dark glasses reading her BlackBerry, bought and paid for by Ready for Hillary. Rolling “Ready for Hillary” billboards coursed through the downtown on Sunday morning. The organization’s big bus, which has trailed her for months, was at the site of the steak fry.
Young volunteers and only slightly older grizzled campaign veterans were everywhere. Defenders of the Clinton record, who are pouncing on anything that smacks of criticism of her from Republicans or even the media, also were in evidence throughout the weekend. They kept their public focus on November, but 2016 was part of the background music.
On Sunday, Clinton leaned in to all this, with her teasing talk of another run — about how presidential campaigns excite her and how she really is thinking about it and about how she’s not going to let another nearly seven years go by before returning to the state with the first presidential caucuses, the state that caused her such pain the last time. “I’m baaaack!” she exclaimed at the top of her speech.
For Clinton, the calibrations are not always easy. If she waits to speak out on something — such as Syria, threats from Islamic State terrorists or the racial tensions exposed by the killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. — she draws criticism for caution. But if she steps out too much, she exposes herself to another kind of criticism — and to even more attention and views that she is in campaign mode. That has left her in a kind of political limbo.
In her speech Sunday, she checked every box — kind words about Harkin’s career, a sound bite framing the election, references to income inequality, some personal history, a call to juice turnout to overcome the normal midterm falloff among Democrats.
But her remarks were neither exceptional in what she said nor particularly passionate in how she delivered them. They were safe and largely predictable, a kind of Democratic Message 101 heading into the most important stretch of the fall campaign.
What this tells some Democrats is that for all her attributes, and for all the advantages she would carry into the nominating process, she is still getting her sea legs for being a better candidate.
She is remembered in Iowa for the missteps of her national campaign team and by at least some for her inability to connect with people. But she is remembered, too — here and elsewhere — for the times she was an exceptional candidate, one whose intensity drew admiration from Obama and his advisers. Most of that came when it was too late to matter.
The summer and early fall have left open questions. How agile and adroit would she be as a candidate? How fast on her feet is she when thrown an unexpected queries or pressed hard in an interview? Does she have a quick partisan trigger when she should hold back? Can she preach the need for cooperation across the aisle and be a partisan fighter at the same time? Will too much exposure feed a sense of Clinton fatigue? Most important: What really is her vision and message?
The fact that those questions exist is one reason many Democrats, including her supporters, hope she would face competition in the nominating contest. They believe it would sharpen her skills and prepare her for what they expect could be a very competitive general election.
There is more than ample time for Clinton to answer some of these questions but not indefinite time. Sunday’s appearance in Iowa was not going to be the place where she began to reveal the answers. But if she decides to run, there will be great expectations. The party is ready for Hillary. At that point, will Hillary be ready?
Washington Post blog: The Fix: “How the political press may be doing Hillary Clinton a favor”
By Nia-Malika Henderson
September 15, 2014, 11:42 a.m. EDT
In the lead-up to Hillary Clinton's return to Iowa over the weekend, the political chattering class was abuzz about just how she would handle going back to the state that crushed her presidential hopes.
Why, some wondered, had she chosen to go back in such a big way -- at Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-Iowa) famous Steak Fry ... and with the Big Dog himself, Bill Clinton, in tow? Shouldn't she do a smaller venue first, to show that she gets Iowa's up-close-and-personal expectations? And what about the speech? Would she be overshadowed by Bill -- the Serena Williams of American politics and a politician completely at ease no matter what kind of voters he's around? And what about President Obama? How would she explain her relationship with that guy? One reporter pointed to the glut of reporters -- irony noted -- and mused that, with their shouted questions and need to file and tweet something, the 200 reporters would be a "big problem" for Hillary Clinton.
