Subject: H4A 6.05.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2015 07:49:21 -0400
List-Id: <HRCRapid.hillaryclinton.com>

*H4A News Clips*

*June 5, 2015*

*LAST NIGHTS EVENING NEWS*

ABC and NBC both had brief segments on Rick Perry entering the race today;
Perry is citing his military experience and record as Governor of Texas. On
CBS John Dickerson was interviewed and noted HRC was the titan of the race;
Dickerson said Chafee was interesting because he challenged HRC’s
trustworthiness and foreign policy judgment, while MOM argues that America
needs a new generation. Dickerson said the danger for HRC was that voters
would hear a consistent message from Republicans and Democrats for a long
time.

*LAST NIGHTS EVENING
NEWS.........................................................................
**1*

*TODAY’S KEY
STORIES.....................................................................................
**4*

*Hillary Clinton Says G.O.P. Rivals Try to Stop Young and Minority Voters*
// NYT // Amy Chozick – June 4,
2015..................................................................................................................................................
4

*Hillary Clinton calls for sweeping expansion of voter registration* //
WaPo // Anne Gearan & Niraj Chokshi – June 4,
2015........................................................................................................................................
6

*Clinton names and shames Republicans for voting restrictions* // Politico
// Annie Karni – June 4, 2015          9

*SOCIAL
MEDIA.................................................................................................
**11*

*Chris Murphy (6/4/15, 12:15 pm)* - No one is going to fight harder for CT
families than @HillaryClinton. That's why I'm proud to endorse her
today...................................................................................................
11

*Norah O’donnell (6/4/15, 7:06 am)* - .@CBSNews confirms Jeb Bush event on
June 15 in Miami will be his presidential announcement:
bit.ly/1dfHazv................................................................................
11

*Mark Murray (6/4/15, 9:46 am)* - No doubt O'Malley racked up progressive
achievements as MD GOV. But that '07 op-ed undercuts that he's always been
a true-blue progressive....................................................
11

*Gabriel Debenedetti (6/4/15, 6:44pm)* - O'Malley super PAC @GenFwdPAC
drops $33k for ads in Iowa, according to new FEC filing:
http://1.usa.gov/1FyEOTb..............................................................................
11

*Peter Nicholas (6/4/15, 1:27 pm)* - Bernie Sanders, on CNN, says
"Secretary Clinton had the same information I had" and yet she voted to
authorize Iraq war in
2002................................................................... 11

*Peter Nicholas (6/4/15, 1:30 pm)* - DNC Chair DWS rejects idea that Dem
pres candidates should criticize Hillary's ethics. Lincoln Chafee had said
"too many ethical" qs re
HRC....................................................... 11

*Mark Murray (6/4/15, 12:56 pm)* - Perry's speech epitomizes GOP's
rhetorical shift from economy/debt (No.1 issue in 2012) to national
security/foreign
policy.................................................................................
12

*Caitlin Huey-Burns (6/4/15, 1:39 pm)* - Rubio, on Fox, calls HRC's
immigration position big shift from 2008 when she wasn't sure if she'd give
licenses to undocumented
immigrants............................................. 12

*HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE............................................................................
**12*

*Why a Presidential Campaign Is the Ultimate Start-Up* // NYT // Neil Irwin
– June 4, 2015.......... 12

*Appealing to Union, Hillary Clinton Calls Teachers ‘Scapegoats’* // NYT //
Maggie Haberman – June 4, 2015 16

*Hillary Clinton, in Texas, Tries to Win Over Forlorn Democrats* // NYT //
Amy Chozick – June 3, 2015              16

*51 percent of Democrats say Benghazi is a legitimate issue for Hillary
Clinton* // WaPo // Amber Phillips – June 4,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
20

*Hillary Clinton Calls for Automatic Voter Registration* // WSJ // Laura
Meckler – June 4, 2015..... 21

*Why Hillary Clinton is pushing early voting in 2016* // AP // Ken Thomas –
June 4, 2015.............. 23

*Democrats fret over recent Hillary Clinton polling* // Politico // Katie
Glueck – June 5, 2015......... 25

*Clinton calls out GOP opponents by name on voting rights* // CNN // Dan
Merica & Eric Bradner – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
29

*Hillary Clinton's Call to Ease Voting Impacts Growing Latino Vote* // NBC
News // Suzanne Gamboa – June 4,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
31

*Hillary Clinton lays out sweeping voting rights vision* // MSNBC //
Zachary Roth – June 4, 2015.. 34

*Hillary Clinton Calls For Automatic, Universal Voter Registration* //
HuffPo // Ryan Reilly – June 4, 2015      37

*The Robby Mook Playbook* // Buzzfeed // Ruby Cramer – June 4,
2015........................................ 37

*Will Hillary Be Our 3rd Black President?* // The Daily Beast // Michael
Tomasky – June 5, 2015... 51

*Hillary Clinton Cannot Afford to Lose Black Voters* // The National
Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
53

*Bernie Sanders Is Surging Among White Democrats, Minorities Love Hillary*
// NBC News // Perry Bacon Jr. & Dante Chinni - June 3,
2014.......................................................................................................
55

*Is Hillary Ready for More Debates?* // US News // David Catanese – June 4,
2015........................ 57

*IRS sends Congress unsigned form letter to brush off demands for Clinton
Foundation investigation* // The Washington Examiner // Pete Kasperowicz –
June 4, 2015......................................................... 60

*Clinton camp wants donors to contribute – by giving staffers a place to
crash* // Fox News – June 4, 2015        60

*Ohio secretary of state slams Clinton over voter access* // Fox News -
June 4, 2015....................... 62

*Attention, pundits: If the polls confirm Hillary’s slide, it must be true*
// Fox News // Howard Kurtz - June 05,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
63

*This is what Hillary Clinton's campaign is saying about her poll numbers*
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker – June 4,
2015..............................................................................................................................
64

*Why you might eventually like Hillary Clinton* // The Chicago Tribune //
Jonathan Bernstein – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
66

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE................................................. **67*

*O’MALLEY...................................................................................................
**67*

*Ad Backing Martin O’Malley Jabs at Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush* // NYT //
Nick Corasaniti – June 4, 2015   67

*O’Malley’s claim on unprecedented wage stagnation for 70 percent of
Americans since World War II* // WaPo // Michelle Ye Hee
Lee..................................................................................................................
67

*Eight years ago, O'Malley argued that Democrats needed to focus on the
center, not the left* // NBC News // Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, & Carrie Dann
– June 4, 2015............................................................
69

*Martin O'Malley Just Took His Populist Pitch Full-Throttle* // ABC News //
Ali Dukakis – June 4, 2015            71

*O'Malley Is Running To The Left, But In 2007 He Urged The Center* // NBC
News // Mark Murray – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
73

*Martin O'Malley going after 'bullies of Wall Street' in campaign, but he
has ties to big banks too* // NY Daily News // Cameron Joseph – June 4,
2015.............................................................................................
74

*SANDERS....................................................................................................
**76*

*Bernie Sanders asks Congress to spend $5.5 billion on 1 million jobs for
youths* // WaPo // Aaron Davis – June 4,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
76

*Bernie Sanders, The Wide-Eyed Pragmatist* // HuffPo // Sam Stein – June 4,
2015...................... 77

*Bernie Sanders scrambles to build Iowa team to meet popular demand* // The
Des Moines Register – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
80

*The 1 percent’s “centrist” propaganda war: Why Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth
Warren are so threatening to the establishment* // Salon // Conor Lynch –
June 4,
2015................................................................ 82

*CHAFEE......................................................................................................
**84*

*Lincoln Chafee and the last mile* // Politico // Adam Lerner – June 4,
2015.................................. 84

*OTHER........................................................................................................
**87*

*Democrats Get a Primary* // TIME // Joe Klein – June 4,
2015..................................................... 87

*Democrats' Supreme Court Litmus Test: Citizens United* // Bloomberg News
// Sahil Kapur – June 4, 2015   88

*GOP.................................................................................................................
**90*

*As Republican Debates Near, Candidates Vie to Make Cut* // NYT // Maggie
Haberman & Jeremy Peters – June 4,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
90

*BUSH...........................................................................................................
**92*

*How Jeb Bush made a mockery of ‘exploring’ a presidential campaign* //
WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 4,
2015................................................................................................................................................
92

*Jeb Bush Facing Crucial Two-Week Stretch* // Bloomberg // Michael C.
Bender - June 5, 2015...... 94

*Bush leads GOP field in NC, Clinton up on most Republicans* // Public
Policy Polling – June 4, 2015 97

*PERRY........................................................................................................
**98*

*Rick Perry ‘Super PAC’ Ads Going Up in Iowa* // NYT // Maggie Haberman –
June 4, 2015............ 98

*After ‘oops,’ Rick Perry is ready to try again* // WaPo // Dan Balz - June
4, 2015............................ 99

*Meet the people who are going to try to get Rick Perry elected president*
// WaPo // Patrick Svitek – June 4,
2015...............................................................................................................................................
102

*Rick Perry spent $350 per vote in 2012* // WaPo //Phillip Bump – June 4,
2015.......................... 103

*What Rick Perry thinks about the issues* // VOX // Andrew Prokop & Tez
Clark – June 4, 2015.... 104

*Tea Party Unloads on 'Complete Imbecile' Rick Perry* // The Daily Beast //
Olivia Nuzzi – June 4, 2015            107

*Rick Perry’s second chance to make a first impression* // MSNBC // Steve
Benen - June 4, 2015... 110

*GRAHAM....................................................................................................
**111*

*Graham: 'Don't vote for me' if you're 'worn out by war'* // The Hill //
Mark Hensch – June 4, 2014 111

*Can Lindsey Graham Win His Home State?* // Real Clear Politics // Caitlin
Huey-Burns & Rebecca Berg – June 4,
2015........................................................................................................................................
112

*An Adelson Backs Lindsey Graham for President* // The National Journal //
Adam Wollner – June 4, 2015     115

*RUBIO........................................................................................................
**116*

*What happened when Marco Rubio spoke at a Bush awards dinner* // WaPo //
Sean Sullivan – June 4, 2015 116

*Rubio: Hillary, Dems will struggle to convince Americans they’re about the
future* // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 4,
2015................................................................................................
117

*Marco Rubio just made another confusing comment about his Middle East
policy* // Business Insider // Hunter Walker – June 4,
2015..............................................................................................................
119

*KASICH.....................................................................................................
**120*

*The 2016 campaign’s new straight shooter: John Kasich* // WaPo // Amber
Phillips – June 4, 2015 120

*Kasich makes favorable impression on the influential in New Hampshire* //
The Columbus Dispatch // Darrell Rowland – June 4,
2015...........................................................................................................
123

*OTHER......................................................................................................
**125*

*GOP hopefuls fight for post-launch poll bounce* // The Hill // Jonathan
Easley – June 4, 2015.... 126

*Poll: Which Republican Presidential Candidate Should Democrats Fear Most?*
// National Journal // Sara Mimms – June 5,
2015.........................................................................................................................
128

*TOP
NEWS.....................................................................................................
**130*

*DOMESTIC.................................................................................................
**131*

*The number of Fortune 500 companies led by women is at an all-time high: 5
percent* // WaPo // Ana Swanson – June 4,
2015............................................................................................................................
131

*Most Americans back legal status for undocumented immigrants* // Politico
// Nick Gass – June 4, 2015         131

*Senate Dems ready to blockade all spending bills* // Politico // Rachel
Bade & John Bresnahan – June 4,
2015...............................................................................................................................................
132

*Fracking Has Had No ‘Widespread’ Impact on Drinking Water, EPA Finds* //
WSJ // Russell Gold & Amy Harder – June 4,
2015............................................................................................................................
135

*Barnard College will now accept transgender women* // CNN // Emily Jane
Fox – June 4, 2015... 136

*As Supreme Court Obamacare case looms, Republicans split on response* //
Reuters // Susan Cornwell & Caroline Humer – June 4,
2015..............................................................................................................
137

*INTERNATIONAL.....................................................................................
**138*

*House could be forced to debate war against ISIL* // Politico // Bryan Bender
– June 4, 2015...... 138

*China suspected in massive breach of federal personnel data* // AP // Ken
Dilanian and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar – June 4,
2015............................................................................................................................
140

*Obama to meet Iraqi prime minister at G7* // The Hill // Jordan Fabian –
June 4, 2015............... 141

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS...................................................................
**142*

*Let Transgender Troops Serve Openly* // NYT // The Editorial Board - June
4, 2015.................... 142

*Listen to Rand Paul* // WaPo // Fareed Zakaria – June 4,
2015................................................... 146

*Jeb Bush vs. Rick Perry* // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 4,
2015............................................. 147

*What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Is Getting Right* // Esquire // Charles
Pierce – June 4, 2015..... 149

*Hillary Clinton gets it on voting rights, Republican contenders don't* //
CNN // Donna Brazile – June 4,
2015...............................................................................................................................................
150

*Hillary Clinton’s Bold Plan for Voting Rights* // The Nation // Ari Berman
– June 4, 2015............ 152

*TODAY’S KEY STORIES*

*Hillary Clinton Says G.O.P. Rivals Try to Stop Young and Minority Voters
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-says-republican-rivals-try-to-stop-young-and-minority-voters.html?_r=0&gwh=241B43B2956D9E937E72FE5FB002D7AD&gwt=pay>
// NYT // Amy Chozick – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday accused Republicans including her
potential rivals Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry of “deliberately
trying to stop” young people and minorities — both vital Democratic
constituencies — from exercising their right to vote, as she presented an
ambitious agenda to make it easier for those groups and other Americans to
participate in elections.

Speaking at Texas Southern University here in front of her largest crowd
yet as a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs.
Clinton accused Republicans generally of enacting state voting laws based
on what she called “a phantom epidemic of election fraud” because they are
“scared of letting citizens have their say.”

“What is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country
to the other,” Mrs. Clinton told a crowd of about 2,000 in a basketball
arena at the historically black campus.

She called for automatic voter registration in every state when young
people turn 18, criticized Republican-sponsored voting laws in North
Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, and urged Congress to take immediate action
to reinstate an important provision of the Voting Rights Act that she said
the Supreme Court had “eviscerated” in a 2013 ruling.

In addition to areas she said needed to be addressed, like easier online
registration, shorter lines at polling precincts and a minimum of 20 days
for early voting before an election, Mrs. Clinton called for a nationwide
law modeled on one recently passed in Oregon that automatically adds voters
to the rolls when they turn 18, using driver’s license data. Residents
would have to opt out to avoid being added to the voter rolls.

But she also used the occasion to attack by name several of her potential
Republican rivals.

“There are people who offer themselves to be leaders whose actions have
undercut this fundamental American principle,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor who formally entered the race for the
Republican nomination on Thursday, “signed a law that a federal court said
was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority
voters,” she said, and he “applauded” when the Voting Rights Act was
“gutted.”

“But Governor Perry is hardly alone in his crusade against voting rights,”
Mrs. Clinton continued. In Wisconsin, Governor Walker “cut back early
voting and signed legislation that would make it harder for college
students to vote,” she said. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey “vetoed
legislation to extend early voting.” And when Jeb Bush was governor of
Florida, she recalled, “state authorities conducted a deeply flawed purge
of voters before the presidential election in 2000” that sent his brother
George W. Bush to the White House.

“What part of democracy are they afraid of?” she said.

Orlando Watson, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, called
Mrs. Clinton’s remarks “misleading and divisive” and “shameless,” and said
they “ignore the fact her Democrat-led home state of New York does not
allow early voting while dozens of Republican-led states do.”

Mrs. Clinton’s early and aggressive stance on voting rights could help
bolster her liberal credentials and energize black voters. In her
appearance at Texas Southern University, where blues music and a high
school marching band played before she arrived, she invoked the civil
rights leaders who worked on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in a speech that
had the feel of an impassioned pitch to the young and minority voters who
largely supported Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton in 2008, and whom she will
need to win in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton recalled helping register poor and Hispanic voters in Texas
for George S. McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972. And she praised
Barbara Jordan, the congresswoman and civil rights leader for whom an award
Mrs. Clinton accepted on Thursday was named.

Texas is a solidly red state, but by delivering her remarks here, Mrs.
Clinton could communicate to voters in battleground states without seeming
too overtly political, her supporters said.

“Ohio will hear it. Pennsylvania will hear it,” said Representative Sheila
Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who presented Mrs. Clinton with the inaugural
Barbara Jordan Gold Medallion.

“The rhetoric is great,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, a South
Carolina Democrat and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress.
“But that’s all you can do when you’re not in office, is talk,” he
cautioned. “It takes getting elected to get something done.”

Mr. Clyburn, who clashed with Bill Clinton on racial issues during the 2008
Democratic primary, said of Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, “I’d hope people would
respond with their voting, sufficiently enough for her to win the office
and follow through.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke not just of minority voters, but also of young people
who she said had been disenfranchised by new voting laws in states like
Texas.

“If you want to vote in this state, you can use a concealed weapon permit
as a valid form of identification, but a valid student ID isn’t good
enough,” Mrs. Clinton said.

*Hillary Clinton calls for sweeping expansion of voter registration
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-calls-for-sweeping-expansion-of-voter-registration/2015/06/04/691f210c-0adb-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html?postshare=8971433448620089>
// WaPo // Anne Gearan & Niraj Chokshi – June 4, 2015*

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday called for sweeping changes in national
voter registration laws aimed at making it easier for young people and
minorities to take part in elections, putting her on a collision course
with Republicans who say such reforms are a political ploy that would lead
to widespread abuses.

In a speech at a historically black college here, Clinton called for
federal legislation that would automatically register Americans to vote at
age 18 and would mandate at least 20 days of early voting ahead of election
days in all states.

Clinton believes that universal registration would help “expand access to
the ballot box,” particularly for young people, the elderly and minorities,
an aide said ahead of Clinton’s speech at Texas Southern University.

Nationwide mandatory voter registration would help Democrats, whose support
frequently comes from younger, poorer and minority groups that may also be
less likely to sign up to vote at 18 on their own. The change would have to
be approved by Congress — now controlled by Republicans — so it is unlikely
to happen in time to benefit Clinton in the 2016 election if she is the
Democratic nominee.

Clinton said Republican state legislatures are deliberately restricting
voting by curtailing early access to the polls and other measures in an
effort to suppress Democratic turnout.

Several GOP presidential hopefuls, including Rick Perry in Texas and Scott
Walker in Wisconsin, pushed such restrictions as governors. Clinton spoke
on the same day that Perry announced his own second White House run near
Dallas.

Republican efforts to limit voter registration have a disproportionate
impact on low-income communities and on young voters, Clinton said.

Under universal voter registration, every citizen would be automatically
registered to vote on their 18th birthday, unless they actively opt out.

About 71 percent of eligible adults nationwide are registered to vote,
according to Census figures, and a lower percentage actually show up at the
polls. Registration and turnout tend to be higher among older and
relatively affluent white voters, who are also more likely to vote
Republican.

Although early voting has become fairly common in the last decade, it
remains a cause of suspicion for many Republicans who say it increases the
opportunity for fraudulent voting. Republicans have raised similar
objections to same-day registration and other efforts — many of them led by
Democrats — to make voting easier or more convenient.

Election analysts generally agree that voter fraud is rare, although there
have been a handful of well-publicized examples of fraudulent names being
added to the rolls.

Clinton’s address comes as Democrats are pursuing legal challenges to
voting rule changes approved by Republican legislatures in several states.
The candidate and her allies claim the changes are aimed at narrowing the
electorate in ways that benefit Republicans.

“This is, I think, a moment when we should be expanding the franchise,”
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in an interview Wednesday.
“What we see in state after state is this effort by conservatives to
restrict the right to vote.”

In recent weeks, top Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias has co-filed
lawsuits over voting access in Ohio and Wisconsin, both key presidential
battleground states with Republican governors who may join the 2016 race.

“This lawsuit concerns the most fundamental of rights guaranteed citizens
in our representative democracy — the right to vote,” lawyers wrote in a
federal complaint filed Friday in Wisconsin.

“That right has been under attack in Wisconsin since Republicans gained
control of the governor’s office and both houses of the State legislature
in the 2010 election,” the lawsuit alleges.

Since the 2010 Republican wave, 21 states have implemented new laws
restricting voting access, some cutting back on early voting hours and
others limiting the number of documents considered valid identification to
vote, according to a new analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, a
nonpartisan think tank at the New York University School of Law. For 14 of
those states, the 2016 contest will be the first presidential election with
the new restrictions in place.

Some limits also flowed from the 2013 Supreme Court decision that
invalidated some parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The day that
decision came down, Perry praised it as a “clear victory for federalism and
the states” and vowed to proceed with the implementation of a strict photo
ID requirement, previously blocked under the law. That requirement is
currently being challenged in court, with a resolution expected as soon as
this summer.

About three dozen states and D.C. offer early voting of some kind, allowing
voters to cast ballots before Election Day without an excuse. The average
early voting period is roughly 22 days, the bipartisan National Conference
of State Legislatures reported earlier this year. Oregon’s breakthrough
“new motor voter” law passed earlier this year is the closest any state has
come to the kind of automatic registration Clinton called for. Under the
new law, all Oregonians applying for a new or updated driver’s license are
automatically added to the voter rolls, unless they opt-out.

Hillary leans hard into the battle over voting // WaPo // Greg Sargent –
June 4, 2015

As you may have heard, Hillary Clinton is already leaning into the
ever-simmering battle over voting. Her Democratic allies are preparing to
wage a national legal battle against GOP state-level voting restrictions,
and she is calling for a national 20-day early voting period.

But now, Clinton is rolling out a third prong in her push for an expansion
of voting access: In a speech in Texas that is underway right now, she is
calling for universal, automatic voter registration.

Automatic voter registration for citizens has long been championed by
voting reformers as a key part of modernizing our voting system. Clinton’s
proposal would require the registration of all citizens in every state when
they turn 18 years of age, unless they opt out. She is also endorsing the
general goal of universal registration for those over 18, without endorsing
a specific mechanism to accomplish this. According to the Brennan Center,
there are various ways to add people to the voter rolls, such as when
changes of address are filed. States can also implement required universal
registration for people of all ages, as Oregon has done. Clinton cited
Oregon as an example today.

Voting reform advocates favor universal, automatic registration as a way to
streamline and simplify the registration process, to eliminate matching
problems between state databases, reduce the possibility of voter
registration fraud, and maximize voter participation.

In political terms, Clinton’s call for universal voting registration
appears to be a bid to energize millennial voters. As it is, the broader
voting access push — like her recent moves leftward on immigration, climate
change, and sentencing reform — is partly about mobilizing core Obama
coalition groups, including minorities. Today’s proposal is more heavily
focused on the young. After all, one of the key unknowns of the cycle is
whether Clinton will be able to turn out Obama voters on the same levels he
did, and young voters — who were excited by the historical nature of
Obama’s candidacy — are key to that.

“There’s a good policy reason why Clinton might support universal voting,
but there’s also a good political reason,” Rick Hasen, a voting law expert,
tells me. “These are issues that motivate the Democratic base. Talking
about Republicans suppressing the vote gets Democrats excited, just like
talking about voter fraud motivates Republicans.”

Indeed, Clinton’s proposal today seems likely to draw opposition from
conservatives and Republicans. For one thing, they would probably seize on
the chance to attack her for favoring another government mandate and
federal encroachment on states, and also to argue that government mandated
registration could produce other types of fraud. The Clinton camp will
probably try to pitch this proposal — and her push for more voting access
in general — in a way that rebuffs GOP efforts to turn independents against
it, casting it as key to maintaining the integrity of the process.

For another thing, as Hasen has noted elsewhere, the battle over voting
access revolves around a much deeper dispute, in which some opponents of
increased access have explicitly argued that making voting harder actually
leads not only to less voter fraud but to more informed choices.

“There are two ways of thinking about voting,” Hasen tells me. “The first,
which is associated with conservatives, is that voting is about choosing
the best candidate. If you take that view, you might want restrictions that
winnow out uninterested or uneducated voters. Democrats and liberals are
more likely to take the second view — that we should all have an easy way
to vote and share in political power.”

That seems like an argument the Clinton campaign might want to have.

*Clinton names and shames Republicans for voting restrictions
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-early-voting-rights-gop-118636.html>
// Politico // Annie Karni – June 4, 2015*

For the first time since hitting the campaign trail two months ago, Hillary
Clinton took on her Republican rivals by name, calling out four
presidential contenders as she spoke authoritatively about restoring voting
rights and asked rhetorically, “What part of Democracy are they afraid of?”

The former secretary of state also called for a new national standard of at
least 20 days of early in-person voting in every state, a move she argued
would reduce long lines at the polls and expand participation.

“What is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country
to another,” Clinton said in a fiery 30-minute speech at Texas Southern
University, a historically black college.

But it was the portion of her speech where she uncharacteristically went on
a personal attack against former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie that was the apex of her speech. About two-thirds of the way into
her remarks, she blasted the group for “fear-mongering” on a “phantom
epidemic of election fraud.”

“Former Governor Rick Perry signed a law that a federal court said was
actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority
voters,” she said. “He applauded when the Voting Rights Act was gutted.”
She slammed Texas for having laws where student IDs are not accepted as
valid identification at the polls but a concealed weapons permit is.

“In Wisconsin, Scott Walker cut back early voting and signed legislation
that would make it harder for college students to vote,” she said, and
called out Christie for vetoing legislation to extend early voting.

“In Florida, when Jeb Bush was governor, state authorities conducted a
deeply flawed purge of voters before the 2000 presidential election,” she
said. “Today Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop
millions of American citizens from voting.”

Of her four targets, only Perry is a declared candidate so far.

Clinton challenged the entire group to “explain why they’re so scared of
citizens having their say.”

Arguing for a change of law to allow voting on the weekends, she said: “If
families coming out of church on Sunday are inspired to vote, they should
be free to do just that. We know that early, in-person voting will reduce
those long lines and give citizens the chance to participate.”

Clinton said the fight to protect voting rights was “for the student who
has to wait hours for his or her right to vote, for the grandmother who’s
turned away from the polls because her driver’s license expired, for the
father whose done his time and paid his debt to society but still hasn’t
gotten his rights back.”

The event at Texas Southern University, during which Clinton accepted an
award named after Barbara Jordan, the first African-American woman to
represent Texas in Congress was her only public event during her Texas
trip, sandwiched by fundraisers.

Clinton has been building up her attacks on her likely Republican
opponents. In South Carolina earlier this month, she drew a contrast with
remarks on equal pay by Walker, and Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand
Paul of Kentucky. But she did not mention them by name.

At a roundtable discussion on immigration reform in Las Vegas last month,
she challenged Republicans to attack her by moving beyond President Barack
Obama on the issue, and told the participants, “this is where I differ from
everyone on the Republican side.”

While her campaign maintains Clinton is squarely focused on the primary,
Clinton on Thursday showed that the personal attacks are not a one-way
street as she embraced an issue that is a flash point between Democrats and
the GOP.

Democrats, and particularly minority groups, are energized and angered by
what they see as blatant Republican attempts to disenfranchise them. Obama
has claimed that the very right to vote is threatened. Democrats have hit
the issue hard, not only on the merits but also because it galvanizes the
party’s base and helps raise money.

On the GOP side, leaders argue restrictive voting laws they support are
necessary to maintain ballot box integrity. But many of those laws
disproportionately impact minority communities.

Outside groups supporting Clinton see the overall contrast with the
Republican party as a strong play for the former secretary of state. As
senator, they note, Clinton introduced the Count Every Vote Act, which
would have made Election Day a national holiday and put in place early
voting, same-day registration and uniform standards for IDs across the
states.

“Nearly the entire Republican Party has worked to restrict voting, from
Republicans like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio who supported limiting
opportunities for early and weekend voting, to Rick Perry who signed
legislation that disenfranchised up to 600,000 registered Texas voters,”
said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the pro-Clinton group Correct the
Record. “Hillary Clinton her entire life has championed the right of
Americans to have a voice at the ballot box.”

*SOCIAL MEDIA*

*Chris Murphy (6/4/15, 12:15 pm)*
<https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/606479766246400000>* - No one is
going to fight harder for CT families than @HillaryClinton. That's why I'm
proud to endorse her today.*

*Norah O’donnell (6/4/15, 7:06 am)*
<https://twitter.com/norahodonnell/status/606416663836262400?refsrc=email&s=11>*
- .@CBSNews confirms Jeb Bush event on June 15 in Miami will be his
presidential announcement: bit.ly/1dfHazv <http://bit.ly/1dfHazv>*

*Mark Murray (6/4/15, 9:46 am)*
<https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/606456976780857344>* - No doubt
O'Malley racked up progressive achievements as MD GOV. But that '07 op-ed
undercuts that he's always been a true-blue progressive*

*Gabriel Debenedetti (6/4/15, 6:44pm)*
<https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/606577374700826624>* - O'Malley
super PAC @GenFwdPAC drops $33k for ads in Iowa, according to new FEC
filing: http://1.usa.gov/1FyEOTb <http://1.usa.gov/1FyEOTb>*

*Peter Nicholas (6/4/15, 1:27 pm)*
<https://twitter.com/PeterNicholas3/status/606512587665244161>* - Bernie
Sanders, on CNN, says "Secretary Clinton had the same information I had"
and yet she voted to authorize Iraq war in 2002.*

*Peter Nicholas (6/4/15, 1:30 pm)*
<https://twitter.com/PeterNicholas3/status/606515722731327490>* - DNC Chair
DWS rejects idea that Dem pres candidates should criticize Hillary's
ethics. Lincoln Chafee had said "too many ethical" qs re HRC*

*Mark Murray (6/4/15, 12:56 pm)*
<https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/606504709696798720>* - Perry's
speech epitomizes GOP's rhetorical shift from economy/debt (No.1 issue in
2012) to national security/foreign policy*

*Caitlin Huey-Burns (6/4/15, 1:39 pm)*
<https://twitter.com/CHueyBurnsRCP/status/606500626827231232>* - Rubio, on
Fox, calls HRC's immigration position big shift from 2008 when she wasn't
sure if she'd give licenses to undocumented immigrants*

*HRC** NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*Why a Presidential Campaign Is the Ultimate Start-Up
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/upshot/why-a-presidential-campaign-is-the-ultimate-start-up.html?mwrsm=Email&abt=0002&abg=0>
// NYT // Neil Irwin – June 4, 2015 *

A new start-up in Brooklyn Heights has 80,000 square feet of freshly leased
office space, computer boxes used as improvised furniture and enormous
ambitions.

Its growth plans put Silicon Valley start-ups to shame. The new outfit
expects to hire hundreds of people and raise and spend one or two billion
dollars by late next year. Its competition is stiff, with similarly
well-funded rivals in Florida, Wisconsin and elsewhere.

But if the Brooklyn team succeeds, it will make history. It is a political
campaign, not a fledgling tech company, and it aims to get Hillary Rodham
Clinton elected president of the United States.

Like the presidential campaigns of a host of other candidates, announced
and unannounced, it faces a complex management challenge that parallels
those of fast-moving tech start-ups, according to people who have worked in
both. Those commonalities contain lessons about how to build a company —
or, for that matter, get someone elected president.

Campaigns are “The Fastest Start-ups in the World,” as Matt McDonald, a
former McKinsey consultant who worked on the 2008 John McCain effort and
other Republican campaigns, calls them in a new report issued by Hamilton
Place Strategies, the Washington public affairs firm where he is a partner.
He points out that buzzy social media firms may attain multibillion-dollar
paper valuations quickly, but take years to reach a scale equivalent to a
major presidential campaign in spending and employee count.

A serious candidate for president, after all, requires a high-functioning
team that is built from scratch in just a few months. That typically means
appointing a campaign manager who may have a background as a political
strategist but who becomes de facto chief executive of a complicated
enterprise that has no time to evolve gradually. Start-ups and campaigns
are both driven by people with a range of motives: an idealistic desire to
change the world along with less noble goals of attaining a great fortune
or power.

An enormous staff must be assembled, learn how to work together and execute
intricate and interrelated tasks. Among them are raising vast sums of money
and developing and executing what is essentially an enormous marketing
campaign. In the end, of course, participants hope to persuade millions of
people to “buy” — meaning, show up at the polls and vote for the candidate
on Election Day.

“A lot of start-ups and a lot of campaigns are similar,” said David
Plouffe, the manager of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign who is now chief
adviser at the fast-growing transportation upstart Uber. “Decisions need to
be made, and there are new challenges every day, while at the same time
you’re trying to hire a lot of people and scale an organization.”

Ken Mehlman, who headed George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and is
now an executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm, sees
similar challenges. “I viewed my job as being the C.E.O. of a company that
in the beginning was a start-up, and was ultimately a very large company,”
he said. “My underlying thesis is that my job wasn’t to be a political
genius. My job was to take best management practices and apply them to
politics.”

Those Obama and Bush campaigns were, almost by definition, the most
successful of the last 15 years. One propelled a man with barely two years
of experience in the Senate to a two-term presidency, and the other
re-elected an incumbent whose popularity was starting to be weighed down by
a war. Their lessons are already being emulated by the 2016 presidential
campaigns, and could as easily be borrowed by aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs.

The 2008 Obama campaign, for example, put a premium on hiring people for
whom the job was a bit of a stretch. All else being equal, for example, it
preferred to appoint as director for a given state someone who had been a
deputy director in a previous campaign, not someone who had served in the
same role many times.

Part of this was necessity; when the Obama effort began in 2007, Hillary
Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination had locked up many
experienced operatives. But in the view of Mr. Plouffe and his colleagues,
their approach had advantages because it created a team that had something
to prove and was unlikely to be complacent.

“If you assemble a bunch of grizzled veterans, you’re not going to get that
sense of inventiveness, and the culture will be one that is not terribly
conducive to good ideas emanating from everywhere,” said Mr. Plouffe. “It
happens more naturally in the tech world, where the C.E.O. can come out of
anywhere and brilliant people may not have a lengthy résumé.”

A related strategy was to create relatively rigid pay bands and avoid
getting into lengthy negotiations over salary, the approach being more
“this is what this job pays; take it or leave it.”

It meant that many people working on the campaign did so for less money
than they could have made elsewhere. This helped to create a culture of
frugality and made it more likely that people joined the staff because they
believed in the campaign, not just for a paycheck.

George W. Bush’s campaigns were known for frugality, and Hillary Clinton’s
nascent 2016 campaign reportedly strives for it (among the manifestations
of the thrift: no business cards, and employees are to use their cellphones
rather than a desk line).

Mr. Mehlman said that in the 2004 Bush campaign, this culture came from the
top: His own salary was $150,000 a year, and no one made more than that.
Travel arrangements were made on the cheap, the logic being that every
dollar spent on a high-end hotel was one fewer available for advertising or
voter outreach in swing states.

“I stayed in Motel 6’s just like everyone else,” he said.

The parallel for start-ups is striking. While there are exceptions, young
companies typically want to keep expenses down to minimize the rate at
which they burn cash, and they want people drawn by belief in the company,
not by the allure of a cushy office, generous expense account or high
salary.

There are important differences, of course. For people working for
campaigns, the potential reward tends to be a job at the White House or a
top government agency, while for start-up employees it is a giant payday
from stock options.

But campaigns and start-ups share common challenges as they ramp up
operations. A campaign that wins its party’s nomination must expand
exponentially as it moves from primaries to a general election. What was
once a small, tight-knit group must suddenly add many more people, often
those with more experience.

It is much like a start-up that goes from a dozen people in a garage to
hundreds of staff members, many with deeper résumés than the original
ragtag crew. Part of the job for those at the top is massaging egos and
trying to keep everyone committed and enthusiastic even as that transition
takes place.

“You need to layer in some more senior hands who have been through it
before, but deciding who is in decision meetings and who is in charge can
be difficult as you scale from a primary campaign to the general,” Mr.
McDonald said. “It’s not dissimilar to the old stereotypical Silicon Valley
start-up where a company raises venture capital money and gets the company
to a certain level, and the V.C.s say, ‘Thanks very much, now we’ll hire a
real C.E.O.’ ”

Some of the management questions are fundamental. Should power be
concentrated at the top of an organization or distributed broadly? Should
there be strict lines of authority in which everyone stays in his or her
narrow lane, or a more open management structure where people cut across
organizational barriers?

Veterans of both worlds argued that a hybrid approach makes the most sense.
They stressed the importance of the leaders setting clear goals and giving
subordinates leeway to reach them — combined with accountability should
they fail.

Both the Bush and Obama campaigns emphasized measuring success and failure
quantitatively. Even for seemingly subjective areas like communications,
the Bush campaign would calibrate how many potential voters in a swing
state were likely to have seen a news broadcast of a positive story. In
other words, a nice press clip was great, but it counted as a success only
if it was seen by large numbers of voters in Ohio and Florida.

“Great campaigns are formulaic in the way they establish responsibilities
for campaign staff, but also ruthless in their tracking and demands for
results,” said Tucker Bounds, a veteran Republican campaign operative who
later worked at Facebook, which has a similar culture of high expectations
and reliance on data.

One of the biggest tests of management is how it copes with a crisis. For a
tech start-up the issue might be a failed product introduction, a big move
by a competitor or fund-raising problems that necessitate layoffs; for a
campaign it might be the loss of a major primary or the emergence of an
unflattering videotape.

Both types of organizations are built on momentum, and both risk a vicious
cycle when something goes wrong. Negative headlines can be self-fulfilling,
as would-be campaign supporters or a company’s customers and investors flee.

Leaders in either world must rise to the occasion. Mr. Plouffe, for
example, described how the Obama 2008 campaign weathered a loss to Hillary
Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, which sapped the campaign’s momentum.

“You make clear that you will diagnose what went wrong, and have a sense
that this is a tough blow,” Mr. Plouffe said. “You have to tell people how
you’ll get through it.” In that case, he said, he had to explain how the
campaign intended to win future states and ultimately enough delegates to
capture the Democratic nomination.

“Without that it would have seemed like happy talk,” he said. “But the
first time you deal with a setback and recover, those bonds between people
on the team really strengthen. When you show the ability to fight through
it, you become a band of brothers and sisters.”

The best-managed campaign won’t necessarily win the presidency. The
political winds, the skills and positions of the candidates and the state
of the economy all help determine that. Similarly, the best-run company
doesn’t necessarily prevail against a competitor with a better product.

Leading a start-up effective enough to win the presidency is no easy task.
But it may pale next to the challenge and opportunity ahead: reconstituting
a successful management team to steer the 2.7 million civilian employees of
the executive branch. Having mastered the high-speed start-up, in other
words, the candidates and their lieutenants may get to apply their talents
to running the government of the United States.

*Appealing to Union, Hillary Clinton Calls Teachers ‘Scapegoats’
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/04/appealing-to-union-hillary-clinton-calls-teachers-scapegoats/>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Rodham Clinton made an appeal for an endorsement from the American
Federation of Teachers this week, suggesting in a private meeting with
union officials that critics have turned teachers into “scapegoats for all
of society’s problems.”

“From what I’ve seen, all of the evidence, and my own personal experience,
says that the most important and impactful thing we can do for our public
schools is to recruit, support and retain the highest-quality educators,”
Mrs. Clinton said before a question-and-answer session with teachers,
according to the union, which released her remarks.

“It is just dead wrong to make teachers the scapegoats for all of society’s
problems,” she said. “Where I come from, teachers are the solution.” Mrs.
Clinton’s remarks were first reported by BuzzFeed.

Mrs. Clinton, as well as two other Democratic presidential hopefuls, former
Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont,
appeared at the union’s executive council meeting this week. But even
allies of Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Sanders acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton is
likely to earn the federation’s backing.

Still, Mrs. Clinton is under some pressure from advocates of an education
overhaul, who have been at odds with the teachers’ union for several years
and believe President Obama has been a supporter of their issues.
Representatives for teachers have publicly denounced Mr. Obama’s education
agenda and programs like “Race to the Top,” which awarded bonuses to school
districts based on performance markers. That makes Mrs. Clinton’s comments
about teachers as “scapegoats” all the more striking.

In an interview in March, Ann O’Leary, who has since become a senior policy
adviser for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, indicated that the candidate planned
to engage in a dialogue with both the teachers and advocates of an
overhaul, something Mr. Obama has been accused of not doing.

Lea Crusey, of the group Democrats for Education Reform, who called Mr.
Obama “a consistent champion for reform,” said advocates had “been in
contact” with Mrs. Clinton’s team, and that they hoped to hear from her on
issues such as college affordability, charter schools and “continued
support for accountability.”

Mrs. Clinton has a long record on the subject, including on efforts to
overhaul public education. In Arkansas, when she was first lady, she was
part of a task force that tried to improve the state’s poor-performing
schools.

*Hillary Clinton, in Texas, Tries to Win Over Forlorn Democrats
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/04/hillary-clinton-in-texas-tries-to-win-over-forlorn-democrats/?smid=nytpolitics>
// NYT // Amy Chozick – June 3, 2015 *

It’s lonely to be a Democrat in Texas these days.

As Hillary Rodham Clinton makes a two-day swing through the state mostly to
raise money, even swaggering Texans with gold belt buckles and ranches that
sit behind gated expanses are beginning to feel a little, well, used.

Last year, liberal groups like Battleground Texas sold local Democrats a
tall tale that turnout would spike in the midterm election and that the
state would show it still had hints of blue. Then, Wendy Davis, the
Democratic candidate for governor, lost in a landslide to Greg Abbott, a
Republican.

Adding insult to injury, many of the Hispanic voters who were supposed to
help turn the tide either didn’t vote or favored Mr. Abbott.