Well, it turns out all this high-stakes expectation-setting might have turned into one of Clinton's biggest allies. As they (really, we) set up test after test for Clinton, what's lost is that all these tests are actually pretty easy for Clinton to ace. Can she give a good speech in Iowa? Sure. She's been doing this for a very long time. As she worked the rope line, signing books, posing for photos and patting shoulders, it was almost as if she was someone who managed to get almost 18 million people to vote for her in 2008.
Clinton in 2008, in fact, got more votes than a certain Illinois senator in the primary, and still lost. But the political chattering classes (me too!), in discounting the real successes of Clinton's 2008 run and suggesting that on policy Clinton might be too far right of Obama, have created something of a mythical hurdle for Clinton to overcome. (One storyline even recounted how she dodged an immigration question, as if there is real doubt about where Clinton stands on the major immigration issues of the day.)
In fairness to us/me, she has done a good bit of expectation-adjusting herself -- particularly when she repeatedly and inexplicably struggled to talk about her family's wealth. And, there is no question that the scrutiny that Clinton will draw from the political press will, at some point, boomerang back against her. (It always does.)
But in trying over and over to locate Clinton's big 2016 Achilles heel -- Remember Iowa? What about Sen. Elizabeth Warren? -- we may have created something else: Clinton, the underdog -- or, at the least, Clinton the hurdle-clearer.
NBC News: Perry Bacon Jr.: “Can Anyone Really Challenge Hillary Clinton?”
By Perry Bacon Jr.
September 15, 2014, 11:48 a.m. EDT
INDIANAOLA, Iowa- Some Democrats in Iowa and nationally want a very competitive Democratic primary, not one where Hillary Clinton has the overwhelming advantage. For now, that looks unlikely.
With her weekend trip to this early primary state, the ex-secretary of state is sounding more and more like a candidate. And much of the party’s apparatus is already rallying around her while also sending an unsubtle signal to Vice-President Biden and other potential contenders that it’s Clinton’s turn.
At least 60 congressional Democrats have already said they would back Clinton if she ran, according to a tabulation by The Hill newspaper. Top officials in early primary states, like Attorney General Tom Miller of Iowa, who endorsed John Kerry in 2004 then Obama four years later, say they are strongly leaning towards supporting Clinton now.
“There are many more chapters to be written in the amazing life of Hillary Clinton,” Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin said at his annual steak fry on Sunday here, all but endorsing Clinton for president.
Key Democratic operatives are likely to join Clinton as well. Democrats say Jack Sullivan, who was a top Clinton aide in 2008 and at the State Department before serving as Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, is expected to work with Clinton, not Biden, in a 2016 campaign. Jeremy Bird, who was the national field director of Obama’s 2012 campaign and is one of the party’s smartest strategists in mobilizing voters, is already aligned with the group “Ready for Hillary.”
Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and ex-Virginia senator Jim Webb are all taking steps towards running in 2016. But the key question is whether they can amass the staff, political support and fundraising to wage a true contest against Clinton, as Obama did in 2008, or will face insurmountable odds from the start, as Biden did in his own campaign six years ago.
Tom Hockensmith, a county supervisor in Des Moines who backed Obama in 2008, said in an interview he wasn’t sure who he supported in 2016, adding, “I don’t know enough about any of the candidates.” But he wasn’t sure he would ultimately have much of a choice.
“I think she’s going to be the candidate,” he said of Clinton.
In 2006, Obama received a strong reception from Iowans at the annual steak fry, encouraging him to run for president. A few months later, as he launched his campaign, he was able to recruit some of the top operatives in the Democratic Party, match Clinton in fundraising and get endorsements from key figures like Miller.
That type of well-funded opposition to Clinton may harder to mobilize now.
Eight years after Obama starred there, the steak fry was essentially a “Hillary for President” rally on Sunday. People from not only across Iowa, but even from nearby Kansas came to cheer her on. Some brought buttons or stickers from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.
Longtime Clinton aides, like Greg Hale, who traveled with Hillary Clinton throughout the 2008 campaign, were in Iowa this weekend to advise her, in a sign the Clintons themselves took this visit to the Hawkeye State seriously.