Democrats had hardly licked their wounds when Mrs. Clinton and the outside
groups that support her came knocking for money for 2016, when the state is
all but certain to keep its solid red streak. “All Texas is to anyone is a
stop to pick up money,” one disillusioned donor said.

Mrs. Clinton’s decision to deliver a substantive, high-profile speech on
voting rights here on Thursday — in addition to fund-raising stops in
Austin, Dallas and San Antonio — can do much to assuage those concerns.

(She will most likely tell her usual story about the summer she spent in
Texas in the 1970s helping to register Hispanic voters on the George
McGovern presidential campaign.)

The speech was not made final until last week, and the site, Texas Southern
University, had to find a larger auditorium to accommodate the local
officials, supporters and national news media who would attend, Democrats
involved in the planning said.

But immediately after Mrs. Clinton’s plea to increase access to the polls,
she will head to (where else?) a fund-raiser in a gated community in this
city’s upscale Memorial area. (Guests were told they would receive details
and the address after delivering their $2,700 checks.)

Texas Democrats are a nostalgic clan, still basking in the legacy of such
homegrown firebrands as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ann Richards, the columnist
Molly Ivins (“Real Texans do not use the word ‘summer’ as a verb,” she
famously wrote of the elder George Bush) and Barbara Jordan, the
congresswoman and civil rights leader after whom the award Mrs. Clinton
will accept here on Thursday is named.

It makes sense that Mrs. Clinton chose the home state of L.B.J., the
architect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, to talk about voting rights. She
will also condemn Republican rivals, including former Gov. Rick Perry of
Texas, who have supported laws increasing requirements for voters. The
restrictions, voting rights activists say, prohibit minorities, the poor
and young voters — groups that tend to vote Democratic — from casting
ballots.

Texas has among the strictest voting laws of any state in the country, and
turnout is generally abysmal, particularly among its Hispanics.

“I hope it’s in Texas because Texas is a microcosm of all of this,”
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said in an
interview, referring to Mrs. Clinton’s voting rights speech. “She is going
to where the problem is.”

It’s not just the voting laws that have the state’s Democrats feeling down.
Recently, the Texas Legislature supported bills that would allow residents
to openly carry handguns and permit students to carry concealed weapons on
college campuses, policies most Democrats abhor.

An exasperated Arthur L. Schechter, a Houston-based donor whose support for
Bill Clinton earned him an ambassadorship, pointed to the recent shootout
at a Waco bar between rival biker gangs.

“It’s like the days of Wyatt Earp are back,” he said.

Hillary Clinton declares war on Voter ID // WaPo // Janell Ross – June 4,
2015

When Hillary Clinton gave her speech Thursday on voting rights, her
campaign staff had already given a pretty ample set of previews to
publications across the country.

No one was expecting fire. But Clinton’s speech – focusing on some of what
Clinton presented as the ugliest truths about voting in the United States –
was no boilerplate stump speech. Clinton went big. She called for universal
and automatic voter registration and a 20-day (or more) period of early
voting in every state, before every election. Clinton's speech identified
the work of protecting and expanding voting rights as a critical part of
her campaign.

Clinton talked about the fact that African Americans consistently rank
among the most deeply affected by the contours of Voter ID laws, must wait
in the longest lines on Election Day and cast ballots at polling sites that
very often house fewer machines and poll workers than other sites. That,
Clinton told the crowd, “is no accident.”

Then, her campaign sent out a tweet that drove the point home.

In case you don’t know, a student ID can’t be used to vote in Texas, but a
concealed carry permit can. The implication: the Democratic Party’s base of
young and minority voters are far more likely to be rendered unable to vote
than the GOP’s gun-loving base. For Clinton, that's a situation that
inherently ties her political fate to groups of voters she says are
imperiled.

It was also no accident that Clinton’s carefully stage-managed speech was
scheduled for Texas Southern University, a historically black college in
Houston. After all, the current Voter ID law that governs voting in Texas
was initially blocked by federal officials. Then, within hours of the U.S.
Supreme Court’s June 2013 Voting Rights Act decision eliminating the
requirement that states like Texas run voting changes past federal
authorities, the state put the law into effect.

African Americans, even in big red states like Texas which the most hopeful
Democrats insist sits on the verge of turning purple, remain a core part of
the constituency that Clinton needs. But Clinton needs to more than attract
African-American voters to her campaign. She needs them fired up to vote.

Consider this. Black America’s first record-setting turnout for Barack
Obama in 2008 might have been about making history. But in 2012, when a
larger proportion of blacks voted than any other group for the second
presidential election in a row, plenty of the nation’s political
prognosticators attributed that to the sense that black access to the
franchise was under active attack.

And so, Clinton came to Houston. She declared war on Voter ID and other
Republican efforts to rein in things like early voting. And she asked the
audience to join her.

The day before Clinton waged her frontal attack, New York University’s
Brennan Center for Justice issued a report offering a far more subdued but
equally cautionary look at the nation’s voting rights situation. And the
center's assessment of 2015 is, well, nuanced.

The most stringent Voter ID laws could disenfranchise anywhere from 8 to 12
percent of the population in these states, the Brennan Center’s Myrna
Pérez, deputy director of organization’s Democracy Program, told me.

That’s also a group disproportionately made up of people of color, very
young voters and the very old, the poor and women. These groups are less
likely to have one of the forms of ID these laws require and more likely
not to have the kinds of underlying documents needed to obtain them such as
a birth certificate or passport. For women, the common practice of changing
one's last name can seriously complicate the work of obtaining ID needed to
vote.

After a raft of bills around the country in 2011 aiming to require ID to
vote, and several legal challenges, some have been put in place. Fourteen
states have passed voting law changes that if not overturned by a court
will be in place for the first time on Election Day 2016. North Dakota also
passed its own Voter ID law this year. But only some of these laws include
the kind of narrow lists of acceptable forms of ID like the law in Texas,
according to that Brennan Center report. And those are the laws voting
rights organizations are fighting in court.

In the court of public opinion, fighting these laws is arguably more
difficult. That's because polls show huge majorities of Americans agree
with the concept of requiring ID to vote. So when Clinton pushes for more
early voting, it's likely to be popular; when she warns that voter ID
disenfranchises African Americans, it's a tougher sell.

But Clinton isn't the only one taking up the cause, and the movement isn't
all in one direction.

At the other end of the spectrum, a small group of states that will likely
surprise people in the political know – Florida, Oklahoma and New Mexico –
have seen bipartisan groups of legislators create laws to make online voter
registration a reality. Maryland and Minnesota came close to overturning
laws that bar convicted felons from voting, a practice that excludes
millions of citizens around the country from voting booths.

And in Oregon, Democrats pushed through a measure that will come very close
to Clinton’s universal registration idea. The state will register anyone
with an Oregon driver’s license who is eligible to vote. Oregon license
holders will have to take steps to opt out of registration if they are
adamant about it. The law is expected to add anywhere from 300,000 to
400,000 voters to Oregon’s rolls.

These fights have largely happened off the front page and in the
little-watched state Houses of America. Clinton is trying to put them on
the national radar -- with a clear eye toward getting key demographic
groups geared up to elect another Democrat as president.

*51 percent of Democrats say Benghazi is a legitimate issue for Hillary
Clinton
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/04/51-percent-of-democrats-say-benghazi-is-a-legitimate-issue-for-hillary-clinton/>
// WaPo // Amber Phillips – June 4, 2015 *

Most voters aren't paying much attention to Republicans' ongoing
investigation into the Benghazi attacks that happened during Hillary Rodham
Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. It's a political witch hunt,
Democrats cry.

But more than any other problem she's faced so far, the 2012 attack on U.S.
diplomatic compounds in Libya that killed four Americans, including
ambassador J. Chris Stevens, is seen as fair game for 2016.

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday, 55 percent say how she
handled Benghazi is a legitimate issue for the 2016 campaign. Most
interestingly, it's far from a partisan issue; that number includes 51
percent of Democrats and half of independents.

The Benghazi attack ranks slightly higher as a legitimate issue for voters
than other, more recent negative headlines for Clinton: The Clinton
Foundation's fundraising from foreign governments (53 percent) and her use
of personal e-mail while she was head of the State Department (48 percent).
Both those numbers break down along much more partisan lines, too.

Of course, the fact that voters think Benghazi is a legitimate issue
doesn't mean they think it's a negative one for Clinton.

In total, half of voters disapprove of the way Clinton handled questions
about the deadly attack, with 33 percent approving. But that breaks down
much more along partisan lines; 82 percent of Republicans compared to 23
percent of Democrats disapprove of her response to the questions. So
many/most Democrats who see it as a legitimate issue don't necessarily see
it as a negative.

This would seem to be good news for Republicans, who have been hammering
away at Clinton on Benghazi for three years now, accusing her of getting a
free pass and skirting tough questions. In Congress, House Republican
lawmakers are on their eighth sanctioned investigation into the incident,
with their findings expected to be released in the throes of the
presidential election in 2016.

On the presidential trail, GOP candidates have mostly stayed away from the
touchy subject, preferring to attack Clinton on other issues, including the
money she took for very well-paid speeches since departing as secretary of
state (among other problems for the Hillary camp).

Attacking Democrats on Benghazi can be tricky, though. The GOP's 2012
nominee, Mitt Romney, faltered in a debate against Obama on the question.

But Clinton isn't the only presidential hopeful with a complicated issue in
the Middle East. The Washington Post/ABC poll also asked voters whether Jeb
Bush's hypothetical handling of his brother's Iraq war was a legitimate
issue. The former Florida governor's stumbles over the question have
produced arguably his most negative headlines thus far.

But the issue seems to be less of an issue for Bush than Benghazi is for
Clinton. More voters (48 percent) say no, what he would have done in Iraq
is not an issue, while 44 percent say it should be part of the 2016 debate.
Again, things aren't as partisan as you might expect -- 44 percent of
Republicans say it's a legitimate issue, for example -- but overall, people
don't seem as interested in hypotheticals about what George W. Bush's
brother would have done if he had been in Dubya's shoes (and with more
information).

But perhaps that's because it is precisely a hypothetical question. In the
same poll, just 23 percent of Republicans said they think Bush would
continue the same policies as his brother if elected.

No one can say for certain whether either Benghazi or the Iraq war -- which
recently matched its lowest approval rating in ever among the American
public -- will sway voters next November. But these latest numbers should
serve as a reminder to candidates that the past is never really in the past.

*Hillary Clinton Calls for Automatic Voter Registration
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-calls-for-automatic-voter-registration-1433449800>
// WSJ // Laura Meckler – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically
registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series
of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.

In her remarks to a largely African-American audience in Houston, she
accused Republicans of making voting harder, particularly for minorities
and young people. Republicans say they are focused on rooting out voter
fraud.

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also proposed
expanded in-person early voting, called on Congress to restore parts of the
Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 and said felons
who have served their sentences should have voting rights restored.

The speech marked the latest in a series of policy announcements likely to
be popular with core Democratic voters. Democrats also see voting rights as
critical to helping them win elections.

“We have a responsibility to say clearly and directly what’s really going
on in our country. Because what is happening is a sweeping effort to
disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people
from one end of our country to another,” she said at Texas Southern
University, a historically black college.

Many candidates for office currently expend significant energy helping
register people to vote who they hope will vote for them. This work is
particularly urgent for Democrats, as young people and minorities are less
likely to register but more likely to vote Democratic. In his two
presidential victories, Barack Obama’s campaign worked to “expand the
electorate” in key states by registering likely supporters. Universal
registration would obviate the need for these efforts.

The proposals contrast with Republicans, who have worked to require photo
identification at the polls and purge registration lists of those
ineligible to vote. They argue that these steps are necessary to combat
voter fraud, and that early voting isn’t worth the cost.

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the
conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Clinton plan wouldn’t succeed in
expanding voter turnout and could result in people being put onto the rolls
more than once.

“Americans feel one of their rights is the right to be left alone by the
government,” he said. “People should be able to make the voluntary decision
as to whether they want to participate or not.”

Mrs. Clinton cited a law enacted in Oregon this year to automatically
register eligible citizens who have driver’s licenses, as long as they
don’t opt out. Lawmakers in 14 other states, plus the District of Columbia,
have introduced similar proposals, according to a count by the Brennan
Center for Justice, which is advocating for universal registration systems.
The proposals vary; some also register people who have conducted business
with other government agencies as well.

“The biggest obstacle to free and fair elections is the ramshackle voter
registration system,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan
Center. The center estimates that at least 50 million eligible citizens
aren’t registered.

Under the current system, he said, people fall off the voter rolls when
they move and remain there after they die. He argued that a stronger
government hand would lead to more accurate voter rolls. He said the
government would have to conduct checks to make sure people who aren’t
eligible to vote, such as noncitizens and, in some states, felons, aren’t
registered.

Mrs. Clinton’s speech comes at the same time her campaign is supporting
Democratic efforts to challenge voting rules in Wisconsin and Ohio, which
allege GOP-backed laws are restricting people’s right to vote. The campaign
isn’t a party to the suits, but its top election attorney is working on the
cases.

The Wisconsin rules being challenged in court include a photo-ID
requirement, reduction in the early voting window, an increase in the
in-state residency requirement and elimination of weekend and evening
voting times. Courts have found voter-ID requirements to be constitutional.

Mrs. Clinton also sold herself as an early champion of voting rights. She
pointed to her work registering voters in Texas in 1972 for Sen. George
McGovern’s presidential campaign, and to legislation she introduced while
in the U.S. Senate to make Election Day a national holiday, expand
registration and increase early voting.

In her speech, Mrs. Clinton urged Congress to pass legislation restoring
federal oversight of elections in states that historically discriminated
against minority voters, after a 2013 Supreme Court decision found Congress
hadn’t adequately justified that supervision when reauthorizing the Voting
Rights Act in 2006.

Mrs. Clinton also called for a national standard of at least 20 days of
early, in-person voting in every state, with early polls open on some
weekends and evenings. She said this standard would reduce wait times at
polling places and give more people the chance to vote, particularly those
who work or have family obligations on Election Day. The campaign said that
a third of states have no early voting.

*Why Hillary Clinton is pushing early voting in 2016
<http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0604/Why-Hillary-Clinton-is-pushing-early-voting-in-2016-video>
// AP // Ken Thomas – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling for an expansion of early voting and
pushing back against Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access,
laying down a marker on voting rights at the start of her presidential
campaign.

The Democratic presidential candidate is using a speech Thursday at
historically black Texas Southern University to denounce voting
restrictions in North Carolina, Texas, Florida and Wisconsin and to
encourage states to adopt a new national standard of no fewer than 20 days
of early in-person voting, including weekend and evening voting.

Clinton is plunging into a partisan debate in many statehouses, which have
pitted Democrats who contend restricting voter registration aims to
suppress turnout among minority and low-income voters against Republicans
who say the steps are needed to prevent voter fraud. The issue is closely
watched by black voters, who supported President Barack Obama in large
numbers and will be an important constituency as Clinton seeks to rebuild
Obama's coalition.

Democrats have signaled plans for a large-scale legal fight against new
voter ID laws and efforts to curtail voting access. Party attorneys
recently filed legal challenges to voting changes made by GOP lawmakers in
the presidential battleground states of Ohio and Wisconsin. One of the
attorneys involved in the lawsuits is Marc Elias, a top elections lawyer
for Democrats who is also serving as the Clinton campaign's general
counsel. The campaign is not officially involved in the lawsuits.

Clinton will also urge Congress to take steps to address a 2013 Supreme
Court ruling striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. Clinton said
at the time of the decision that the court had "struck at the heart" of the
landmark law and warned that it would make it difficult for the poor,
elderly, minorities and working people to vote.

She is also expected to urge the full adoption of the recommendations of
Obama's bipartisan commission on voting administration.

Raising the voting issues allow Clinton to draw sharp distinctions with the
potential Republican presidential field, which has largely endorsed the
changes.

Three potential GOP rivals — Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John
Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas — helped overhaul their
states' election laws. Democrats, meanwhile, still blame former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush, another likely GOP candidate, for purging his state's voting
rolls of certain eligible voters prior to the 2000 election, which ended
with his brother, former President George W. Bush, narrowly winning the
state following a lengthy recount.

"Time and again, members of the 2016 Republican field have put partisan
political interests above the fundamental American right to vote," said
Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist and longtime Clinton adviser.

Republicans have defended the changes, saying they ensure the integrity of
the voting process. Under Walker, Wisconsin's changes included requiring a
proof of residency except for overseas and military voters, reducing the
early voting period and increasing residency requirements.

"Any measure that protects our democracy by making it easier to vote and
harder to cheat is a step in the right direction. This is a bipartisan
issue and Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are on the wrong side," said
Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for Walker's political action committee.

About 20 million people voted early in the 2014 elections. However, about
one-third of states do not have any early voting. Republicans note that
Clinton's home state of New York is one of the states that lack early
voting.

Thursday's event will be hosted by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and
Clinton will be honored with an award named after Barbara Jordan, the late
Texas congresswoman and civil rights leader.

The former secretary of state has been actively raising money for her
campaign and the speech is part of a two-day trip to Albuquerque, New
Mexico, and Texas, where she is holding private fundraisers in Dallas, San
Antonio, Austin and Houston.

*Democrats fret over recent Hillary Clinton polling
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-2016-polling-concern-democrats-insiders-caucus-118667.html>
// Politico // Katie Glueck – June 5, 2015*

Despite polls, many early-state insiders say there’s enthusiasm for
Hillary’s presidential bid — especially among women.

Early-state Democrats are evenly divided over whether Hillary Clinton’s
campaign should be worried about recent polls showing her highest
unfavorability ratings in years.

Exactly 50 percent say there’s cause for concern while the other 50 percent
saw no reason for alarm.

That’s the assessment of this week’s survey of the POLITICO Caucus — a
bipartisan group of influential activists, operatives and elected officials
in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Twenty-plus Republicans beating her up, Elizabeth Warren talking about the
working man issues that terrify her, a couple of candidates like Bernie
[Sanders] and Martin [O’Malley] to fill in her policy blanks and a media
that feels stiffed by her lack of access, so all we can focus on is emails
and the notorious Clinton Foundation and newly acquired wealth that
suggests, at a minimum, the appearance of impropriety,” one Granite State
Democrat said, offering an explanation for her sinking favorability.
“Frankly if Hillary could step back at look at herself she would rate
herself unfavorably as well.”

That remark comes during a week in which two major national polls delivered
troubling results, including a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday that showed
Clinton with her highest unfavorability ratings of the past 14 years. A
separate poll released Tuesday by The Washington Post and ABC News found
that Clinton’s favorability was just 45 percent — her lowest in that survey
since April 2008, when she was in the middle of a nomination battle with
Barack Obama.

Caucus participants largely chalked those numbers up to a spate of
unflattering stories about donations made to the Clinton Foundation, as
well as scrutiny of Clinton’s email practices when she was at the State
Department. Some blamed the media — the “drumbeat” of negative headlines
was a common explanation for her slide in popularity. But others argued
that she should engage more with the press about those subjects.

“She is not proactively addressing the issues of concern to Americans,”
said an Iowa Democrat who, like everyone in the POLITICO Caucus, was
granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “Her refusal to take questions
is taking a toll. These polls indicate that she needs to take a more
proactive role. Not that she needs to be completely responsive to the
media, but she can’t ignore them.”

“Emails, Clinton Foundation, etc,” one New Hampshire Democrat responded.
“She is taking the initial barrage from the punditocracy trying to frame
the narrative of the race — which is largely about process and character,
not very much about issues — and because she is not taking the bait she’s
in a little bit of a roper-doper strategy right now. I think she needs to
go on offense.”

But many Democrats also attributed falling poll numbers to the fact that
she is now a partisan candidate for political office, rather than secretary
of state, and noted that she still outpaces the Republican candidates in
polls. And several who responded that the Clinton campaign should be
concerned by those surveys said the information should be used only to make
minor adjustments.

“Any candidate facing waves of partisan attacks for weeks on end sees the
impact in their numbers, but the list of folks capable of sustaining this
kind of a barrage and still looking this good is very small,” said a
Granite Stater.

Another New Hampshire Democrat, who believes the Clinton campaign should be
concerned about the polls, explained, “Hillary Clinton generates extremely
strong passions, both positive and negative. She needs to be completely
candid and transparent about the [Clinton] Foundation’s dealings and
accomplishments and cannot engage in either spin or obfuscation. As long as
she is straight, truthful and credible, she will be fine.”

Despite the rising negative ratings and polling suggesting high numbers of
voters question her trustworthiness, three-quarters of early-state
Democrats say Clinton is generating sufficient excitement about her
presidential bid — especially among women.

“Regular people, particularly women of all age groups are beyond excited
about this candidacy,” a New Hampshire Democrat said.

“Sufficient is the right choice of words,” said another New Hampshire
Democrat. “Hillary is, and remains, solid in the eyes of Democrats.”

Some respondents, however, wondered whether there’s enough energy and
enthusiasm for the long haul.

“There is almost “forced” excitement from establishment types trying to
sell the Clinton brand as the perfect standard bearer for rank and file
Democrats,” said one New Hampshire Democrat. “In New Hampshire, there does
not appear to be a barrage of new Clinton supporters; rather, just the
usual Clinton supporters.”

An Iowa Democrat cautioned, “Sufficient to win a primary yes, a general
election right now — we aren’t there.”

On the Republican side, unsurprisingly, 94 percent of insiders said her
campaign should be concerned by the polls, and 91 percent said they’re not
seeing much enthusiasm about her candidacy. Several insiders likened
Clinton to former Sen. Bob Dole, who won the 1996 GOP nomination but lost
to Bill Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton is this cycle’s version of Bob Dole. It’s her turn but
holy sh**!” one Granite State Republican said.

Here are three other takeaways from this week’s POLITICO Caucus:

Expectations are high for Clinton’s June 13 announcement rally

Hillary Clinton has been a candidate since April, but she will officially
kick off her race on June 13 at a rally in New York. That’s a good time for
her to spell out exactly why she’s running, Democratic insiders say — it’s
a way to show skeptical voters that she’s pursuing the White House because
of an issue set or philosophy, rather than out of a sense that she’s
inevitable or entitled.

A New Hampshire Democrat suggested Clinton answer these questions. “Why is
she the best person out of 320 million people to be President? Where’s the
passion? And what can you say that will truly inspire non-base voters?”

“She needs consistency of effort in transferring attention from herself to
the issues on which she is running,” an Iowa Democrat said. “June 13th
plays an important role in putting the attention on her priority issues.”

A New Hampshire Democrat added that Clinton should try to explain that the
campaign is bigger than she is, and bigger than the Clinton brand: “That
this campaign isn’t about her and it isn’t about Washington, that it’s
about Manchester and Davenport and other communities and the issues that
matter there — a quality education for your kids, safe neighborhoods, good
roads and bridges, confronting the drug epidemic, lowering the costs of
healthcare, childcare, student loans and energy prices. Don’t make this
campaign about the Clintons, but about families all across the country who
are just trying to do the right thing everyday.”

Other non-Democrats — Republicans and a handful of nonpartisan respondents
— indulged in some wishful thinking.

Clinton should say “I am not a crook,” suggested at least two insiders.

“I have decided to spend more time with my family and thus I am resetting
my priorities and going to devote my life to the Clinton Foundation,”
deadpanned a New Hampshire Republican.

As Warren fades, Sanders rises

Supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren are increasingly taking her at her word
that she won’t run for president — which makes room on the left for Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders. Fully 100 percent of Iowa Democrats, and 72 percent of
New Hampshire Democrats, see Sanders as the heir to Warren’s support,
rather than former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley or former Rhode Island
Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

“The lane is on the left,” an Iowa Democrat said. “There’s not enough room
for Left of Hillary but Right of Bernie. Why settle for a mainstream
liberal when you can have a lefty dream candidate?”

“Bernie is taking it to the streets. He’s calling for political revolution.
While he is not the picture of change one might imagine, he has the ability
to reprise the role of Howard Dean in 2004 in the Democratic primary,” an
Iowa Republican said.

A New Hampshire Republican, questioning enthusiasm for Clinton, said,
“Hundreds of people are turning out for a socialist from Vermont!”

But an Iowa Democrat noted, “Sanders is the flavor of the month in [Iowa].
He has connected with the [Dennis] Kucinich and Dean supporters from years
ago. The big question is whether they are curious or committed.”

Carly Fiorina is on fire — for now

One hundred percent of New Hampshire Republicans and about 80 percent of
Iowa Republicans say GOP candidate Carly Fiorina is gaining traction.

“People love Carly when they see her. Momentum in Iowa is real,” a Hawkeye
State Republican said.

A New Hampshire Democrat added a word of support: “She is different from
all the other candidates in the Republican field, and for more than her
gender. Her business background, her communication style, her willingness
to talk like a general election candidate right now, her never holding
office, and her personal story, are all interesting. If she is not one of
the 10 people on that debate stage, the process is not working.”

An Iowa Republican noted that Fiorina’s status as the GOP field’s most
frequent critic of Hillary Clinton is going a long way for her candidacy.

“Fiorina has been wowing crowds and exceeding expectations wherever she
goes in Iowa,” the insider said. “It’s one part love for the Clinton
zingers, one part excitement in a charismatic Republican woman, and one
part interest in the unknown, but she is making headway in Iowa in a real
way.”

But, a New Hampshire Republican said of the former Hewlett Packard head,
“she’s had a free ride so far attacking Hillary, which is easy, with no
critical review of her record or policies. That will change.”

*Clinton calls out GOP opponents by name on voting rights
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/04/politics/hillary-clinton-voting-rights-texas/index.html>
// CNN // Dan Merica & Eric Bradner – June 4, 2015*

Hillary Clinton accused four potential GOP presidential rivals by name of
being "scared of letting citizens have their say" as she called Thursday
for every American to automatically be registered to vote.

Clinton told an audience at the historically black Texas Southern
University that she supports the concept of signing every American up to
vote as soon as they're eligible at age 18, unless they specifically opt
out. She called for expanded access to polling places, keeping them open
for at least 20 days and offering voting hours on evenings and weekends.

For the first time in her campaign, she attacked her likely opponents by
name as she laid into four GOP governors -- Texas's Rick Perry, Wisconsin's
Scott Walker, Florida's Jeb Bush and New Jersey's Chris Christie -- telling
them to "stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud."

"All of these problems voting just didn't happen by accident," she said.
"And it is just wrong -- it's wrong -- to try to prevent, undermine and
inhibit Americans' right to vote."

The former secretary of state's move to put voter access front and center
in the 2016 presidential campaign highlights a contrast with laws
implemented by GOP-controlled legislatures in states like North Carolina,
Texas, Wisconsin and Florida that cut down on early voting times and
tighten voter identification rules.

The Supreme Court also ruled in 2013 that a key aspect of President Lyndon
Johnson's Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer constitutional.

"What is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country
to the other," Clinton said.

In her 2008 campaign, Clinton rarely addressed voting rights. But Democrats
have fretted that policies imposed by GOP state legislatures in recent
years could dissuade African-Americans and those in urban areas from
voting, cutting into crucial blocs of Democratic support in swing states.

The Democratic frontrunner highlighted the issue in a heavily political
speech as she received an award in the name of Barbara Jordan, a pioneer
African-American lawmaker and civil rights leader.

"Forty years after Barbara Jordan fought to extend the Voting Rights Act,
its heart has been ripped out," Clinton said. "I wish we could hear her
speak up for the student who has to wait hours for his or her right to
vote; for the grandmother who's turned away from the polls because her
driver's license expired; for the father who's done his time and paid his
debt to society but still hasn't gotten his rights back."

Her complaints about the Republican governors: Perry signed a law that
courts later ruled intentionally discriminated against minority voters;
Walker signed one that made voting more difficult for college students;
Christie rejected an expansion of early voting; and Bush oversaw a purge of
the state's voter rolls.

And she attacked the nation's high court for its 2013 ruling on the Voting
Rights Act as well as its 2010 decision on campaign finance laws.

"We need a Supreme Court who cares more about the right to vote of a person
than the right to buy an election of a corporation," Clinton said.

While the speech appears to be good politics, the likelihood of achieving
universal voter registration is questionable even to people who support it.

Rob Richie, the executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy,
a group in favor of universal registration, said Thursday that the "very
decentralized" voting systems in the United States make it "feasible" but
"difficult."

The primary problem: The United States does not have a national ID system
like other countries that have universal voter registration.

"There is not a simple single approach because we do not have this simple,
singular ID that connects us," said Richie, noting that instead of
registering to vote nationally, in the United States, you register with
your state.

One solution to the problem would be to implement a national identification
card, said Richie. The problem: Groups like the American Civil Liberties
Union and others are vehemently against a national ID, calling it a
"slippery slope" to surveillance and monitoring citizens.

Clinton supports the concept of universal registration, but not a specific
method, an aide said.

The former first lady has long been a supporter of voting rights: She
helped register voters in Texas' Rio Grande Valley during the George
McGovern's failed 1972 presidential run and as a senator introduced
legislation to make Election Day a national holiday and reduce lines at
polling stations.

Clinton's top campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, has also taken on the fight by
filing lawsuits challenging voter restriction laws in Ohio and Wisconsin.
He told The New York Times on Wednesday that "we should all want to ensure
that all eligible voters can exercise their right to vote and have their
vote counted."

Clinton's aides have said that they are aware of the lawsuits and are
supportive of their goals.

Obama won 93% of African-American voters in 2012 and 95% in 2008, according
to exit polls. Some Democrats worry that Clinton needs a similar
performance with African-American voters and disenfranchisement is an issue
that Democrats hope will activate that base.

The first few months of Clinton's campaign have seen a number of events and
trips focused on African-American voters.

In her first speech as a candidate, Clinton called for mandatory police
body cameras across the country and end "era of mass incarceration," an
issue that connected with African-American activists concerned about black
men dying at the hands of law enforcement.

Clinton also focused on a minority-owned business in her first trip to
South Carolina, a state with a sizable African-American population that
overwhelmingly picked Obama over her in the 2008 primary.

*Hillary Clinton's Call to Ease Voting Impacts Growing Latino Vote
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/hillary-clinton-call-ease-voting-impacts-growing-latino-vote-n370081>
// NBC News // Suzanne Gamboa – June 4, 2015 *

Although the setting for her voting rights speech was a historically black
college, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's call for making it easier
for Americans to vote has implications for the political involvement of
Latinos.

Every year, at least 50,000 Latino youth turn 18. Pew Research Center has
projected that Latinos would account for 40 percent of the growth in
America's eligible to vote through 2030 and in that year, some 40 million
Latinos would be able to vote.

Speaking at Texas Southern University - established in Houston in 1927 as
Colored Junior College to educate blacks - Clinton proposed automatic voter
registration for young people when they turn 18, unless they opt out. She
also proposed a national standard of no fewer than 20 days of early voting
in every state.

Clinton added that she'd push for Congress to pass a bipartisan bill
hammered out in the last Congress but never voted on that would restore
Voting Rights Act protections from voting discrimination.

"I believe every citizen has the right to vote and I believe we should do
everything we can to make it easier for every citizen to vote," Clinton
said.

Although the Supreme Court decision gutting protections against
discrimination in the Voting Rights act is often discussed in the context
of black voters, the decision has significantly impacted potential Latino
voters, said Maria Teresa Kumar, founding president of Voto Latino, a group
that works to get young Latinos to vote.

For example, the county that brought the lawsuit that led to the Supreme
Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County, experienced a 297
percent growth in its Latino population during 2000 to 2010.

"Most folks think the Voting Rights Act (challenge) was to disenfranchise
blacks," Kumar said. "When you look at the states that started implementing
voting restrictions after the decision - Texas, Alabama, Georgia, North
Carolina - the voting restrictions paralleled the states with the fastest
Latino growth."

A Texas voter ID law that was rejected by a federal court in Washington,
D.C. was deemed racially discriminatory, which Clinton mentioned and used
to take a swipe at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who announced
his presidential bid Thursday.

Since President Barack Obama's 2012 election, a number of
Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors have passed or
signed laws instituting restrictions on voting.

Supporters of the restrictions have said they are aimed at curbing fraud,
but opponents have tagged them as a response to the coalition of black and
brown voters who heavily supported Obama in both elections.

While requirements for specific forms of identification at the polls have
gotten the most attention, a slew of other laws have been instituted on
voting, including reductions in early voting periods, elimination of
election day voter registration, cuts in voting hours, elimination of laws
allowing young people to register when they get driver's licenses (though
they could not vote until they turned 18) and more.

"We should be clearing the way for more people to vote, not putting up any
roadblock anyone can imagine," said Clinton, who received an award at the
event. The award is named after Barbara Jordan, whose legislation in
Congress broadened the Voting Rights Act's protections to Latinos and other
groups.

The Republican Party criticized Clinton's comments saying she was
"misleading" and "divisive."

"The vast majority of Americans - including minority voters - support
commonsense measures to prevent voter fraud," said Orlando Watson, an RNC
spokesman. He said Clinton's home state of New York does not allow early
voting while dozens of Republican-led states do. "Her exploitation of the
issue underscores why voters find her dishonest and untrustworthy," Watson
said.

But Pratt Wiley, the Democratic Party's national director of voter
expansion, said people are kept from registering to vote in other ways.
About 60 percent of all Americans are registered to vote when they get
their driver's licenses, through what is known as motor voter laws, Wiley
said.

Groups all over the country are asserting that state departments that
oversee driver's licensing are falling down on the job of giving people the
opportunity to register to vote by not asking if people want to register,
he said. Also, counties are not processing applications when they get them,
are slow to do so or are losing applications, Wiley said.

"Voter ID is part of a whole suite of restrictive laws and tactics" that
Republicans have employed to keep people from voting, Wiley said. "These
laws are not passed to make our system safer. They were not passed to save
money … But that's what you do if your election strategy is to have as few
people vote as possible. That's what the Republican strategy is."

He provided quotes from some Republicans that he said demonstrated the
strategy:

_ "I guess I really feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to
accommodate the urban - read African-American - voter-turnout machine,"
Ohio GOP Chairman Doug Preis said.

_ "I've had some radical ideas about voting and it's probably not a good
time to tell them, but you used to have to be a property owner to vote,"
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla. said.

_ "If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them
everything, so be it," Buncombe County, North Carolina GOP Precinct Chair
Don Yelton said on The Daily Show about the state's voter ID law.

Daniel Garza, executive director of LIBRE, a conservative group that wants
to increase Latino voting, said he has no problem with requiring
identification to vote because his group believes in preserving the
"integrity" of the vote and the principle of "one man, one vote."

"I've never been in a meeting where people have said we need to suppress
the vote. I've never heard a conservative in a room saying 'What can we do
to keep Latinos from voting? It doesn't occur, it doesn't happen," Garza
said.

Garza said he did not know enough about the other voting restrictions
passed in states, so could not comment on that. But he said his group puts
a priority on informing Latinos and wants them to be informed and is not
trying to keep people home.

"The left has worked hard to suppress our voice. We've been slammed by the
left to shut up to not do outreach, to not engage," Garza said.

In her speech, Clinton recalled her days working to register voters in the
Rio Grande Valley 33 years ago.

"Some of the people I met were understandably a little wary of a girl from
Chicago who didn't speak a word of Spanish, but they wanted to vote. They
were citizens, they knew they had a right to be heard. They wanted to
exercise all the rights and responsibilities that citizenship conveys," she
said.

Clinton is scheduled to speak next week before the National Association of
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), a bipartisan group. Any
increase in getting young people to register and turn out to vote would
benefit Latinos because it is a young population.

The Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act removed protection
for 7 million Latino voters, said Arturo Vargas, NALEO's executive director.

"We would want to have those protections restored," he said. "But we are
very interested in a modernized Voting Rights Act that looks to
prospectively protect the rights of all voters."

*Hillary Clinton lays out sweeping voting rights vision
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-early-voting-nationwide> //
MSNBC // Zachary Roth – June 4, 2015 *

In a major speech on voting rights Thursday, Hillary Clinton laid out a
far-reaching vision for expanding access to the ballot box, and denounced
Republican efforts to make voting harder.

Speaking at Texas Southern University in Houston, Clinton called for every
American to be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 unless
they choose not to be. She backed a nationwide standard of at least 20 days
of early voting. She urged Congress to pass legislation strengthening the
Voting Rights Act, which was gravely weakened by a 2013 Supreme Court
ruling. And she slammed restrictive voting laws imposed by the GOP in
Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, which she said affect
minorities and students in particular.

“What is happening is a sweeping effort to dis-empower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people, and young people from one end of our country
to the other.”

“We have a responsibility to say clearly and directly what’s really going
on in our country,” Clinton said, “because what is happening is a sweeping
effort to dis-empower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and
young people from one end of our country to the other.”

“We should be clearing the way for more people to vote, not putting up
every road-block anyone can imagine,” Clinton added.

From a political perspective, forthrightly calling out Republican voting
restrictions and advocating greater access to voting will likely help
Clinton shore up key sections of her base – minorities and students in
particular. And it could put the GOP on notice that further efforts to make
voting harder may backfire by giving Democrats a tool to motivate their
supporters.

Clinton, the prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic presidential
nomination, called out by name several of her potential 2016 rivals – Rick
Perry, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie – for supporting
restrictive voting policies. She said Republicans should stop
“fearmongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud.”

Clinton said relatively little about the most hot-button voting issue,
voter ID – an approach that also appears politically savvy. Despite
evidence that as many as 10% of eligible voters, disproportionately
minorities, don’t have the ID required by strict versions of the law, polls
show voter ID is generally popular.

Instead, Clinton sought to move the voting rights debate for 2016 toward
more advantageous terrain for Democrats and voting rights supporters:
expanding access to voting and voter registration, to make it easier to
cast a ballot and bring more Americans into the process.

Noting that between one quarter and one third of all Americans aren’t
registered to vote, Clinton called for an across-the-board modernization of
the registration process. The centerpiece: universal automatic voter
registration, in which every citizen is automatically registered when they
turn 18 unless they affirmatively choose not to be, effectively changing
the system’s default status from non-registered to registered. Oregon
passed such a law earlier this year, and several other states, including
California, are considering the idea.

“I think this would have a profound impact on our elections and our
democracy,” Clinton said.

Clinton also said registration should be updated automatically when a voter
moves, and called for making voter rolls more accurate secure. And she said
Republican efforts to restrict voter registration, seen in Texas, Florida,
and other states, disproportionately affect marginalized communities, and
students.

Around 50 million eligible voters aren’t registered, according to a recent
study by the Center for Popular Democracy, based on Census Bureau data.
That’s three times as many as the number who are registered but stay home.

Clinton said the nationwide early voting standard of at least 20 days
should also include evening and weekend voting, to accommodate those with
work or family commitments.

“If families coming out of church on Sunday are inspired to go vote, they
should be free to do just that,” Clinton said, in a reference to the Souls
to the Polls drives that are popular in Africa-American communities, in
which people vote en masse after church.

Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina — all Republican-controlled states —
have cut their early voting periods in recent years, with the latter two
states also eliminating same-day voter registration. And a third of all
states offer no early voting at all. Democratic efforts to create or expand
early voting have been killed, or allowed to languish in committee, by
Republicans in at least 15 states, eight of them in the south, according to
a tally compiled by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

In addition, Clinton called for Congress to fully implement the
recommendations of a bipartisan presidential panel on voting released last
year, which included online voter registration and establishing the
principle that voters shouldn’t wait more than 30 minutes. And she
suggested that laws barring ex-felons from voting should be liberalized,
adding her voice to a growing push against felon disenfranchisement laws.

And Clinton lamented the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act.

“We need a Supreme Court that cares more about protecting the right to vote
of a person to vote than the right of a corporation to buy an election,”
she said.

Asked by msnbc on a call with reporters whether it was realistic to propose
legislation, given the record of the Republican-controlled Congress, a
senior official with the Clinton campaign pointed to ”encouraging signs” in
the states, arguing that such changes could be implemented at the state
level with federal support.

On voter ID, Clinton’s criticism of Texas’s law was centered on a provision
that allows concealed gun permits but not student IDs, suggesting partisan
bias. She didn’t offer the kind of broader condemnation of ID laws per se
often voiced by voting and civil rights groups. And in criticizing
Wisconsin and North Carolina’s slew of voting restrictions, she focused on
cuts to early voting rather than those states’ ID laws.

Hours before Clinton spoke, a de facto arm of her campaign that provides
pro-Clinton information to the media sent out an email documenting the GOP
2016 hopefuls’ records of supporting restrictive voting policies, which it
contrasted with Clinton’s expansive approach.

Clinton’s speech comes less than a week after her campaign’s top lawyer,
Marc Elias, filed suit to challenge Wisconsin’s voting restrictions. Last
month, Elias filed a similar lawsuit challenging Ohio’s early voting cuts.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted called the lawsuit “frivolous” in a
statement to msnbc and said Elias is wasting Ohioans’ tax dollars. “Hillary
Clinton is calling for a national standard for early voting that is less
than what Ohio currently offers,” Husted said. “Given this fact, I call on
her to tell her attorneys to drop her elections lawsuit against Ohio.”

The Clinton campaign has said it’s not officially involved in the lawsuits
but supports them.

In choosing to give the speech in Texas, Clinton was going into the belly
of the beast. In addition to the ID law, which has been struck down as
racially discriminatory and is currently being appealed, Texas also has the
strictest voter registration rules in the country. And last week, a voting
group alleged that the state is systematically failing to process
registration applications, msnbcreported.