She has another major advantage: the uniqueness of her candidacy. Clinton and Obama were both trying to make history in 2008. Now Clinton is running in a Democratic party ready to elect a female president, and the only people who are considering running against her are white males.
But she was not the only likely candidate in Iowa this weekend. Sanders held three events in the Hawkeye State, with more than 400 people crowded into the meeting room of Grace United Methodist Church to hear him on Sunday night.
“We need to pass a Medicare-for-all program,” he said to the crowd of liberals, one of a number of comments he made suggesting today’s Democratic Party is too centrist.
It’s not yet clear Sanders intends his candidacy to be mainly a forum to push his very liberal views through the television debates during the primary, as Herman Cain and other Republicans did in 2012, or if he wants to and can raise the money and build the campaign operation to truly compete with Clinton.
Even Sanders’ own supporters are doubtful he could truly challenge Clinton. Bob Morck, who came to see Sanders speak in Des Moines, said he would vote for the Vermont senator in a Democratic primary because he views Clinton as “war-hungry” and “part of the corporate structure.”
But when asked if Sanders could win, Morck, a probation officer who backed Obama in the 2008 caucuses, bluntly said “no.”
“He’s just not well-known enough,” Morck said.
Biden is coming to Iowa on Wednesday, as the vice-president continues to give hints he will consider a run. But there are real doubts that staffers and key donors in the Democratic Party would support him beyond those who aided his 2008 run, when he did not win a single primary.
O’Malley is taking some strongly liberal stands, mostly notably criticizing President Obama for being too supportive of sending migrant children to back their home countries earlier this year during the border crisis.
He is also actively talking to party donors and key strategists, and some Democrats in Iowa believe he could be a credible candidate. Webb, with his populist economic ideas and Vietnam War experience, could criticize Clinton for being too eager to wage war abroad and too allied with Wall Street at home.
But less than four months from the start of 2015, when the presidential contest starts in earnest, the politicians who could more easily challenge Clinton seem very unlikely to do so.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has a large fundraising base from his long political career, has said he will not run. The group “Ready for Warren” handed out tee-shirts and buttons at the Steak Fry, but Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a huge favorite of liberals and a prolific fundraiser, has repeatedly ruled out a campaign. Another popular figure among Democratic activists, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, has already said he would back Clinton if the former secretary of state runs.
To be sure, heavy front-runners can be challenged by underdogs. In 2000, Arizona Sen. John McCain won a number of key primaries despite the party’s establishment favoring George W. Bush.
But that same year, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley didn’t win a single race against then Vice-President Al Gore, who entered the primary with the kind of strong party support Clinton has this time.
Politico: “Hillary Clinton dodges questions from DREAMers”
By Maggie Haberman
September 15, 2014, 12:30 p.m. EDT
Hillary Clinton dodged questions from an immigration reform group on the rope line at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa on Sunday when pressed on whether she supports President Barack Obama’s delay on immigration-related executive actions.
The exchange was made public in a video shot by two activists with the DREAMers Action Coalition. The group has been critical of Obama’s decision to hold off on executive actions to reform portions of the immigration system until after the midterm elections.
As Clinton walked slowly by signing autographs after speaking at the gathering in Indianola, which is named after outgoing Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the activists told her that she’s an Iowa DREAMer, one of many young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children.
“Yay!” Clinton replied, holding a thumbs up.
The activist kept talking and asked her view of Obama’s executive action delay.
“Well, I think we just have to keep working,” Clinton said. “Can’t stop ever working.”
When another activist said Obama had “broken his promise to the Latino” community, Clinton said, “You know, I think we have to elect more Democrats.” She kept moving after that.
Earlier this year, while on her book tour, Clinton upset some immigration advocates when she was asked about the surge of children from South American countries who were crossing the border into the U.S.