Clinton has long had a strong record on voting issues. As a volunteer for
the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign, Clinton worked to register
Latino voters in Texas. And in 2005 as a senator, she introduced an
expansive voting bill that would have made Election Day a national holiday
and set standards for early voting.

At Texas Southern, Clinton received the Barbara Jordan Leadership Award,
named for the crusading civil rights leader who was the first southern
black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

*Hillary Clinton Calls For Automatic, Universal Voter Registration
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/hillary-clinton-voting-rights_n_7513858.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000016>
// HuffPo // Ryan Reilly – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton in a speech on Thursday called for universal, automatic
voter registration, saying every citizen in the country should be
automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt-out.

Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University in Houston, where she was
receiving the Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award. She also said
Republican-led efforts in several states to further regulate voting and
voter registration disproportionately harm both underrepresented
communities and young people.

Clinton also called for a national standard that would require every state
in the country to offer at least 20 days of early in-person voting,
including keeping polling stations open on weekends and evenings.

During her speech, Clinton also called on Congress to pass legislation to
give the federal government power to review changes to state voting laws
before they go into effect. A Supreme Court decision in 2013 struck down a
key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act that required certain
states to have their voting changes pre-cleared by the Justice Department
or by a panel of federal judges before they were implemented.

*The Robby Mook Playbook
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/the-robby-mook-playbook#.slr14B2N3> //
Buzzfeed // Ruby Cramer – June 4, 2015 *

Eight years ago in Nevada, on the first race he managed for Hillary
Clinton, Robby Mook provided everyone on the team with a copy of his
175-page training manual. Some staffers‚ the field organizers, received a
second item: one standard-issue composition notebook, bound in
black-and-white marble, the kind kids use in school.

These were “organizing books.” They were considered vital to the field
operation, or as Mook called it, “the program.” And like everything
pertaining to the program, the organizing books came with a system, and the
system with instructions. In this particular case, they could be found in
the manual. (Page 110, “Getting Organized.”)

Your notebook should be divided into three sections per day: calendar,
notes, and action items…

Every morning began with a new calendar entry — a simple table, two
columns. Down the left-hand margin, organizers wrote out 24 timestamps, one
for every half-hour interval in the day. (Twelve hours, minimum.)

To the right, they scheduled and recorded their activity.

You will track progress to goal using the tools provided by the campaign
including maintaining your organizing notebook…

For eight months, it went like this. They started in desert summer,
100-degree days. For eight months, they logged every half-hour of every
hour of every long and hot day. For eight months, time passed in 30-minute
intervals — from the statewide call (which got earlier as the caucuses got
closer), to the single break in the daily schedule (lunch, 12:30 to 1
p.m.), to the long slog of the afternoon (the one-on-one meetings with
volunteers, the call-time, the house meetings in the evening), to the
final, most important task of the day.

At 9 p.m., it was time to report.

All Hillary Clinton for President-Nevada staff are expected to report
nightly by 9:15 p.m…. These reports are vital to ensuring that our strategy
is succeeding and an important recognition of the tremendous contribution
staff are making…

Organizers went first, entering the results of their day into a finicky
computer system called the Donkey. Next, the regional directors. Then the
field director. It was his job to take their aggregate data and combine it
all into one last report. And that went to Mook.

Then the day was over.

All of this — the ledgers, the reports — was in service of the goals. Mook
laid them out in the training manual, his initial plan. To beat Barack
Obama in Nevada, the Clinton campaign would need to enlist exactly 2,475
volunteers, train 1,744 precinct captains, and generate 24,751
caucus-goers. And to meet those goals, the team would have to meet their
smaller daily goals.

The benchmarks underwent constant examination and adjustment. They were
continually evaluated, tweaked, and reset, all based on data from the field
team’s nightly progress reports. It was a three-part process, played out
ceaselessly, day after day — as if the heartbeat of the campaign.

On Jan. 19, 2008, that’s how Clinton won. There was some initial confusion
about the national delegate count. Because of his victory in a more heavily
weighted district, Obama walked away that night with an extra delegate. But
Clinton carried the vote. Mook, at 28 years old, delivered the campaign’s
first caucus win — and at a time when they needed it badly. He then took
his playbook to Ohio, Indiana, Puerto Rico. Most of his team came with him
— and they beat Obama there, too. The operative, clean-cut and unassuming,
was Clinton’s most winning state director. He came out of 2008 a star.

But working for Mook was hard. The days were long and unrelenting. The
structure was rigid.

Failure to report nightly will have serious consequences and may be grounds
for dismissal.

They were exhausted all the time. And yet, the next morning, they woke up
and did it all over again… They wanted to.

Some members of the Nevada field team struggled to explain why in
interviews — though most pointed to Mook. It’s not that he wasn’t
regimented, they said. He was. All the time. But there was something else
that kept them going. And it was essential.

In 2010, Mook helped write another manual — this one for Democrats hoping
to run a race like Nevada. They called it the “Engagement Campaign.” There,
a manager’s job is plainly described as winning: “setting clear,
measurable, WINNING campaign goals and creating a culture of excellence and
commitment to meet those goals.”

But the other required component, the manual says, is “motivation.”

Since one of your major resources is people — and since people are the
resource that generate your other key resource, money — an Engagement
Campaign is all about motivating people…

Brian DiMarzio, the deputy field director in Nevada, described it another
way. There was one night on the campaign, he said, that didn’t end the way
it always did. Clinton happened to be in town, and it was thunderstorming
badly. After her event, the staff dragged everything back to headquarters
in the pouring rain. The power was out, and they sat there in the darkness,
dripping wet.

Then, from the silence, they heard clapping.

It was Mook. He was going into his routine.

It started slow at first. Then other people joined in and the pace picked
up and the clapping got louder. It was still dark in the office — and they
were still wet. But soon everybody was clapping. They clapped faster and
faster, and then they were cheering too, and the sound in the room got so
loud and fast it was almost frenzied.

Finally they went still… and Mook started to speak.

“Everyone was back in that place he gets you in,” said DiMarzio. “He’d talk
about the event you just did, and about how it’s neck-and-neck, and it’s so
close, and” — he slipped into a Mook impression — “‘do you want to look
back at the end of this campaign, if we lose by 1,000 votes and think, I
could have maybe pulled in a couple hundred votes myself if I’d just done
15 minutes harder each day?’”

It was contagious, DiMarzio said. Former colleagues described similar
moments. Sometimes on a staff call — other times in the office. (One
referred to it as “the preach.”)

It’s about motivating staff, volunteers, and voters… To do that, you must
do more than merely talk about the candidate’s biography and policy
positions…

“He could get you to give everything that you had, you would give it, and
then thank him for it later,” said DiMarzio. “When you’re working more than
12 hours every day and it’s 10:30 p.m., you finish and think, I’m gonna
strangle Robby. But at the end of the day, you’d be clapping with everyone
else — and you believed it.”

… To engage people, you must inspire them.

“By the end of it, you’re on Team Robby, and you’re not getting off.”

A lot of people are on Team Robby.

It is a big team, full of committed teammates. By the time Clinton lost
2008, it had a name: the “Mook Mafia.” Its members share one thing. They
have witnessed or experienced firsthand a campaign with the 35-year-old
operative.

In the Mafia group, Mook is equal parts friend, mentor, and figurehead. But
for many of the affiliated, Team Robby is as much about its leader as the
political philosophy he champions: namely, the power of “organizing.”

Mook is now at the helm of Clinton’s second presidential campaign — and
that model will be tested like never before, on the biggest stage there is.
In each of the early states, he’ll construct what he did eight years ago in
Nevada: a true organizing program.

It will be the biggest challenge of his young career. Mook has managed
plenty of races since 2008. Most recently, he helped Terry McAuliffe, the
longtime Democratic fundraiser and Clinton family friend, become governor
of Virginia. But now Mook is running a campaign larger than his background
in field. And to accomplish what he does best, he’ll have to foster the
environment his campaigns require.

At the center of the intractable, messy thing known as “Clintonworld,” Mook
needs another Nevada: that rare mix of discipline and accountability with
enthusiasm and encouragement that makes his field programs possible.

It will be a momentous first — for Mook, for his followers, and for a
generation of operatives who see themselves as organizers. Never before has
a manager constructed a national campaign operation like this, so
deliberately or so squarely, under the banner of organizing or in the mold
of the so-called “Engagement Campaign.”

Hillary Clinton delivers a speech at a high school in Las Vegas in 2007.
Isaac Brekken / AP

About 10 years ago, Clinton was pitched on an early version of this
strategy. It was, she was told, a “new kind of organizing” — and it was
going to change politics.

This was the summer after the 2004 election, when a collection of campaign
aides from that cycle got the chance to attend a private gathering of
Democratic senators. It was an audience with some of the party’s top
legislators — and a rare opportunity to speak directly with the senator
many in the room viewed as the party’s next nominee.

So when the moment came, they talked to Clinton about organizing. Howard
Dean’s presidential campaign had done something special in New Hampshire,
they said. And there were technological advances rapidly changing the face
of elections. Imagine the gains Democrats could make, the operatives told
Clinton, if they could weave it all together.

Dean, of course, didn’t make it past February in the primaries. But for
many of the operatives and activists who came up in politics around the
time of his brief rise, the former Vermont governor helped redefine the
very concept of “field.”

Most campaigns focused almost exclusively on building supporter lists,
often from scratch. The effort requires identifying voters — supporters,
undecideds, backers of the opponent, and various shades in between. The
process, called “voter contact” in field-speak, is simple, time-consuming,
and necessary. And it happens only one way: door by door, call by call, for
hours and hours, every day. Campaigns can use staff and volunteers — but
often, they pay a team of canvassers to do the work.

In New Hampshire, Dean aides flipped the traditional field operation on its
head.

They pulled people off voter contact — away from the doors and the phones —
and instead trained them as organizers in the tradition of the ’60s and
’70s. Using techniques from the protest and labor movements of that era —
one-on-one meetings, house meetings — the Dean campaign set out to build a
volunteer army.

The idea went was this: Organizers sought to cultivate relationships with
voters, enlist them as volunteers, and then develop those volunteers into
“volunteer leaders” — who would invest even more time, take on even more
responsibility, and recruit even more volunteers. The objective was an
organization of devoted supporters, not cogs in the machine or paid labor.
And the result, ultimately, was far greater capacity for voter contact.

The volunteers, together, could do more at the phones and the doors and on
Election Day than the campaign ever could have otherwise. Or at least, that
was the bet. Each half-hour spent on organizing — finding, meeting with, or
training volunteers — was a half-hour that could be spent simply
identifying voters.

But the risk was worth pursuing, the Democratic aides told Clinton in 2005.

Zack Exley, an adviser on the Dean race who attended the meeting with the
senators, said that he and the other operatives urged Clinton to embrace
the organizing practices of 2004 — and to push officials at the Democratic
National Committee to do the same.

“We were saying to her, ‘Senator, you need to take care of that,’” Exley
recalled of the exchange. “‘This is a new kind of field organizing that’s
possible. If you connect it with the right online stuff, it’ll change
everything. You gotta get on this.’”

Clinton was a receptive listener — but remained unconvinced.

“The organizing takes care of itself,” the senator told the operatives,
according to Exley. “Once you have that clear message, then organizing just
takes care of itself.”

She believed organizing would “rise up around a good message
automatically,” Exley said. “Kind of like if setting up a field campaign
was like placing a media buy.”

Three years later, Clinton lost on message and on organizing.

Barack Obama captured Democrats’ eagerness for something different. And in
both Iowa and South Carolina, despite pressure from headquarters to keep up
with voter-contact metrics, aides were given the room they needed. Many
were among the upstarts of the 2004 races, an ascendant new class of
operatives-as-organizers.

Clinton had some of them, too. Mook won in Nevada — and his mentor, Karen
Hicks, the engineer of Dean’s New Hampshire program, oversaw the early
states. But aides at headquarters hardly made a full-scale commitment to
organizing. Even as Mook went to work building his field program, his
operation remained badly under-resourced.

“Robby ran a very organized campaign on a shoestring in Nevada,” as Hicks
put it.

One summer day, as temperatures climbed into triple digits out West, a
Clinton aide back in Virginia sent a staff-wide email to say: There’s ice
cream cake in the freezer.

“We never got any of the resources we needed,” said one former Nevada
staffer. “We have 75-year-old ladies we’re sending out to canvass in the
110-degree heat… and somebody in Arlington is saying there’s ice cream cake
in the freezer?”

This time, Clinton has made organizing the priority.

Campaign officials have said that the state directors in Iowa, New
Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada will not only have the resources they
need — but they’ll also get the candidate often, and in settings tailored
to benefit their organizing efforts. Internally, they have even replaced
the word “field” with “organizing” in staffers’ titles.

As Exley put it, with Mook in charge, “she’s not making the same mistake
this time.”

But there will be challenges. One question is whether the organizing model
can actually scale effectively across the board in a presidential campaign.
Obama came close in 2008. But before that, there were only isolated cases:
John Kerry did it in Iowa in 2004. And Dean, whose campaign helped
introduce organizing conceptually to a national electoral audience, really
only did it in one state — New Hampshire.

Hicks, the operative who pulled it off, said the approach “lends itself to
a primary” — and to a presidential candidate capable of exciting volunteer
support. But there are two things organizing requires, and they stay the
same, she said, “no matter what the campaign.” First is a commitment to
disciplined goals. Second is a commitment to the “shared values” — the
methods and the principles that guide the campaign.

Mook has excelled at both. But it doesn’t happen on its own. His campaigns
come with requirements — a particular kind of leadership and a particular
kind of anatomy.

If there is a prototype of the Mook campaign, it is Nevada in 2008.

For the evangelical belief in data — look to the sign that hung on his
office wall, a reminder to himself and the staff of the three steps in
their ongoing, data-driven process. “Set Goals, Experiment and Learn,
Celebrate and Appreciate,” it read.

For the sense of “accountability,” fostered by the subculture of field and
all its peculiarities — look to his idiosyncratic shorthand. One favorite:
“No silos!” (Always said as if with an exclamation point.) The meaning:
Keep communication open between departments. Another Mook term was the
“plus delta.” (A twist on the “action item.”) This one, derived from the
Greek letter denoting change, was a word for something specific that a
staffer could improve or incorporate into his or her goals.

For the self-discipline — look to his fascination with “personal mastery,”
which he preached to some of his staffers. It’s a concept from The Fifth
Discipline, a 1990 book by MIT’s Peter Senge. Personal mastery is defined
as a lifelong practice, divided into three parts: redefining and deepening
your personal vision, focusing your energy, and “seeing reality
objectively” as it pertains to others and, most important, to yourself.
(The book touches on other Mook tropes: Senge writes that organizations are
best built around a “shared vision,” not a leader’s goals or personality.
And teams, he says, develop “extraordinary capacities” beyond the sum total
abilities of individual members.)

And for his precise focus on the thing this was all for, the final goal —
look to Dec. 12, 2007, when just one month before the caucuses, Mook got
his regionals together to deliver big news. The numbers they’d all been
working toward, the ones in the manual, wouldn’t be enough. They needed to
double their goal — from 24,751 caucus-goers to 60,000.

Most of the team was alarmed. There’s a photo of two field staffers, Stuart
Rosenberg and Dan DeBauche, as they listen to Mook in the meeting. (It
still makes the rounds every few months.) Rosenberg is dismayed, bent over
in his seat, head in hand. “Stu looks like he’s about to have a coronary,”
said DeBauche, the regional field director for South Las Vegas, Henderson,
and Boulder City.

DeBauche is shown leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.
He looks fine. “Everyone was freaking out, but internally we already had a
plan,” he said. A couple nights before the meeting, Mook and Marlon
Marshall, the field director, had pulled DeBauche in to help game out the
new numbers. The expression, he said of the photo, reflected the calm of
the boss. Mook knew it was possible, so long as they could answer the one
question that mattered: “How do we get to 52% with this new reality?”

DeBauche, left, with Rosenberg, right, in the meeting with Mook and
Marshall in December 2007. Courtesy of Zack Exley

That’s the thing, essentially, they were asking, of themselves and of one
another, with every meeting, every organizing-book entry, every nightly
report. And the answer — it was another question, one written in all caps
on printouts, taped to the office wall:

“DID YOU REPORT YET?”

When organizers fell short, managers consulted the data — or the marble
composition books — before advising adjustments. (This is phase two:
“Experiment and Learn.”) If organizers were holding a good number of
one-on-one meetings with potential volunteers but barely recruiting any,
they’d get help on their asks. If they weren’t scheduling enough, they’d
get help with time management.

“If your numbers weren’t good, we needed to understand why,” said DiMarzio,
the deputy field director, of the organizing books. “That means you are
going to use every minute of every day as effectively as you could be to
elect Hillary Clinton.”

Mook made clear that meeting daily goals, even for the most junior members
of the organizing team, was essential to 52% in Nevada. Three hours of
call-time wasn’t three hours at a desk with a phone and a list of numbers —
it was three hours for which you were beholden to your teammates,
accountable for winning.

“He ensures that everyone understands their part in achieving our shared
goal,” said Mara Lee, who served as Mook’s caucus director in Nevada.

The work itself was a grind. Field staffers on the campaign recalled daily
disappointments: It wasn’t uncommon to invest hours in a volunteer who
would then flake on a commitment. Or to spend a day working the phones with
little success. (Consider the numbers: Say an organizer makes 150 calls to
potential volunteer recruits. From those calls, the organizer might
schedule 15 volunteer shifts. Of those shifts, 10 volunteers might show up.
And in that small pool, the organizer might find one potential precinct
captain. It’s hours of work for the possibility of one precinct captain.)

Once, as a “trial by fire” for a new batch of organizers, DeBauche asked
they make phone calls for 12 continuous hours, from 9 a.m. “straight
through until 9 p.m.,” he said.

He still hasn’t forgotten one. Lisa. She made 681 calls that day.

“Of course I remember,” he said. “That’s just ridiculous!”

Through the hot slog of Nevada, Mook worked just as hard as his team.

Eight years later, the old staff still expressed disbelief at his schedule:
He did things like arrive at the office at 6 a.m., leave at 3 a.m., and
then do it again the next day, they said.

Mook wanted the office to see him share in the work. He made it a frequent
practice, across departments, to take on jobs here and there, said Lee. “He
is notorious for doing the work himself: making fundraising calls, knocking
on doors, marching in the parade, separating literature — or whatever task
is needed.” Field staffers said Mook would jump into a regional’s office,
grab a call list, and run down 10 or 15 names.

He wanted to show them, Lee said, that “no one is too senior or too
important.” He also wanted to set the bar high for work ethic, another
former field staffer said. “He wanted us to see that he was always working
so that we would do the same.”

And he took every opportunity: At headquarters, a business center in Las
Vegas, the campaign occupied two ground-floor suites separated by a narrow
courtyard. Mook chose an office with large plate window that provided a
view outside — and into the other office suite across the way. Members of
the field team recalled a ubiquitous image from their time in Las Vegas:
Mook at his desk, always working, always within view.

The plain details of the Nevada campaign could sound grim: a strict,
grinding affair, all in service of a losing candidate whose primary defeat
meant her staffers could never completely share in the Democratic euphoria
of election night 2008.

And yet, the large share of the field team talks about their time in the
desert, living in 30-minute blocks, with warmth and zeal.

There is a second necessary piece to Mook’s campaign: It is cultural, and
it begins with him. There’s no easy explanation of the tone he sets, how he
sets it, and keeps it, even as the demands of the work grow. (“He’s just
one of those people,” offered Exley.)

Not everyone left Nevada as devoted to Mook as his team of organizers.
There were other departments — communications, operations. Mook ran them,
but his mind was always on the program. And his core following was there,
in the field department.

Those who worked as his organizers struggled putting into words exactly
what draws people to the young campaign manager. But many are, and have
been for years. Mook showed that from the start, in the summer of 2003,
when a group from Howard Dean’s campaign spent a sweltering weekend in
Durham, N.H., learning how to organize.

Hicks, leading the New Hampshire operation, had asked a veteran of the
trade to act as their teacher. And so Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor
who worked as an organizer with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in
the ’60s and ’70s, spent those few un-air-conditioned days going over the
basics: the relationship-building, storytelling, the one-on-ones, house
meetings, and the nuts and bolts of the quantitative side.

That was the part Mook liked — he was, as Ganz observed, “the data guy.”

But to colleagues, he was just as skilled with the interpersonal element.
“He was the best at people. Everybody coming out of the New Hampshire
experience was a mad genius at field. He was a mad genius but didn’t come
across that way,” said Exley. “People talk about the way Bill Clinton makes
you feel like you’re the only person in the room — Robby has that.”

“I think people felt genuinely loved by him. He exuded this love of
individuals.”

Some former staffers described him as they might a well-loved camp
counselor. He was serious about the work, but could be goofy. He had an
infectious enthusiasm for campaigns. And he put others at ease, old Nevada
colleagues said, because he was comfortable with his own eccentricities —
of which there were many.

He’d walk into the campaign office, and to greet the staff, let out one
long “TEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMM.” There were state-specific variations, too. One
former aide recalled him once yelling out to the Ohio office,
“APPALAAAACHHIA WOOMMENNN.” (They’d been targeting female voters in the
state’s Appalachian communities.)

When an organizer submitted his nightly report on time, without first
needing a reminder, Mook might offer his praise by spelling out a fake URL
— “www.accountability.com!” — as if a lighthearted pat on the back.

And then there were the nicknames. Everyone in Nevada had one. (Brian
DiMarzio was “Bri Guy.” Dan DeBauche, “De-Boo,” pronounced DEE-boo. And
Mara Lee, “Nobody Does It Like Mara Lee,” rhyming, of course, with the Sara
Lee jingle.)

Creating the right culture, Ganz said, ultimately becomes the “central
skill” required of a manager on an organizing-based campaign. “The old
school says there’s a boss that shouts at everybody and tells them what to
do,” he said. “People are terrorized.”

Mook makes his first television appearance as campaign manager last month.
CNBC

“A campaign needs to be a story, a strategy, and a structure. The narrative
is the values and the inspiration,” said Ganz. “The reason you need the
details and the numbers is not just so that you can watch people — it’s so
that you can learn.”

“You have to create a spirit of learning and of support.”

There was a larger effect in Nevada. People talk about the experience in
personal, almost electrifying terms. Some are eager to explain, to try to
tell you how it all felt in the end — the conditions, the exacting work,
the shared culture, just being around him. It was something close to
whatever they felt that rainy night in Las Vegas, soaking wet and clapping
— something close, a few said, to “inspiration.” It was heightening.

“It’s a crazy thing to be that inspired by somebody who is just a guy, you
know?” said DeBauche. “He gets the most out of people. If you have any
self-awareness, you leave that realizing that you accomplished things you
didn’t think were possible.”

“I knew it was happening as it was happening.”

For DiMarzio, Mook was like a coach. “He taught me how to organize my work,
how to be disciplined and focused, to do things I didn’t think I could do,”
he said.

“When someone teaches you, and empowers you, you start to think, I can do
this. I can do amazing things. Maybe I can do anything. Robby said I could.”

The mechanics of Mook’s campaigns have produced an unusual thing. It has
roots in Nevada and has grown in size and shape in the years since. It was,
in the months running up to his job on the 2016 campaign, talked about in
the media more than any of Mook’s previous accomplishments or
qualifications as a manager.

And it still is, many of its members say, badly misunderstood.

To observers, the Mook Mafia and an email listserv by the same name most
resemble a “cult.” The group is less an exclusive club, more a loose
confederation of friends and former colleagues, men and women, from various
campaigns, numbering around 150 people. The members are tight-knit enough
to attend an annual reunion. They don’t disagree it’s cult-like. But they
also don’t mean it in a bad way.

It’s just a by-product of the Mook experience.

They worked the hardest they ever had, felt more capable, more enabled than
ever by a state director who didn’t appear concerned with his own standing.
Just the team’s. And they bought into that, to the whole thing. They
committed to the organization, to the process, the cause — the leader. It
wasn’t “just for the candidate” that they all worked like hell, as one
field staffer said, “but for Robby and the whole team — because you really
were a team.”

The Mook Mafia has, in fact, been the most visible manifestation of that
team — of the buy-in that produces what appears to be, to the outside, such
strange devotion. The email list. The nicknames. (“Deacon Mook,” “Reverend
Marshall.”) The hashtags. (“#Mafia4Life.”) The reunion itineraries (with
maps, pictures, schedules). The grainy website, a WordPress blog from 2009,
featuring job listings and a Mafia logo. (The bubble lettering is, in place
of a color, filled with an image of Mook and Marshall.)

There’s been a conscious effort to keep the welcome feel of the campaign.
But they haven’t always succeeded.

In 2008, an invite-only offshoot group called the “Free Radicals”
materialized briefly, somewhere out of Indiana. It was too exclusive, a
“Mafia elite” for senior staff — and so they shut the thing down. The
incident was “small,” a former aide said, “but pretty big to a lot of
people who weren’t invited to join in.”

The logo on the Mook Mafia’s old website, now defunct. Wordpress

It’s all very intense. And Mook is often the focus.

Members once printed Mafia tees that read “Est. 2004,” not because the
group dates back that far — but because that’s the year Mook got his start
in politics. And in 2009, when the WordPress blog went live, a member left
a comment to congratulate the group: “glad Mafia finally got on the web.
next feat: a facebook page for Robby Mook.”

Marlon Marshall, his longtime right hand, emailed the list more often than
his counterpart and played a heavier role in facilitating events like the
reunions. Mook, meanwhile, is known as a private guy. He is social, but not
a partier. He does interviews, but not if he can help it. And he is the
first openly gay person to manage a major presidential campaign, but he
won’t be boasting about that or much else.

He is an unlikely fit for the figurehead role, and that may be why he’s in
it.

Peter Senge spends a good deal of his management book, The Fifth
Discipline, describing the qualities that make an effective leader.
(“Personal mastery,” the concept Mook mentioned to other staffers in
Nevada, plays a major role.)

There are leaders who are “heroes in their own minds,” writes Senge, and
they will never successfully lead an organization. True leaders don’t think
of their own interests: “Their focus is invariably on what needs to be
done, the larger system in which they are operating, and the people with
whom they are creating — not on themselves as ‘leaders.’” True leaders have
shared vision, and that results in a loyal following.

As Senge puts it: “Leaders with vision are cult heroes.”

It was November 2014, and it looked like he was going to get the campaign
manager job, when early one morning, Mook and his group ended up in the
headlines. The first one, an ABC News “EXCLUSIVE,” landed at 6:01 a.m., the
same day the Clintons and their friends and former aides kicked off a big
reunion weekend in Little Rock, Arkansas: “Read the Secret Emails of the
Men Who May Run Hillary Clinton’s Campaign.”

The group hadn’t been a secret. Neither was the Mook Mafia email list. But
the article, quoting a set of largely innocuous messages, cast the group as
controversial, maybe even salacious. (The most “eyebrow-raising” email was
a mock press release quoting Bill Clinton: “This is even more exciting than
walking through the back of the Bellagio.”)

The Mook Mafia list was shut down that day.

At some point over the year, the group’s WordPress blog was also removed,
its various pages scraped from the Internet Archive. And the last annual
reunion, one of the longest Mafia traditions, never happened. Since late
2008, when they all met up in Nevada, members of the group have made time
once a year for a weekend away. This was a first.

At no point did the story put Mook’s job in danger, but the incident
rattled some Clinton advisers. There were theories about the leak: Some
thought it came from a former staffer, one with an axe to grind against
Mook. Some saw it as a move to boost another operative’s chances at
campaign manager. Whatever the reason, some of the emails were said to have
been circulating among reporters for months. And when they made it into
print, when the email list was deactivated — the Mook Mafia died a little.

Since the ABC News story, there has been no activity inside the group.

It was the earliest, starkest sign that Mook would have to work hard to
create and preserve the very particular environment his campaigns require
to succeed — and that building it in the middle of Clinton’s world would be
an exceptional challenge.

In the four decades since Bill’s first run for office, he and his wife have
acquired a tangled and unwieldy network of friends, associates, and
confidants. Many worked on, advised, or meddled in unhelpful ways with
Hillary Clinton’s first presidential bid. The campaign’s outstanding
feature, in the end, was its dysfunction. The infighting tampered with the
team’s operation, and spirit, in a way Mook’s system could not abide.

Two months into the 2016 race, Mook has put the mechanics in motion.
There’s no doubt they’ll focus on organizing in this campaign. Senior
campaign officials will tell you that Clinton is headquartered in Brooklyn
— but that the lifeblood of the operation is in the early states. They’ll
tell you that the state directors are building a volunteer leadership
organization, that digital will enhance but not replace the classic model.
They’ll tell you this is a campaign to win Iowa, the first of the caucus
states.

But there’s more to it than that. There’s a difference between what Mook
hopes to do and what Ganz, the organizing expert, described as a purely
“mechanical” field program. People can “run around doing what they’re told,
reading scripts, getting responses.”

Or they can participate in an organizing program. But to make it work, Ganz
said, “people have got to support it, and protect it, and invest in it, and
believe in it.”

In the 2010 manual he helped write, “Campaigning to Engage and Win,”
creating a “deliberate culture” is ranked as the first task of any manager
— ahead of the budget, of fundraising, of building the website, of
developing trust with the candidate.

Every campaign has a culture — the way staff and volunteers engage with
each other and with your opponent and their staff. The challenge is taking
the time and creating the space to develop that culture deliberately…
Create a culture of accountability, not rules… a culture of excellence… a
culture of learning…

“Culture” is not a loose term. It is built into the program.

Strong campaigns are those where staff and volunteers are committed not
just to the candidate, but also to each other in a common purpose to win.

Eight years ago in Nevada — in a one-page document about halfway through
the training manual — Mook outlined his idea of the culture for the
campaign, the “Team Values,” in five categories: Respect, Accountability
and Discipline, Communication and Honesty,Leadership and Creativity, and
Teamwork and Loyalty. A string of bullet points follows the headings,
expanding on the tenets and qualities behind each one.

The last in the list reads, “Know we are at our best when we are together.”

There will be no shortage of resources for field in this campaign, no
question that the organizers will get what they need, no resentment in Iowa
or New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, over ice cream cake in the
freezer at headquarters.

The question is whether the entire staff — from the volunteers to the
campaign chair to the most seniors advisers to Bill Clinton — will support,
protect, and invest in what Mook does… Whether he can be the leader he was
in Nevada, overseeing a growing staff in Brooklyn, at the top of a
billion-dollar Clinton operation… Whether he can walk down the hallway and
duck into an office and run down 15 names on a call list… Or head into the
bullpen and let out one long, steady “TEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMM.” Can he do any of
that this time? Can he give a nickname to someone who’s been in Clinton’s
orbit for a decade, or get them talking about plus deltas or personal
mastery or setting goals — or ask them to use every minute of every day,
ask them to work harder than they ever have?

Can he make them followers — can he push them, inspire them, get them
clapping in the dark at night?

This is what the culture requires. Everyone in the campaign must give
themselves over to the rules; the structure; the rigor of adjustment; the
constantly changing goals; the trust in common, sincere shared values; the
purpose. Everyone must be accountable and must believe. Everyone must buy
in.

His success will depend on it.

*Will Hillary Be Our 3rd Black President?
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/05/will-hillary-be-our-3rd-black-president.html>
// The Daily Beast // Michael Tomasky – June 5, 2015*

Were Obama’s 95-5 margins an aberration because of his race? So everyone
says. But maybe 95-5 (or something close) is the new normal.

Here’s one story I predict you’re going to read (should you choose to)
about 367 times over the next 17 months: that Hillary Clinton isn’t going
to do as well or maybe even nearly as well among African American voters,
because, well, it’s obvious. Black people, we’ll be told, won’t be
enthusiastic about turning out to vote for her, because what’s she ever
done for them. And of course some portion of those 367 stories will feature
breathless speculation that the Republican, whoever it is, just might
surprise us among black voters, because remember what George W. Bush did in
2004, and the younger generation of African Americans don’t feel the old
loyalty to the Democrats their parents did, and, and, and, you can write
the rest yourself.

It will be a key element in the “Hillary’s in Trouble” meme that’s going to
dominate the coverage of her campaign in the mainstream media. But is there
any truth to it?

Yes, a little. Clinton and John Podesta and her other strategists are
acknowledging as much with the big speech she gave yesterday in Texas
laying the lumber into Republicans about voting rights and recent GOP
voter-suppression schemes. This was her first capital-P Political speech of
the campaign, and the fact that she chose to make that speech about this
topic and not a broader economic one, or one aimed squarely at women, say,
demonstrates clearly enough that Clinton is concerned about getting out the
black vote.

It was also a partisan speech, of the sort she doesn’t usually give and
most presidential candidates don’t typically deliver this early in the
process. If it’s true that partisanship turns off centrist voters, and it
is to some extent, then the Clinton camp obviously made the calculation
that with respect to this issue and the larger goal of black turnout,
alienating some white independent voters is a price worth paying.

But how much worrying does Clinton really need to do here? The standard
media line, as suggested above, will be that Obama skewed things by being
black and all, and that if you go back to 2004 and recall that George W.
Bush got 16 percent of the black vote in Ohio, that was somehow a more
“normal” state of affairs, since there were two white candidates.

So let’s look at the numbers. Yes, Obama did skew things. He won the black
vote 95-4 in 2008 and 93-6 in 2012. By contrast, John Kerry won the black
vote 88-11. If you go back to 1964, that’s exactly what the Democratic
nominee averages, 88 percent. The Republican averages 10 percent.

Aside from head-to-head numbers, there’s the matter of turnout. Obama also
inspired blacks to vote in larger numbers, of course, so they made up 13
percent of the overall electorate in 2008 and 2012, as opposed to 11
percent in 2004. The increase in Ohio was particularly striking. In 2004,
blacks constituted 10 percent of total Ohio vote. In 2012, they were 15
percent.

When Gerald Ford was getting 15 percent of the black vote in 1976, his
party wasn’t carrying out a jihad to make sure as few black people could
vote as possible or uncorking champagne when the Supreme Court struck down
the Voting Rights Act.

But here’s the question. Are the Obama-era numbers an aberration, or are
they more like a new normal? The near-universal assumption among
journalists is aberration. But here’s the case for why they might be
something closer to the new normal, which rests on two points.

The first is the much-discussed demographic change. The white vote over the
last three presidential elections has gone from 77 percent (2004) to 74
percent (2008) to 72 percent (2012). If the Obama era was an aberration,
you’d expect that figure to bounce back up. But electoral demographers say
quite the opposite. One comprehensive statistical model predicts that the
white vote will just keep dropping, down maybe to 70 percent in 2016. The
African American vote is expected to at least hold steady at 13.

But second and more important, it’s about the Republican Party of then
versus now. When Gerald Ford was getting 15 percent of the black vote in
1976, his party wasn’t carrying out a jihad to make sure as few black
people could vote as possible or uncorking champagne when the Supreme Court
struck down the Voting Rights Act. Or, for that matter, trying to make sure
as few working poor people as possible could have access to health
insurance.

When I was young I thought Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party was bad on
race, and it was, but the GOP is a far more openly and aggressively
anti-black-people party today. Back then, there were still a fair number of
moderate Republicans in the House and Senate who voted for civil rights
measures. Arguably the greatest legal crusader against segregation of the
1960s and 1970s was a Republican, the venerable John Doar. Heck,
Republicans in Congress even reauthorized the VRA when Dubya was president!
Those days are long, long gone. Maybe not forever, but certainly for the
foreseeable future.

Clinton will have to work it. And she is—a proposal for automatic voter
registration for every citizen who turns 18 (unless that citizen decides to
opt out), which she called for in the speech, is great stuff. But her
competition—unless they nominate Rand Paul, which seems increasingly
unlikely—is making it easier for her. She probably won’t duplicate Obama’s
numbers, but if someone wants to bet you that her black-vote totals will be
closer to John Kerry’s than to Obama’s, that’s a bet I’d advise you to take
in heartbeat.

*Hillary Clinton Cannot Afford to Lose Black Voters
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/hillary-clinton-cannot-afford-to-lose-black-voters-20150603>
// The National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 4, 2015 *

Barack Obama didn't need to do much—almost anything—to win record turnout
from African-American voters. Hillary Clinton will need to pull out all the
stops to score just a fraction of that support.

An exaggeration? Black political leaders don't think so.

"Make no mistake, there will be some drop-off," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver
of Missouri, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose
comments echoed those of other influential African-American Democrats.

Indeed, black leaders concede it will be nearly impossible for Clinton to
replicate the level of turnout Obama's candidacy generated among this core
demographic—a group of voters central to the national coalition necessary
for a Democrat to win the White House. So she'll need to coax them to the
polls by honing specific messages about policies relevant to the black
community, something her team says she's preparing to unveil.

On Thursday, Clinton will call for expanded early voting in every state,
including weekend and evening hours over many days before Election
Day—positions supported by Democrats who say working-class voters need
greater access to the polls.

And she'll specifically criticize laws in North Carolina, Texas, and
Wisconsin that, she argues, reduced rather than expanded access to the
polls.

These are significant targets for Clinton. Democrats have their eyes on
changing demographics in counties in North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere
that might begin to shift those states away from Republicans, perhaps as
soon as 2016.

Black voters, specifically, are growing as a share of the electorate in
many states. But while pollsters think Clinton will win them by similar
margins to Obama—95 percent of African-Americans voted for the president in
2012—her team should not underestimate the challenge she will have
motivating African-Americans to show up when the first black president
isn't at the top of the ticket.

In 2012, the U.S Census Bureau estimated that just more than 66 percent of
eligible black voters showed up at the polls—the highest turnout ever for
this demographic group, higher even than turnout among whites. Indeed,
Obama's support among black voters "went off the charts," said Brookings
demographer William Frey—enough so that minority turnout, especially black
turnout, was a deciding factor in the president winning a second term.

And in states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, a difference in
turnout of even a few percentage points could have big repercussions, Frey
added.

"You could call it the excitement factor," he said. "At least in these
states … where blacks are a huge part of the minority population, she's
going to need that."

In other words, unlike Obama, Clinton will really have to work for high
black turnout.

"I can't in all honesty say that she will receive the same level of support
as an African-American president," said Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, "but
clearly I do believe that if her message is strong she can get close."

Late last week, Clinton appointed LaDavia Drane, the former executive
director of the CBC, as her African-American-outreach director. Drane joins
a staff at Clinton's Brooklyn headquarters with several other high-profile
African Americans among its ranks, including Marlon Marshall, the director
of state campaigns; Maya Harris, a top policy adviser; and Karen Finney, a
senior spokeswoman.

Harris, sister of California Democratic Senate candidate Kamala Harris and
formerly of the Center for American Progress, has done research
specifically on encouraging greater turnout of minority women, and she
argued that they are a reliable voting bloc when they're given strong
policy reasons to vote. That's true of black voters overall, she noted, and
is part of the campaign's calculus.

"One thing we know is that issues matter—that at the end of the day,
whether [African-American] voters are going to turn out is going to depend
on whether they have been motivated to turn out," Harris told National
Journal. "Secretary Clinton is well-situated to do that, both in terms of
what she has already demonstrated in her life's work and in the issues
she's talking about."

That motivation will come partly from policy proposals and partly from
focusing on parts of Clinton's biography, the campaign says. Speaking in
South Carolina last week, she put deliberate focus on her early career
experiences at the Children's Defense Fund and her work for women and
children. The campaign is also talking about specific policy positions that
are relevant to the black community—health care, a minimum-wage increase,
substance-abuse issues, and perhaps most noticeably, criminal-justice
reform, which Clinton addressed in a speech at Columbia back in April.
Clinton aides are quick to note that it was her first policy speech as a
candidate—and with its proposals to provide body cameras for police
officers nationwide and end the "era of mass incarceration," it was a
direct response to unrest over police activity in Baltimore and other
cities.

"Her speech in New York was amazing," said Bakari Sellers, a former South
Carolina state legislator who backed Obama in 2008 but is now supporting
Clinton. "It's a serious plank in terms of African-American outreach, it's
one that can be developed, it's one that can help galvanize not just your
typical participants … but also a new generation of voices."

The other key piece of necessary strategy is the ground game. Cleaver said
African-American leaders are welcoming signs from Clinton that her team
will build a robust turnout operation in urban areas, which is something
Obama—whose candidacy was naturally a source of excitement to many black
voters—didn't need to do. Clinton's 2016 team, with campaign manager Robby
Mook at the helm, is placing heavy emphasis on grassroots strategy; it has
sizable field teams in the four early states.

"The president did not have to do a lot in the urban core, and didn't—he
used his resources elsewhere," Cleaver said. "So I think you're going to
find elected officials celebrating the fact that there's a great deal of
attention being paid to the ground game."

That starts in South Carolina, the only one of the four early states with a
large African-American population. Clinton's campaign has hired a team of
staffers and field organizers—including state director Clay Middleton and
state political director Jalisa Washington, both of whom are African
Americans with strong ties to the state's politics. A half-dozen field
organizers are already in place in the state, focusing on traditionally
African-American neighborhoods and gathering places as they start to
introduce themselves and the campaign to the state's voters."We are going
to where the voters are. So we are in faith-based communities, we are at
churches, we are at several social-justice organizations," Middleton said.
"We have field organizers that look like the community and understand the
community and can relate to those individuals."

*Bernie Sanders Is Surging Among White Democrats, Minorities Love Hillary
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/bernie-sanders-surging-among-white-democrats-others-love-hillary-n369251>
// NBC News // Perry Bacon Jr. & Dante Chinni - June 3, 2014 *

When Hillary Clinton gives a speech in Houston on Thursday at a
historically-black college calling for 20 days of early voting in every
state, she will be reemphasizing her long-held commitment to defending the
voting rights of minorities.

She will also be appealing to some of her strongest supporters: non-white
Democrats.

In the early stages of the Democratic primary race, one of Clinton's
rivals, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has drawn huge crowds and surged in
polls, although he remains well-behind the former secretary of state.

Sanders appears to have been benefited from the much-discussed divide
between traditional Democrats like Clinton and those who are more liberal
on economic issues like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

But another divide has emerged that favors Clinton: white versus non-white
Democrats. In a new Washington Post/ABC News survey, 56 percent of white
Democrats backed Clinton, while 14 percent supported Sanders. Among
self-described liberals, Sanders had 17 percent support, compared to 63
percent for Clinton. (Vice President Biden, who has given no indication he
will run, polled in double-digits among both groups.)

But among non-white Democrats (the survey did not break them down by
ethnicity), Clinton had 72 percent support, compared to 5 percent for the
Vermont senator.

This finding mirrors that of other surveys. As Dante Chinni wrote last
week, Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling shows that 68 percent of
non-white Democrats say Clinton does not need a primary challenger, while
the majority of white Democrats (53 percent) want her to face other
candidates.

Among white Democrats, 56 percent say Clinton will bring "real change,"
compared to a whopping 81 percent of non-white Democrats, according to the
WSJ/NBC survey. A CNN poll showed Sanders with 14 percent of the white
vote, compared to 5 percent among non-white Democrats.

A Pew poll in March, before Clinton formally started her campaign, showed
that 74 percent of black Democrats said there was a "good chance" they
would back the former first lady. Only 54 percent of white Democrats agreed
with that statement, with many of them (34 percent) opting with the less
enthusiastic "some chance."

Sanders disproportionate support among whites and liberals is an advantage
early in the primary process because it starts in Iowa and New Hampshire,
two overwhelmingly-white states. In Iowa, 93 percent of the Democratic
electorate was white in 2008.

And caucuses in particular reward the kind of intense supporters who are
drawn to a candidate like Sanders.

But he will need to vastly expand his base to become a true challenger to
Clinton. More than 40% of the people who voted for Obama in 2012 were
ethnic minorities. Blacks may be the majority of voters in some Democratic
primaries in the South, as they were in 2008.

For Clinton, barring the entrance of a candidate who would have more appeal
to minority voters (First Lady Michelle Obama would be very strong with
blacks and Biden would be more formidable than Sanders), this advantage
among non-white voters provides a kind of security blanket for her in the
primary.

But the former secretary of state is likely to keep courting non-white
voters, in part to prepare for the general election, where maintaining
Obama's huge advantage among minority voters is a virtual requirement for
winning.

While Clinton has said little to address economic liberals in her first few
weeks as a candidate, she has strongly emphasized her commitment to
creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and reforming
America's criminal justice system, issues that are strong priorities for
black and Hispanic activists.

Clinton has a long-standing and ardent opposition to some of the voting
provisions adopted recently by GOP governors and state legislatures, such
as limits on same-day registration and requirements to present a photo ID
to cast a ballot. In one of her first political speeches after leaving the
State Department in 2013, Clinton called a North Carolina law, "the
greatest hits of voter suppression."

She is expected to use similar language on Thursday, as well as calling for
Congress to write a new version of the Voting Rights Act, after one of its
core planks was struck down two years ago by the Supreme Court.

*Is Hillary Ready for More Debates?
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2015/06/04/is-hillary-clinton-ready-for-more-democratic-party-debates>
// US News // David Catanese – June 4, 2015 *

Since January, Republicans with dreams of occupying the White House have
dutifully traipsed to a dozen gatherings before audiences eager to compare
and contrast their options for the presidency.

In order, there was the Iowa Freedom Summit, the Freedom Partners Koch
brothers summit, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Iowa Ag
Summit, the South Carolina National Security Action Summit, the New
Hampshire Freedom Summit, the First In the Nation Republican Leadership
Summit, the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition forum, the South Carolina
Freedom Summit, the National Review Ideas Summit, the Southern Republican
Leadership Conference and Florida Gov. Rick Scott's Economic Growth Summit.

And on Saturday, the GOP contenders will make it a baker's dozen by
descending on Boone, Iowa, for Sen. Joni Ernst's "Roast and Ride," which is
also, essentially, a summit. With motorcycles and barbecue.

These summits aren't debates, but they do allow likely primary voters to
measure a contender's message, style and substance against his or her
competitors. Additionally, they attract gobs of media attention for the
slew of contenders seeking a breakout moment.

Yet so far, all of this action has taken place on the Republican side.

The Democratic field, which grew to four this week, has had no such
platforms. Not one.

What's more, while Republicans have agreed to hold at least nine and up to
a dozen primary debates, the Democratic National Committee is only
sanctioning half as many.

All of this is resulting in an obvious dialogue disparity between the two
parties, one that progressives are now moving to remedy, U.S. News has
learned.

In a move which could potentially place pressure on front-runner Hillary
Clinton to interact with her field of Democratic rivals sooner than
expected, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has made initial
inquiries to Democratic campaigns about holding one or more additional
debates, beginning as early as this August.

The PCCC, an ardent cheerleader of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the
Democratic Party, is advocating what they're dubbing an "open debate"
format, in which questions would be formulated by voters rather than media
figures.

They've even begun a dialogue with conservative groups to organize a
similar venture among Republican candidates, and are floating the idea of
holding an "open debate" for the general election.

The initial test, though, will be whether the liberal group can foster
agreement to participate from all camps on the Democratic side.

"Debates are absolutely essential if we want a race to the top with them
racing with each other to support big ideas," PCCC co-founder Adam Green
says. "There's going to be broad support among most progressives for more
debates, not less."

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signaled swift interest in the
organization's pitch.

"It's a great idea," says Lis Smith, O'Malley's deputy campaign manager.
"Gov. O'Malley enjoys taking unscripted questions from voters wherever he
goes, and we think it's critical that Democrats have more – not fewer –
debates."

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, is circulating a petition and
imploring the Democratic Party to begin holding debates this summer,
seemingly eager to take part in any format.

"More debates will encourage more people to vote, and when more people
vote, Democrats win," he wrote in an email to supporters this week.

But it's Clinton's participation that's the key to this effort, and so far
her campaign has been quiet on the topic.

After the DNC announced its plan for six debates, Clinton tweeted that
she's "looking forward to a real conversation," without making a firm
commitment to the number proposed. Her campaign did not respond to multiple
inquiries from U.S. News.

"We informed Hillary that this was brewing and let them know we'd like to
talk to them about it," Green says. Asked if he thought Clinton would
ultimately sign on to his idea, he replied, "We will find out."

As a historic party front-runner leading her field by an exorbitant margin
in the polls, there may not be much incentive for Clinton to expose herself
further.

But that's where pressure from interest groups and her rivals comes in.
O'Malley, Sanders and newly minted candidate Lincoln Chafee have shied away
from attacking Clinton directly so far, but that's prone to change if she's
skirting engaging with them. In fact, this could become the first fault
line in what's been a quiet primary.

And the PCCC isn't the only group that will be looking for facetime with
all of the candidates.

"We'll look for opportunities, once the field is set in the fall, to have
all the candidates engage with and make the case to our 8 million members
on key issues they care about," Ilya Sheyman, executive director of
MoveOn.org Political Action – one of the nation's leading progressive
groups – tells U.S. News in an email.

During the 2008 campaign, the last time there was an open-seat race for the
presidency, Democrats held more than two dozen debates between their
candidates, which eventually narrowed from eight to only Clinton and Barack
Obama.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton speaks in Columbia, S.C., on May 27, 2015. Clinton plans to
deliver the first major speech of her Democratic presidential primary
campaign in New York City next week in a new phase of her campaign adding
some fanfare and policy specifics to a White House bid marked by small
events in parts of the country since its launch.

The glaring reduction this cycle may best be explained by the perceived
lack of competitiveness on the Democratic side of the ledger. While a cast
of more than a dozen Republicans are bunched up in national and early
primary state polling, Clinton looms as the nominee-in-waiting, amassing a
46-point lead over her Democratic rivals in the latest CNN survey.

"I just don't see where there's an opening for anybody," Democratic
pollster Celinda Lake says. "There's not a lot of Democratic primary voters
looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton."

Many progressives consider that argument irrelevant, though. They see early
debates as the only way to pressure Clinton on their pet issues, such as
college affordability, financial regulation and expanding Social Security.

Plus, Green thinks his unique format could be potentially advantageous to
Clinton, because the questions will be driven by substance, not cable
newshounds trying to advance headlines on topics like The Clinton
Foundation or her email use.

"I assume they'd much rather talk about college affordability and Social
Security than more petty things like the right-wing scandal of the day," he
says.

Whereas Republicans worry a protracted debate schedule could damage their
party brand and wear down their ultimate nominee, some Democrats see less
risk in greater exposure of their national candidates.

"Our candidates, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, aren't a bunch of
crazy people. I don't worry about them saying something that would hurt the
party brand. I think getting our ideas out there in the mainstream would
benefit," says Boyd Brown, a Democratic National Committee member from
South Carolina and an O'Malley supporter. "The more debate, the better."

Now they wait to see if Clinton agrees.

*IRS sends Congress unsigned form letter to brush off demands for Clinton
Foundation investigation
<http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/irs-sends-congress-unsigned-form-letter-to-brush-off-demands-for-clinton-foundation-investigation/article/2565634>
// The Washington Examiner // Pete Kasperowicz – June 4, 2015*

The IRS responded to a Republican request for an investigation into the
Clinton Foundation's tax-exempt status with a one-page form letter that
starts with "Dear Sir or Madam."

In May, more than 50 House Republicans asked the IRS to review the Clinton
Foundation's tax-exempt status, after it became clear that the foundation
had failed to report millions of dollars in grants from foreign governments.

That letter, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, said a review was
"appropriate" given that this money was accepted and not reported while
Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state.

In response, the IRS sent Blackburn a form letter, which Blackburn received
late Wednesday. The letter thanked her for submitting the request, and said
the IRS has an "ongoing examination program" to ensure tax-exempt groups
comply with tax law.

"The information you submitted will be considered in this program," it
said. The letter was from Margaret Von Lienen, director of exempt
organizations examinations, but she didn't sign it.

Blackburn said the perfunctory response is far below the level of customer
service members of Congress should be getting.

"The IRS response is not acceptable and lacking in the requisite tact that
should accompany a congressional inquiry," she said. "It is unbelievably
disrespectful that Margaret Von Lienen couldn't even take the few extra
seconds needed to sign the letter."

"It begs the question – do they even take our request seriously? This is
exactly why people don't trust the IRS," she added, noting that 51 of her
colleagues took the time to ask a series of questions that deserve an
answer.

"We'd expect officials at the IRS, who also work for and are paid by the
U.S. taxpayer, to take the same care and effort in crafting a response to
our inquiry," she said. "The allegations swirling around the Clinton
Foundation are very serious and raise issues of great public importance."

*Clinton camp wants donors to contribute – by giving staffers a place to
crash
<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/04/clinton-camp-asks-donors-to-provide-place-for-volunteers-to-crash/?vgnextrefresh=1>
// Fox News – June 4, 2015 *

Apparently facing a space crunch at their new 2016 headquarters in New York
City, the Clinton campaign has started asking supporters to pony up their
Big Apple pads for the cause. An email sent Wednesday asks them to sign up
to "host" Clinton campaign workers arriving to the city.

“Do you have a spare room – or just a spare couch! – where a new staffer
could stay?” Marlon Marshall, director of State Campaigns and Political
Engagement at Hillary for America, asks in the email.

Marshall, who did not respond to requests by FoxNews.com for comment, said
in his email pitch:  “You and I both know that finding a place to live in
New York can take longer than an afternoon of apartment hunting.” But he
wrote that the campaign needs its new hires to start "right away" at the
Brooklyn HQ.

He then promised that the to-be bunkmates will most likely “be working long
days, so they really just need a place to sleep, and they’ll be so grateful
to be staying with someone who shares their beliefs and their goals.”

Of course, Marshall is right -- scoring an apartment in crowded New York
isn’t easy or cheap. According to the April 2015 Elliman Real Estate
report, Manhattan rents have gone up for 14 consecutive months, with the
largest increases seen in entry-level apartments. Brooklyn rents rose to a
new record in April as well apartments of all sizes in northwest Queens.

Whether droves of Clinton supporters are willing to go the extra mile and
open their doors to her campaign staff, though, is an open question.

The host-a-staffer drive isn’t the first of its kind.

In September 2012, President Obama’s campaign supporters were hit with a
similar request.

The pitch began by asking volunteers to open up their private residences to
some “dedicated organizers” working on Obama’s re-election campaign.

The email asked: “A group of the most dedicated organizers and volunteers
will be coming to Northern Virginia for the remaining weeks of the
campaign. They heard we’re looking to run a fierce ground game for
President Obama this fall – and they want to be a part of it. But here’s
the thing: They need somewhere to stay. And I’m hoping you can lend them a
hand with that.”

So what’s an apartment or house owner get in return? Tales from the
frontlines of a reelection campaign.

Obama's pitch said: “I bet they’ll come back at night with some amazing
stories about all the people they’ve reached and the energy they’re
sparking – stories that you might not get to hear.”

*Ohio secretary of state slams Clinton over voter access
<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/04/ohio-secretary-state-takes-aim-at-clinton-over-voter-access/>
// Fox News - June 4, 2015 *

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted blasted Hillary Clinton's call for an
overhaul of voter access laws Thursday, saying her proposals were less than
what the Buckeye State already offers.

Clinton’s top campaign lawyer Marc Elias launched a court challenge to Ohio
voting laws last month, claiming restrictions are designed to suppress
minority and young voters.

In a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston on Thursday, Clinton
blasted Republicans for “systematically and deliberately trying to stop
millions of American citizens from voting” and called for universal,
automatic voter registration for young people when they turn 18, as well as
a new national standard of 20 days of early, in-person voting, including
weekend and evening voting.

“What part of democracy are they afraid of? I believe every citizen has the
right to vote and I believe we should do everything we can to make it
easier for every citizen to vote,” Clinton said at the historically black
university.

However, Husted took issue with Clinton’s remarks, saying her proposals are
weaker than what Ohio already has on the books.

“With 28 days to vote and the ability to cast a ballot without ever leaving
your home, Ohio voters enjoy some of the most generous voting options in
the country. For this reason, and many others, our state is a national
leader in voter access,” Husted said.

The complaint against Ohio, filed by a group of lawyers -- including Elias
-- on behalf of The Ohio Organizing Collaborative and three individuals,
called for an injunction on a number of measures passed in Ohio in recent
years.

These included laws that limit the time and locations for early voting,
such as abolishing an early voting period known as “Golden Week” in which
voters could register and cast an in-person ballot on the same day.

The laws, passed by a Republican legislature and signed by GOP Gov. John
Kasich, “were designed to and will disproportionately burden specific
populations, including African-Americans, Latinos and young people – each
of which are, not coincidentally, core Democratic constituencies,” the
complaint said.

Husted mentioned the legal challenge in his remarks:

“Hillary Clinton is calling for a national standard for early voting that
is less than what Ohio currently offers. Given this fact, I call on her to
tell her attorneys to drop her elections lawsuit against Ohio. Stop wasting
Ohioans tax dollars defending your frivolous lawsuits,” Husted said.

*Attention, pundits: If the polls confirm Hillary’s slide, it must be true
<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/05/attention-pundits-if-polls-confirm-hillarys-slide-it-must-be-true/>
// Fox News // Howard Kurtz - June 05, 2015*

But the evidence was hidden in plain view.

For many weeks now, it’s been clear that Hillary has had an awful campaign
launch, that she has been submerged by an array of negative stories, and
that her message has been underwater as well.

But when I’ve brought this up—on the air, in print, at social
gatherings—what I’ve heard again and again is: It doesn’t matter. It’s not
a problem. This is media-bubble stuff. She’s emerged unscathed. It’s not
hurting her in the polls.

But now it is.

The pundit class is so poll-addicted that if something doesn’t show up in
fav/unfav, or right track/wrong track, or cares-about-people-like-you, it
didn’t happen. I know that journalists were just as aware as I was that
Hillary has been hammered since the day her listening tour began. But most
of them couldn’t believe their own eyes because, well, it wasn’t there in
the data.

Of course, polls can be a lagging indicator, and the barrage had to be
chipping away at Clinton’s image—especially among independents. And that’s
exactly what happened.

In the CNN poll, 57 percent say she’s not honest and trustworthy, compared
with 42 percent who say she is.

In the Washington Post/ABC poll, 52 percent say she’s not honest and
trustworthy, compared with 41 percent who think she is.

Now polls bounce around, of course, but those are troubling numbers.

They show the combined impact of the private emails scandal, the ethical
questions swirling around the Clinton Foundation, the six-figure speaking
fees, and one more thing: the constant avoidance of the press.

It’s not that people are up in arms about journalists getting stiffed. We
aren’t very popular either.

But by barely responding to questions about the negative stories, she ceded
the turf to all the damaging headlines. Her operation seemed antiseptic and
orchestrated. And by having bland conversations with small groups of
voters, Hillary made no competing news. She left a vacuum filled by all the
financial and email stories.

Perhaps that will change after Hillary does her Roosevelt Island kickoff in
New York next week. But impressions about trustworthiness are hard to
change, especially with a figure as well known as Hillary Clinton.

There is some truth to the spin that Hillary was always going to slip in
the polls when she descended from the lofty perch of secretary of State to
the grubby reality of campaigning. But that doesn’t fully explain her slide
on the honesty question in just the last couple of months.

Most political journalists are smart. They can see when a presidential
candidate is struggling. And they don’t need the latest pollster’s survey
to report what they’re seeing and hearing.

*This is what Hillary Clinton's campaign is saying about her poll numbers
<http://www.businessinsider.com/what-hillarys-campaign-says-about-her-poll-numbers-2015-6>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker – June 4, 2015 *

Some negative numbers from a pair of recent polls on Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign have made headlines this week and caused some
Democrats to express concern. However, Team Clinton has a different read on
the numbers.

Business Insider had a lengthy conversation about Clinton's poll
performance with a campaign spokesperson on Wednesday.

The spokesperson, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss polling
and strategy, pointed out there have been several surveys in addition to
the two that generated much of the hand-wringing, which came from CNN/ORC
and The Washington Post and ABC News. Both of those polls showed Clinton's
popularity is down, with about 50% of voters saying they have an
unfavorable impression of her.

The other recent polls cited by the campaign spokesperson came from The New
York Times and CBS News, the Des Moines Register, and The Wall Street
Journal and NBC News. The spokesperson noted that all of the recent polls
show Clinton well ahead of her Democratic primary rivals. Additionally, she
is leading in head-to-head matchups with all of her presumed and announced
Republican opponents.

While touting Clinton's lead on her prospective opponents, the spokesperson
argued her standing has remained strong in spite of what they described as
a period of sustained recent media scrutiny.

In the weeks surrounding Clinton's April campaign launch, there has been
extensive press coverage on a series of controversies involving her
personal finances, family charitable foundation, and her use of a private
email address while she was secretary of state. Along with bad headlines,
the spokesperson noted these flaps have fueled attacks from Clinton's
Republican rivals.

Clinton's campaign believes there is one number that shows she has
weathered the recent scrutiny.

The Des Moines Register poll, which surveyed Democratic voters in Iowa's
influential early primary, contained a specific data point that the
spokesperson said her team sees as evidence Clinton wasn't badly hurt by
the recent controversies and scrutiny. That poll showed at least 70% of
Democratic primary voters in Iowa are not bothered by the questions about
Clinton's emails or foundation. According to the spokesperson, the campaign
believes that proves various controversies that have emerged around Clinton
won't factor into the Iowa caucus — and potentially other states' primaries.

One of the main negative numbers from the CNN/ORC and Washington Post/ABC
poll concerned Clinton's trustworthiness. The CNN poll found 57% of voters
do not think Clinton is "honest and trustworthy. According to the
Washington Post/ABC poll, 52% of voters don't see Clinton as "honest and
trustworthy."

The spokesperson pointed out the CNN poll did not ask voters whether they
found any of the likely Republican candidates trustworthy. Because of this,
they said there was no point of comparison for Clinton's numbers.

Further, the spokesperson said Clinton's campaign believes a more important
question is asking voters who they trust to address the issues they care
about. They described this question as more finely tuned whereas a question
about general trustworthiness can be more subjective.

Additionally, the spokesperson said this is the key question Clinton is
trying to address with her campaign, which is designed to brand her as the
candidate who can serve as a champion for Americans who will improve the
economy.

The Clinton campaign spokesperson pointed out The Washington Post/ABC poll
showed Clinton is doing eight points better on the more finely tuned
question of whether she "understands the problems of people like you" than
the general trustworthiness question. In that poll, they noted she was
doing nine points better than one of her top Republican rivals, former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), on the more specific trustworthiness question.

Still, in spite of these arguments, there's no denying Clinton's
favorability numbers have declined in recent polls.

The spokesperson suggested this was a natural part of Clinton's transition
from being secretary of state to becoming a more apolitical figure, and
then reentering the political fray. They said the American public is
skeptical of the government and politicians. As a result, they argued
anyone who made themselves an official 2016 candidate would have issues
with trustworthiness and would not be able to avoid some decline in their
numbers.

In the end, though they said Clinton's team is satisfied with where she is
sitting in relation to her rivals, the spokesperson forecast the number of
people who say they trust her to confront the issues they care about will
improve. They identified this question as the key one her campaign is
designed to answer and predicted it will begin to do so as Clinton unveils
more specific policies following her relaunch event next week.

*Why you might eventually like Hillary Clinton
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-hillary-clinton-popularity-20150604-story.html>
// The Chicago Tribune // Jonathan Bernstein – June 4, 2015 *

This Candidate, you're going to believe, can really connect with the
American people. He/she is a new kind of [Democrat/Republican]. This
Candidate's qualifications for the presidency aren't just impressive. It's
uncanny how well This Candidate's skills and history seem exactly made for
the challenges the U.S. faces in 2016. Most politicians just spout cliches,
you'll think, but This Candidate talks with, not at, us.

Oh, and on a personal level: What about that heartbreaking anecdote about
This Candidate's family history? Why didn't This Candidate talk more about
the personal stuff earlier? People would have realized then just how
special he/she is. And what a refreshing collection of technocrats,
oddballs and respected veterans are running This Candidate's campaign!

Some things in elections are difficult to predict, but the cycle of
enthusiasm for presidential nominees isn't one of them. It's real,
foreseeable and practically irresistible. As John Sides said on Wednesday
in the Washington Post, "campaigns almost always rally each party's voters
behind their nominee." This is in the context of what he predicts will be a
temporary (and modest) decline in Hillary Clinton's polling numbers among
Democrats. But the ebb-and-flow pattern is even more relevant to the
generally dismal polling numbers the Republican candidates have compiled in
this presidential cycle.

The way we feel about politicians is affected by context. A good example is
to look back at John Kerry's favorable/unfavorable ratings over time. Back
before 2004, the year of his first presidential campaign, Kerry was mostly
unknown, but those who knew him liked him. He has a rating of 30 percent
favorable and 9 percent unfavorable.

As his campaign for the Democratic nomination began, his unfavorability
spiked (with both Republicans and Howard Dean supporters learning who he
was probably and not liking him), leaving him with a rating of 31 percent
favorable and 32 percent unfavorable.

Then he won a bunch of primaries, and his "you'll love this candidate"
moment arrived in spring 2004, when he peaked at 61 percent favorable. By
the fall, his unfavorable rating had almost doubled from 23 percent to 44
percent, and after losing to President George W. Bush he fell further. By
July 2005, he was at 42 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable.

Kerry's standing recovered once he returned to being a senator — with 48
percent favorability in spring 2013. After he became secretary of state, a
(seemingly) less partisan position, he got a big bump up. Last time Gallup
checked, in February 2014, he was at 55 percent favorable, 34 percent
unfavorable. It isn't that Kerry became more appealing or less appealing.
It's that we respond to political context more than we do to individuals.
It just feels as if we're reacting to those politicians.

I don't mean to sound cynical. The temporary enthusiasm we will feel for
our party's future nominee is healthy for democracy. It's healthy, too,
when our critical faculties re-engage along with disillusion. It's even
fine that most of us skip the critical stage by tuning out politics for a
few years. After all, the ability of most citizens to safely ignore
politics most of the time is a sign of the stability and success of the
polity.

So there's no need to worry much about the favorability ratings of
presidential candidates right now, especially with regard to the general
election. And [This Candidate] shouldn't be worried, either.

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*O’MALLEY*

*Ad Backing Martin O’Malley Jabs at Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/04/ad-backing-martin-omalley-jabs-at-hillary-clinton-and-jeb-bush/?nytapp=true>
// NYT // Nick Corasaniti – June 4, 2015 *

A new TV ad from the “super PAC” supporting former Gov. Martin O’Malley of
Maryland is titled “Wall Street’s Public Enemy No. 1.” But it seems the
intended target of the ad is Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush.

The ad from Generation Forward splices excerpts from Mr. O’Malley’s recent
presidential announcement speech, centered around his suggestion that the
head of Goldman Sachs would be “just fine with either Bush or a Clinton.”
It then repeats his criticism that “the presidency is not a crown to be
passed back and forth by you between two royal families.”

Mr. O’Malley has focused his early campaign message on the anti-Wall Street
sentiment popular among the Democratic left. But Generation Forward, while
staying at least on the surface in line with that theme, framed the
critique around political dynasties as well.

The $25,000 ad purchase will focus on the Iowa media markets of Cedar
Rapids, Des Moines and Davenport, and will start airing with Thursday’s
evening news.

The title of the ad comes from a phrase uttered by the Fox Business Network
correspondent Charles Gasparino, who said that Mr. O’Malley is “public
enemy No. 1 in the halls of Goldman Sachs, in the halls of Black Rock, the
big money management firm. All throughout Wall Street right now.”

*O’Malley’s claim on unprecedented wage stagnation for 70 percent of
Americans since World War II
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/04/omalleys-claim-on-unprecedented-wage-stagnation-for-70-percent-of-americans-since-world-war-ii/>
// WaPo // Michelle Ye Hee Lee*

O’Malley officially entered the Democratic presidential race last weekend,
framing himself as a progressive alternative to front-runner Hillary Rodham
Clinton. His launch speech focused on economic inequality and attacked Wall
Street and corporate power.

In describing the “growing gap of injustice in our country today,” O’Malley
said 70 percent of Americans are “earning the same or less” than they were
12 years ago, for the first time since World War II. Is he correct?

The Facts

O’Malley’s staff pointed to June 2014 research from the left-leaning
Economic Policy Institute and 1947-2013 historical Census data as sources
of his figures.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found slow and unequal wage growth in
recent decades, and a “near stagnation” of hourly wage growth over the past
generation for the majority of American workers. Hourly wage data compiled
by the group, from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, show a
breakdown by percentile from 1973 to 2013, adjusted to 2013 dollars. Hourly
wages for the 10th through 60th percentiles in 2013 were lower, or
relatively flat compared to their hourly wages in 2001.

The trend begins to change in the 70th percentile, whose 2013 hourly wages
($23.88) were slightly higher than in 2001 ($23.57). The increase in hourly
wage becomes progressively bigger in the 80th, 90th and 95th percentiles.
It is unclear exactly at which point between the 60th and 70th percentiles
that the trend changes.

This spreadsheet dates to 1973, and there were two other 12-year periods
when hourly wages fell or remained flat for the 70th percentile: 1973 to
1985, and 1979 to 1991.

EPI President Lawrence Mishel said the group does not track the information
back to World War II. But given that wages grew after the war and through
the 1960s, Mishel said he is confident there was not the same wage
stagnation in the 1950s or 1960s.

The EPI data support O’Malley’s general point that wage stagnation in the
last 12 years has been broader than in other periods, including previous
recessions, and occurred over two economic recoveries, Mishel said.

The 1947-2013 Current Population Survey data from O’Malley’s staff show a
breakdown of family income (not earnings) for each fifth percentile,
adjusted to 2013 dollars. The table shows that family income at the 80th
percentile is lower in 2013 than in 2001, and was the case for 12-year
periods going back to 1999. It is important to note that according to
experts, Census data prior to 1960s are not as reliable as more recent data.

The data support a “story of broad stagnation” for the American economy and
American families, although the language in the speech is imprecise, said
Gregory Acs, director of the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy
Center.

O’Malley says “70 percent of us” in America are earning the same or less.
That can be interpreted to apply to 70 percent of individual Americans, or
Americans at the 70th percentile.

The percentile data do not reflect individual Americans’ wages, and instead
shows the distribution of wages. The Current Population Survey does not
follow the same people over time. So the people who were in the 70th
percentile in 2001 may not be in the same percentile in 2013, even though
his statement could mean that 70 percent of the same Americans earn less or
the same 12 years later.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics does measure that information. The
ongoing study began in 1968, of nationally representative sample of
individual Americans. But such longitudinal study would not support
O’Malley’s claim, according to Urban Institute’s Stephen Rose. Tracking
individual wages this way would show growth in majority of 12-year periods,
if only for the life cycle effect: people tend to earn more money up to
about 50 years old, then even out until retirement.

O’Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris said the point that he is trying to make
is about broad and evident trends, not specific families or individuals.

The Pinocchio Test

O’Malley’s general point has some merit — that wages for the bottom 70
percent of Americans fell in the past 12 years. But neither dataset
provided by his staff supports the specifics in his claim, especially that
this is the “first time that that has happened this side of World War II.”
(PolitiFact rated this comment “Half True.”)

The EPI table dates to 1973, and the most recent 12-year period (2001 to
2013) was the third time wages fell between 1973 and 2013 for up to the
70th percentile. Census data from the campaign show the same trend started
in the 12-year period beginning in 1999, for family incomes at the 80th
percentile.

The 12-year decrease began in 1999, and the data do not exactly refer to
“70 percent of us” in America nor to earnings.

We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios. But the details matter —
especially when making such a specific statement in a speech as significant
as the announcement of his run for president. So O’Malley earns Three
Pinocchios.

*Eight years ago, O'Malley argued that Democrats needed to focus on the
center, not the left
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/our-process-picking-president-brutal-its-getting-worse-n369651?cid=sm_twitter_feed_firstread>
// NBC News // Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, & Carrie Dann – June 4, 2015*

Martin O'Malley is running as a progressive with a gubernatorial record to
back it up. The latest example came yesterday, when he vowed he "would
never give up" on efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, per
NBC's Leigh Ann Caldwell. But contrast today's Martin O'Malley with this
2007 Washington Post op-ed he co-wrote with Harold Ford Jr. (!!!) entitled:
"Our Chance to Capture the Center." In the op-ed, the two said, "Some on
the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic
Leadership Council, the party's leading centrist voice, aren't needed
anymore. But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would
be a greater mistake than ever before." More: "Contrast the collapse of a
conservative president with the success of the last centrist president.
Bill Clinton ran on an agenda of sensible ideas that brought America a
decade of peace and prosperity. He was the only Democrat to be elected and
reelected president in the past seven decades, and he left office more
popular than almost any other president in recent memory."

Remembering the context of that 2007 op-ed

Don't forget the context of that Aug. 2007 op-ed: It came when Hillary
Clinton (whom O'Malley had already endorsed) was facing Barack Obama and
John Edwards from her left. What's more, that entire message -- Democrats
must stick to the center to win the White House -- was pretty much undercut
by Obama's successful presidential victories in 2008 and 2012. One of the
reasons why some progressives haven't been jumping on the O'Malley
bandwagon was the sense that he ALWAYS hasn't been a progressive. And this
2007 op-ed, plus his endorsement of Hillary over Obama in 2008, only adds
to that sense, despite his progressive record as Maryland governor. First
Read reached out to O'Malley's campaign for comment on the '07 op-ed, but
we didn't hear back by our publication time.

Lincoln Chafee hits Hillary Clinton on war, trustworthiness // CNN Jeremy
Diamond – June 4, 2015

The latest Democratic presidential candidate is running to Hillary
Clinton's left on foreign policy, but when it comes to questions about her
emails and foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, Lincoln Chafee
sounds like a Republican.

Chafee pointed to what he described as Clinton's "long record just going
back over decades of questionable ethical practices," pointing not just to
recent questions over Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, but also to
the decades-old Whitewater scandal on Thursday in an interview with CNN's
Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

"It seems like it just never stops," Chafee said. "Anytime you're running
for office...trustworthiness is a main concern of the voters," Chafee said
Thursday on CNN's "New Day."

Chafee hinted at a recent CNN/ORC poll that showed 57% of Americans believe
Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, up from 49% in March.

Those numbers came as Republicans have continued to hammer Clinton on her
use of private email housed on a personal server during her time as
secretary of state and over foreign donations made to the Clinton
Foundation during that same time.

"Those poll numbers and that perception of untrustworthiness, it just
cannot sweep away. It's something very, very important no matter what
office you run for," Chafee said.

Clinton's other two primary opponents, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and
former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, have looked to set up a contrast with
Clinton but have been warier of attacking Clinton, notably on the questions
swirling around the Clinton Foundation and her email use.

But Chafee hasn't hesitated, even before he formally announced his
candidacy Wednesday.

Chafee is also going after Clinton's record on foreign policy, calling her
a "hawk" in the interview Thursday. And he is saying that Clinton's vote in
favor of the Iraq War in 2002 -- which she has since called a mistake --
should disqualify her from carrying the Democratic Party banner into the
2016 general election.

"I would submit to the Democrats across the country we are going to be
compromised in trying to win the election in 2016 if our nominee supported
the war in Iraq," Chafee said Thursday. "In 2016, this should be a
republican war, a Republican mess (in Iraq)."

He said he plans to raise questions about how the U.S. got "into this
endless tragic quagmire" in Iraq and "who made the mistakes that got us
there."

Not Chafee, he would argue, as he voted against authorizing military
intervention in Iraq when he was a U.S. senator.

Chafee said he would present himself as the candidate who wants to "wage
peace," not war.

He is also running on a less common presidential platform: bringing the
metric system to the U.S., which he said would ring "big economic benefits"
to the country.

*Martin O'Malley Just Took His Populist Pitch Full-Throttle
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/martin-omalley-populist-pitch-full-throttle/story?id=31520684>
// ABC News // Ali Dukakis – June 4, 2015*

The Democratic Party’s newest candidate on the block, Martin O’Malley, took
his Wall Street offensive full-throttle Wednesday, attempting to capitalize
on signs that questions about the Clintons’ personal earnings and the
dealings of their foundation could mean a fall from grace for presidential
front-runner Hillary Clinton.

In his first public engagement as a presidential candidate, the former
Maryland governor joined the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce at the
Newseum in Washington, D.C., for 45 minutes of questions and answers with
the chamber president and CEO Javier Palomarez. O’Malley then took a
handful of questions from reporters who had been pre-selected on a
first-come basis.

O’Malley launched his populist appeal right out the gate, answering
Palomarez’s first question asking him to describe who he is and why he
should be president after a recent CBS News poll found 72 percent of
Democrats don’t know him well enough to decide whether they’d support his
bid for president.

“I am one of six kids born to Tom and Barbara O’Malley who are two
Americans born into The Depression,” O’Malley said.

He added that his father was only able to afford college thanks to the G.I.
Bill, and “the generous country that understood that the stronger we made
our citizens, the more we made it possible for more families to send their
kids to college, the stronger we would be as a nation.”

Citing chatter that O’Malley, 52, has shown reluctance to take on Clinton
directly, Palomarez asked, “So the question is, and no pun intended here
governor, are you, as they say, ‘Ready for Hillary’?”

O’Malley remained steadfast in painting himself as a candidate of the
people looking to save the American Dream, which he said “is in deep
trouble.”

“Other candidates in this race have come to the conclusion that they have
that combination of experience and vision to be able to do this and so now
the way it works is now that we’ve made up our minds, now the public gets
to decide, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work,” he said, striking
Clinton.

While answering a questions about whether he’d accept contributions from
big businesses to his campaign, O’Malley said, “I understand I’ve been
named public enemy number one by Goldman-Sachs, so while I’m three days a
presidential candidate, I am one day a public enemy of Goldman-Sachs.”

O’Malley, also a former mayor of Baltimore, hit populist high notes as he
charted the history of America’s workers and wage from its high-functioning
peaks during the New Deal, citing a sea change 30 years ago that brought
the U.S. economy to the perilous state it’s in today.

“We need to realize that our economy is not money, our economy is people,
and we need to put wage policies at the center,” he said.

He later added, “No state and no city is an island, we need to get our
national economy functioning again by getting wages to start rising instead
of declining.”

Even in response to questions unrelated to America’s economic climate or
Clinton herself, O’Malley seemed to work income inequality and the
importance of taking down big money giants into many of his answers.

When faced with a damning statement from the Maryland ACLU that named his
legacy as governor, specifically his “zero tolerance” policing strategy, as
a culprit in creating high tension and distrust between the citizens and
police in Baltimore, O’Malley cited his record of cutting the crime rate
and number of police-involved shootings “to the lowest level I think in
modern times,” but ultimately brought his message back to income inequality.

“These policing incidents are the spark, but the rage that erupted in
Baltimore that night was not only about policing, and not only about race –
it was about the fact that our economy is leaving huge portions of our
population behind,” he said in reference to the April rioting after the
funeral of Freddie Gray, the man who died in police custody.

Of course, the populist message isn’t unique to O’Malley. Also playing on
the Democratic primary field is Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who
solidified his reputation as a fierce critic committed to taking down Wall
Street fat cats far before he set his sights on the White House.

And with the effort to draft perhaps big business’ greatest watchdog in
government, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to run for office officially
coming to an end this week, it seems O’Malley may be sensing it’s his time
to distinguish himself on one of the issues that matter to the party most –
and that happens to be an area of weakness for his main opponent, Clinton.

*O'Malley Is Running To The Left, But In 2007 He Urged The Center
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/omalley-running-left-2007-he-urged-center-n369721>
// NBC News // Mark Murray – June 4, 2015 *

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who has tried to seize the
progressive mantle in his White House bid, wrote an op-ed he eight years
ago where he argued that the center - not the left - should be the
Democratic Party's focus.

The 2007 Washington Post op-ed he co-authored with former Congressman
Harold Ford Jr., then the chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership
Council was entitled "Our Chance to Capture the Center."

The two men wrote, "Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such
as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party's leading centrist voice,
aren't needed anymore. But for Democrats, taking the center for granted
next year would be a greater mistake than ever before."

The op-ed is a contrast with what O'Malley has been promoting in his
presidential bid.

At his speech officially announcing his presidential candidacy last
Saturday, O'Malley said, "Our economic and political system is upside down
and backwards and it is time to turn it around."

In his eight years as Maryland governor, O'Malley racked a record with
progressive achievements on gay marriage, gun control and immigration.

But the context of that 2007 op-ed is striking: It came when Hillary
Clinton (whom O'Malley had already endorsed) was facing Barack Obama and
John Edwards from her left in the 2008 contest. What's more, that entire
message - Democrats must stick to the center to win the White House - was
pretty much undercut by Obama's successful presidential victories in 2008
and 2012.

O'Malley and Ford also wrote: "Contrast the collapse of a conservative
president [George W. Bush] with the success of the last centrist president.
Bill Clinton ran on an agenda of sensible ideas that brought America a
decade of peace and prosperity. He was the only Democrat to be elected and
reelected president in the past seven decades, and he left office more
popular than almost any other president in recent memory."

Reached for comment about this 2007 op-ed, the O'Malley campaign cited a
2002 Baltimore Sun article with O'Malley calling himself a "progressive
liberal." The article, however, also recounts O'Malley's appearance at a
Democratic Leadership Council event.

"O'Malley said he was recruited to join the DLC soon after he was elected
mayor three years ago. He said that although he enjoys debating strategy
with the organization, he doesn't subscribe to all the positions of its
leadership," the Sun article says. "He said he made clear his differences
in discussions that included leaders such as Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman of
Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana and focused on what the council calls
the 'battle over the soul of the Democratic Party.'"

*Martin O'Malley going after 'bullies of Wall Street' in campaign, but he
has ties to big banks too
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/martin-o-malley-wall-st-ties-big-banks-article-1.2246630>
// NY Daily News // Cameron Joseph – June 4, 2015*

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has been bashing Hillary Clinton for
being too cozy with Wall Street, but he's got some ties of his own to
financial big-wigs.

O'Malley has been looking to show he's a populist warrior in the Democratic
presidential primary, hoping he can get to Clinton's left and capitalize on
the anti-Wall Street mood coursing through the progressive base while
ripping Clinton for her well-heeled support.

"When you have somebody that's the CEO of one of the biggest
repeat-offending investment banks in the country telling his employees that
he'd be fine with either Bush or Clinton, that should tell all of us
something," O’Malley said on ABC Sunday, pointing out that Goldman Sachs
CEO Lloyd Blankfein has said he'd be happy with either Clinton or former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the White House.

O'Malley also warned the "bullies of Wall Street" during his Saturday
campaign announcement that "the presidency is not a crown to be passed back
and forth by you between two royal families."

But while he was the finance chairman of the Democratic Governors
Association in 2008, Goldman Sachs gave $100,000 to the organization.

O'Malley admitted on Wednesday that he "probably" had asked for big checks
from financial giants in the past before refusing to rule out soliciting
more from the financial industry for his presidential bid.