Clinton said unaccompanied minors “should be sent back” to be reunited with their families, adding that the goal is not to encourage more children to make the dangerous trek.
“We have to send a clear message,” she said. “Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay.”
Clinton, who is likely to run for president for a second time in 2016, is going to face increasing pressure to speak out on issues of the day, and immigration has been a major issue this election cycle.
The DREAMers group made headlines last month when they approached staunch anti-immigration Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, as he had an outdoor lunch with Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul.
Paul, who’s considering running for president, could be seen in the video making a hasty retreat when an aide pulled him away, still chewing on his hamburger, as King answered questions.
CNN: “In Iowa, DREAMers confront Clinton”
By Leigh Ann Caldwell
September 15, 2014, 12:50 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Hillary Clinton was confronted by immigration reform activists in Iowa over the weekend. The activists accused President Obama of breaking promises to immigrants and wanted to know what Clinton would do about the issue.
She told them to "elect more Democrats."
The former secretary of state and likely future presidential candidate was signing autographs and T-shirts and participating in selfies in Iowa on Sunday when a DREAMer tried to turn the conversation to immigration and deportations.
Monica Reyes announced herself as a DREAMer, an undocumented immigrant brought to the U.S. by parents.
Clinton, wearing black sunglasses, responded, "Yay."
"I was wondering what you feel about Obama's delay on immigration," Reyes asked Clinton in an in an exchange caught on video by immigration reform activists.
While Clinton continued down the line of people behind metal barriers, she responded, "I think we have to keep working -- can't stop ever working."
President Barack Obama recently announced that he was postponing his announcement to address broken immigration policy until after the elections. The decision infuriated immigration advocates, who were already disappointed in the record number of deportations during Obama's tenure.
Cesar Vargas, a member of the DRM Coalition standing next to Reyes, pointedly followed up. "The President has broken his promise to the Latino community, and we wanted to know if you stand by the President's delay on immigration," he said.
Clinton kept moving but said, "You know, I think we have to elect more Democrats."
Hillary Clinton's return to Iowa: a fresh start or deja vu?
This was the first time Clinton had been to Iowa as a politician since she lost the caucuses there in 2008 to then-Sen. Barack Obama. At Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin's annual steak fry in Indianola on Monday, her speech, filled with foreshadowing innuendos, added to the speculation that Clinton is seriously plotting a second presidential run.
Vargas and fellow DREAMers also confronted Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist who is toying with a presidential run, in Iowa over the weekend. On Twitter, Vargas wrote that Sanders hit a "home run" while Clinton struck out.
But the activists' attendance at the Clinton and Sanders events signals that the immigrant community and immigration advocates are going to put political pressure on candidates contemplating a presidential run.
"The message we want to make clear to them is they should not take our community for granted," Cristina Jimenez, co-founder of United We Dream, told CNN.
Latinos, who are not the only community affected by deportations but recently has been the largest, tend to vote for Democrats. They backed Obama overwhelmingly -- by more than 70% -- in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
"We ask Republicans the question 'why do they want to deport us,' and we're going to do the same thing with Democrats," Jimenez told CNN. "Both parties have really failed our community."
DREAMers interrupted one of Sen. Marco Rubio's events in South Carolina, also a key presidential nominating state, last month. And earlier in August, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul abruptly left a lunch table in Iowa when Vargas and fellow DREAMers confronted colleague and immigration hard-liner Rep. Steve King.
Slate blog: Weigel: “So 200 Reporters Walk into a Field in Iowa ...”
By David Weigel
September 15, 2014, 9:53 a.m. EDT
My colleague John Dickerson was in Iowa yesterday for the Second Coming of Hillary Clinton. From my armchair (actually, at that hour, probably from a car heading back from a friend's wedding), it seemed like the arrival of Bill and Hillary Clinton at Sen. Tom Harkin's last "steak fry"—a populist picnic for thousands of people, at which the steak is actually grilled—would confirm that Hillary wanted to run in 2016 and that the media was already in full-on Beatlemania mode about it.