"I probably have. I was the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
I'm quite sure I've called everybody that they've put up sheets in front of
me," he said when asked about past donations during an event in Washington
with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, referring to the fundraising
call sheets candidates dial through looking for donations.

"I'm not prone to call up the head of Goldman Sachs or those individuals,
nor am I inclined to tell those people in the financial industry that they
shouldn't be involved in my campaign, in fact I think they should," he
continued. "There's a lot of good people who work in our financial
industry."

Hillary Clinton has been slammed by O'Malley for her ties to Wall Street.

That's a different tune than a Wednesday fundraising email from O'Malley's
campaign that asked for donations to "help us fight back against Wall
Street."

According to CNBC, O'Malley wined and dined with Wall Street leaders
including Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of UBS
Investment Bank, and Marvin Rosen, a corporate and securities lawyer, at
the swanky Lever House in November 2013.

Some of O'Malley's current campaign supporters have ties to big banks as
well.

George Appleby, who introduced him last weekend in Iowa, is a registered
Des Moines lobbyist who counts Wells Fargo and OneMain Financial, formerly
the Citigroup Management Corporation, among his clients.

O'Malley began his career as a member of the business-friendly Democratic
Leadership Council, and his current rhetoric runs counter to a 2007 op-ed
he coauthored with the group's then-leader and former Rep. Harold Ford
(D-Tenn.), who currently works for Morgan Stanley and at the time was at
Merrill Lynch.

The two wrote then that Democrats must seek a "centrist agenda" and praised
Bill Clinton's presidential campaign for its "sensible ideas."

And when O'Malley was governor, he appointed former Legg Mason CEO Richard
C. Mike Lewin to the Maryland Transportation Authority and former Deutsche
Bank Alex Brown managing director Mark Kaufman to head Maryland's committee
on financial regulation.

Kaufman helped O'Malley keep banks from foreclosing on families during the
financial crisis and was named the 2014 consumer advocate of the year by
the Maryland Consumer Rights Association.

O'Malley is now calling to break up the big banks and reimpose the
Glass-Steagall Act, which would impose tighter restrictions on the banking
industry.

Professor Adam Sheingate of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said
O'Malley "never took a populist anti-Wall Street stance" when he was mayor
or governor, though he pointed out that O'Malley successfully pushed
through some new financial regulations while he was in office.

"He can say he took on the financial services industry, and he did some
things that I don't think went very far in terms of curtailing payday loans
and require banks to renegotiate mortgages instead of foreclose on people,"
he said.

O'Malley's campaign downplayed his ties to banks.

"Governor O'Malley's strong call to finally rein in Wall Street has clearly
struck a chord with the powers that be. They can try to leak as many
meaningless tidbits as they want, but Governor O'Malley has shown he will
stand up to his own party to call for real structural and accountability
reforms of Wall Street," O'Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris told the Daily
News.

"Rather than engaging in this silly back and forth, every candidate should
have the courage to say where they stand on this issue."

*SANDERS*

*Bernie Sanders asks Congress to spend $5.5 billion on 1 million jobs for
youths
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bernie-sanders-asks-congress-to-spend-55-billion-on-1-million-jobs-for-youths/2015/06/04/0354e9dc-0ae6-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html>
// WaPo // Aaron Davis – June 4, 2015 *

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday called on
Congress to immediately fund a million jobs for disadvantaged young
Americans, adding to a pile of high-cost plans that might only become
reality if he prevails in his longshot bid for the White House.

Sanders’s bill, which he introduced in a D.C. neighborhood with relatively
high unemployment and crime rates, would send $5.5 billion to local and
state governments to fund job-training programs. Much of the money would go
to helping unemployed African Americans. Sanders suggested the investment
could pay for itself if it keeps more young black men out of jail.

“If current trends continue, 1 in 3 black males born today can expect to
spend time in prison during his lifetime. This is an unspeakable tragedy,”
Sanders said. “But this crisis is not just a destruction of human life. It
is also very, very costly to the taxpayers.” Sanders pegged the country’s
annual prison tab at $70 billion.

“It makes a lot more sense to me to be investing in jobs, in job training .
. . than to be building more and more jails and to be locking more and more
people up,” Sanders said.

The bill, introduced with longtime Michigan Rep. John Conyers (D), comes as
declared Democratic presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Hillary
Rodham Clinton have tried to find the right tone to respond to riots from
Ferguson to Baltimore over police tactics that stirred national debate over
racial and economic inequality.

For Sanders (I-Vt.), the bill’s introduction also highlighted the long and
detailed — if highly controversial — policy plans he has put on the record
over three decades on Capitol Hill. The Vermont independent has recently
renewed legislative efforts for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending and
$750 billion in new taxes on overseas profits to make all state college and
universities free.

Announcing the policy in D.C. also marked a rare campaign-style appearance
for a candidate in the nation’s capital. While election-year fundraisers in
the city abound and Clinton is expected to appear before a congressional
committee investigating her e-mail retention as secretary of state,
candidates usually seek backdrops as far from D.C. as possible.

On Thursday, Sanders traveled just three miles down Pennsylvania Avenue
from the U.S. Capitol. Across the Anacostia River in a building atop a
rundown strip mall, Sanders noted the unemployment rate, which hovers
around 15 percent there and above 20 percent in the city for young black
men.

The event raised the possibility that Sanders may embrace D.C. in his
campaign, where he has readymade access to the city’s large press corps,
and his role as a current elected lawmaker is unique among Democratic
contenders.

It was the third event Sanders has held in D.C. since the spring, including
his announcement outside the Capitol, and a town hall meeting before he
became a candidate. At that event, he warned of impending disaster in the
next federal budget decided by congressional Republicans.

As he rushed back to the Capitol for a vote Thursday in a compact car with
Vermont tags, Sanders declined to comment on whether President Obama had
done enough on youth unemployment, or on the positions of his competitors.
Clinton has spoken without specifics about addressing youth unemployment,
and O’Malley has talked about using the fourth year of high school for
skills training.

“This issue is a crisis facing American society. It is an international
disgrace,” Sanders said. “It has to be dealt with, and I hope every
candidate feels that we have to address this issue.”

*Bernie Sanders, The Wide-Eyed Pragmatist
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/bernie-sanders-2016_n_7514328.html>
// HuffPo // Sam Stein – June 4, 2015 *

With days to go before Congress adjourned for August recess last year, the
prospects of passing a Veterans Affairs reform bill looked dim. Weeks of
turmoil over long waits, cover-ups, and potentially avoidable deaths at VA
hospitals had not produced a legislative agreement. Instead, the two
lawmakers responsible with crafting one hadn't spoken in days.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who as chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs
Committee was half of this duo, hastily organized a press conference to
lash out at his House counterpart, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), for pushing a
proposal outside the agreed-upon parameters. Miller's office responded by
leaking emails showing that Sanders' staff had refused to join a meeting in
retaliation for not being given advance notice.

The VA reform effort seemed likely to end up in the same trash heap as all
the other attempts to respond to the crises of summer 2014, from illegal
border crossings, to lost IRS emails, to the dwindling highway trust fund.

And then, it was saved.

A phone conversation took place between Sanders and Miller. Their staffs
held marathon negotiating sessions. And three days before the calendar
turned to August, they finalized a deal. It permitted veterans to get care
at private hospitals under certain conditions, spent $5 billion to shore up
the VA's own system, allocated additional funds to leasing new facilities
and implemented new policies to encourage doctors to work for the VA.

The revitalization of VA reform legislation is an unsexy tale. It is the
story of two lawmakers who swallowed their ideological pride to make
moderate progress. But it also illustrates a defining paradox of one of the
more dynamic figures currently in politics.

Bernie Sanders, the wide-eyed socialist running for president in 2016, just
happened to produce one of the few -- and perhaps the largest -- bipartisan
legislative breakthroughs in the last Congress.

"I'm a pragmatist," Sanders said in an interview with The Huffington Post.
"If I was a writer or paid to go around giving speeches, then that is
something I could do. But I was elected by the people of Vermont to be
their elected representative in Washington. And that requires me to shape
and pass legislation.”

Few people think of Sanders this way. His reputation -- reinforced by his
firebrand speeches, rumpled suits and Dr. Emmett Brown hair -- is that of
an uncompromising ideologue. And he often plays the part. He's been
virulently opposed to Trade Promotion Authority for years and has an
unbending view of Social Security: it should be expanded, not cut. This
past week, he indicated on "Meet The Press" that he'd support a bill
reforming the NSA's bulk data collection program, even if he thought it
didn't go far enough. Days later, he voted against it.

But those who work with him in Congress see Sanders differently. Miller
called him a "realist" whose inability to play coy was refreshing.

"He is very open and honest as he goes through the process," Miller said.
"You know where Bernie is coming from."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who helped write the Senate version of the VA
reform bill, praised Sanders for having the gumption to drop F-bombs one
minute and counteroffers the next.

"Negotiating with Bernie was not a usual experience, because he is very
passionate and he and I are both very strong-willed people and we spend a
lot of time banging our fists on the table and having the occasional
four-letter word," McCain said. "But at the end of the day, Bernie was
result-oriented."

Sanders rose through the political system, rather than entering it late. He
was a mayor for eight years and a congressman for 16, during which time he
figured out that protest votes and purity could only get him so far. He
pursued smaller priorities to attach to larger pieces of legislation that
he invariably found less than ideal. A Rolling Stone article from 2005
called him "the amendment king of the current House of Representatives," as
he'd passed more roll call amendments than any other member.

This pick-your-spots approach extends to the current day. Sanders has
routinely flouted the Democratic Party's agenda on gun control. He got $12
billion for community health centers included in the final version of
Obamacare, which he ultimately voted for despite being an unwavering
single-payer advocate. He secured a provision for an audit of the Federal
Reserve in the final version of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which
he voted for despite worries that it didn't go far enough.

The latter, in particular, separates Sanders from certain politicians to
whom he's often compared. He helped strike a deal to make the Fed audit a
one-time thing, which ultimately led to its passage. But it also ended up
splintering Sanders from his collaborator on the issue, former Rep. Ron
Paul (R-Texas), who had wanted the audit to be rolling.

"We were very disappointed when Sen. Sanders gutted Audit the Fed in 2010
and are even more disappointed that he has thus far refused to cosponsor
Audit the Fed this Congress," said Megan Stiles, communications director
for Paul's Campaign for Liberty.

Sanders' team doesn't mind such criticisms, in part because there's little
risk that anyone outside Paul's universe will brand him a sell-out.
Compared to other politicians running for president, Sanders is downright
rigid. That he has pursued a few policy victories on the side just makes
him a more open-minded member of that rigid class.

"After decades of Congressman Paul trying, Bernie was able to actually get
a piece of legislation passed," said Michael Briggs, Sanders' long time
aide.

The tougher criticism comes from those who argue that Sanders' victories
aren't nearly as impressive as he wants voters to believe. Despite the
praise from McCain and Miller, others ask how the VA was allowed to
deteriorate so badly with him chairing the veterans' affairs committee.

"I think he is an ideologue and had a very difficult time getting anything
done for vets," said Paul Rieckhoff, the founder and executive director of
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "Oftentimes he just viewed the
criticism of the VA as an attack on the VA … Saying he reached a compromise
with John McCain after the whole world saw what happened is not a win."

To be sure, problems persist within the VA, even after last summer's
passage of the law. Sanders said he wanted more money in the final bill to
shore up long waits at VA hospitals. His staff, meanwhile, frames the
legislation as reform-minded pragmatism rather than political ingenuity,
though they do praise some of its smaller components, such as student loan
repayments for VA doctors.

"The fact is, he was able to work with McCain across the party aisle and
accomplish the most significant piece of legislation in the past year,"
Briggs said. "Yes, the bar is pretty low. But they got it passed, without
much help from Paul Rieckhoff."

So far in his run for the White House, Sanders has spent little time
talking about this or other elements of his legislative record. This is
partly because producing legislation is an inherently unflattering process
filled with messy trade-offs. But more to the point, it's not the most
galvanizing part of his candidacy. It's better, after all, to warn of the
ills of politics than to tout that you, too, know how to play the game.

"In given moments in my political career, we had to make compromises to get
things done. And of course I’ve done that. And I will continue to do that,"
Sanders said. "But at the end of the day, the way we bring about real
change and the way we are most effective is by rallying the people to stand
up and fight back."

*Bernie Sanders scrambles to build Iowa team to meet popular demand
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/04/bernie-sanders-scrambles-build-iowa-team/28477881/>
// The Des Moines Register – June 4, 2015*

Campaign aides for liberal warrior Bernie Sanders are scrambling to hire
more staff in Iowa and open an Iowa office to keep up with momentum as each
of his events attracts a crush of hundreds.

"People are out ahead and we're trying to play catch-up organizationally to
give these people a vehicle to participate in the campaign," Sanders'
campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told The Des Moines Register on Thursday
morning.

Sanders is the no-party Vermont U.S. senator who's running for president as
a Democrat. His rebel yell calling for a revolution — he wants to fight
economic inequality and wrest control of the government from millionaires —
has brought Iowans running.

Sanders's crowd-attracting abilities are reminiscent of another
revolution-rallying, white-haired grandfather-like figure who was also
famous for stemwinders on big change for the federal government: Ron Paul,
the Republican who finished in third place just 3 points behind the leaders
in the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

While Paul was a libertarian-leaning conservative who blasted U.S.
intervention in the Middle East and the war on drugs, Sanders is liberal
independent who supports the decriminalization of marijuana possession and
says Muslim countries should be the ones who lead the fight against Islamic
terrorists.

After Sanders' April 30 formal presidential campaign announcement speech
yielded an estimated 5,000 in Vermont, he packed in roughly 700 for a
Davenport town hall, 300 in the tiny town of Kensett and several hundred at
a recreation center in Iowa City. When all the seats were full, Iowans
grabbed exercise balls to sit upon.

Sanders is the rival-in-chief to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. He
has seen his support triple with Iowa likely caucusgoers in the last four
months, according to the new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll.
But he's the first choice of only 16 percent of Democratic likely
caucusgoers, 41 points down from Clinton, who is currently the first choice
for 57 percent.

During his speeches in Iowa, Sanders calls for guaranteed sick leave and
vacation for workers, more cushion from Social Security for retirees, a
reduction in unemployment, a minimum wage increase, free public college,
free preschool to help reduce the need for expensive child care,
government-run health care that covers the entire population, and other
changes.

Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, is in Iowa this week to sign a lease for
a Des Moines campaign office and bring on more staff to help Sanders' Iowa
director, Pete D'Alessandro, who has been almost single-handedly dealing
with swarms of Iowans who want to connect with the campaign.

This is the first early state where Sanders has opened a headquarters; New
Hampshire is next, Weaver told the Register.

"Iowa's a very important state to us. We're going to be competing here very
aggressively. We won't have what she has," Weaver said, referring to the
big staff and nine offices Clinton already has in Iowa, "but we'll be
competing very aggressively."

On the same day Sanders drew 700 in Davenport, Ron Paul's son Rand Paul,
who is running for president in the 2016 race, drew about 100 in Davenport.
Politics watchers on Twitter argued that Sanders was offering "free money"
while Paul was promoting hard work.

"This is not about handouts — people pay taxes in this country," Weaver
responded Thursday. "We're talking about leveling the playing field so
every person has the opportunity to succeed to their maximum potential."

Sanders is focused on the day-to-day lives of Americans who don't have
enough money to pay the mortgage or send their child to college or to
afford quality child care, Weaver said.

"The Republicans give lip service to this idea of everyone succeeding, but
the deck starts so lopsided there's no way for people in many cases,
especially for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, to succeed," he said.

Sanders intends to return to Iowa soon, he said.

*The 1 percent’s “centrist” propaganda war: Why Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth
Warren are so threatening to the establishment
<http://www.salon.com/2015/06/04/the_1_percents_centrist_propaganda_war_why_bernie_sanders_elizabeth_warren_are_so_threatening_to_the_establishment/>
// Salon // Conor Lynch – June 4, 2015 *

After last Novembers elections, the GOP had a bit of a revelation. Once
they had gained control of the congress, bipartisanship suddenly became the
mature and necessary thing to do. The people spoke, after all, and had
given the go ahead for Republican’s to push through their ideology, and it
was now the responsibility of the Democrats to play along. “Serious adults
are in charge here and we intend to make progress,” said Senate Majority
Leader, Mitch McConnell, with an air of superiority. Yes, this is the same
fellow who made the following remark a few years back: “Our top political
priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second
term.” It is also the same party that has fought bitterly against nearly
every policy that President Obama has advocated, like health care reform,
the economic stimulus, immigration reform, etc.

Of course its all nonsense. The GOP is about as interested in
bipartisanship as Reagan was interested in a balanced budget. They say one
thing, and do something entirely different. They are politicians, this is
what they do.

But still, this does lead to a different question that has been floating
around lately, which is whether the Democratic Party should be embracing
the liberal movement, led by people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders, or falling back to a more centrist plan that Bill Clinton embraced
back in the ’90s. This question seems legitimate, but it actually is not.

In reality, it is a question that is subtly being posed by the right wing
and Wall Street Democrats, in the hope of slowing down a movement that is
quickly becoming a true force in American politics. Former speechwriter for
George W. Bush, Peter Wehner, wrote quite an embarrassing piece last week
in the New York Times that argued that the Democratic party has indeed gone
too far to the left, saying that “Democrats believe that they are riding a
tide of presidential inevitability. They may want to rethink that. They are
placing a very risky bet that there are virtually no limits to how far left
they can go.”

I have discussed the article previously in more detail, but the gist of his
argument is based on comparing the views of modern Obama with ’90s-era
Clinton, as if we have nothing to learn from time and evidence, lamely
ignoring changes that have occurred over the past three decades, like the
increasing scientific evidence of climate change, the skyrocketing rate of
inequality, and the complete disaster that is the war on drugs.

These arguments for centrism are just red herrings cloaked as pragmatic
advice, designed to distract people from real problems, like the fact the
GOP is actually a dying breed, while the rise of the modern liberal
movement is overwhelmingly associated with the millennial generation.

Indeed, the largest base for conservatism today will be, quite literally,
dying off in the near future. The Republican party is the old white party,
which is not a very good survival strategy, as white people will cease to
be a majority in about three decades, and todays elderly will be dead. This
seems to be a much more significant problem than the Democratic party going
too far to the left, which is actually a wise strategy for the future, if
we are to believe the data suggesting the millennial generation is the most
liberal yet. In fact, a few years ago, a Pew poll suggested that
millennials (18-29) view socialism more favorably than capitalism, which is
quite astonishing for the United States.

Elizabeth Warren and the rising liberal movement have created a real fear
within the Republican party and Wall Street. Certain right wing pundits
paint Warren as nothing less than a radical socialist, aiming to overthrow
the capitalist system. This is fear. Fear that the new liberal movement is
not just a fad, and that the future is moving leftward.

The argument for centrism within the Democratic party is a distraction, but
also a tactic. After all, what does centrism really mean in Washington? It
means corporatism. It means the neoliberal alliance between Wall Street and
D.C. that we have seen wreak havoc over the past 30 years. It means the
Clinton administration signing financial deregulation into law, and
refusing to regulate derivatives. It means the promotion of corporatist
trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP.

Centrism also means “easily bought,” and funded by the 1 percent. Take the
“centrist” think tank, “Third Way,” which was founded by former Clinton
staffers. This organization has aggressively gone after Elizabeth Warren
and the liberal movement, saying in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

“If you talk to leading progressives these days, you’ll be sure to hear
this message: The Democratic Party should embrace the economic populism of
New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth
Warren. Such economic populism, they argue, should be the guiding star for
Democrats heading into 2016. Nothing would be more disastrous for
Democrats.”

Its the same argument that Wehner made, this time from so-called (Clinton)
Democrats. It may seem like they are stuck in the nineties, but it is more
likely a result of their funding and history. Third Way’s board of trustees
is made up almost entirely of investment bankers and CEOs, and it is funded
by the banking community.

So, is this group simply a DINO (Democrat in name only) organization? That
wouldn’t be entirely fair, as the Democratic party contains different
factions, and neoliberal Democrats still exist — just look at Andrew Cuomo
(and even Obama in some cases). The fact is, Wall Street is afraid of
modern liberalism, and is working hard to kill it from within with the same
arguments that were made in the eighties and nineties. The only difference
is, today, we know just how bad neoliberalism has been for the majority of
people, and how good it has been for folks on Wall Street.

The financial crisis and the current inequality we face discredits the
neoliberal ideology of the past thirty years. Centrism tends to be promoted
as pragmatism, and the only way to win national elections. This may have
been true in 1992, but today it is false. Centrism is a wolf in sheep’s
clothing; a strategy for corporatism, to stop progress with a slogan of
practicality. But giving in to the crony-capitalist status quo is not a
practical move for the middle class, just the one-percent.

*CHAFEE*

*Lincoln Chafee and the last mile
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/lincoln-chafee-metric-system-american-politics-118650.html>
// Politico // Adam Lerner – June 4, 2015 *

Announcing his quirky run for the White House Wednesday, Lincoln Chafee may
have inadvertently touched one of the more obscure third rails of American
politics: conversion to the metric system, or “metrication” to those in the
know.

Touting his time as a farrier in kilometer-loving Canada, the Rhode Island
Republican-cum-Independent-cum-Democrat called metrication a “bold embrace
of internationalism” that, in due course, “will help our economy.”

Political journalists chortled, and for good reason: More than two
centuries of history show that Americans really can’t be persuaded.

“Nobody is really interested in giving up their measurement systems,” said
Russ Rowlett, a retired professor of mathematics at UNC Chapel Hill who
authored “How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement.”

In every country minus the U.S., Liberia, and Burma, the metric system has
been applied via some sort of top-down coercion, said Rowlett. “We have
such a large economy, we don’t feel that same pressure.”

“Ordinary people don’t,” he clarified. “Industry does.”

The measurement question has surfaced and resurfaced in American politics
since the country’s founding.

Even the Articles of Confederation, the proto-constitution that was
famously discarded because it did not provide the federal government with
enough authority, allowed the central government the “sole and exclusive
right and power” to fix the standard of weights and measures. The U.S.
Constitution similarly then gave this power to the Congress in the same
clause that allowed it the exclusive right to coin money and regulate its
value.

In 1790, then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson issued a proposal to
Congress to establish a base-ten system of measurement, less than a decade
before the French First Republic adopted the metric system in 1799.
Jefferson’s system included ten inches in every foot, 10,000 feet in every
mile and a whole host of new measurements like a ten-foot-long “decade,” a
100-foot-long “rood” and a 1,000-foot-long “furlong.”

In true congressional fashion, the legislature balked and did nothing,
partly because subsequent bills relating to land acquisition depended upon
the old mile measurement. Americans largely retained the system of English
measurements established by the British parliament in prior centuries,
including the inch, foot, mile, pound and gallon.

ARLINGTON, VA - JUNE 03:  Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen.
Lincoln Chafee (D-RI) announces his candidacy for the U.S. presidency at
George Mason University June 3, 2015 in Arlington, Virginia. Chafee joins
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley in seeking the
Democratic nomination.

By the mid-1800s the metric system began to gain steam around the rest of
the world, largely because of colonialism and the support of engineers,
scientists and businesses who favored its easy conversions and
internationalism. In 1875, 17 countries — including the United States — met
in Paris and signed a treaty establishing the International Bureau of
Weights and Measures that internationalized the metric system. The treaty
is largely credited with giving the system the final push it needed to
achieve near-universality.

But the U.S. and UK continued to resist.

By the 1970s, as globalizing forces picked up, both countries saw renewed
pushes for metrication. The UK slowly but surely adopted the metric system
as businesses switched over to meters and grams to secure access to
European markets. And in 1975, the U.S. Congress likewise passed the Metric
Conversion Act, which called for making the metric system the “preferred
system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce.”

“To say that this legislation is historic is an understatement,” President
Ford said in a statement upon signing the bill.

Still, Ford and the Congress were reluctant to push metrication too hard.
He added that “the conversion contemplated in this legislation is to be a
completely voluntary one. The Government’s function … will be to coordinate
and synchronize increasing use of metric measurement.”

Dr. Donald Hillger, president of the U.S. Metric Association, which
advocates complete metric adoption, believes this word, “voluntary,” was
the nail in metrication’s coffin. “If that word were not in there and if
they had decided to fully support the issue” by giving the legislation
“teeth,” he said, “they could have [pushed conversion].”

Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, supported the 1975 legislation, but also
did not push to make metric conversion mandatory. The bill established the
U.S. Metric Board, and during Carter’s presidency the group began
sponsoring public service announcement to promote the metric system. One of
these was a series of television shorts that aired alongside Saturday
morning cartoons in 1978 called “The Metric Marvels.” Produced by the
makers of “Schoolhouse Rock!” the series featured superheroes like Meter
Man, Liter Leader, Super Celsius, and Wonder Gram.

“Metric superheroes, fighting to stamp out metric ignorance and introduce
the system that rules the world!” the theme song declared.

But the system never stuck. President Ronald Reagan began his tenure by
overturning a law to promote teaching of the metric system in American
schools, and in 1981 and in 1982 Reagan disbanded the U.S. Metric Board,
citing his “program to reduce government spending and streamline its
operations” in a letter to the board’s chairman.

Reagan wrote that the secretary of commerce would continue to support
“voluntary metrication” and that he would continue to support the 1975 law,
but federal efforts to convert the public largely languished.

In 1988, Reagan did sign a bill requiring the federal government to go
metric by the end of 1992, however, and in 1994 President Clinton signed a
law requiring metric units on a variety of consumer products. But the
public stubbornly refused to follow the federal push, and Congress declined
to make adoption mandatory.

A 2010 survey by Consumer World found that, more than 30 years after the
law’s passage, up to 80 percent of those tested could not identify how much
sugar was in a product when it was expressed in grams rather than in common
household measurements like teaspoons.

Part of Americans’ reluctance can be attributed to the fact that, even
though supporters assure that metrication will ease barriers to trade and
boost the economy in the long-run, in the short run converting all of the
signs — not to mention hearts and minds — would be costly. For instance, in
1995 the GAO estimated the total cost of changing all of the nation’s
highway signs to kilometers to be between around $520 million and $650
million in today’s dollars. Considering the clumsiness such a conversion
would impose on older generations accustomed to the old system, the costs
could skyrocket. From supermarket goods to construction sites to pants
sizes, shifting to metric would require substantial changes.

So the United States has stayed a “soft metric” country, with both
Democrats and Republicans content to let private industries decide which
measurements they use. In response to a 2013 “We the People” petition,
Under Secretary of Commerce Patrick Gallagher wrote that, since the 1970s,
the U.S. has settled on promoting metric within the government while
privately pushing a dual system that allows private citizens “the power to
make this choice.”

Even though the issue has lost steam with the U.S., plodding along industry
by industry, immigrant family by immigrant family, Chafee apparently
believes he can revive it.

At the very least, support for metrication provides a point of contrast
with his Democratic rivals. The Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley campaigns
all did not respond to a request for comment on the issue (though O’Malley
reportedly told the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson that he’s “not passionate
about the metric system” when cornered on an Amtrak train).

But Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has already incorporated it into
an attack. In an email to POLITICO, his spokesman Michael Reed said Chafee
is a “Typical Democrat — wants to make America more European. Governor
Jindal would rather make the world more American.”

Dr. Hillger refused to assess the Rhode Island Democrat’s chances against
front-runner Hillary Clinton, though he is pessimistic about Chafee’s
ability to drive debate. “I don’t think [metrication] will be the issue
that will challenge her,” he said.

But he’s optimistic that, eventually, Americans will have to abandon their
beloved inches for centimeters, and miles for kilometers.

“It’s inevitable.”

*OTHER*

*Democrats Get a Primary
<http://time.com/3908652/hillary-clinton-primary-challengers/> // TIME //
Joe Klein – June 4, 2015*

The zinger captured the current 2016 campaign zeitgeist on several levels.
There is a yeasty popu-lism rising in both parties. Among the Democrats,
it’s anti-Big Business; for the Republicans, it is anti-Big Government (and
labor). There is also a rising discomfort with the aforementioned royalist
candidates, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Bush’s relatively moderate
conservatism separates him from the pack temperamentally, but he is hardly
the front runner at this point. No one is. Clinton is very much the
presumptive Democrat, but not a very dynamic or compelling one. Indeed, the
entry of O’Malley and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders into the race during the
last week of May produced something of an energy jolt among Democrats, who
have a preternatural need for a horse race, even when the horses are lame,
and a long-festering desire for an ideological fight between left and
center.

It should come as no surprise that Sanders seems to be catching fire among
the leftish faithful, drawing big crowds and scoring double digits in an
Iowa poll. He is a recognizable Democratic type–the prophet scorned,
gushing rumpled authenticity. Usually, this phenomenon occurs when
Democrats find themselves enmeshed in a foolish war: Eugene McCarthy in
1968, George McGovern in 1972, Howard Dean in 2004. Sanders’ distinction is
that he is an economic Jeremiah, pitchforking the depredations of Wall
Street. This is fertile turf. It is a fight that has been coming since
moderate Democrats began courting Wall Street donors in the mid-1980s. Bill
and Hillary Clinton’s wanton sloshing about in the plutocratic pigpen of
their foundation makes it a particularly fat target this time. Sanders
flies commercial.

But the populist case against the Clinton-Obama economic policies has real
substance as well. It is no coincidence that the fundamental distortion of
the American economy, with the deck stacked to benefit the financial
sector, also dates back 30 years, when Democratic Congresses began to slip
pro-bank provisions into the tax code, reaching a peak during the Clinton
Administration with the demolition of the wall between commercial and
investment banking and the flagrant refusal to regulate exotic derivative
financial instruments—which, in turn, led to the Great Recession.

Both Sanders and O’Malley would take specific action against the Wall
Street giants. They would break up the too-big-to-fail banks; they would
reinstate the Glass-Steagall rules that used to separate legitimate banking
from casino gambling. And if O’Malley got off the best zinger of the early
campaign, Sanders has the best policy proposal: a tax on Wall Street
transactions, tiny enough to impact only the computer-driven churning that
makes the markets more volatile than they should be. He would spend some of
the proceeds on a $1 trillion infrastructure-improvement program that would
create, Sanders estimates, 13 million jobs—another good idea.

This should be a bright line in the primary, the most important substantive
issue facing Hillary Clinton: How would she reform the tax and regulatory
codes that unduly favor the financial sector?

I went to an O’Malley house party in Gilford, N.H., on the last day of May
and met Johan Anderson, 68, who had been a successful sales executive but
is now working two minimum-wage jobs to augment his Social Security. He had
been a Republican and a town official in Stamford, Conn., “back in the days
when you could be a Republican and a human being”—that is, before the
party’s rightward lurch. Now he was engaged in the ancient New Hampshire
pursuit of candidate shopping. “I really respect Hillary Clinton,” he said.
“She’s obviously very smart and experienced. But I wonder about her
leadership abilities. She made a mess of her health care plan [in 1994],
and she didn’t organize her last campaign very well [in 2008]. My heart is
with Bernie Sanders. I’d love to vote for him, but can he win? O’Malley is
young [52] and brings a real freshness and energy to the race.”

I’m not sure how many people like Anderson are out there: perhaps enough to
make Clinton a better candidate, perhaps enough to give her a scare. But
there will definitely be a Democratic primary.

*Democrats' Supreme Court Litmus Test: Citizens United
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-04/democrats-supreme-court-litmus-test-citizens-united>
// Bloomberg News // Sahil Kapur – June 4, 2015 *

In past presidential elections, Supreme Court litmus tests were a
Republican issue, with candidates vying for the evangelical vote by
attacking the Roe v. Waderuling that legalized abortion nationwide. This
year, Democrats have a litmus test of their own: Three of the four declared
presidential candidates are suggesting they'll seek Supreme Court nominees
who want to overturn Citizens United.

Martin O'Malley on Wednesday became the latest contender to jump aboard the
bandwagon. In an interview with Bloomberg, he made it clear he will try to
engineer a reversal of the landmark 2010 ruling, widely blamed for a new
wave of big money in politics. The 5-4 ruling, which pitted justices
appointed by Republican presidents against those appointed by Democrats,
paved the way for super PACs and unlimited spending by corporations and
unions to influence elections. In the 2014 election cycle, super PACs --
entities that can raise and spend political money in unlimited amounts --
raised close to $1 billion to influence Senate and House elections,
according to the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation.

"I would appoint judges who don't think corporations are people. We need to
overturn Citizens United," the former Maryland governor said after a
Washington event hosted by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "And we need
to recognize that big money is having a corrupting influence on our
politics."

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, long a vociferous opponent of the 2010
ruling, kicked off the debate May 10 in an interview on CBS. "If elected
president," he said, "I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to
be a Supreme Court justice and that nominee will say that they are going to
overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision."

One week later, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton told activists in
Mason City, Iowa that the Citizens United ruling was "a grave error" by the
Court. "I will do everything I can to appoint Supreme Court justices who
protect the right to vote and do not protect the right of billionaires to
buy elections," she said.

A spokesperson for Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and
U.S. senator who launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential
nomination earlier this week, declined Thursday to weigh in.

A nationwide poll released this week by the New York Times found that a
whopping 84 percent of Americans think money has "too much" influence in
political campaigns. The survey found that 78 percent said political
spending should be limited, while 19 percent said it should remain
unlimited.

The Citizens United decision, prompted by a legal challenge to a
documentary that took aim at Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential
bid, has long drawn the ire of progressive activists and campaign finance
reformers, upset over the seven-figure political donations it has enabled.
It has sparked calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn the
decision, an idea that has lacks support from congressional Republicans.

In Citizens United v. FEC, the justices overturned a provision of the 2002
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and struck down limits on political spending
by corporations, unions and nonprofit groups as a violation of the First
Amendment. Those groups can now give unlimited amounts to influence an
election as long as they don't coordinate with the candidates themselves.
In practice, however, most of the big-spending committees are closely
linked to candidate committees. The court followed up in the 2014
McCutcheon v. FEC ruling by invalidating limits on the aggregate amount
that people can give to candidates and political committees in a two-year
election cycle.

Caroline Fredrickson, the president of the American Constitution Society, a
progressive legal advocacy group, said the backlash has echoes of how
conservatives responded to the 1973 Roe ruling, which remains deeply
divisive today.

"I think it's happening," she said. "Whether it'll reach the level of
fervency of Roe v. Wade, it's hard to say. But it certainly seems to be
going in that direction."

*GOP*

*As Republican Debates Near, Candidates Vie to Make Cut
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/republican-presidential-candidates-fight-to-make-cnn-fox-debate-cut.html?smid=tw-share>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman & Jeremy Peters – June 4, 2015 *

Carly Fiorina is a woman on the clock, a nine-week clock to be exact. That
is when the first Republican debate of the 2016 election will happen. And
if she does not get her poll numbers up, she will not make the cut.

“I need your help to get on that debate stage,” Ms. Fiorina, the former
Hewlett-Packard chief executive, wrote in an urgent plea to supporters the
other day. “I need to grow my team of supporters.”

Rick Santorum, the former senator and two-time presidential candidate, also
might find himself excluded. “If you’re a United States senator, if you’re
a governor, if you’re a woman who ran a Fortune 500 company,” he vented to
reporters recently, “then you should have a right to be on stage.”

The announcements by Fox News and CNN that they will limit the first two
debates to candidates who rank in the top 10 in national polls has given
the Republican Party a “Hunger Games”-type atmosphere. Facing the
possibility of being excluded from the first nationally televised face-offs
of the 2016 election – and deprived of the priceless media attention the
events can generate – some of the lesser-known candidates are under
tremendous pressure to raise their visibility.

They are imploring supporters to give more money. They are increasing their
national television presence. And they are not waiting for the spotlight to
find them.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who barely cracks the top 10 in many
polls, has spoken to Fox News at length twice in recent weeks, stressing
conservative positions. Ms. Fiorina invited reporters and cameras last week
to follow her to the same hotel in Columbia, S.C., where Hillary Rodham
Clinton was speaking. She then stood outside and taunted Mrs. Clinton,
landing copious headlines.

For Republicans in states like Iowa and New Hampshire that hold the first
primaries and caucuses, the trend is troubling. They fear candidates are
too focused on getting on television to enhance their poll standing, when
they should be out meeting voters in town halls and greasy spoons. Making
matters worse, they say, is that the networks are using only national polls
to determine who makes the top 10 – not state-based polls — so a candidate
who builds momentum in Iowa could still be left off the stage.

There are already signs that the early-state rituals are being neglected,
with a number of candidates waving off traditions like the Iowa straw poll
in August. Jeb Bush and SenatorMarco Rubio of Florida have said they will
skip it, and representatives of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin last week declined to send anyone to an
informational meeting on the poll.

Making the cut for the first debates is now “on everybody’s mind,” said
Steve DeMaura, executive director of Carly for America, thesuper PAC
working for Ms. Fiorina. “If you’re currently at 5 percent or below, you
have to know that everybody is trying to get in,” he said.

Some Republicans said the traditional role of taking the measure of
candidates has effectively been outsourced to the networks.

“The centralization of the presidential primary process is very concerning,
especially when you have the very real prospect of network executives, not
actual voters in an early primary or caucus states winnowing the field,”
said Matt Strawn, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. “The
strength of early states like Iowa and New Hampshire,” he added, “is the
fact that a candidate, no matter their station or title in politics, is
expected to look voters in the eye.”

Those at risk of being left out could include politicians who in any other
election year would be competitive.

There is Lindsey Graham, a popular senator from South Carolina; two former
governors of big states, Rick Perry of Texas and George Pataki of New York;
and three sitting governors: Mr. Christie, Mr. Jindal and John R. Kasich of
Ohio. In Mr. Kasich’s case, exclusion would come with an added indignity:
the first debate will take place in his own state.

The scramble underway shows the degree to which the Republican Party is
still struggling to exert control over the debate process after the last
election cycle, in which a series of debates — 20 in all — seemed to
exasperate party leaders and, occasionally, candidates too. The Republican
National Committee has sanctioned only nine debates this time, with the
possibility for three more. But there are 15 declared or likely candidates,
and each will be looking for ways to stand out in such a crowded pack.

Then there is the gnawing question of what to do with Donald Trump. Mr.
Trump ranks high in national polls because of his name recognition. Many
Republicans worry that the inclusion of Mr. Trump, who few believe will
follow through with an authentic presidential campaign, will squeeze out
someone like Mr. Kasich or Mr. Jindal.

Despite the frustrations of state officials and back-of-the-pack
candidates, the party and the networks say there is no easy way to avoid
leaving some people out.

“Nobody knows how to do this. Nobody,” said Newt Gingrich, the former
speaker of the House who saw his campaign for president in 2012 take off
after he delivered two aggressive debate performances in South Carolina.

Chief among the concerns among the campaigns is the networks’ methodology
for selecting the top 10. Early polls have shown the contenders closely
bunched together, with the differences in their ranking still statistically
insignificant.

Mr. Santorum’s top political adviser, John Brabender, likened the criteria
set by Fox News and CNN to pulling numbers out of a hat. And Mr. Pataki’s
spokesman, David Catalfamo, said the criteria would have barred “Jimmy
Carter, Bill Clinton and probably Abraham Lincoln” from the stage.

Network executives, who said they could find no precedent for a televised
debate including more than 10 people, believe they have been as fair as
possible under unusual circumstances. And they point out that they have
long used national polls to narrow who gets on the debate stage. CNN has
set up a two-tiered debate for Sept. 16, with the lower-polling candidates
participating in a segment that will air before the main event. Fox said it
would l offer airtime on the same day of its Aug. 6 debate to candidates
who do not clear the top 10.

But these secondary debates – likely to be taken as consolation prizes for
being denied a seat at the adults’ table – may not mollify everyone. And
that has raised questions about what candidates might do to get a piece of
the spotlight.

“People got to do what they’ve got to do to draw attention,” said Armstrong
Williams, a friend and adviser to Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who
is a Republican candidate, adding: “I can see them just totally disrupting
the rules and the process.”

Mr. Gingrich offered one possibility. “So you don’t want me to be on the
stage? Fine. So I’m going to be the guy who comments about dumb answers
online,” he said. “You could imagine the social media around the debate
being bigger than the actual debate.”

*BUSH*

*How Jeb Bush made a mockery of ‘exploring’ a presidential campaign
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/04/how-jeb-bush-made-a-mockery-of-exploring-a-presidential-campaign/>
// WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 4, 2015 *

Finally, after months and months of hand-wringing, fingernail-chewing and
nervous pacing, the world will know June 15 whether Jeb Bush is going to
run for president.

WHAT WILL HE SAY!?

He will say, of course, that he is running for president.* This is the same
thing he has been doing, actively but unofficially, for at least the last
six months. And we will cover it as though this is a breaking news event on
par with a natural disaster or a 23-inning baseball game.

Here's some breaking news for you: It is not a breaking news event.

While all candidates -- and campaigns -- draw out their announcement
schedule long after they have made up their mind in order to raise interest
(and by interest, I mean money), Bush has taken the "exploratory" phase of
a campaign to its logical extreme with his if-I-runsmanship over the last
six months.

"Lawyers say Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, is stretching the limits
of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and
raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring
— except once, by mistake — that he is a candidate," wrote Eric Lichtblau
and Nick Corasanti this week. The duo quote Karl Sandstrom, a former
Federal Election Commissioner and a campaign finance lawyer, saying that
Bush's approach "makes a mockery of the law."