Peter Hamby's dispatch from Indianola suggests that this was true. "Roughly 200 credentialed media" showed up for the steak fry, according to Hamby. (For contrast, there were only a few dozen reporters at this past summer's Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, and often only 10 reporters in the press availabilities with Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz.) The press stayed in one sector of the picnic, until "after a 90 minute wait" they were allowed to capture "a staged shot of Bill and Hillary Clinton, fresh out of their motorcade, ritualistically flipping steaks with Harkin."
And then, a miracle: Clinton talking to reporters, for a little while:
“‘Good to see you!’ she told the assembled press, surely a half-truth. ‘My goodness! You guys having a good time? Good. We're having a good time today.’
“Strutting back and forth, Clinton declared that it was ‘fabulous to be back’ in the state. ‘I love Iowa,’ she said, smiling as if she were in on a joke. She entertained and swatted away a bombardment of questions, mostly of the unremarkable ‘will you run?’ variety.
“‘Does this whet your appetite for another campaign?’ asked one reporter.”
The reader may be surprised to learn that Clinton did not reveal her 2016 plans to a reporter on a ropeline. Nor to the other reporter who asked. Actually, it appeared as though Clinton was following the plan of every other 2016 candidate—pacing herself before the mideterms, making a decision after them. It's almost unheard of to announce a presidential run before the previous cycle's midterms are over, and the only guy who's broken that recently was Mike Gravel, who did not become the nominee.
So, how to interpret Joe Scarborough's rant about Hillary and imperial frontrunners? Scarborough wonders (in September 2014) if Clinton is blowing it already, because in 2008 "it wasn't against her back was against the wall that she had to stop acting like a robot on the campaign trail and start acting like herself that she started winning." (Again, it's September 2014.)
"I don't want to see you eating steak!" Scarborough moans, to an in absentia frontrunner "I want to see you talking about how we're going to stop ISIS, not behind some cute little prepackaged plan that some of your handlers fixed up or somebody helped you write in a book."
Clinton's book tour and interviews haven't mentioned ISIS? It was just a month ago that the news cycle churned over whether Clinton had attacked the Obama administration for letting ISIS happen. Clinton bemoaned the failure to vet and arm Syrian rebels when it mattered. That's not a what-to-do-now answer, and yes, we are being denied some fun stories by Clinton's decision not to comment on the administration with the frequency of, say, John McCain. But no one running in the invisible primary has an alternate ISIS-handling plan. Rand Paul, who's been getting the most coverage for his comments, has focused—like Clinton—largely on the American mistakes that enabled to ISIS's renaissance.
The steak fry did present an opportunity for less hawkish progressives to light into the Clintons. The thing was started by Tom Harkin, after all—just last week, as Jennifer Bendery reported, Harkin was one of very few Democrats who worried that American policymakers were over-rating the threat of ISIS. But the only attempt I saw to find the space between Harkin and Clinton came from Jonathan Karl, who asked Harkin sort of generally if Hillary was too hawkish. Harkin had "questions," he said, but he had questions for everyone.
"I must be frank with you," said Harkin. "I thought Barack Obama was a great progressive, and a great populist, and quite frankly some things have happened that I have not agreed with."
That was the end of the clip, so we don't know what else Harkin enunciated. But it was telling that he evaded a Hillary question by pointing out his disappointment with Obama. That remains the central progressive lesson of 2008: Electing a president is not everything. Notice what Harkin said, via Ana Marie Cox, when introducing Bill Clinton.
“Harkin himself did Hillary no favors when his introduction of Bill included an anecdote about an earlier steak fry, when the heavens parted the moment Clinton took the stage: ‘The clouds disappeared, the sun came out.’ There’s being in someone’s shadow and then there’s being compared with a demigod.”
It's hard to hear that and not experience an acid flashback to 2008, when before the Rhode Island primary (which she won in a rout), Hillary mocked the idea that electing Obama would fix America. "The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect," she snarked.
The Hillary 2016 campaign is a minor problem for Democrats. They are generally ready to nominate her. Some of them want a progressive challenge that moves her to the left, or at least keeps her honest.* Far far fewer believe that the party needs a savior, because it already tossed her aside for one of those.
Hillary 2016 is a far bigger problem for the media, which simultaneously is ready right now to cover her like a nominee—200 reporters!—and yet so palpably bored with how she talks, and runs.
*"Keeps a Clinton honest!" I can hear you laughing.
USA Today: “Pro-Clinton super PAC plans November strategy meeting”
By Fredreka Schouten
September 14, 2014
As Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton heads back into Iowa politics Sunday afternoon, a super PAC encouraging her to seek the presidency is planning a big gathering of its top donors in late November.
Ready for Hillary super PAC is hosting a Nov. 21 strategy summit in New York for its 900-member national finance council. Clinton has said she will decide on another White House campaign early next year.
“What better time to come together and show our support right before this decision will be made?” said Ready for Hillary spokesman Seth Bringman.
The two super PACs backing Clinton, Ready for Hillary and Priorities USA Action, have said they are focusing for now on November’s midterm elections for Congress.
Ready for Hillary is trumpeting her return to Iowa — her first trip to the state since the 2008 campaign — in a big way. The group has posted her image on a billboard in Des Moines and has organized six busloads of college students to attend Clinton’s speech Sunday afternoon at the 37th annual Steak Fry hosted by Rep. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is retiring. Former president Bill Clinton also will speak at the event, which raises money for Iowa Democrats.
STORIES: The Des Moines Register’s coverage of the Harkin Steak Fry and Clinton’s visit
Ready for Hillary has raised more than $8 million since it launched in early 2013 to build grassroots support for a Clinton candidacy.
Over the weekend, Variety reported that singer Burt Bacharach and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, will headline a Sept. 21 fundraiser for the group at the Los Angeles area home of Homeland producer Howard Gordon.
Politico: “N.H. poll: Rand Paul ahead but field open”
By Kendall Breitman
September 15, 2014, 9:59 a.m. EDT
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is leading the pack of potential Republican presidential contenders, but the GOP race is wide open according to a new poll.
In a CNN/ORC poll released on Monday, 15 percent of those polled said that they would most likely support Paul from a long list of contenders. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) follow with 10 percent, followed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with support falling at 9 percent.
Among potential Democrats running for the presidential seat, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is holding a clear lead, with 60 percent of those polled saying that they would most likely support Clinton. Eleven percent support Sen. Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts, beating Vice President Joe Biden, who had 8 percent of the vote.
Paul told Fox News on Monday that he would not be announcing whether he will run for president for about another 6 months, and plans to reach a decision “by Spring” on his future political plans.
This poll was taken among 383 registered Republican voters and 334 registered Democrats from Sept. 8 to 11 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percent among Republicans and 5.5 percent among Democrats.
By Sharyl Attkisson
September 15, 2014
As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.
At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.
“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” says Maxwell.
He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.
“Basement Operation”
Maxwell says the weekend document session was held in the basement of the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters in a room underneath the “jogger’s entrance.” He describes it as a large space, outfitted with computers and big screen monitors, intended for emergency planning, and with small offices on the periphery.
When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.
“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.
“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
A few minutes after he arrived, Maxwell says in walked two high-ranking State Department officials.
Maxwell says after those two officials arrived, he, the office director and an intern moved into a small office where they looked through some papers. Maxwell says his stack included pre-attack telegrams and cables between the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and State Department headquarters. After a short time, Maxwell says he decided to leave.
“I didn’t feel good about it,” he said.