Right. Here's the thing: The only reason Jeb hasn't announced for president
is because by not doing so, he has allowed himself to raise oodles of cash
for his Right To Rise super PAC.  Once he says "I'm running," Jeb can't
coordinate with the super PAC anymore, which takes the super PAC's
fundraising power down several notches. But as long as Bush is "actively
exploring" a candidacy, he can go to these events, talk about the platform
he would run on and ask those donors to be supportive in the event he runs.

The reason Bush has drawn this process out even further than others: He has
taken the novel step of essentially outsourcing much of his campaign to the
super PAC, which can raise money in unlimited amounts. When he officially
launches, he won't be able to control precisely what the super PAC does,
but he gets the benefit of no contribution limits.

It's all very wink wink, nudge nudge, and it speaks to the ridiculousness
of campaign finance law in the modern age.  The idea that Jeb Bush is
somehow not an official candidate because he hasn't filed his "statement of
candidacy" with the FEC is absolutely ludicrous.

Ask yourself this: Is there any doubt in your mind that Jeb Bush will
announce he is running for president in 11 days time? Any? And then ask
yourself when the last time was that you had any doubt about him running?
Four months ago? More?

This exchange between Bob Schieffer and Bush over the weekend on CBS' "Face
the Nation" makes quite clear how thinly stretched Bush's equivocations on
a candidacy are.

Schieffer: Do you think, in some way, you may be just at least violating
the spirit of the law? Do you feel that you have violated the law?

Jeb: No, of course not. I would never do that. And I'm nearing the end of
this journey of traveling and listening to people, garnering, trying to get
a sense of whether my candidacy would be viable or not. We're going to
completely adhere to the law, for sure. Look, politics is politics. There's
always people that are going to be carping on the sidelines. And should I
be a candidate, and that will be in the relatively near future where that
decision will be made, there'll be no coordination at all with any super
P.A.C.

Schieffer: Now, you're not telling me that there's a possibility you may
not run?

Jeb: I, look, I hope, I hope I run, to be honest with you. I'd like to run,
but I haven't made the decision.

Even Jeb had trouble selling that last line.

Bush is, of course, taking advantage of the holes in campaign finance law.
Common sense makes clear he is running for president. But, campaign finance
law isn't dictated by common sense -- obviously.

All advocates for common sense reigning in politics can hope for is that
the way in which Bush has stretched the law will force the FEC (or
Congress) to reconsider the way in which a candidate becomes a candidate.
Judging from the level of activity out of the FEC (and Congress) in recent
years, however, I wouldn't hold my breath.

*Jeb Bush Facing Crucial Two-Week Stretch
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-05/jeb-bush-facing-crucial-two-week-stretch?cmpid=yhoo>
// Bloomberg // Michael C. Bender - June 5, 2015*

Bush will visit Germany, Poland and Estonia next week, before campaigning
in Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire.

When Jeb Bush returns next week from Estonia, the tiny, technologically
advanced country that shares a border with Russia, he’ll have about 48
hours to shake off the jet lag before a June 15 rally in Miami, where he
formally announces his decision to enter the race for the Republican
presidential nomination.

That will be the midpoint of a crucial two weeks in which Bush will first
try to establish his foreign policy credentials, and then introduce himself
to voters. The week before his campaign launch, the former Florida governor
travels to Germany, Poland and Estonia; the week after, he will be stumping
in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In case there's any doubt what Bush will be announcing later this month,
his spokeswoman Kristy Campbell offered this Thursday: "Governor Bush is
thankful for the support and encouragement he's received from so many
Americans, and is excited to announce his decision."

“The Bush kids have had a chance to have a front-row seat in history.”

Jeb Bush

Bush's "decision" will come just two days after Hillary Clinton holds her
much-ballyhooed first campaign rally in New York City. But if there were
any concerns about sharing the spotlight with the other political dynasty
in the race—or about the quick transition from Europe to a campaign
announcement at Miami Dade College’s Theodore Gibson Health Center (a
complex that includes a 3,200-seat gymnasium)—they may have been overridden
by other scheduling issues.

The fact is, Bush has waited so long to make it official that he's running
into a bit of a calendar crunch: The last week of June is expected to bring
highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and gay
marriage, both decisions that have the potential to dominate the political
news cycle and force candidates off message as they respond. Then comes the
long Independence Day holiday weekend and the start of family vacation
season. And then, the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on
August 6. To have any chance of getting a ticket to be on stage, a
candidate has to be officially in the race.

Before Bush becomes the 11th major Republican candidate in the race, he’ll
have a chance to polish his foreign-policy résumé with a week in Berlin,
Warsaw and Tallinn, Estonia. It’s the kind of opportunity that some of his
potential Republican rivals haven’t been able to seize, especially the
governors among them.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has curiously claimed that President
Reagan’s firing of air-traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981 was
the most important foreign policy event of the past five decades (and
wrongly said the move influenced U.S.-Russian relations).

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie refused to answer questions about
foreign policy issues while traveling to England in February. Asked by a
Washington Post reporter during the trip about the terrorist threat from
Islamic State, Christie said, “Is there something you don’t understand
about ‘no questions’?”

Foreign policy prompted Bush’s one major gaffe in the seven months since he
served notice in December that he was serious about running for president.

In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on May 9, Bush said he’d have
authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq even knowing the intelligence was
faulty. Bush struggled for the next week to give a clear answer, finally
saying on May 14 that he “would not have engaged” in Iraq, knowing what he
knows now.

“That’s one that shook a lot of people,” a Bush fundraiser who requested
anonymity to speak about private conversations told Bloomberg. “That’s a
question you know was coming. It should have been a slam dunk and gone, and
it didn’t happen that way. But even the most professional of these guys
stumble from time to time.”

Bush has also incorrectly claimed that the Islamic state didn’t exist when
his brother, George W. Bush, was president, and that al-Qaeda had been
wiped out.

But expectations for Bush should be high.

A fluent Spanish speaker who lived in Venezuela before entering politics,
Bush led trade and advocacy missions to at least 18 countries as governor,
including Peru and Israel, as well as a six-day trip in 2005 that included
stops in Dusseldorf and Munich, two of Germany’s largest cities.

As a former senior advisor to London-based Barclays PLC, Bush says he
traveled overseas 89 times to 29 countries in the eight years after leaving
office. Last year, Bush started an investment fund with backing from a
Chinese conglomerate. He has said he had been traveling about four times a
year to China, where his father, George H.W. Bush, served as U.S.
ambassador before being elected the nation's 41st president.

"The Bush kids have had a chance to have a front-row seat in history,” Bush
said at a Republican National Committee rally during his father’s 1992
re-election bid. “We’ve seen the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, the hammer
and the sickle going down from the Kremlin on Christmas Day just a few
years ago. We’ve seen so many incredible things happen.”

In Berlin, Bush will participate in a question-and-answer session during an
economic conference on June 9, where he'll have a prime speaking slot
sandwiched between Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt, and German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.

Merkel supports the nuclear negotiations with Iran that Bush opposes, but
Bush’s father remains very popular in the country because of the role he
took promoting German reunification while he was in the White House.
Outside the former president's library in College Station, Texas is a
statue of horses leaping over pieces from the Berlin Wall, a Cold War relic
that came down during his term in the White House. Germany unveiled its own
monument in Berlin in 2010, known as the "Fathers of German Unity," that
includes bronze busts of Bush, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev,
and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

That legacy may help Bush counter the one left by his brother. The nation's
43rd president remains generally disliked in Europe because of his
aggressive foreign policy and unpopular war in Iraq, said Alexander
Privitera, a senior fellow at at the Johns Hopkins American Institute for
Contemporary German Studies.

While Europeans are "going to be looking for signs of whether he's similar
to his brother," Privitera predicted that “there won’t be thousands
protesting against Jeb Bush. A lot of people will associate him with
memories that are overcharged with emotions."

In Poland, Bush will participate in a roundtable with the Polish-American
Freedom Foundation, a pro-democracy, free-market group, and meet with
senior members of the Polish government about efforts to support Ukraine.

In Estonia, where the Internet phone service Skype was born and where
residents can vote and pay their taxes online, Bush will participate in a
roundtable discussion about transatlantic security with the International
Center for Defense and Security, a group focused on cyber attacks, social
cohesion and energy policy in the Baltic-Nordic region. Bush will also tour
NATO’s Cyber Defence Center of Excellence, and meet Estonians from the
e-Estonia Showroom, a briefing center that highlights the country's digital
successes.

Bush called Estonia “this really cool, tiny country” during a speech in
Florida on Wednesday. He held up the Balkan nation, population 1.3 million,
as an example of a relatively simple tax code.

“You can fill out your tax return in Estonia online in five minutes,” Bush
said. “That should be a worthy aspiration for a great nation.”

*Bush leads GOP field in NC, Clinton up on most Republicans
<http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/06/bush-leads-gop-field-in-nc-clinton-up-on-most-republicans.html>
// Public Policy Polling – June 4, 2015 *

For the most part Jeb Bush has been struggling in PPP's recent Republican
primary polling across the country- one exception though is the South. Bush
leads our North Carolina polling for the second time in a row. He's at 19%
to 12% each for Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker, 11% for Ted Cruz,
10% for Mike Huckabee, 9% for Ben Carson, 8% for Chris Christie, and 2% for
Carly Fiorina. Bush also led our most recent surveys in Florida and South
Carolina.

Bush has the same problems with the far right in North Carolina that he
does everywhere else- only 35% of 'very conservative' voters have a
favorable opinion of him to 44% with a negative one and he's in 6th place
in the horse race with that group. But Bush has a commanding lead with
voters who identify themselves as being just 'somewhat conservative'- with
them he's at 30% with the next closest Republican contender coming in at
13%. In 2012 the front runner with 'very conservative' voters shifted
around a lot over the course of the cycle but Mitt Romney was generally
leading the field with 'somewhat conservative' voters- who might be seen as
the moderates at least within the confines of the GOP electorate- and that
was enough to propel him to the nomination.

The candidates at the top of the heap in North Carolina in terms of their
overall popularity are Mike Huckabee at 56% favorability and Marco Rubio at
55% favorability. We've found a similar story in a lot of places recently.
Chris Christie continues to be very unpopular with only 29% of voters
seeing him positively to 47% who have a negative view. All but two
candidates are within 1 point of where we found their support in April- the
exceptions are Scott Walker who dropped from 16% to 12% and Rand Paul who
improved his support from 6% to 12%. Walker still leads with voters
identifying as 'very conservative' despite his overall drop this month.

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton continues to be as dominant as ever.
62% of Democrats say they want her to be the nominee to 14% for Bernie
Sanders, 5% for Jim Webb, and 4% each for Lincoln Chafee and Martin
O'Malley. Clinton polls over 80% with African Americans, over 60% with
liberals, moderates, women, seniors, and younger voters, and polls over 50%
with men. There's not much sign of her position for the Democratic
nomination weakening at all.

Clinton leads 7 out of 9 Republicans for the general election in North
Carolina, generally by modest margins. The two exceptions are Rand Paul and
Scott Walker, who she's tied with at 44% and 45% respectively. Marco Rubio
trails by only one point at 45/44, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee are each
down by 2 at 46/44, Chris Christie has a 3 point deficit at 43/40, Carly
Fiorina is down 6 at 46/40, and Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz each trail by 7 at
47/40 and 49/42 respectively. This continues a string of polls showing that
the Presidential race in North Carolina is likely to be close once again
next year, following up on the state's being the second closest in the
country in both 2008 and 2012.

Almost all the Presidential candidates have negative favorability ratings
in the Tar Heel State- the only exceptions are Ben Carson and Scott Walker.
All non-Clinton Democratic candidates trail by a wide margin in possible
match ups with Walker- Bernie Sanders is down 10 at 43/33, Jim Webb trails
by 11 at 42/31, Lincoln Chafee has a 13 point gap at 42/29, and Martin
O'Malley is down 16 at 44/28. That's a function of only 54-59% of Democrats
voting for their second tier candidates because of their current
unfamiliarity with them but at any rate it makes it clear that for all the
hand wringing about Hillary Clinton she is still by far and away the
Democrats' strongest candidate.

*PERRY*

*Rick Perry ‘Super PAC’ Ads Going Up in Iowa
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/04/rick-perry-super-pac-ads-going-up-in-iowa/>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman – June 4, 2015 *

The “super PAC” supporting former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has made a large
reservation for television ad time in two Iowa markets, just as the former
Texas governor has announced his second campaign for the White House.

Opportunity and Freedom PAC, which is being led by Austin Barbour, a
Republican consultant, began placing nearly $170,000 worth of ads this
week, according to a person tracking media spending, who was unauthorized
to speak publicly.

Mr. Barbour did not respond to a call for comment. But the ad purchase is
in two Iowa media markets, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, for the first two
weeks of June.

The amount of airtime is significant. Running ads this early is not
particularly effective in terms of luring voters, since few are paying
attention. But it is likely an attempt to raise Mr. Perry’s profile to help
him qualify for the early debates, hosted by Fox News and CNN, two networks
that are trying to manage an unwieldy field of nearly 20 candidates and
relying on polling performance to determine participation.

Follow the New York Times Politics and Washington on Facebook andTwitter,
and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.

*After ‘oops,’ Rick Perry is ready to try again
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-oops-rick-perry-is-ready-to-try-again/2015/06/03/2587a252-0a54-11e5-951e-8e15090d64ae_story.html>
// WaPo // Dan Balz - June 4, 2015    *

On Thursday, Perry made his candidacy official on his official Web site.

“I am running for president because I know our country’s best days are
ahead of us,” said a message on the site, which included a video that
stressed his ability to bridge political divides in Washington.

The post came hours before Perry was scheduled to announce his plans for
2016 at an airplane hangar in this northern suburb of Dallas, surrounded by
military veterans and others in a patriotic display.

There is little suspense about what he intends to say, according to
advisers, but there are plenty of questions about whether greater
preparation, good intentions and personal determination are enough to
overcome the impressions he left behind after his first campaign.

When he first announced his candidacy for the White House in August 2011,
he seemed almost the perfect candidate to compete seriously for the
Republican nomination. He was a long-serving Texas governor in a party
whose political base was in the South. He governed during a period of rapid
growth and job creation in his native state. His anti-Washington instincts
made him a tea party darling before there was a tea party. He had never
lost an election.

Within weeks of his announcement, he was atop the polls, a major threat to
the front-runner, Mitt Romney. But within weeks of achieving those lofty
poll numbers, his candidacy was in a rapid descent, caused by his
opponents’ attacks and his own maladroit performances in a series of early
debates.

By the time he said “oops” on a debate stage in Michigan (he couldn’t
remember all the agencies in Washington he planned to zero out as
president), his candidacy was already history, as he has since admitted.

Now, as he prepares to announce his intentions, he is in an utterly
different position — mired in low single digits in early polls, lightly
regarded by many of his rivals, ignored or dismissed by many in the media
and struggling for the kind of attention that a politician who served 14
years as chief executive of one of the nation’s most populous states might
normally command.

He and his advisers believe that, if he was overestimated but ill-prepared
four years ago, he is the opposite now, underestimated and in their
estimation readier for the challenges that a presidential campaign
presents. They say he likes nothing better than to be underestimated.

These advisers say a second campaign is not simply for redemption but
rather because Perry believes he has something to offer his party and his
country. But the former governor also is eager to prove all the doubters
wrong — and those doubters are widespread.

Talk privately to strategists working for other candidates and they say he
is a likable politician and one who could cause problems for some other
candidates, but not one they see as a genuine threat to compete for the
nomination.

Many share the view of Matthew Dowd, who helped former president George W.
Bush win two elections to the White House and is now an independent
analyst. Dowd sees an extremely difficult road ahead for Perry, owing to
the impressions he made four years ago.

Asked about Perry’s prospects of becoming the GOP nominee, Dowd said: “I
wouldn’t say impossible but very difficult. . . . The caricature has been
made of him and it’s hard to get out of it.”

But Matt Rhoades, who was Romney’s campaign manager and who saw Perry as
enough of a threat in the late summer of 2011 to move aggressively to bring
him down, offered a dissenting view — suggesting that people are foolish to
write off the former governor as an afterthought in the nomination battle.

“Gov. Perry has worked hard and done the right things to reposition himself
for a run in 2016,” Rhoades, the founder of the conservative political
action committee America Rising, said in an e-mail message. “I believe his
candidacy will have a major impact on the primary and voters will give him
a second chance.”

Perry long has been open about the mistakes of his first campaign, saying
at one point last year that he was “a bit arrogant” in thinking he could
suddenly jump into that race with minimal preparation. He also entered
shortly after major surgery for a back ailment, and he was plagued by
health problems for weeks that he said affected his candidacy.

In the intervening years, he has devoted himself to policy briefings, some
foreign travel, trips to the early states — all in contrast to his previous
campaign. Ray Sullivan, who served as one of Perry’s senior advisers during
the governorship and the 2012 campaign but who is not formally a part of
the 2016 campaign, said he expects voters will take a fresh look.

“When he entered in 2011, he gave himself and our campaign team six weeks
to prepare,” Sullivan said. “He entered the race as a front-runner and had
no ramp-up time and no room for really any error. He clearly learned from
that experience and is a much better prepared, more informed campaigner for
it.”

In his season of preparation, Perry has offered himself as a fiscal
conservative with a sterling record of economic success during his time in
office; a social conservative in good standing with the Republican right;
and an optimistic leader who will provide muscular leadership whether in
dealing with the issue of immigration by securing the U.S.-Mexico border or
taking on Islamic State militants and other foreign-policy challenges.

Many of the themes he has been talking about this year were the same ones
that were supposed to boost him four years ago. “We did a horrible job of
telling that story last time,” said a senior Perry adviser who declined to
be identified in order to speak openly. “We jumped in and thought everybody
knew that story. The American people are going to see a very different Rick
Perry.”

Like his many rivals, Perry has taken part in candidate forums, done
quieter trips to Iowa and New Hampshire and counts on his retail skills as
a candidate to win over voters who still have negative impressions from
2012. He has won applause and some plaudits for robust rhetorical skills,
and some voters who have seen him over the past year say he is not the same
candidate they remember from 2012.

So far, none of this has translated into significant support. The latest
Washington Post-ABC News poll, released earlier this week, showed Perry at
2 percent nationally among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents, tied for 12th place among 16 candidates tested. In the Real
Clear Politics average of recent polls, he is 10th on the list of
candidates.

The polls may be only an early snapshot, certain to change with time, but
they are important now because they will be used to determine who is
invited to participate in the first two GOP debates later this summer.
Perry is at risk of not being among the 10 candidates on the stage, though
his advisers say they are confident he will be among the candidates in the
opening debate in Cleveland on Aug. 6.

Perry’s path begins in Iowa, seen by other Republicans as the linchpin
state where he must finish in at least the top three. He is far from that
today, standing 11th at 3.3 percent in the most recent Bloomberg
Politics-Des Moines Register Poll, though history says there could be
considerable movement among the candidates there before next year’s
caucuses.

His advisers also concede that, after his 2012 campaign, there is little
margin of error. Some other candidates have had small stumbles this year
but have not paid a significant price. Perry can ill afford any such
missteps.

In that sense, Perry will be running, at least for the time being, against
the image of his last candidacy as much or more than against any of the
others in the field. Said one Perry loyalist: “He has to continue to grind
it out — and do well.”

*Meet the people who are going to try to get Rick Perry elected president
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/04/meet-the-people-who-are-going-to-try-to-get-rick-perry-elected-president/>
// WaPo // Patrick Svitek – June 4, 2015 *

Rob Johnson and Jeff Miller

Johnson and Miller are by far Perry's most senior advisers. Miller, who
spearheaded Perry's 2012 bid in California, has long been expected to run
his 2016 campaign, while Johnson, it is said, will eventually settle into a
role as Perry's top strategist. Johnson ran Perry's 2012 campaign, a
credential that makes him the highest-ranking holdover from the last bid.
Miller has received the most credit for rehabilitating Perry's national
image in the years since his 2012 campaign ended in embarrassment. The two
are among Perry's closest confidantes.

In some ways, Johnson and Miller have filled the void left by Dave Carney,
the veteran New Hampshire-based strategist who had been with Perry for
years before orchestrating his 2012 run. This time around, Carney is not
expected to be involved in Perry's presidential operation.

Abby McCloskey and Avik Roy

McCloskey and Roy likely will serve as Perry's top policy hands. McCloskey,
a Dallas economist who used to work for the American Enterprise Institute,
played a central role in organizing a series of briefings over the past
several months aimed at bringing Perry up to speed on a wide range of
issues. Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Forbes opinion
editor, is among the most respected GOP voices on health care, though his
work for Perry's 2016 campaign is expected to span a variety of issues.

Margaret Lauderback

Another holdover from Perry's 2012 campaign, Lauderback is expected to
serve as his top fundraiser. Having also raised money for his 2010
gubernatorial re-election bid, she is well-versed in the vast world of GOP
fundraising in Texas — and Perry's longtime connections to it. Her resume
also includes finance consulting gigs for Republican Governors Association,
National Republican Senatorial Committee and Greg Abbott's 2014
gubernatorial campaign.

Greg Strimple

A veteran Republican pollster, Strimple is completely new to Perry's orbit
for 2016. Strimple, president of Idaho-based GS Strategy Group, has served
as a senior adviser to Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie and Arizona Sen. John McCain. The top pollster on Perry's 2012
campaign, Tony Fabrizio, now works for another GOP presidential candidate,
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

The Barbours

The Barbour family, a big brand in GOP politics, has long been close to the
Perrys. Brothers Austin and Henry, both Mississippi-based operatives, are
poised to be the most involved in Perry's 2016 plans. Austin is running a
pro-Perry super PAC called Opportunity and Freedom PAC, while Henry remains
an informal adviser who reliably has the former governor's ear.

The early-state operatives

Perry's point men in the early-voting states have played especially active
roles in light of his nearly nonstop travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and
South Carolina since stepping down as governor in January. Calling the
shots in Iowa is Bob Haus, the veteran GOP strategist who served in the
same capacity for Perry's 2012 bid. Katon Dawson, Perry's top adviser in
South Carolina, is another return player from the 2012 campaign. New to
Perry's early-state crew is New Hampshire's Mike Dennehy, the longtime
Republican strategist who helped engineer John McCain's come-from-behind
win in the 2008 Granite State primary.

Lucy Nashed and Travis Considine

Having worked seven years in Perry's office, there perhaps is no other
spokesperson on the campaign as well-equipped to discuss his gubernatorial
record than Nashed. She is expected to lead Perry's press shop, which
likely will also include Travis Considine, a former spokesman for former
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Considine and Nashed were Perry's most active
liaisons to the press as he wound down his governorship and prepared for a
2016 bid.

Other people to know

— Erin DeLullo is handling Perry's outreach to the universe of conservative
groups that promise to shape the 2016 primary. A Washington-based
fundraiser, DeLullo has spent years introducing candidates to the outside
organizations such as the staunchly limited-government Club for Growth.

— Jamie Johnson is an Iowa-based ordained minister with deep ties to the
evangelical community who's helping connect Perry with social conservatives
in the early-voting states. During the 2012 race, Johnson worked in Iowa
for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the eventual winner of the
caucuses.

— Anita Perry, the former first lady of Texas, has long had a role in her
husband's political life — and 2016 looks no different. It was she who
broke the news this month on Twitter that Perry would announce his
presidential plans Thursday in Dallas.

*Rick Perry spent $350 per vote in 2012
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/04/rick-perry-spent-350-per-vote-in-2012/?postshare=4811433442585486>
// WaPo //Phillip Bump – June 4, 2015 *

Rick Perry's 2012 campaign went badly. I know that's not what he'd like us
to talk about on the day that he announces his 2016 candidacy, and I am
confident that some Perry supporters will pointedly request that we focus
on his policies* and not his past performance. Well, too bad! Because his
past performance was so bad -- historically bad -- that it's worth
revisiting.

Particularly if you're thinking about giving him money.

Perry didn't actually spend that much, at least compared to other recent
candidates. That's in part because he did badly enough, early enough that
he stopped writing checks. According to FEC data, he ended up spending less
than everyone on the graph below, save Mike Huckabee.

But he still spent a lot, in average-American terms. Nineteen million in
2012 dollars! And for that, he got ... very few votes.

And that 0.1 million votes was very close to being 0.0, because of
rounding. According to U.S. Election Atlas, he earned 42,251 primary votes
and 12,646 votes in the caucuses. That's 54,897 votes, which rounds up to
0.1 million by the skin of its teeth.

A lot of money spent for a not-a-lot of votes? That means Rick Perry's
votes cost a lot more. A whole lot more.

(Now you see why we did that weird, drop-down format in the earlier graphs.)

We also conducted this exercise after Perry dropped out in 2012, at which
point he had spent more than $1,000 per vote. He wound up getting enough
votes after he dropped out of the race, though, to fall well below that
threshold.

The fuller picture also means his campaign isn't quite the most expensive
per-vote in recent federal primaries. That would have been Linda McMahon's
2010 Connecticut Senate campaign, at $454 per vote.

Anyway, this is Rick Perry 2016, a whole new guy! He's learned his lessons!
He probably won't win this time, either, but at the very least, he'll
likely end up with a slightly better cost-per-vote ratio.

Or so those people writing checks hope.

*What Rick Perry thinks about the issues
<http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/6/4/8730469/rick-perry-issues>
// VOX // Andrew Prokop & Tez Clark – June 4, 2015 *

Rick Perry is so conservative that when he ran for president in 2011, he
proposed eliminating so many federal agencies that he couldn't remember
them all.

In his 14 years as governor of Texas, Perry pursued a low-tax, deregulatory
agenda. And as he launches his 2016 bid for the Republican presidential
nomination, he's sure to lean on that record.

But like many politicians, when Perry had the responsibility of governing a
state, he diverged from his party's national line on some issues. He tried
to build new highways all over Texas. He let unauthorized immigrants get
in-state tuition at colleges and universities. He mandated that girls
entering the sixth grade be vaccinated for HPV. And he supported reforms of
his state's criminal justice system.

In his campaign announcement speech Thursday, Perry unsurprisingly
emphasized the most conservative parts of his record and agenda, saying,
"We need to return power to the states and freedom to the individuals." And
he tried to tout his credentials on foreign policy and national security,
arguing that America needed to lead in a dangerous world.

Slash taxes and eliminate several government agencies

During his 2011 presidential campaign, Perry proposed slashing both federal
taxes and federal spending. On taxes, his plan gave Americans the option of
paying a flat tax rate of 20 percent with many fewer deductions,
eliminating the federal estate tax, and cutting the corporate and capital
gains tax rates.

On spending, he backed a cap of federal expenditures at 18 percent of GDP,
and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. He proposed
eliminating the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy, and
repealing Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law.
He's no fan of the Federal Reserve either, saying in 2011 that its easy
money policies might be "treasonous," and that if Ben Bernanke visited
Texas, "we would treat him pretty ugly."

Mandated HPV vaccine, then disavowed it

One of the biggest controversies Perry was involved in during his
governorship focused on his 2007 executive order mandating that sixth-grade
girls be vaccinated for HPV.

Though there was an option for parents to have their children opt out of
the vaccine, Perry was criticized by conservatives who thought the vaccine
encouraged sexual risk-taking, people who doubted the science of vaccines
and feared they could cause health problems, and others who thought Perry
was serving the interest of pharmaceutical companies. (Perry's former chief
of staff Mike Toomey was a lobbyist for Merck, and pushed for the executive
order).

So as his presidential campaign geared up in 2011, Perry declared that the
executive order was "a mistake" and backed the legislature's support for
overturning it. "I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we
needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry," he said. "If
I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently."

Opposes same-sex marriage and supported Texas's sodomy ban

As governor, Perry supported Texas's law banning gay sex, which the Supreme
Court overturned in 2003. He's also been an opponent of same-sex marriage,
saying that "it’s fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights
to decide an issue," but that "obviously gay marriage is not fine with me."

In June 2014, Perry reportedly made comments comparing homosexuality to
alcoholism. He soon walked that back, saying, "I stepped right in it." His
main interest, he said, was in talking about how "whether you're gay or
straight, you need to be having a job."

Tough on border security, but let unauthorized immigrants get in-state
tuition

As governor, Perry has argued repeatedly for the importance of border
security. During the summer 2014 child migrant crisis, he deployed the
National Guard to his state's border with Mexico. On immigration reform,
he's said, "I don’t think anyone with a sense of reality thinks that we’re
going to ship 11 or 12 million people back to where they’re from." But he's
argued that border security has to come first.

As governor, Perry signed a law that let unauthorized immigrants pay
in-state tuition at Texas public universities. And when he was questioned
about it during a 2011 presidential debate, he said that if you oppose the
law, "I don't think you have a heart." Lately, he's said that that "was a
really bad choice of words," but that he stands by his support for the law.
He said the choice he faced was, "Are you going to put these people in a
position of having to rely upon government to take care of themselves, or
are you going to let them be educated and be contributing members of
society, obviously working toward getting their citizenship?"

His sweeping plan for new highways was blocked

Early in his governorship, Perry unveiled an ambitious plan to build a
network of toll roads and rail lines that would be called the Trans-Texas
Corridor. But as the New York Times's Deborah Sontag recounted, the plan
became intensely controversial. What horrified some opponents, Sontag
writes, "was the realization that the corridors were going to rip through
the heart of rural Texas and require 146 acres of right of way for every
mile of road — or 584,000 acres total." After public opposition grew,
Perry's party abandoned the plan, and Perry himself eventually disavowed it.

Criminal justice policy shouldn't be driven by "fear"

Perry argues that under his leadership, "Texas fundamentally changed its
course on criminal justice." He says the state started focusing "on
diverting people with drug addiction issues from entering prison in the
first place, and programs to keep them from returning."

Specifically, he touts his support for drug courts allowing some low-level
offenders to avoid going to prison, and greater investment in treatment and
rehabilitation programs for drug addicts. "I am proud that in Texas,
criminal justice policy is no longer driven solely by fear, but by a
commitment to true justice, and compassion for those shackled by the chains
of addiction," he wrote in a 2015 essay.

A skeptic of climate science

Like many Republicans, Rick Perry questions the scientific consensus that
humans are causing climate change. He's claimed that "there are a
substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data," and that
global warming is "a scientific theory that has not been proven" and "is
more and more being put into question." He said last year that "calling CO2
a pollutant is doing a disservice the country, and I believe a disservice
to the world," and that he was "offended" that skeptics of climate science
were called "deniers."

Drastic overhaul of Social Security is necessary

In 2011, Perry said that our Social Security program is a "Ponzi scheme,"
and argued that the program needed a massive overhaul to survive.
(PolitiFact rated the "Ponzi scheme" characterization as false.) He
proposed letting younger workers have access to private accounts in Social
Security, as well as letting some state and local government workers opt
against paying into the program.

A foreign policy hawk

In the Republican Party's split between hawks and doves, Perry has sided
firmly with the hawks. He's argued that ISIS "represents a real threat to
our national security," and called on Obama to "do more with our military
and intelligence communities" against them. The more non-interventionist
policies of Sen. Rand Paul, Perry says, would "only endanger our national
security even further."

In his announcement, he criticized President Obama for prematurely
withdrawing troops from Iraq. "Our president failed to secure the peace,"
he said. He also said he'd withdraw from any nuclear agreement with Iran
that "legitimizes their quest to get a nuclear weapon."

*Tea Party Unloads on 'Complete Imbecile' Rick Perry
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/tea-party-unloads-on-complete-imbecile-rick-perry.html>
// The Daily Beast // Olivia Nuzzi – June 4, 2015 *

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry was indicted last month on two felony charges
stemming from how he dealt with a misbehaving Democratic state official,
the image of the stuttering 2012 Republican primary challenger was replaced
with that of a hero-cowboy in the eyes of many conservatives. Perry was
under attack from the left wing, and his response was not to apologize but
to walk through a hail of blue-hued bullets and emerge laughing, without a
mark on him. But some conservative true believers have begun to notice
something rather suspicious: The company Perry keeps seems more suited to a
mainstream Republican—or a right-of-center Democrat—than to their
hero-cowboy.

Perry is associated with three operatives who have concerned some members
of the die-hard right wing: lobbyist Henry Barbour, former Bill Clinton
aide Mark Fabiani, and McCain-Palin campaign chief and MSNBC pundit Steve
Schmidt.

Well, maybe “concerned” is putting it somewhat mildly.

“The only two options are that Rick Perry is a complete imbecile and he has
no idea who these people are and what they’ve done and how the conservative
base—who votes in primaries—feels about these guys, or he’s doing it on
purpose because that’s the kind of message he wants to send,” said Keli
Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.
Either way, she assured: “It will be an issue. We will make it an issue.”

Barbour is already working on Perry’s 2016 bid for the White House. But
conservatives know him best for his role running the political action
committee Mississippi Conservatives, founded by his uncle, Haley Barbour,
the former governor of Mississippi. In this year’s Magnolia State primary
fight—and “fight” is an understatement—between U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and
state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Barbour reportedly played an influential and
controversial role. According to National Review, his PAC funneled money to
produce ads against McDaniel that alleged he would set back “race
relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups.” The ads,
which seemed intended to drive African-American voters to the polls,
enraged McDaniel’s Tea Party supporters.

As reported by Breitbart News, some conservatives loathe Barbour so much
that they tried to get the Republican National Committee to censure him, to
no avail.

“Republicans should not hire Henry Barbour unless and until he apologizes
for the tactics he helped fund in Mississippi...I don’t think [keeping
Barbour around] necessarily means Perry is endorsing what he did, but it
means he’s certainly not properly condemning it or taking it seriously
enough,” Quin Hillyer, a conservative writer and activist, told The Daily
Beast. “What he helped finance was so far beyond the pale that he should be
blackballed by conservatives, and if Perry wants to be considered a
conservative, he should no longer employ Henry Barbour.”

Rick Shaftan, a Republican consultant who involved himself in the
Mississippi primary, offered a somewhat different view of Barbour to The
Daily Beast: “I don’t like what he did in Mississippi, but you know what?
It shows he’s a ruthless, cutthroat operative, and there’s something to be
said for that on the Republican side. Because we don’t have enough of them.
If the force of evil can be brought to do good, then that’s a good thing.”

Normally, staffers don’t matter much to voters, Carender noted. But
Mississippi is different for many on the far right. It’s become the
ultimate test of Tea Party fidelity, a measuring stick for whether a
conservative will sell out his principles to inside-the-Beltway Washington
RINOs or will stay true to the cause and the grassroots activists who are
the heart and soul of the movement.

People don’t recognize, Carender said, just “how plugged in the
conservative base is to Mississippi…If you’re a man of integrity, you don’t
associate with Henry Barbour as far as we’re concerned.”

Perry has associated with Barbour since at least 2012, when Barbour served
on his ill-fated but memorable presidential campaign. (Haley Barbour, for
his part, supported Newt Gingrich.)

Publicly, Perry may have shrugged at last month’s indictment—but that
doesn’t mean he hasn’t been taking Lone Star State-size measures to ensure
it doesn’t sink him for good.

As part of his legal team, Perry has hired the Harvard-educated Mark
Fabiani, best known for his ties to the Democratic Party. From 1994 through
1996, Fabiani worked as special counsel to President Bill Clinton. He then
served as Al Gore’s communications director during his 2000 presidential
campaign. Fabiani has worked for the Democratic former San Francisco mayor
Gavin Newsom as well.

Perry also has hired Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former
consultant to John McCain in 2008. Schmidt has long enraged Tea Party
conservatives with his candor about members of his own party. Schmidt has
called McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, “someone [who] was nominated to the
vice presidency who was manifestly unprepared to take the oath of office
should it become necessary and as it has become necessary many times in
American history.” Asked whether Palin would have a future in politics,
Schmidt once remarked: “I hope not...And the reason I say that is because
if you look at it, over the last four years, all of the deficiencies in
knowledge, all of the deficiencies in preparedness, she’s done not one
thing to rectify them, to correct them.”

Then Schmidt described Palin’s unflattering qualities, which could,
unfortunately for Perry, double as descriptions for most members of the Tea
Party: “She has become a person who, I think, is filled with grievance,
filled with anger, who has a divisive message for the national stage...”

Conservative radio host Mark Levin wondered of Schmidt, “Why would Perry
hire this conservative attacker and Palin hater?”

Schmidt made those comments on MSNBC, where he is employed as a political
analyst. Shaftan said of Perry hiring the strategist: “If they have Steve
Schmidt working for them, why are they telling people? That I don’t
understand.”

Perry has been basking in the glory of the conservative credibility his
fight with Texas Democrats has lent him—so much so that his mugshot
features a prominent smirk, one you can wear on a T-shirt being sold by his
PAC for just $25. Some Republicans made that same image their Facebook
profile pictures in a show of support, in the way some do for gay marriage,
or to end violence against children. But you’re only as good as the company
you keep, according to some members of the far right who have in the past
proved themselves to be loud enough to get their way.

Conservative HQ columnist Richard Viguerie wrote of Perry’s team: “When you
hire a consultant, you hire his reputation, strategy, and tactics. We doubt
that Governor Perry plans to win the Republican presidential nomination by
race-baiting, recruiting Democrats to vote in Republican primary elections,
and trashing as ‘poisonous’ conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh…”

Hillyer agreed: “A very important law of politics and government, as
emphasized again and again by conservative movement leader Morton
Blackwell, is that personnel is policy. If somebody wants to get a sense of
how a political leader might govern, it certainly is important to see who
he hires.”

*Rick Perry’s second chance to make a first impression
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rick-perrys-second-chance-make-first-impression>
// MSNBC // Steve Benen - June 4, 2015*

There was actually a point at which Rick Perry was a serious contender for
the Republican presidential nomination. It was August 2011.

At the time, party activists and officials realized that Mitt Romney was
well on his way towards dispatching weak rivals, but there were widespread
fears that he would struggle in a national race. The then-Texas governor
rode in on a white horse to rescue his party and very quickly took the lead.

Perry’s support eroded quite quickly. Most remember his “oops” moment from
November 2011, but the truth remains that the Texas Republican’s campaign
was already faltering. His first day as a candidate was a disaster, and the
weeks that followed were no better. The more voters saw of him, the more
Perry’s support evaporated.

Four years later, Perry believes he’s ready to be a far better candidate
the second time around. MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt reported today:

Now Perry is set to announce a second – and this time, long-shot – bid for
president. He’ll do so on Thursday from his home state of Texas, where
he’ll stand in front of an enormous airplane emblazoned with “Perry for
President.” Joining him is Marcus Luttrell, the Navy SEAL made famous in
the movie “Lone Survivor,” and by the widow of Chris Kyle, the focus of the
film “American Sniper.” It’s all aimed at highlighting Perry’s military
experience – he served in the Air Force – at a time when foreign policy is
at the forefront of the campaign.

Perry will also focus on his economic record as Texas governor; he says he
created 1.8 million new jobs during his tenure. They’re themes he’s also
been emphasizing on the campaign trail in recent months, especially in New
Hampshire, where veterans are a key voting bloc.

Whereas Perry entered the 2012 race as a savior candidate, the Texan enters
this year as an afterthought. Despite being well known to Republicans,
Perry’s national support is hovering below 3%, which may be enough to
qualify for debate participation – though it’ll be close. Perry’s not even
especially popular in Texas, where’s he’s running a distant fifth in a
state he led for over a decade.

There’s also the matter of the felony charges pending against him.

As Rachel noted on the show last night, Perry will become the first
presidential contender to launch a campaign while under criminal indictment
on corruption charge. Last summer, as regular readers no doubt recall,
Perry was charged with two felony counts – the former governor faces the
potential of jail time – which generally doesn’t help presidential
candidates get ahead in a crowded field.

There’s also Perry’s challenge overcoming his often bizarre ideological
radicalism. ThinkProgress pulled together several examples of “completely
bonkers things” Perry believes about constitutional law – the list didn’t
even include his flirtation with secession – and the Democratic National
Committee followed up with a similar list of its own, noting Perry’s
opposition to the federal minimum wage and Social Security, among other
things.

But even if we put aside the pending criminal charges, the weak support,
and the radical governing vision, Perry’s biggest problem may be the
perception that he’s just not a serious person. When Kasie Hunt asked the
Texas Republican late last year, “Are you smart enough to be president of
the United States?” the obvious answer should have been something along the
lines of, “Of course I’m smart enough.”

Instead, Perry replied, “Running for the presidency’s not an IQ test.”

It’s safe to say the Texas Republican faces long odds of success.

*GRAHAM*

*Graham: 'Don't vote for me' if you're 'worn out by war'
<http://thehill.com/policy/defense/244022-graham-dont-vote-for-me-if-youre-anti-war>
// The Hill // Mark Hensch – June 4, 2014 *

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Americans on Thursday not to vote for him
in the 2016 presidential election if they are worn out by war.

The 2016 GOP presidential candidate appeared on Fox News’s "Fox & Friends,"
where co-host Steve Doocy questioned his past war hawk rhetoric.

“It’s a tough message,” he told Graham. “A lot of people are just worn out
by war.”

"Well, don’t vote for me," the Republican senator responded. "Don't vote
for me, because I’m telling you what’s coming: Barack Obama’s policies
leading from behind are going to allow another 9/11."

"[ISIS] is large, rich and entrenched,” he added, referring to the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria. “If I’m president they will be poor, small and on
the run.”

Graham also said that U.S. ground forces were necessary for defeating ISIS
before they could reach targets on American soil.

“I’m trying to tell the American people and the Republican primary voter —
the only way I know to defend this country is to send some of us back to
Iraq and eventually to Syria to dig these guys out of the ground, destroy
the Caliphate, kill as many of them as you can, hold territory and help
people over there help themselves,” he said.

Graham further tied President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy to Hillary
Clinton, his former secretary of State and the Democratic presidential
front-runner.

“I think it’s the lack of confidence in her ability to distinguish herself
from Barack Obama,” he said when asked about Clinton’s lack of media
availability on the campaign trail.

“Her biggest nightmare is for someone to ask her, ‘Hey, do you think the
war on terror is going well? Do you agree with Barack Obama’s foreign
policy?’” he said. “’If you don’t, tell us why.’ ”

Graham added that Clinton’s perceived secrecy would likely cost her voters
next year.

“Well, it’s easier to talk to the North Korean guy than it is her,” he
quipped, comparing Clinton to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “At the end
of the day, when 57 percent of people don’t trust you, you’ve got a
problem,”

Graham officially launched his 2016 presidential campaign on Monday from
his hometown of Central, S.C.

He has already made a muscular foreign policy a key theme of his bid. “I
want to be president to defeat the enemies trying to kill us, not just
penalize them or criticize them or contain them, but defeat them,” he said
on Monday.

*Can Lindsey Graham Win His Home State?
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/03/can_lindsey_graham_win_his_home_state.html>
// Real Clear Politics // Caitlin Huey-Burns & Rebecca Berg – June 4, 2015 *

South Carolina has been good to Lindsey Graham.

The U.S. senator from the small town of Central has never lost an election
in his home state over a two-decade political career. Last year, he was
elected to a third term in the upper chamber after winning a six-way
Republican primary with 57 percent of the vote.

This week, Graham became the ninth GOP aspirant to officially join the 2016
presidential race, and the Palmetto State’s first-in-the-South primary will
play an especially significant role in winnowing the most crowded field in
memory.

But given the expansive roster of candidates, a competitive financial race,
and two early states to get through first, there’s a real chance Graham
won’t make it all the way home.

State strategists acknowledge their senior senator’s political savvy and
experience, and believe his foreign policy credentials will play a key role
in the larger Republican debate about international affairs. But as Graham
stands now in the polls, he won’t likely make it onto the first debate
stage in August.

Graham has been talking about a presidential run for a few months, but is
polling third in his home state—nearly six percentage points behind Jeb
Bush and Scott Walker, according to the Real Clear Politics average. And he
barely registers in the first two voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire,
where he is campaigning this week.

“Given the way things are going, I’d be surprised if we get here in
[February] and he was still alive as a candidate,” says David Woodard, a
political science professor at Clemson and a former political consultant.
“He's not a popular ‘favorite son’ in South Carolina and the idea he could
be limping along and South Carolina can crown him is just not backed up.”

A recent Winthrop University poll found that while Graham has a 58.2
percent approval rating as a senator, 55 percent of survey respondents
would not even consider voting for him as a presidential contender.

Even though seemingly every GOP politician is seeking the White House this
cycle, Graham’s presidential campaign has sparked conspiracy theories. Is
he in the race just as a foil to Rand Paul’s libertarian philosophy on
foreign affairs? Is he eyeing a Cabinet post in 2017? Is he planning to
make it through the first two primaries only to then throw his support
behind a rival ahead of his home state contest?

Graham has insisted he can win South Carolina’s primary, telling Fox News
in April, “If I didn’t think I could win South Carolina, I wouldn’t be
talking to you. If I’m on the ballot, I’ll win South Carolina.”

This week, the Graham campaign signaled it is working to shore up support
on his home turf, announcing a 100-person state finance committee.

“This list is a ‘Who’s Who’ in the South Carolina business and professional
community,” said Graham’s Finance Committee chairman, David Wilkins.
“Bringing this group together is a remarkable statement about how much
these top leaders respect and support Lindsey Graham and the unique
qualifications he brings to this presidential race.”

Graham has also been meeting individually with members of South Carolina’s
congressional delegation, and has asked them to stay neutral if they are
not supporting his bid for president, according to an aide for one of the
members.

So far, the delegation has indeed kept quiet about Graham. Rep. Mark
Sanford attended a South Carolina rally for Rand Paul earlier this year,
although the Charleston-area congressman did not endorse the Kentucky
senator. And conspicuously absent from Graham’s announcement Monday in
Central was that district’s representative, Jeff Duncan, who recently
hosted a Faith and Freedom forum, a cattle call attended by most of the
presidential contenders.

Gov. Nikki Haley is remaining noncommittal for now as several candidates
come through her state, but her eventual endorsement is highly coveted. And
despite having a hometown pol on the ballot in 2016, Haley has said she
would prefer that a governor get the GOP nomination.

“Even Senator Graham admits he’s running for president of the United States
and not president of South Carolina,” says Matt Moore, the state GOP
chairman. “Our voters here are savvy in terms of presidential politics.
While he may have a little bit of home-field advantage, it won't be a
deciding factor. He has to compete.”

Still, strategists say Graham’s connections are valuable in the state—as
evidenced by the way in which he suavely cleared substantial challengers
from his Senate primary in 2014—and can help him at least in the short term.

His candidacy has frozen some of the establishment wing of the party in
South Carolina, including loyal donors, major business owners, and some
older elected officials who do not necessarily believe he can win but have
enough respect for Graham that they will not support other candidates for
as long as he is in the race.

“People who support him now anticipate he will get out and they intend to
be for someone else when it’s all said and done,” says one state Republican
operative working for a rival super PAC. “There may have been a time way
back in the day when primaries were smaller or more controlled that a
favorite son could get in there and mess things up, but that’s not case
anymore.”

If Graham does poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, he will have a difficult
time competing in his home state against one or two candidates who will
have gained momentum from their performances in either state (or both).

“Graham's going to have his most loyal supporters, but the overwhelming
majority of the state is still up for grabs,” said another state Republican
operative. “The question would be whether, if Graham doesn't see this
through to the end, he has the sway to take his block and send it toward a
single candidate."

Some prominent Republicans who might have supported Bush have already
stepped up to support Graham, such as Wilkins, who chaired George W. Bush’s
South Carolina campaign in 2004 and was later appointed ambassador to
Canada. Wilkins attended Graham’s announcement in Central on Monday.

But Marco Rubio is also seriously competing in the state. His campaign
manager, Terry Sullivan, is a veteran South Carolina operative. In
addition, the Florida senator’s team is stocked with state operatives, and
has cultivated significant business community support, according to a
National Journal report on Rubio’s emerging clasp on the state.

Walker, the son of a preacher, has been appealing to the state’s Christian
base in recent campaign stops. Rick Santorum, who announced his bid last
week, also plans to compete in the state. He has made several stops there
in recent months, and his son attends The Citadel. Rick Perry, who dropped
out of the running before the South Carolina primary in 2012, has been
visiting the state as well.

South Carolina, with roughly 600,000 primary voters, has picked the
eventual Republican nominee almost every cycle since 1980, with Newt
Gingrich’s 2012 win being an exception. With so many candidates running
this year, the Palmetto State could play a crucial role as the first
deep-red state to weigh in on the primary field, and could help set the
tone heading into Super Tuesday on March 1, where voters in a significant
number of Southern states will cast ballots.

“If you can't win here, you probably can't win nationally,” says Moore.
“This [state] is a test of organization and message, and it’s as important
as ever.”

*An Adelson Backs Lindsey Graham for President
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/an-adelson-backs-lindsey-graham-for-president-20150604>
// The National Journal // Adam Wollner – June 4, 2015*

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate and highly sought-after
Republican mega-donor, still isn't sure which Republican presidential
candidate he will back for the nomination in 2016. But Adelson's younger,
lesser-known brother has lent his support to Sen. Lindsey Graham's
long-shot White House bid.

Graham named Lenny Adelson, along with 38 others, to his long-shot
campaign's national finance committee on Thursday.

Lenny Adelson typically keeps a much lower political profile than his
brother. While Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam gave nearly $100 million
in disclosed contributions to conservative outside groups during the past
two election cycles, the only disclosed federal donations Lenny Adelson
made during that time frame were a pair of $2,600 contributions to two
House candidates—one Republican and one Democrat—in his home state of
Massachusetts, according to records maintained by the Center for Responsive
Politics.

Sheldon Adelson's net worth currently stands at $29 billion, but little is
publicly known about his brother's finances. A press release issued by the
Graham campaign didn't specify Lenny Adelson's current occupation, and a
2014 Federal Election Commission filing listed "Adelson Graphics" as his
employer.

Lenny Adelson does not tend to get involved with his brother's business
affairs. But he did originally introduce Sheldon Adelson to Hong Kong
businessman Richard Suen, who is now suing him. Suen claims Sheldon Adelson
owes him more than $300 million for helping his company, Las Vegas Sands
Corp., secure a license to operate a casino in Macau in 2002. The trial is
still ongoing.

Lenny Adelson, as well as a spokesman for Sheldon Adelson, could not
immediately be reached for comment.

Just about every GOP presidential hopeful has aggressively courted the
elder Adelson, who bankrolled a super PAC during the 2012 primary campaign
that kept Newt Gingrich afloat. But he hasn't committed to backing anyone
just yet. Adelson did, however, co-chair a fundraiser for an exploratory
committee Graham set up in March.

Aside from Adelson, Graham's list of national finance committee members
features a few other notable names. Jeff Immelt, the chairman and CEO of
General Electric, and Ronald Perelman, the CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes,
Inc., are among the committee's co-chairs.

"We are thrilled to have such strong support from these individuals who
believe that Senator Graham is the candidate best equipped to address the
issues facing our nation," said Graham spokeswoman Brittany Bramell.

*RUBIO*

*What happened when Marco Rubio spoke at a Bush awards dinner
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/04/what-happened-when-marco-rubio-spoke-at-a-bush-awards-dinner/>
// WaPo // Sean Sullivan – June 4, 2015 *

As Republican donors sipped their wine and munched on their salads in a
hotel ballroom here Thursday evening, a clip of Marco Rubio launching his
campaign on the promise that "yesterday is over" played on the television
screens around the room.

Then, the screens quickly cut to a message welcoming everyone to the
Prescott Bush awards dinner, named for the late grandfather of Jeb Bush,
Rubio's likely presidential rival and a man seen by many as an implicit
target of Rubio's generation-centric rhetoric on the campaign trail.

In his 25-minute speech at the fundraising dinner for the state GOP named
after the former Connecticut senator and Bush family icon, Rubio never once
mentioned the Bush name. But the elephant in the room was not lost on the
crowd.

"It is interesting because it's Jeb Bush's grandfather and now it's a guy
running against him who also happens to be from Florida," said Jay Sheehy
of Stratford.

Rubio had ventured into the heart of a state where the Bush family has deep
roots. Still, the crowd was mostly welcoming, applauding at several points
in his speech.

As he does often on the campaign trail, Rubio started by mentioning his
parents, who came to the United States from Cuba. He called for a muscular
national security strategy, slammed President Obama's signature health-care
law and took a swipe at the Clintons for making millions from paid
speeches, among other things.

Like former Florida governor Bush, whose father and brother were president,
former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is also seen as a target
of Rubio's "new generation" argument.

"The time has come for a new generation of leaders to guide us in our
transition from the past we are so proud of to the exciting future that
awaits our country," Rubio said.

He also cited John F. Kennedy's famous line from his inauguration speech:
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country."

"The truth is that for far too long, leaders in both parties have asked for
your vote on the promise of what our government can do for you," said
Rubio. "But I'm asking for your vote on the promise of what together we can
do for America."

The Prescott Bush dinner is state GOP's largest annual event. Jeb Bush
keynoted the dinner in 2014. Tickets for this year's event ranged from $199
to $5,000.

As the donors gathered inside the hotel ballroom to hear Rubio speak, about
three dozen demonstrators lined up outside to protest the Florida senator's
position on immigration.

"Up up with liberation, down down with deportation!" they chanted about 45
minutes before the dinner as a uniformed officer looked on and black cars
pulled up to the hotel. Some held up signs labeling Rubio the
"anti-immigrant."

Rubio pushed a sweeping immigration reform bill that included a path to
citizenship for undocumented immigrants in 2013 before backing away from
it. He's faced criticism from both conservative and liberal activists on
immigration. Rubio now favors a piecemeal approach to reform that
prioritizes border security and enforcing current laws.

Rubio will campaign in Idaho on Friday. On Saturday, he will make his
second appearance in Iowa since announcing his campaign in April.

Carol Way of Fairfield, Conn., said she has been impressed by both Bush and
Rubio. But Rubio has to prove himself to her, she said, citing an infamous
moment from his 2013 State of the Union response.

"I was one of the ones that watched the water bottle thing," she said.

*Rubio: Hillary, Dems will struggle to convince Americans they’re about the
future
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/4/marco-rubio-hillary-clinton-dems-will-struggle/>
// The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 4, 2015*

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and the Democrats are going to struggle to convince Americans
they’re part of a movement about the future, as he continues to fine-tune
his pitch for a “new generation of leadership” in the country.

“I believe Hillary Clinton and her whole party, for the most part, is going
to struggle to convince Americans that they are a movement about the
future,” Mr. Rubio, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said Thursday on Fox
News’ “Outnumbered” program.

Asked if he thought Mrs. Clinton, 67, is too old to be president, Mr.
Rubio, 44, said it doesn’t have anything to do with a person’s age, but
rather “the age of their ideas.”

“So we have all these people out there today struggling to get ahead — the
answer cannot be ‘we’re going to raise the minimum wage by a couple
bucks,’” he said. “Ten dollars and 10 cents doesn’t solve the problem for
someone.

“We need to figure out how can we help people that are making nine dollars
an hour to make 30 dollars an hour?” he continued. “And the only way that’s
going to happen is if you have an economy that produces that $30-an-hour
job and that person has the skills that that job requires. And the answer
to both of those questions today is no.”

In a videotaped message earlier in the week to an economic forum hosted by
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Mr. Rubio had criticized “outdated leaders” and
said the time has come for a “new generation of leaders.”

Other 40-somethings who are either running for president or are seriously
considering runs on the Republican side include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 44,
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, 47, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, 43.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is running, is 52, as is New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie, who is laying the groundwork for a possible bid.

One of Mr. Rubio’s top GOP rivals could be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,
62, who spoke in person at the forum and said he didn’t think the comments
were directed at him.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine that my good friend Marco would be critical
of his good friend Jeb,” Mr. Bush told reporters with a smile, according to
the New York Times.

Mr. Rubio, for his part, also offered praise for the GOP field, which grew
larger Thursday with the addition of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“I always tell people as a Republican, I’m glad that we have so many good
candidates. The Democrats are struggling to come up with one,” Mr. Rubio
said. “So I think it’s great that we have so many good candidates — I
believe this field is going to produce the next president, potentially the
next vice president, maybe a future president, and cabinet officers. And
we’re going to have a vibrant, spirited primary where that … competition is
going to drive excellence and ultimately give us a stronger nominee.”

“These are quality people that are going to be well-financed and have a
good message — we agree on a lot of issues; we have some differences. We’ll
talk about those. But I think from a competitive process like this, you get
a better nominee — someone who’s been tested, someone who’s had to spend
time working with people to fine-tune both their ideas and their delivery
and I think competition drives excellence, so it’s a good thing,” he said.

*Marco Rubio just made another confusing comment about his Middle East
policy
<http://www.businessinsider.com/marco-rubios-confusing-comment-about-iraq-nation-building-2015-6>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker – June 4, 2015 *

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) offered a somewhat confusing explanation of
his Iraq policy in an appearance on Fox News' "Outnumbered" on Thursday.

Rubio seemed to express support for US troops being present in Iraq, but he
maintained this did not represent the controversial "nation-building"
philosophy that led to a protracted American military presence in that
country following the US invasion in 2003.

However, while insisting he doesn't advocate "nation-building," Rubio
seemed to define his policy as exactly that.

"It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation,"
Rubio said of his vision for Iraq.

Watch a video of Rubio's remark below.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPrHm_zyWzw

The exchange began when a host asked Rubio whether he agrees with other
Republican presidential candidates who have criticized the extended
presence of US military troops in that country.

He began by explaining that America "can't build a democracy" in Iraq, but
could help the country with practical matters like infrastructure that
might help them "govern" long term. The host responded by saying he seemed
to be expressing support for "nation-building."

This query provoked Rubio's claim that he's not calling for
"nation-building" in Iraq and is instead talking about "assisting them in
building their nation."

His campaign did not immediately respond to an email from Business Insider
asking them to clarify how that is any different from "nation-building."

After making his seemingly contradictory statement about "nation-building,"
the senator went on to explain why he believes the US has a "vested
interest" in helping Iraqis govern their country.

"The alternative to not doing that is the chaos we have now," he said.

He argued that President Barack Obama's administration supported former
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been criticized for trying to
consolidate power in the country among his fellow Shias while leaving out
Sunni Muslims. Rubio said this behavior by al-Maliki facilitated the rise
of the jihadist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Iraq.

"What happened in Iraq under this administration is they rallied around
Maliki. Maliki was a Shia leader who used his power to go after Sunnis,"
Rubio explained. "That created the environment that was conducive for ISIS
to come back in and cause all these problems."

The US-led war in that country proved extremely unpopular and questions
about the government's handling of Iraq have come up on the campaign trail
for both the Republicans and Democrats who are aiming to win the White
House in 2016. These questions have been fueled by the fact ISIS gained a
foothold in Iraq following US troop withdrawal. Last year, the US military
launched operations aimed at wiping the group out.

Rubio's comments on "nation-building" are the third instance where he has
seemingly stumbled while discussing Iraq. As CNN has noted, Rubio, who has
made foreign policy expertise a cornerstone of his campaign, has been
"vague" about whether he'd support committing ground troops to fight ISIS.
And last month, in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, Rubio
said he would not have supported the decision to invade Iraq, which was an
apparent reversal from multiple prior comments he made in support of the
war.

*KASICH*

*The 2016 campaign’s new straight shooter: John Kasich
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/04/the-2016-campaigns-new-straight-shooter-john-kasich/>
// WaPo // Amber Phillips – June 4, 2015 *

John Kasich is quickly becoming the most quotable candidate in the 2016
field.

The two-term Ohio governor told the Washington Post's Dan Balz and Robert
Costa that he'll consider jumping into the race at the end of this month
(and allies think he'll run). This would be his second time running for
president; he entered the 2000 GOP primary, then quickly bowed out because
his campaign didn't go anywhere.

“I didn’t get scared out, I got destroyed out,” he told Balz recently. “I
had no money and no oxygen."

See what we mean? Balz, who has interviewed Kasich several times in recent
years, describes his conversation style this way:

Kasich spews out current initiatives and ideas for new ones at a rapid
pace, often shifting from one thought to another mid-sentence.

Here are more of Kasich's straight-shooter quotes. (For the record, The Fix
urges all politicians to be this blunt.)

On whether he's going to gain traction this time around:

"Either I got it, or I don't." -- At a May 1, 2015 Christian Science
Monitor breakfast

On the all-important first nominating state of Iowa:

“I haven’t been to Iowa." -- Washington Post interview, May 27, 2015

Actually, Kasich has a lot to say on Iowa -- all of it entertaining.

On whether he'd run for 2016, in a September 2014 editorial board meeting
with Ohio's Youngstown Vindicator:

"Honestly, I just don’t see it. I tried it once. You come with me. You can
go with me out to Iowa. You wouldn’t believe it. You’d never go to Iowa
again."

Oops. More on Iowa, in an October 2014 interview with Dan Balz:

"I blew this one,” he said of the Vindicator comment. “I like the people of
Iowa. ... I never liked the system they had where you had to pay to park
your RV in a parking lot. I wasn’t here to insult the people of Iowa.

(This is a reference to the Iowa straw poll, where prime real estate will
cost your campaign.)

That wasn't the only time Kasich's blunt rhetoric has gotten him into
trouble. In 2011, he had to apologize to a Columbus traffic cop who gave
him a ticket. Kasich called him "an idiot."

And earlier this year Kentucky lawmakers demanded an apology from Kasich
when he held a joint press conference with Democratic Kentucky Gov. Steve
Beshear and bashed state lawmakers there for not wanting to toll a
cross-border bridge between the two states.

Kasich, as quoted inthe Cincinnati Business Courier:

"At the end of the day, he (Beshear) can't force a group of legislators who
want to put their heads in the sand to go forward and do something that
needs to be done. He needs help from all of you," Kasich told business
leaders in the room.

From the podium, Kasich randomly shouted out to "Tommy" a couple of times –
North American Properties president Tom Williams.

Kasich is a bit of an odd duck in the Republican Party. As governor of
Ohio, he expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and promoted
federal social programs to help low-income residents. He also expressed
resignation after voters rebuked his move to rein in the collective
bargaining rights of unions.

In an interview with Robert Costa in February, Kasich acknowledged his
uniqueness:

“It's pretty hard to peg me."

More on the issues. Kasich is officially for marriage "between a man and a
woman," but said he'll uphold as president whatever the Supreme Court
decides.

"I have a number of friends who are gay. I like them," he said at the May 1
Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

At the same breakfast, Kasich on the question of the moment for GOP
candidates of -- whether he'd attend a friend's or relative's gay wedding:

"I don't usually go to weddings of people that I don't know, okay? I don't
go to 'em. But if somebody that I like is getting married in the
traditional sense or in the non-traditional sense, I'm not hung up about
it. I'll be celebrating with them."

More on how his views don't quite align with Republican Party:

"I’ve always said the party is my vehicle and not my master,” he told Balz
and Costa this May.

In the same interview, Kasich said if he runs, it won't be away from his
record:

" If people are bored by it, well, they’ll have to put up with it while I
give them the résumé. They need to know.”

But in November 2011, when Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted to repeal a law
he supported to limit collective bargaining rights, Kasich was humble about
his loss:

"If you don’t win and the people speak ...  you have to pay attention to
what they’re saying."

Kasich also thinks young people don't focus enough on politics. (He's
probably right.)

“Instead of young people talking about Justin Bieber or how bad the Grammys
were, maybe we could get people talking about Washington, Madison and
Monroe, and have a renewal of American history," he told Costa  in February.

Kasich launches some pretty blunt attacks at his  GOP competitors. He's
focused his criticism so far on the frontrunner, Jeb Bush, who most
analysts see him competing against for establishment-minded voters.

On Bush's nonprofit and super PAC, "Right to Rise":

"I don’t know anything about [Bush’s theme]. I really don’t. I’ve never
listened to him. What’s “Right to Rise”? Getting up in the morning?” he
said in May.

And as to why he's campaigning in New Hampshire this week:

Kasich is also plain-spoken when it comes to foreign policy. The former
congressman probably is best described as a hawk who has called for sending
troops to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Kasich, on the Hugh Hewitt radio show in April, on peace in the Middle East:

"People who think that there is a solution are naïve."

On Obama's much-maligned nuclear deal with Iran, at the Christian Science
Monitor breakfast:

Obama is "so in love" with the idea. It's like, Kasich said, "You're so
hungry to get that car you'll pay anything for it."

Kasich doesn't take himself too seriously, though. His philosophy on life
on the Hugh Hewitt show:

"You know what? Everybody needs to take a deep breath and have a little fun
once in a while, huh?"

We couldn't agree more, Mr. Kasich.

*Kasich makes favorable impression on the influential in New Hampshire
<http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/04/Kasich_in_NH.html>
// The Columbus Dispatch // Darrell Rowland – June 4, 2015 *

Renee Plummer wanted to pin down exactly what time Ohio Gov. John Kasich
and his entourage were coming to her condo Thursday evening for a private
dinner.

She was ordering fried clams and filet mignon for the 18 or so guests, so
she needed a firm commitment.

But it’s Plummer’s commitment Kasich and other Republican presidential
hopefuls are seeking. While Kasich didn’t quite win that Thursday, he did
get glowing praise from a woman regarded as highly influential in New
Hampshire politics.

Earlier in the day Kasich was the ninth possible presidential candidate
that she hosted for a luncheon with nearly 50 business leaders in a
conference room near her office next to the airport. And in this Plummer
Primary he did what he must do time and time again in coming months if he
is to become a serious presidential candidate: Win converts.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Plummer said after the lunch. “People
who were walking out (after Kasich’s 52-minute talk) who thought they were
with somebody else said ‘I love this guy.’

“They stopped me. It was like, ‘All right, you know what? He’s like my No.
1.’ They thought they were all set before they saw him.”

And Plummer wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“I said, ‘Told you.’ He’s real. He’s a real person. He’s smart. ... I’ve
been telling everybody, wait until you hear this guy speak.”

The business roundtable was Kasich’s only public event Thursday, but he
also campaigned behind the scenes aside from the dinner with Renee and
Danny Plummer’s place. Just before Plummer’s luncheon, for instance, he
gave an interview to National Public Radio.

But perhaps the most important get-together of the day came with former New
Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, patriarch of the state’s leading GOP family.
Kasich’s campaign committee already is backed by his son, former U.S. Sen.
John H. Sununu, which Danny Plummer said is very notable.

Kasich was accompanied by Franklin County Republican Chairman Doug Preisse
as well as his campaign committee’s top two leaders in New Hampshire:
consultant Bruce Berke and state director Paul Collins, who worked for both
Sununus.

Renee Plummer — who also praised the performance of former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush and former executive Carly Fiorina at her roundtables — said she
appreciates the fact that Kasich talks about working with Democrats rather
than attacking them.

The Ohio governor raised eyebrows during a question-and-answer period
following his roundtable speech by saying that any GOP presidential hopeful
who thinks the party can topple Hillary Clinton by emphasizing the
Republicans’ familiar message about her questionable dealings is dead wrong.

“We are not going to beat Hillary Clinton on the basis of Benghazi and
emails and the Clinton Foundation,” Kasich said.

“You know how you win? You better have a bigger vision as to how Americans
feel that America’s going to be better for them. And how they’re going to
play a role in it. And how the American Dream is not dead.”

While bashing Clinton and President Barack Obama may win applause from GOP
partisans, “That’s hitting it in the cheap seats. That’s not what’s going
to change this country.”

It was merely the latest deviation from the party line for Kasich, seeking
to make an impact in a presidential race where he is little known.

Thursday morning, Hotline dubbed him the “Most Interesting Man in the
Field” and moved him up to No. 7 with an “up” arrow in its new GOP
presidential power rankings.

Thursday afternoon, a much-watched Washington Post blog called him “the
2016 campaign’s new straight shooter.”

Kasich declined to criticize specific candidates in the GOP field, praising
former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who entered the race Thursday.

However, he did refer to the underwhelming performance of Bush to explain
his serious consideration of running.

“I just thought that Jeb was going to suck all the air from the room. It
hasn’t happened. No hit on you Jeb!” Kasich told the business crowd.

And he took a jab at GOP ideologues in the race.

“If you think that somebody can get elected president, and go down to
Washington and change that city without understanding how it works, it will
not happen. It will not happen,” Kasich said. “It cannot be done with some
strict ideology and without understanding how you get other people in the
other political party to support your efforts.”

The governor said his effort is hitting internal organizational and
fundraising goals, and “we’r e getting closer and closer to making the
final conclusion” on whether he will officially launch his campaign. He
could be the final major entrant into the contest.

But in a line he repeats often, Kasich said he would be as content spending
time on his back porch with his family as he would running for president.

“I’m playing for a bigger game than that, which is really my eternal
salvation, (which) is what matters to me. I think I’ve got it.”

*OTHER*

*GOP hopefuls fight for post-launch poll bounce
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/243977-gop-hopefuls-fight-for-post-launch-poll-bounce>
// The Hill // Jonathan Easley – June 4, 2015 *

Republican presidential candidates entering one of the most crowded primary
races in recent history are hoping to get a big bounce from their campaign
launches.

Each of the nine candidates in the race so far has fought to win attention
from social and traditional media when jumping into the race — but not
everyone has been successful.

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) jumped to the top of the pack after his
announcement, while Sen. Rand Paul’s (Ky.) approval ratings stayed
relatively stable after his.

Some big names — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker,
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have yet to
enter the race.

And for others, it is too early to tell. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) joined
the fight this week, while former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) and former New
York Gov. George Pataki got in the GOP race last week.

Here is a look at how each Republican presidential candidate has fared in
the wake of their announcements.

Marco Rubio

Rubio has had the best bounce from his campaign launch.

As recently as March 31, Rubio was buried in the polls, sitting in seventh
place with only 5 percent support, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP)
average.

After announcing his candidacy on April 13, he saw his numbers double, and
the lift has yet to fade. He now tops the GOP field with 14 percent,
according to the latest CNN/ORC poll released on Tuesday.

Rubio was already rising before his campaign launch in Miami, as
influential conservative pundits lauded him as a next-generation candidate
with unmatched rhetorical skills. He had already risen to 7.3 percent,
according to the RCP average, the day of his announcement.

Since then, he’s underlined his status as a top-tier contender.

Ben Carson

Carson had seen his support erode in the weeks leading up to his
announcement; he arrived in his hometown of Detroit on May 4 taking only 5
percent. That placed him eighth.

But the media attention surrounding his campaign launch has helped his
polling numbers. He stands at 9.5 percent — good for fourth place —
according to the latest RCP average.

A Fox News poll released in mid-May showed Carson tied for first with Bush.

Carson’s launch energized his base; his supporters are flooding his
campaign with small-dollar donations and helping him to build a substantial
election fund.

Although he trails Rubio, he might be the Republican candidate with the
best chance of locking up the conservative vote in the primary.

Ted Cruz

Cruz also enjoyed a sizable boost in polls after his announcement on March
23.

Unfortunately for the Tea Party senator from Texas, his numbers haven’t
remained elevated like Rubio’s and Carson’s have.

According to the RCP average, Cruz sat at 4.6 percent on the day of his
announcement, burying him in eighth place. Less than one month later, Cruz
peaked at 11.3 percent — trailing only Walker and Bush.

Cruz got a jump on the GOP field, becoming the first presidential contender
to enter the race with a direct appeal to evangelical conservatives at
Liberty University, the nation’s largest Christian college.

Cruz had a full two weeks to himself as the GOP’s lone candidate, and his
aggression was rewarded by a tremendous lift in the polls.

Cruz’s early announcement helped him draw in conservative backers. His
support among those who identify as “very conservative” shot up from 11
percent in March to 33 percent in April, according to a survey from Public
Policy Polling.

But as other candidates have entered the race, particularly Carson and
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Cruz has seen his polling bump fade.

He’s currently at 8.2 percent, according to the RCP average, and has fallen
back into seventh place.

Mike Huckabee

Huckabee’s presidential announcement helped him put an end to what had been
a prolonged slide in the polls.

In early March, when the polls are largely driven by name ID, Huckabee was
near the top of the field with 13.3 percent, according to
RealClearPolitics. On May 5, when Huckabee launched his campaign from his
hometown of Hope, Ark., he had slid into sixth place with 7.5 percent.

Huckabee has seen a modest uptick in since. He is currently in fifth place
with 9.3 percent.

That’s not as much of an uptick as some candidates received, perhaps
because Huckabee entered an already crowded race.

Rand Paul

Paul got almost no bump from his campaign launch.

The Kentucky Republican became the second presidential candidate to enter
the GOP race on April 7, hitting the launch button in a well-received event
in Louisville, Ky.

At the time, Paul was polling in the middle of the pack, taking 8.7 percent
and sitting in fifth place, per RCP. After the launch, he ticked up to the
9.5 percent range, and fourth place in the polls.

The lack of a bounce might be because of his messy launch, which was
overcome by a high-profile dust-up with NBC “Today” show host Savannah
Guthrie the day after his announcement. Video of Paul chastising and
talking over Guthrie went viral, and he spent the rest of the week having
to explain himself.

The libertarian will look for a second wind after campaigning heavily on
his Patriot Act talkathon.

Carly Fiorina

Fiorina was the first candidate not to launch with a major event, opting
instead to announce on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on May 4.

She hails from a deep blue state and lacks a clearly defined base of
support, never having won political office. At the time, she barely
registered in the national polls.

Still, Fiorina has earned rave reviews on the campaign trail for her fiery
speeches and aggressive attacks against Republicans’ likely opponent in the
general election, Hillary Clinton.

But nothing has changed for Fiorina in the polls. She consistently pulls
only 1 percent, despite benefitting from outsized media coverage in places
like the Drudge Report.

*Poll: Which Republican Presidential Candidate Should Democrats Fear Most?
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/poll-gop-candidate-democrats-fear-most-20150605>
// National Journal // Sara Mimms – June 5, 2015*

'Jeb can better battle Hillary for the center and exploit her pandering to
the Warren faction.'

Q: Which Republican presidential candidate should Democrats fear most?

Jeb Bush: 37%

Marco Rubio: 29%

Scott Walker: 5%

John Kasich: 13%

Rand Paul: 4%

Mike Huckabee: 2%

Ben Carson: 0%

Chris Christie: 0%

Ted Cruz: 0%

Carly Fiorina: 0%

Jeb Bush

"He's the one who can unify his party at the end of the day and win swing
voters in November 2016."

"If he can get through the primaries, he has the most crossover appeal to
moderates and undecideds. He would also make great inroads with Hispanic
voters."

"He'll have the deep-pocket Republican establishment behind him. Rubio a
close second."

Marco Rubio

"He's young, handsome, has charisma. Thank God he is not nearly as good a
candidate as Obama was."

"Rubio is likable, dynamic, and has a great story to tell, and he tells it
well. He can connect. His earnest, youthful contrast to [Hillary Clinton]
is worrisome."

"Broadest appeal and most different from Hillary. Represents [the] fresh /
new."

Scott Walker

"Probably the best politician in the group. Also the least likely to be a
good president if he wins."

"Danger is Scott Walker could bore the electorate to victory."

Q: Which Republican presidential candidate should Democrats fear most?

REPUBLICANS (56 VOTES)

Marco Rubio: 43%

Jeb Bush: 21%

John Kasich: 12%

Scott Walker: 9%

Chris Christie: 7%

Ben Carson: 2%

Ted Cruz: 2%

Carly Fiorina: 2%

Rand Paul: 2%

Mike Huckabee: 0%

Marco Rubio

"He represents a significant turning of the page for the GOP and has the
potential to appeal to Hispanics and millennials in ways the others can't."

"A powerful combination of personal story and great ability to inspire.
It's up to his campaign to see how far he can go."

"He is a natural campaigner that will fare well with the independents."

Jeb Bush

"Will keep GOP base, while getting more Latino votes than his brother."

"Jeb can better battle Hillary for the center and exploit her pandering to
the Warren faction."

John Kasich

"Experienced, centered, Ohio, with little baggage. Perfect matchup with
Clinton."

Scott Walker

"Midwest governor who turned blue state red, beat public-sector unions
three times at polls, and made Wisconsin a right-to-work state. That's a
tough hombre."

Chris Christie

"If he runs and survives the primary, his tell-it-like-it-is persona will
be perfected, and he rivals Bill Clinton in terms of charisma. Hillary
can't compete."

*TOP NEWS*

*DOMESTIC*

*The number of Fortune 500 companies led by women is at an all-time high: 5
percent
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/04/the-number-of-fortune-500-companies-led-by-women-is-at-an-all-time-high-5-percent/?tid=sm_tw>
// WaPo // Ana Swanson – June 4, 2015 *

Female leaders in the Fortune 500 had another record year.

This year’s Fortune 500 list “ties the record (set last year) for highest
number of female CEOs with 24, including Mary Barra (General Motors), Meg
Whitman (Hewlett-Packard), Ginny Rometty (IBM) and more.” So reads the
press release about the new list of America’s 500 largest companies by
revenue, which was published this morning.

But there's a less charitable way to look at this new. The number of female
CEOs of America’s most influential companies is stuck at a 5 percent, as it
was the year before. While women make up 45 percent of the labor force of
the S&P 500, few are climbing to the very top.

Catalyst, http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-sp-500-companies

That said, there has been progress.  In 1998, just one woman led a Fortune
500 company. By 2009, the figure had risen to 15, but then it fell to 12 in
2011 before doubling to 24 in 2014.

Among American companies overall, the percentage of female CEOs is slightly
higher: about 15 percent, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on
women in the workplace. The percentage of women on U.S. corporate boards
has been stuck at around 17 percent for almost a decade.

There are various arguments for bringing more women into the highest levels
of corporate power. Some say it’s a moral issue, while others stress that
more diverse viewpoints bring better governance.

But the most persuasive argument may be the simplest one. When you draw
from a smaller pool of people, you miss out on a lot of talent. Women are
50.8 percent of the population. Would you rather select your executive team
from a pool of 100 people, or from 49?

Bringing more women into the workforce has already added a lot to the
American economy. Consultancy McKinsey calculates that the additional
productive power of women entering the workforce between 1970 to today
accounts for about a quarter of the size of the U.S. economy.

*Most Americans back legal status for undocumented immigrants
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-americans-support-undocumented-immigrants-legal-status-118639.html>
// Politico // Nick Gass – June 4, 2015 *

More than seven in 10 Americans say undocumented immigrants should be
allowed to stay in the United States legally, as long as they meet certain
requirements, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released
Thursday.

A majority — 72 percent — say that immigrants should be allowed to legally
remain in the country, including 80 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of
independents and 56 percent of Republicans.

Of those 72 percent, 42 percent say they should be allowed to apply for
citizenship, while 26 percent would allow for permanent residency. Just 27
percent responded that they should not be allowed to stay.

A majority of Republicans support allowing undocumented immigrants to stay
in the U.S., but 58 percent see giving them a path to legal status as a
reward for doing something that is against the law. Only 23 percent of
Democrats and 33 percent of independents surveyed feel that way.

And Republicans and leaners aren’t happy with the way their party is
dealing with the issue. Just 34 percent say the GOP is doing a good job,
with 59 percent in disagreement. By contrast, 51 percent of Democrats think
their party is doing well on the issue, with 34 percent dissatisfied.

Additionally, 63 percent of Republicans surveyed said immigrants are a
burden on the country, compared to 27 percent who called them a strength.

Overall, 51 percent said immigrants strengthen the country, compared to 41
percent who said they do not.

As far as legal immigration goes, a plurality of 39 percent said it should
stay at current levels, while 31 percent say it should be decreased and 24
percent want more.

According to Pew, the share of Americans favoring less legal immigration
has not declined in the last two years, though it has gone down in the past
decade.

Just 37 percent approve of President Barack Obama’s handling of
immigration, while 65 percent disapprove.

The poll was conducted May 12-18 among 2,002 adults nationwide via
landlines and cellphones, carrying an overall margin of error of 2.5
percentage points. Among 506 Republicans, the margin of error is plus or
minus 5 percentage points; among 636 Democrats, it is plus or minus 4.5
percentage points; among 758 independents, it is plus or minus 4.1
percentage points.

*Senate Dems ready to blockade all spending bills
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/senate-democrats-to-block-spending-bills-118641.html>
// Politico // Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan – June 4, 2015 *

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is plotting to block GOP spending bills —
an attempt to force Republicans to the negotiating table and hasten a deal
to raise strict spending caps.

At a closed-door Democratic leadership meeting Tuesday night, Reid (D-Nev.)
vowed that his caucus wouldn’t allow a single appropriations bill to get a
floor vote, sources familiar with the meeting say. Sen. Chuck Schumer
(D-N.Y.), one of Reid’s top lieutenants, told their House counterparts that
they’re asking colleagues to filibuster and prevent Republicans from even
calling up the spending measures.

“We will not vote to proceed to the Defense appropriations bill or any
appropriations bills until Republicans have sat down at the table and
figured out with us how we’re going to properly fund the Defense Department
… and our families’ domestic needs,” Schumer said Thursday at a news
conference disclosing the strategy.

Republicans in both chambers are working on spending bills that give the
Pentagon more money, skirting 2011 spending caps by tucking the money into
a war fund.

But President Barack Obama and the Democrats want dollar-for-dollar funding
boosts for domestic priorities like education and transportation programs,
too — and they’re betting that gumming up the appropriations process will
force the GOP to make a deal.

The plan, if executed correctly, would deliver a huge blow to the Senate’s
fledgling Republican majority, barring it from completing one of its top
legislative priorities.

The GOP has prioritized a return to “regular order” — where all 12
appropriations bills are individually scrutinized and passed on the floor —
as a way to demonstrate Republicans can govern effectively with control of
both chambers. They want to avoid funding the government with a series of
stop-gap continuing resolutions and last-minute legislating.

And while many Republicans are also interested in raising the spending caps
eventually — though not until much, much later in the year — they’d hoped
to clear GOP appropriations bills first, which would have given them
bragging rights, at the very least.

Obama has promised to veto their appropriations measures, but the latest
Democratic strategy means those bills wouldn’t even make it to his desk.

“Every day that goes by without an agreement to replace sequestration in a
responsible way is a day that makes it tougher,” said Sen. Patty Murray
(D-Wash.), calling GOP insistence on moving their own spending bills a
“waste of time.” She and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took a full two months to
hammer out the first agreement to lift the caps in 2013, she said, a pact
that many lawmakers hope can be recreated this year. “It’s getting us,
every day, closer to a meltdown.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said some kind of Democratic stand is necessary
to “reinforce the president’s veto threat and … compel a negotiation over
the future of the budget.”

Republicans will no doubt call Democrats obstructionists, accusing them of
flirting with a government shutdown.

But Democrats are already playing defense, suggesting at a Thursday news
conference that refusing to move to a deal immediately would hurt military
families and veterans. They argue the ball is in the GOP’s court.