We reached out to Clinton, who declined an interview request and offered no comment. A State Department spokesman told us it would have been impossible for anybody outside the Accountability Review Board (ARB) to control the flow of information because the board cultivated so many sources.
“Unfettered access”?
When the ARB issued its call for documents in early October 2012, the executive directorate of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs was put in charge of collecting all emails and relevant material. It was gathered, boxed and—Maxwell says—ended up in the basement room prior to being turned over.
In May 2013, when critics questioned the ARB’s investigation as not thorough enough, co-chairmen Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen stated, “we had unfettered access to everyone and everything including all the documentation we needed.”
Maxwell says when he heard that statement, he couldn’t help but wonder if the ARB—perhaps unknowingly—had received from his bureau a scrubbed set of documents with the most damaging material missing.
Maxwell also criticizes the ARB as “anything but independent,” pointing to Mullen’s admission in congressional testimony that he called Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills to give her inside advice after the ARB interviewed a potential congressional witness.
In an interview in September 2013, Pickering told me that he would not have done what Mullen did. But both co-chairmen strongly defend their probe as “fiercely independent.”
Maxwell also criticizes the ARB for failing to interview key people at the White House, State Department and the CIA, including Secretary Clinton; Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, who managed department resources in Libya; Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro; and White House National Security Council Director for Libya Ben Fishman.
“The ARB inquiry was, at best, a shoddily executed attempt at damage control, both in Foggy Bottom and on Capitol Hill,” says Maxwell. He views the after-hours operation he witnessed in the State Department basement as “an exercise in misdirection.”
State Department Response
A State Department spokesman calls the implication that documents were withheld “totally without merit.” Spokesman Alec Gerlach says “The range of sources that the ARB’s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information.”
Gerlach says the State Department instructed all employees to cooperate “fully and promptly” with the ARB, which invited anyone with relevant information to contact them directly.
“So individuals with information were reaching out proactively to the board. And, the ARB was also directly engaged with individuals and the [State] Department’s bureaus and offices to request information and pull on whichever threads it chose to,” says Gerlach.
Benghazi Select Committee
Maxwell says he has been privately interviewed by several members of Congress in recent months, including Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House Oversight Committee.
When reached for comment, Chaffetz told me that Maxwell’s allegations “go to the heart of the integrity of the State Department.”
“The allegations are as serious as it gets, and it’s something we have obviously followed up and pursued,” Chaffetz says. “I’m 100 percent confident the Benghazi Select Committee is going to dive deep on that issue.”
Former Obama Supporter
Maxwell, 58, strongly supported Barack Obama and personally contributed to his presidential campaign. But post-Benghazi, he has soured on both Obama and Clinton, saying he had nothing to do with security and was sacrificed as a scapegoat while higher-up officials directly responsible escaped discipline. He spent a year on paid administrative leave with no official charge ever levied. Ultimately, the State Department cleared Maxwell of wrongdoing and reinstated him. He retired a short time later in November 2013.
Maxwell worked in foreign service for 21 years as the well-respected deputy assistant secretary for Maghreb Affairs in the Near East Bureau and former chief of staff to the ambassador in Baghdad. Fluent in Portuguese, Maxwell is also an ex-Navy “mustanger,” which means he successfully made the leap from enlisted ranks to commissioned officer.
He’s also a prolific poet. While on administrative leave, he published poems online: allegories hinting at his post-Benghazi observations and experiences.
A poem entitled “Invitation,” refers to Maxwell’s placement on administrative leave in December 2012: “The Queen’s Henchmen / request the pleasure of your company / at a Lynching – / to be held / at 23rd and C Streets NW [State Dept. building] / on Tuesday, December 18, 2012 / just past sunset. / Dress: Formal, Masks and Hoods- / the four being lynched / must never know the identities/ of their executioners, or what/ whose sin required their sacrifice./ A blood sacrifice- / to divert the hounds- / to appease the gods- / to cleanse our filth and /satisfy our guilty consciences…”
In another poem called “Trapped in a purgatory of their own deceit,” Maxwell wrote: “The web of lies they weave / gets tighter and tighter / in its deceit / until it bottoms out – / at a very low frequency – / and implodes…Yet all the while, / the more they talk, / the more they lie, / and the deeper down the hole they go… Just wait…/ just wait and feed them the rope.”
Several weeks after he was placed on leave with no formal accusations, Maxwell made an appointment to address his status with a State Department ombudsman.
“She told me, ‘You are taking this all too personally, Raymond. It is not about you,’” Maxwell says.
“I told her that ‘My name is on TV and I’m on administrative leave, it seems like it’s about me.’ Then she said, ‘You’re not harmed, you’re still getting paid. Don’t watch TV. Take your wife on a cruise. It’s not about you; it’s about Hillary and 2016.”
Since Maxwell retired from the State Department, he has obtained a master’s degree in library information science.
Talking Points Memo: Scarborough: “Hillary, Stop Being A Robot And Say If You're Going To Run”
By Daniel Strauss
September 15, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EDT
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough went on a bit of a rant on Monday saying that Hillary Clinton has been too much of a robot as she hints plans to run for president in 2016. Scarborough, in a tangent on Morning Joe, said politicians like Clinton need to stop teasing out whether they're going to run for president and just say so.
"What Hillary Clinton has done over the past year or so is why Americans hate politics…It just is…You're secretary of State," Scarborough said. "You play it safe. You then write a book. You say absolutely nothing. You go around on a glorified book tour where you say absolutely nothing, you want people to ask you to run for president so you can say 'we're not running for president, we don't know yet.'
"Then you go to these stupid events and then you —I mean you're either running or you're not running," Scarborough said, his voice a few octaves higher than before.
Clinton, Scarborough said, has shown "no creativity or spontaneity" lately.
"Like —no creativity, no spontaneity, nothing from the heart. This is Hillary Clinton's problem for people that know her and like her, like I know her and like her. But she puts on that political hat and then she's a robot," Scarborough said. "And she goes through the motions, she doesn't ever reveal herself, she didn't do it against Barack Obama, that's why she lost in 2008. And it wasn't against her back was against the wall that she had to stop acting like a robot on the campaign trail and start acting like herself that she started winning."
But, Scarborough continued, Clinton has been acting like a robot for the past two years "while people are getting their heads carved off" -likely a reference to the recent beheadings by the terrorist group ISIS.
"This is not a game," Scarborough said. "This is not some little chess match. This is something that actually matters."
Scarborough then expanded to major political families and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R).
"You know if you want to run, run," Scarborough said. "If you want to save America then get your ass out there and save America. Stop playing your stupid political games. Because more people are out of work and if they do have jobs they have two or three crappy jobs. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, terrorists are carving heads off of people who are trying to help the middle east and you're sitting around playing games rubbing your hands together like you're Hamlet on whether you're going to run or not.
"Hey Jeb, if you're going to run, run," Scarborough said. "And if you're not going to run just tell us that want people to talk about you so you can make more money giving speeches or having people pay attention to you. Hillary if you're going to run, just say you're going to run, and stop playing games."
Scarborough's rant comes a day after Clinton appeared at Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-IA) Iowa Steakfry event.
"Hey Hillary, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. I don't want to see you eating steak," Scarborough yelled. "I want to see you talking about how we're going to stop ISIS, not behind some cute little prepackaged plan that some of your handlers fixed up or somebody helped you write in a book."
Scarborough then went back to Jeb Bush.
"If you're the savior of the Republican party, then get out there," Scarborough continued. "Or listen to your mom, or stay at home."
Cohost Mika Brzezinski then read a quote from Clinton suggesting she had not decided on whether she would run or not yet.
"Oh shut up!" Scarborough said. Brzezinski then tried to get Scarborough to end his rant.
"If you're going to run, run!" Scarborough said.
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