“[T]he onus will be on Republicans to come to the table,” a senior
Democratic aide said.

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. is pursued by the
media as he departs a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington,
Tuesday, June 2, 2015, where officials and families of 9-11 victims called
for the 28 classified pages of the 9-11 report to be declassified. Paul has
been voicing his dissent in the Senate against a House bill backed by the
president that would end the National Security Agency's collection of
American calling records while preserving other surveillance authorities.

Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois told POLITICO that he and leadership had not
whipped the count yet to ensure the entire party was on board, and when
asked whether it would be easy to do so, Durbin responded with a terse, “No
— nothing’s easy.”

But Democratic leaders already have a number of key Senate Democrats lined
up, including former Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, who still
leads the panel for the left.

“I want to put the chairman on notice: The president will veto bills at
this allocation, and Democrats will vote against motions to proceed to
these bills on the Senate floor,” the Maryland Democrat warned at a recent
spending mark-up. “We need a sequel to Murray-Ryan, and we need it sooner
rather than later ”

Senate Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed stood with leadership at the
Thursday news conference, suggesting the defense-minded Rhode Island
Democrat also backs the strategy. And Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri,
another Democrat with a keen eye for military needs, says she’s in.

“I certainly am inclined to vote against [the motion] to proceed to
appropriations that’s going to damage our military permanently by not
dealing with the base budget needs,” she said. “The appropriations bill is
really where the fight will come.”

Across the Rotunda, House Democrats under Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are
also playing offense. Though chamber rules don’t allow them to muck up the
process like the Senate can, the California Democrat also promised at
Tuesday night’s meeting that Democrats would continue to oppose House
appropriations bills in large swaths to ensure Republicans cannot claim
they have a veto-proof majority.

She also suggested that Democrats need to push for revenue increases to
offset a portion of the cost associated with raising spending caps.

“What we have done is come together with a unified message of the folly of
this budget’s austerity,” said House Democratic appropriator David Price
(D-N.C.). “At some point there’s going to be some sort of budget agreement
… so what’s it going to take to precipitate that action?”

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, when asked whether such a
strategy would quicken work toward a deal, shrugged.

“I don’t know,” said the Kentucky Republican, who’s been calling for a deal
to raise the caps for a few months now. “We’re going to continue with what
we’re doing. We’re working at a record pace, and we’ll just have to see.”

*Fracking Has Had No ‘Widespread’ Impact on Drinking Water, EPA Finds
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/fracking-has-had-no-widespread-impact-on-drinking-water-epa-finds-1433433850?cb=logged0.593785903416574>
// WSJ // Russell Gold & Amy Harder – June 4, 2015*

A decade into an energy boom led by hydraulic fracturing, the Environmental
Protection Agency has concluded there is no evidence the practice has had a
“widespread, systemic impact on drinking water.”

The report is the federal government’s most comprehensive examination of
the issue of fracking and drinking water, and it bolsters the position
staked out by the energy industry and its supporters: that fracking can be
carried out safely and doesn’t need to pose a threat to water.

While there have been some cases involving spills and leaking wells, the
spread of fracking didn’t cause extensive damage to groundwater resources,
the EPA found. The four-year study noted that there were certain “potential
vulnerabilities” to water supplies that needed to be addressed, including
ensuring wells are well built and wastewater is disposed of properly.

“EPA’s draft study will give state regulators, tribes and local communities
and industry around the country a critical resource to identify how best to
protect public health and their drinking water resources,” said Thomas
Burke, deputy assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and
Development.

While the report doesn’t recommend any specific action, it could
reinvigorate a debate over the role of fracking in the nation’s energy
landscape at a time when environmentalists have increasingly called to ban
the practice outright, a step that two states with gas resources—New York
and Maryland—have recently taken.

Fracking remains controversial in some communities as critics of the
practice have recently moved to highlight other concerns with the practice,
including air emissions, community health impacts and the proliferation of
earthquakes that some studies have tied to injecting fracking wastewater.

Fracking involves shooting millions of gallons of water, laced with
chemicals, into dense rock formations to create fractures and allow oil and
natural gas to flow out.

Several years ago, as fracking spread across the U.S., there were
widespread fears that fracking would lead to contaminated drinking water.
Many of these fears were stoked by the 2010 documentary Gasland. One of the
most notable scenes showed a landowners lighting his faucet on fire.

In Congress recently, the political debate over fracking has subsided.
Almost all Republicans endorse fracking, and many Democratic lawmakers have
increasingly been supportive as well, in large part because it has brought
economic growth to their districts.

The growing skepticism of fracking by the Democratic Party’s environmental
base has done little to move Democrats toward that position. The EPA’s
report, whose findings echo that of many Democrats on Capitol Hill and in
the Obama administration, will reinforce much of the conventional wisdom on
Capitol Hill about the drilling practice.

*Barnard College will now accept transgender women
<http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/04/pf/college/barnard-college-transgender-admissions/index.html>
// CNN // Emily Jane Fox – June 4, 2015 *

Barnard College announced Thursday that it will admit transgender women, a
move that follows a number of women's colleges who have expanded their
policies on gender identity over the last several months.

Barnard, an all women's college in New York affiliated with Columbia
University, said its board voted to consider admissions for applicants who
"consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned
to them at birth." This will go into effect for those applying in the fall
of 2016.

The policy does not apply to transgender men, who were born female and
identified as male when they applied, though the college said it will
continue to support and enroll those who transition to males after they
have already been admitted.

Before now, Barnard did not have an official policy on transgender students
or applicants.

The decision was made after a year-long discussion on campus, consisting of
five town halls and a virtual forum that collected more than 900 responses.

From the conversations and feedback, a statement from the college said two
things were made clear: "There was no question that Barnard must reaffirm
its mission as a college for women. And there was little debate that trans
women should be eligible for admission to Barnard."

Barnard's announcement comes as a spate of women's colleges across the
country have reached similar decisions, amidst a national dialogue about
transgender issues. Last fall, Mount Holyoke College announced it would
admit "any qualified student who is female or identifies as a women." This
means that it admits those who were born female and identify as female,
those who were born male and identify as female, and, in a step further
than Barnard, those who were born female and identify as male. The school
also clarifies that it admits those who were born female and don't identify
as either a man or woman.

In February, Bryn Mawr College adopted a policy that is much like Barnard's
new policy, admitting those who were born male but identify as female at
the time of application. Wellesley College came to a similar decision in
March, as did Smith College in May.

*As Supreme Court Obamacare case looms, Republicans split on response
<http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0OK2LU20150604?irpc=932> //
Reuters // Susan Cornwell & Caroline Humer – June 4, 2015*

U.S. Republicans face a potential political backlash from voters if the
Supreme Court rules soon against President Barack Obama's healthcare law,
and are split over what to do about it, with some calling on the Obama
administration for help.

But the White House, perhaps sensing a chance to blame Republicans for
trouble, is showing no outward signs of crafting a contingency plan in case
of an adverse outcome in King v. Burwell, expected to be ruled on by the
end of this month.

The outcome could mean millions of Americans, many of them Republicans,
would lose their Obamacare health insurance coverage. One of them might be
Rosel Ettress, of Chicago.

A daycare center manager and mother of three, Ettress could lose $250 a
month in tax subsidies that help her afford the premiums for her insurance
under 2010's Affordable Care Act.

She said in a telephone interview that this would be a blow and she urged
Republicans and Democrats in Congress to act.

"I would like for Congress to come up with a way to fix this where everyone
could still get the subsidies and still save a little money in the
process," she said.

King v. Burwell is the result of a lawsuit brought by anti-Obamacare
libertarian activists. Ordinarily, Republicans might be expected to cheer
for a ruling damaging to Obamacare, which the party has opposed since its
passage.

But there are many Republicans among the 6.4 million low- and middle-income
Americans who get Obamacare premium subsidies in 34 states. If those
Americans lost their coverage as a result of the case, who would they blame
at the polls in 2016?

REPUBLICANS DIVIDED

Republicans in Congress have been working on post-King v. Burwell plans for
months, but still can not decide what to do. Some favor extending the
Obamacare subsidies long enough to protect people like Ettress for a time
and prevent them from possibly seeking revenge on the party.

In another approach, the Republican Study Committee, a group of some 170
House of Representatives conservatives, on Thursday proposed a model for a
longer-term replacement for Obamacare.

But the group's chairman, Representative Bill Flores, said it would not
offer an interim plan for the immediate aftermath of King v. Burwell, in
part because members can not agree on whether to temporarily extend the
Obamacare subsidies.

"I will not vote to extend the subsidies unless the president is willing to
sit down with us and do the things to reduce the overall cost of the
premiums," said Representative Austin Scott, a member of the committee, at
a news conference.

In the Senate, there was rising Republican anxiety about what might need to
be done in the wake of King v. Burwell.

Twenty-one of 24 Republicans who are running for re-election to the Senate
next year are from states on the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov, which
King v. Burwell specifically targets and from which the court could make
the subsidies disappear.

"Millions have grown accustomed to those subsidies and we're gonna have to
replace them" if the court nixes them, Republican Senator John McCain of
Arizona told Reuters earlier this week.

One of the senators running for re-election in 2016, Ron Johnson of
Wisconsin, has 31 co-sponsors including McCain for his bill to extend the
Obamacare subsidies through August 2017.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a Senate Republican leader, this week
said Obama should step in. "The president made the mess. He doesn't seem to
be a willing partner to work with in finding solutions to the mess he's
made," Barrasso said.

White House officials said they have no Plan B if the Court rules against
the administration.

"If the Supreme Court were to throw the health care system in this country
into utter chaos, there would be no easy solutions for solving that
problem,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.

*INTERNATIONAL*

*House could be forced to debate war against ISIL
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/house-war-debate-isil-118651.html#ixzz3c7Qn1Fun>
// Politico // Bryan Bender – June 4, 2015  *

Rep. Jim McGovern, calling Congress “the poster child for cowardice,” is
taking advantage of an obscure provision to force the House to debate the
10-month-old war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The Massachusetts Democrat took to the House floor Thursday to introduce a
bipartisan resolution under the provisions of the War Powers Resolution,
which would require a full debate within 15 days on whether U.S. troops
should withdraw from Iraq and Syria.

He cited the Congress’ failure to authorize the U.S.-led air campaign
against the militant group, along with some 3,000 military advisers to help
train Iraqi troops.

“Frankly speaking, this is unacceptable,” McGovern said, saying that if the
Congress “doesn’t have the stomach” to authorize the war it should vote to
bring U.S. forces home.

His resolution is co-sponsored by Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Barbara
Lee (D-Calif.).

“This House appears to have no problem sending our uniformed men and women
into harm’s way. It appears to have no problem spending billions of dollars
for the arms, equipment and airpower to carry out these wars. But it just
can’t bring itself to step up to the plate and take responsibility for
these wars,” McGovern said in prepared remarks. “Congress is the poster
child for cowardice.”

“Just yesterday Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy for the U.S.-led coalition
fighting ISIL, said that this fight may take ‘a generation or more,’”
McGovern went on. “If we are going to invest a generation or more of our
blood and our treasure in this war, then shouldn’t Congress at least debate
whether or not to authorize it?”

“Every single hour the taxpayers of the United States are paying $3.42
million for military actions against the Islamic State. $3.42 million every
hour,” he declared.

The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within
48 hours of committing armed forces to military action. It also requires
the troops be brought home after 90 days without without an authorization
of the use of military force or a declaration of war — a requirement that
has largely been ignored over the decades since it was adopted after the
Vietnam War.

An aide described the procedure McGovern is relying on to force such a
debate this way:

“The way it works, the clock would start tomorrow and there would then be
15 calendar days for the House Foreign Affairs Committee to act. If they
fail to act, the resolution can then be brought up for a vote once it has
‘ripened’ the week of June 22, specifically on the first day of session
that week, June 23.”

At the urging of members of both parties, President Barack Obama sent
Congress a proposed authorization for the use of military force in
February, but due to deep disagreements in both parties neither the House
nor Senate has taken action.

Jones, who represents Fort Bragg, cited in his floor remarks Thursday
Congress’ war making authority in the Constitution.

“The House has a responsibility to the men and women in uniform and the
American people,” he said.

*China suspected in massive breach of federal personnel data
<http://news.yahoo.com/us-officials-massive-breach-federal-personnel-data-210302099--politics.html>
// AP // Ken Dilanian and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar – June 4, 2015 *

China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of
the U.S. government personnel office and stealing identifying information
of at least 4 million federal workers, American officials said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the
Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been
compromised.

"The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this
occurred," the statement said.

The hackers were believed to be based in China, said Sen. Susan Collins, a
Maine Republican.

Collins, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said the breach was
"yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and
focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with
security clearances."

A U.S. official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to
publicly discuss the data breach, said it could potentially affect every
federal agency. One key question is whether intelligence agency employee
information was stolen. Former government employees are affected as well.

"This is an attack against the nation," said Ken Ammon, chief strategy
officer of Xceedium, who said the attack fit the pattern of those carried
out by nation states for the purpose of espionage. The information stolen
could be used to impersonate or blackmail federal employees with access to
sensitive information, he said.

The Office of Personnel Management is the human resources department for
the federal government, and it conducts background checks for security
clearances. The OPM conducts more than 90 percent of federal background
investigations, according to its website.

The agency said it is offering credit monitoring and identity theft
insurance for 18 months to individuals potentially affected. The National
Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers in 31 federal agencies,
said it is encouraging members to sign up for the monitoring as soon as
possible.

In November, a former DHS contractor disclosed another cyberbreach that
compromised the private files of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands
of other federal employees.

Cyber-security experts also noted that the OPM was targeted a year ago in a
cyber-attack that was suspected of originating in China. In that case,
authorities reported no personal information was stolen.

One expert said it's possible that hackers could use information from
government personnel files for financial gain. In a recent case disclosed
by the IRS, hackers appear to have obtained tax return information by
posing as taxpayers, using personal information gleaned from previous
commercial breaches, said Rick Holland, an information security analyst at
Forrester Research.

"Given what OPM does around security clearances, and the level of detail
they acquire when doing these investigations, both on the subjects of the
investigations and their contacts and references, it would be a vast amount
of information," Holland added.

DHS said its intrusion detection system, known as EINSTEIN, which screens
federal Internet traffic to identify potential cyber threats, identified
the hack of OPM's systems and the Interior Department's data center, which
is shared by other federal agencies.

It was unclear why the EINSTEIN system didn't detect the breach until after
so many records had been copied and removed.

"DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity
and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct
investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion," the
statement said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee,
called the hack "shocking, because Americans may expect that federal
computer networks are maintained with state of the art defenses."

Ammon said federal agencies are rushing to install two-factor
authentication with smart cards, a system designed to make it harder for
intruders to access networks. But implementing that technology takes time.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the
government must overhaul its cybersecurity defenses. "Our response to these
attacks can no longer simply be notifying people after their personal
information has been stolen," he said. "We must start to prevent these
breaches in the first place."

*Obama to meet Iraqi prime minister at G7
<http://thehill.com/policy/international/244043-obama-to-meet-iraqi-prime-minister-at-g7>
// The Hill // Jordan Fabian – June 4, 2015*

President Obama will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi at this
weekend’s Group of Seven (G7) summit in Germany amid tensions over the
administration’s strategy in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS).

It will be Obama and Abadi’s first face-to-face meeting since the city of
Ramadi fell to ISIS militants last month, a major blow for the
international coalition’s campaign against the group.

The two leaders will discuss “the situation on the ground and our efforts
to support the Iraqi security forces,” deputy national security adviser Ben
Rhodes told reporters Thursday.

The White House has publicly expressed confidence in Abadi’s leadership,
but there have been signs of a strained relationship since ISIS took
control of the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi.

Abadi called for greater international support for Iraqi ground forces
during a meeting of coalition partners in Paris this week.

“This is a failure on the part of the world,” Abadi told reporters. “There
is a lot of talk of support for Iraq. There is very little on the ground.”

ISIS has also made recent gains in Syria, taking the ancient city of
Palmyra and advancing on Aleppo.

Rhodes said there are no plans to announce any shift in strategy. He
expressed confidence in the existing plan to fight the group, which
includes a new offensive in Anbar Province, where Ramadi is located.

There are approximately 3,000 U.S. troops training and equipping Iraqi
forces, but they do not serve in combat roles.

In addition, the government has sent 2,000 anti-tank missiles to Iraq to
help combat ISIS’s use of car bombs placed inside armored vehicles. The
administration has also pledged to speed up other weapons shipments.

Last month, Iraqi officials were angered when Defense Secretary Ashton
Carter said Iraqi troops who were routed in Ramadi showed “no will to
fight.” That prompted Vice President Biden to smooth over tensions and
pledge support for the Iraqi forces in a phone call with Abadi.

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS*

*Let Transgender Troops Serve Openly
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/opinion/let-transgender-troops-serve-openly.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region&_r=0>
// NYT // The Editorial Board - June 4, 2015 *

Staff Sgt. Loeri Harrison could receive the paperwork any day now, forms
certifying that after an exemplary eight-year Army career, she is no longer
fit for duty and must leave Fort Bragg because she is transgender.

Early this year, Senior Airman Logan Ireland feared he might face a similar
fate when he disclosed to his commanders during a recent deployment in
Afghanistan that he transitioned from female to male. Yet, his supervisors
have been supportive, allowing him to wear male uniforms and adhere to male
grooming standards even though Air Force records continue to label him as
female.

It can go either way in the military these days. While transgender
civilians in the federal work force enjoy robust legal protections from
discrimination, those in the armed forces may be discharged at any moment.
The Pentagon, shamefully, has yet to rescind anachronistic personnel
guidelines that prohibit openly transgender people from joining in the
military, labeling their condition a “paraphilia,” or perversion.

The policy has forced thousands to serve in silence, repressing an
essential part of their identity. The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A.
School of Law, which researches gender issues, estimates there are about
15,500 transgender troops serving in uniform.

Those who take steps to transition while in uniform must carefully
compartmentalize their lives as they test the shifting boundaries of
tolerance within an institution that still allows discrimination on the
basis of gender identity. While some service members have come out in
recent years to commanders willing to bend or disregard rules, scores have
been expelled.

The absence of common-sense leadership on this issue by Pentagon leaders
has forced commanders on the ground to develop a patchwork of unofficial
rules. Those have created a tremendously uneven landscape in which some
service members are treated with respect and assured career advancement,
while others are subject to scorn, if not dismissal.

A recent graduate at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., who is in the
early stages of transitioning from male to female, is agonizing about the
months ahead. When she reports for flight school in Pensacola, Fla., in the
fall, and undergoes a medical exam, the officer may be forced to explain
why she has been on hormone replacement therapy for more than a year.

“If they let me serve as myself, I will give 30-plus years,” said the
22-year-old Navy officer, who asked to be identified only as Alex, wihch is
part of her name. “I will sign up for the rest of my life. I love the
military. I love my peers. I love the whole structure of the military.”

The rules that prohibit transgender people from entering miltary service
were introduced in the early 1980s, an era during which few people lived
openly and those who did were widely stigmatized. The Pentagon’s
transgender ban went largely unchallenged, even as the medical community’s
understanding of gender identity evolved considerably over the years.

In the 1990s, when Congress passed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law allowing
gay and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they remained
closeted, there was no mention of transgender troops. The unspoken
consensuswas that they did not belong in the force.

During the months leading to the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law
in 2011, gay activists refrained from publicly talking about the
transgender ban, which was never codified in law. Some feared that
advocating for transgender rights would cause Congress to enact a ban on
transgender service. After “don’t ask, don’t tell” was rescinded,
transgender service members felt slighted. Like gay troops had done a few
years earlier, some began to mobilize covertly, initially largely online,
to make the case that they, too, deserved to serve openly and proudly.

Sergeant Harrison, a satellite communications expert who joined the Army in
2007, contacted Sparta, an advocacy group for gay and transgender troops,
after returning in 2012 from her second deployment to Afghanistan. At the
time, her marriage was crumbling, and she was finding it increasingly hard
to suppress the desire to live as a woman.

She was among the active duty service members who traveled to Houston in
January 2014 for a Sparta strategy meeting attended by representatives of
prominent advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union,
the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Palm Center. It was a
galvanizing moment for those who had been too afraid of taking steps to
transition.

Senior Airman Ireland met an Army nurse, Cpl. Laila Villanueva, to whom he
is now engaged. The two legally changed their names last year and began
coming out gradually. The underground support community started expanding.

“Meeting all those people, seeing what they were doing, how they were
balancing the military life with themselves, gave me an impetus to do more
than just talk to a therapist,” said Sergeant Harrison, who legally changed
her name this year.

Soon after the Houston meeting, Sergeant Harrison told her battalion
physician during a regular checkup that she intended to start hormone
replacement therapy soon. The doctor urged her to notify her commander.
“That was a scary moment, basically going up to someone and saying, ‘Here
is my career. You can flush it if you want, but this is what I need to do
to be sane,’ ” she said.

Much to her surprise, her commander was supportive. As long as she adhered
nominally to male grooming standards during the day, he said, the unit
would overlook everything else that was happening in her life. She used
strong gel to slick her hair back during the work day, asked close
colleagues, as a personal favor, to use female pronouns, and began using a
female restroom near her office that was infrequently used.

Late last year, after a stressful period at work, Sergeant Harrison went to
the behavioral health center at Fort Bragg to talk to a therapist, where
she broke down in tears. A physician who reviewed her file during that
visit filled out a form setting in motion her expulsion from the Army.

Two former secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel, were urged
to review the military’s ban on transgender troops and the type of policies
needed to allow them to serve openly. Neither made it a priority.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter should take on what they refused to do. The
current policies leave transgender troops vulnerable to discrimination that
the Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
describe as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Medical and
military experts who have studied the policies have concluded that there is
no rationale for disqualifying transgender troops from serving on medical
grounds.

On the ground, commanders and military doctors who have reached the same
conclusions have resorted to makeshift, imperfect solutions. Some doctors
prescribe hormones for transgender patients without clearly documenting the
reason on their medical files. In rare cases, policies on personal grooming
and uniform standards are waived.

Lt. Cmdr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, a Navy Reserve doctor who returned recently from
a deployment to Afghanistan, has treated several transgender service
members. He said the type of medical care most of them need is fairly basic
and should not preclude them from being deployed.

“They do just fine and are able to serve appropriately,” he said. “I’ve
seen folks deploy with all sorts of complex medical conditions that are
frankly more limiting.” Yet, some commanders have prohibited troops from
taking hormones to transition.

Military officials from several of America’s closest allies have been
pragmatic and enlightened about this issue for years. Britain, Canada,
Australia, Germany and Israel are among the nations that allow transgender
people to serve openly. The Israeli military has begun educating commanders
and rank-and-file troops about gender identity to ensure that the handful
of service members who transition each year are treated with respect.

“It’s not that hard,” Brig. Gen. Rachel Tevet-Weisel, a senior Israeli
military leader who played a significant role in fostering an open
environment for transgender troops. “The issue is you have to have very
good education for the young soldiers coming each year.”

Commander Ehrenfeld and Senior Airman Ireland were among the troops who met
with Mr. Carter during his visit to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in February, a
few days after being sworn in. The doctor asked Mr. Carter what he thought
about transgender troops serving in austere environments, a reference to
the argument some officials at the Pentagon have made to justify the ban.

Mr. Carter replied that he hadn’t studied the issue closely, but he added
that the military should be working to attract the most qualified people.
“That’s the important criteria,” he said. “Are they going to be excellent
service members?”

They already are. While some, like Senior Airman Ireland, are thriving,
others, including Sergeant Harrison, fear that their careers could unravel
at any moment. That is an inexcusable way to treat Americans who want to
serve their country.

Alex, the recent Naval Academy graduate, decided during her junior year
that she would transition publicly in the near future. The only
alternative, she felt, was suicide. “I’m going to stop fighting it, and I’m
going to do something about it to save my life,” she said she decided then.

She is scheduled to report for flight school in October. That gives Mr.
Carter ample time to ensure that her career gets off the ground smoothly,
and that transgender troops will no longer have to suffer in silence.

*Listen to Rand Paul
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/listen-to-rand-paul/2015/06/04/f3d9c9a8-0af1-11e5-95fd-d580f1c5d44e_story.html>
// WaPo // Fareed Zakaria – June 4, 2015 *

It turns out that Republicans in Washington are united on one issue: their
hatred of Rand Paul. John McCain says that he is “the worst possible
candidate . . . on the most important issue.” Marco Rubio opines that “he
has no idea what he’s talking about.” Lindsey Graham concludes that it
would be “devastating” for the party to nominate him. Conservative
commentators are even more vicious and ad hominem. The obsession with Paul
is striking. In a Post op-ed last summer, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry
mentioned Paul 10 times. I cannot recall an instance in recent decades when
so much vitriol has been directed against a leading political figure by his
own party.

The attacks are almost entirely focused on Paul’s foreign policy, which is
routinely characterized as dangerous and isolationist. In fact, the real
problem appears to be that Paul is trying to force Republicans and many
Democrats to defend what has become a lazy, smug consensus in favor of an
ever-expanding national security state.

I have read Paul’s proposals and speeches on foreign policy. There are some
bloopers, odd comments and rhetorical broadsides, but for the most part his
views are intellectually serious and well within a tradition of what he
(correctly) calls conservative realism. They are also politically
courageous. Paul has taken positions and cited authorities that are deeply
unpopular with his own party. Yes, of course, he craves publicity and
engages in stunts. What politician doesn’t? But what makes his opponents
most uncomfortable is the substance, not the style.

Take the most recent example: his opposition to the blanket extension of
the Patriot Act, which has resulted in some modest restraint on the vast
expansion of government powers since 9/11. (The new checks and balances are
close to ones recommended by a panel put together by the Obama
administration.) In defending his position, Paul notes— correctly — that we
would not even know of the existence of this system of metadata collection
if not for Edward Snowden’s revelations, that the FBI has been unable to
cite a single terrorist plot disrupted by it and that the special courts in
place have few checks and little transparency. He cites, glowingly, the
1979 dissenting opinion regarding the dangers of government collection of
phone records by Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, the Supreme Court’s
two most prominent liberals of the past half-century.

Or consider Paul’s views on lifting the embargo on Cuba, on which he
writes: “The supporters of the embargo . . . fall strangely silent when
asked how trade with Cuba is so different than trade with Russia or China
or Vietnam.” This is not a path to primary voters’ hearts in Florida.

He has raised uncomfortable questions that no other politician dares raise
about Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a car on a road
in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike. Paul has pointed out that since Awlaki was
a U.S. citizen, this action creates an extraordinary legal precedent — that
the president of the United States can execute a U.S. citizen without
trial. He cites approvingly the American Civil Liberties Union, which, he
writes, has pointed out that “in modern history, a presidential order to
kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.”

In the Middle East, Paul has called for caution before the next military
intervention, suggesting that it is worth learning some lessons from the
past decade. U.S. military interventions, he has argued, have destabilized
countries and led to perverse consequences. “As secular dictators fell in
Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and now Syria, radical jihadists exploited the vacuum,”
he has noted.

In Afghanistan, he said, President Obama added 50,000 troops to the U.S.
force and spent an additional $120 billion on the effort with little
effect. Afghanistan today is by some measures as dangerous as ever — after
14 years of continuous U.S. military intervention and $1 trillion spent, by
one estimate. Surely this is worth pondering?

I don’t agree with Rand Paul on many things, including foreign policy. I
think some of his positions on civil rights are historically blind, cruel
and dangerous. But in the arena of national security, he has time and again
raised important, inconvenient questions, only to have them ruled out of
order and to be told that he is a crank, far outside the mainstream. In
fact, it would be useful and important for Republicans — and Democrats — to
stop the name-calling and actually discuss and debate his ideas.

*Jeb Bush vs. Rick Perry
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/06/04/jeb-bush-vs-rick-perry/>
// WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 4, 2015*

Former Texas governor Rick Perry will officially announce his run for the
presidency in less than two hours. Jeb Bush will announce his run on June
15. In comparing the two, Bush’s challenges become clear.

Jeb Bush was not a combatant during most of the Obama presidency. Perry was
famous for suing the federal government, challenging the president to
enforce the border and railing against federal overreach. Some Republicans
who have engaged in political combat have the sense that Bush was not there
in the trenches.

Bush is knowledgeable and impressive; Perry is emotional, enthusiastic and
engaged. The latter attributes may be more helpful in a campaign.

Perry and Bush have similar views on immigration (secure the border, fix
legal immigration and then deal with the 12 million here illegally). Perry,
however, gains credibility with the right wing because he took on the White
House and deployed National Guard troops to secure the border. Bush will
need to show that he is emphatic about border security. Bush, however, is
not the most generous when it comes to illegal immigration. While Bush
flirted with the idea, both Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.) are foursquare in favor of an earned path to citizenship.

Both candidates were accomplished conservative governors, but given the
passage of time, Bush’s record of accomplishment is not well known to most
voters. He will need to show what he accomplished and why he more than
every other candidate can deliver conservative results. By contrast, most
Republican primary voters are well aware that Perry’s job creation record
during the recession was by far the best of any governor.

Expectations for Bush are high, so when he leads the pack but with less
than 15 percent support he is in “trouble”; Perry enjoys low expectations
and the ability to surprise voters. In the debates, Bush is likely to be
attacked; Perry is not expected to be a target for many candidates.

Bush does not seem to relish skewering Hillary Clinton, and there are real
concerns that he won’t be aggressive enough to deliver fatal blows. Perry
(like Carly Fiorina) seems downright giddy when it comes to attacking the
Chappaqua millionairess. If Bush wants to convince Republican primary
voters that he can beat Clinton, he needs to show some fire, beginning now.

Bush is not only a “Bush,” but he is perceived as someone whose background
and life experience set him apart from regular Americans. Perry can play up
his origins as a poor boy from Paint Creek, Tex. Bush has to become “Jeb”
and not just another Bush. That requires that he show enough about his own
life so he does not become a caricature like Mitt Romney.

Both Bush (62) and Rick Perry (65) are younger than Clinton (67), but they
are not of the “next generation” of new leaders that some Republicans want.
Both Republicans will need to show energy, vigor, technological
sophistication and recast the GOP’s image if they are to paint Clinton as
past her sell date.

Both Bush and Perry have a newer rival whom they need to get past to
solidify their support. Bush faces a younger, more dynamic reformer in
Rubio. Perry will need to displace the younger conservative governor Scott
Walker of Wisconsin. In both cases, one suspects that Bush and Perry will
argue that the newcomers just are not ready or that their rhetoric does not
always match their results.

Bush will have tons of money, but it makes a real difference if the race
becomes a long slough. However, what we have seen is that there is more
than enough money to go around and at least in the early states it is time
on the ground and emotional connectivity more than ad dollars that are
decisive.

In sum, Bush — like Perry — would come into the presidency with a record of
accomplishment and with leadership skills that Clinton entirely lacks. But
the trick for each is convincing the primary voters he is the best
candidate to retake the White House.

*What Hillary Clinton's Campaign Is Getting Right
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35474/hillary-clinton-voting-rights-act/>
// Esquire // Charles Pierce – June 4, 2015 *

Perhaps it's been overlooked by the inside baseball press corps but, so
far, Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has hit all the right buttons about
what's really going on in the country. Specifically, the rigging of our
politics to suit the needs of the money power, the slide toward oligarchy
that has not been arrested for any length of time since Ronald Reagan
started the snowball down the mountain with his first budget in 1981. She
has come out in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens
United decision and its progeny–a longshot proposition at best, but the
only real solution at law to the legalized influence-peddling that the
decision produced. (Read the decision again. It's damned near bulletproof.)
And, Thursday, in a speech she's planning to take on the second arm of the
pincer attack on popular democracy–John Roberts's declaration of the Day Of
Jubilee.

The voting rights speech at the historically-black college Texas Southern
University will be one of the first policy speeches of Clinton's newly
launched campaign and will mark one of the first times a 2016 presidential
candidate has spoken out about voting restrictions which have swept the
country since the high courtstruck down Section 4 of the VRA in its Shelby
County ruling in 2013. According to her campaign staff, the speech will
include a call for a new standard of no fewer than 20 days of early
in-person voting in every state, including weekend and evening voting. In
2014, 20 million American voters cast their ballot early but currently,one
thirdof states offer no early voting.

HRC also is planning to call for Congress–I know, I know, but elect some
damn Democratic candidates and see–to restore those parts of the Voting
Rights Act that the Supreme Court fed to the woodchipper. In addition, she
is not just talking the talk on this one. Her campaign has gone to court in
several important swing states to challenge the new voter-suppression laws
that have become all the rage since the Day Of Jubilee was declared.

While Clinton speaks out against restrictive voting measures which studies
have shown disproportionately keep African Americans and younger voters
from the polls, her campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, has started bringing legal
actions against restrictive laws in a number of key swing states. Last
month, he and others filed a suit against Ohio alleging the state's
restrictive voting laws were designed to suppress the votes of groups that
typically vote for Democrats, including students, African Americans and
Latinos. And last week, he hit Wisconsin with another suit claiming laws
that have curtailed early voting and other restrictive changes put in place
by Republican lawmakers hurt minority voters and other groups.

Make no mistake. This is a fight worth making and a debate worth having.
The Republican party considers its efforts to restrict the franchise an
unalloyed triumph. It helped get Greg Abbott elected governor of Texas.
Scott Walker never shuts up about the grotesque law that he and his pet
legislature enacted in Wisconsin, the state that gave us so many of the
mechanisms by which the money power first was struck from our elections.
And, in where-the-fck else, Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback may allow his
secretary of state, Kris Kobach, the man behind the Papers, Please theory
of immigration law, to prosecute "voter fraud" cases that state prosecutors
had declared non-starters. Voter suppression is a litmus test on the
political Right now, and it is a central pillar of Republican politics
general, and it has been ever since Karl Rove used it as the casus belli in
his purge of U.S. Attorneys nine years ago. It is a long game they've been
playing.

As hard as it may be for the likes of Chris Cillizza to understand, there
is considerable merit in taking on important issues that do not necessarily
poll as well as "Eeek! Moosssslims!" does. The corruption of our politics
by the money power, and the new mechanisms enacted to safeguard it, is the
fundamental issue of our time because, unless it is reversed, and soon, all
of the other issues won't matter because no real solutions will emerge from
the one place where they are supposed to emerge. Ms. Rodham Clinton seems
to get this. Good on her for bringing it up.

*Hillary Clinton gets it on voting rights, Republican contenders don't
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/04/opinions/brazile-hillary-clinton/index.html>
// CNN // Donna Brazile – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton is speaking Thursday in Texas about the importance of
protecting and expanding the constitutional right to vote for all citizens
of the United States. Clinton will also call for a new national standard of
"no fewer than 20 days of early in-person voting, including weekend and
evening voting."

It has been 50 years since the historic march led by John Lewis, the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists from Selma, Alabama, to
Montgomery, Alabama, protesting voting restrictions used against
African-Americans who wanted to exercise their right to vote.

It was only a few months later, on August 6, 1965, when President Lyndon
Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act to end all barriers to
political participation for racial and ethnic minorities, once and for all.

While a great deal of progress has been made over the years, today, we face
new challenges to those who are eligible to vote, and some of the leading
culprits of erecting barriers are running for president.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Republicans are imposing new
restrictions on the right to vote -- restrictions that disproportionally
affect African-Americans, Latinos, working Americans, seniors and America's
youth -- the very groups the Voting Rights Act was formed to protect.

It is because of these restrictions that we must continue to march for the
right of all eligible citizens to exercise their right to vote. We march
because the right to have one's voice heard in this country is embodied in
our Constitution, and in the spirit of our democracy.

That's the fundamental difference between Democrats and the current GOP
presidential field. As Democrats, we believe in the right of every eligible
citizen to vote and have that vote counted; we are fighting to expand and
protect the right to vote, while Republicans are doing just the opposite.

Many of the Republican presidential hopefuls would make it more difficult
for people to cast their ballots because they believe that is their party's
best path to victory, to have a smaller electorate with fewer minority
voters.

While a small number of Republicans have worked to restore protections to
voting rights struck down by the Supreme Court, too many of them support
laws that prevent people who disagree with them from participating in the
electoral process.

Jeb Bush has a long history of opposing basic voting rights, calling for
more stringent voter ID laws and signing into law legislation that
restricted the hours and locations for early voting. And let's not forget
when the Jeb Bush administration purged 12,000 eligible voters from the
Florida voter rolls ahead of the 2000 presidential election, and attempted
a similar voter purge ahead of the 2004 election.

Republican hopeful, Sen. Marco Rubio also supported voter ID laws. While on
the campaign trail for Mitt Romney, Rubio stated his support for these
laws, saying "What's the big deal? What is the big deal?" Well according to
the Brennan Center for Justice, the "big deal" is that more than 11% of
eligible voters lack government-issued identification.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry also signed legislation to make Texas voter ID
laws stricter. Even though Texans were already required to bring an ID with
them to the polls, the new law would have required them to bring a photo
ID. The Department of Justice blocked the law, stating that it violated the
Voting Rights Act and disproportionately affected Hispanic voters.

Sen. Ted Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, introduced federal legislation
that would have required voters to present "proof of citizenship" before
casting their ballots in elections for federal office. This measure would
have amended the National Voter Registration Act.

Sen. Rand Paul claims he is the single GOP candidate qualified to broaden
his party's appeal to constituencies they normally ignore. But when asked
about the need to strengthen the Voting Rights Act, Paul suggested it
wasn't necessary because "we have an African-American president."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law a piece of legislation that slashed
early voting and ended same-day registration in the state. The Cleveland
Plain Dealer's editorial board even said the legislation was "a
breathtaking bid to suppress voting despite constitutional guarantees of
voting rights."

And then there's Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has arguably the worst
record among the GOP's potential candidates in terms of voting rights. In
2010, Walker enacted one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the
country that also cut the early voting period from 30 to 12 days,
eliminated weekend and evening voting, and required proof of residence when
registering to vote, along with many other strict provisions.

To no one's surprise, lawsuits were filed in recent weeks maintaining that
Ohio and Wisconsin laws violated the Voting Rights Act. In Ohio, the
lawsuit claimed that "hundreds of thousands of Ohioans will find it
substantially more difficult to exercise" their right to vote.

In Wisconsin, the lawsuit was specifically filed against the voting laws
passed under the Walker administration, claiming that the measures targeted
"African-American, Latino, young, and/or Democratic voters in Wisconsin in
particular."

Clearly, these guys just don't get it.

It's time the GOP presidential candidates get behind one of their party's
own elected officials, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, and others who want to
fulfill the promise of the Constitution and protect everyone's right to
vote.

Listen, at the end of the day, the right to vote is sacred in this country,
especially for the people who have fought so hard over the years to have
their voices heard. When Republican lawmakers play politics and take that
away, they silence the voices of so many across the country. I'm glad
Clinton is speaking out on this issue and, who knows, we might get a chance
to hear from others before the end of the summer.

*Hillary Clinton’s Bold Plan for Voting Rights
<http://www.thenation.com/blog/209265/hillary-clintons-bold-plan-voting-rights>
// The Nation // Ari Berman – June 4, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton was a senior in high school when she watched on a
black-and-white television as President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act.

Fifty years later, the VRA—the country’s most important civil rights
law—has been gutted by the Supreme Court and voting rights are under attack
across the country. From 2011 to 2015, 395 new voting restrictions have
been introduced in forty-nine states, according to the Brennan Center for
Justice, and twenty-one states have adopted new laws making it harder to
vote, 14 of which will be in effect for the first presidential cycle in
2016.

Clinton sounded the alarm about the widespread push to roll back voting
rights during a high-profile speech in Texas today and offered innovative
solutions to fix our broken political system.

“What is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise
people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country
to the other,” Clinton said. She criticized the GOP contenders for
president for “systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of
Americans from voting” by peddling a “phantom epidemic of voter fraud.”

She offered three major policy ideas for expanding voting rights:

1. Automatically register voters

Up to a third of Americans are not registered to vote. Clinton proposed
fixing that problem by automatically registering every American when they
turn eighteen unless they opt out. Universal, automatic voter
registration—recently adopted by states like Oregon—would add 50 million
Americans to the voting rolls. “I think this would have a profound impact
on our elections and our democracy,” Clinton said.

2. Expand early voting

14 states have no form of early voting before Election Day and many others
have limited days and hours. Clinton proposed a minimum of 20 days of early
voting nationwide, with expanded hours on nights and weekends. “Early,
in-person voting will reduce those long lines and give more citizens the
chance to participate, especially those who have work or family obligations
that make it difficult to get to the polls on Election Day,” she said.

Unfortunately, many states continue to move in the opposite direction.
Republicans have killed bills to expand early voting in fifteen states so
far this year, according to Carolyn Fiddler of the Democratic Legislative
Campaign Committee.

3. Restore the Voting Rights Act

Nine of fifteen states that previously had to submit their voting changes
with the federal government before the Supreme Court gutted the VRA have
passed new voting restrictions since 2010. The Supreme Court’s decision has
had a devastating impact in states like Texas, whose strict voter ID law
was previously blocked under the VRA but is now in effect, leading to many
longtime voters being turned away from the polls.

“We need a Supreme Court who cares more about the right to vote of a person
than the right to buy an election of a corporation,” Clinton said. Efforts
to restore the VRA have gone nowhere in Congress, even after 100 lawmakers
traveled to Selma to observe the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

These policy proposals would make it easier for millions of Americans to
cast a ballot and participate in the political process. Clinton’s speech
signaled that voting rights will be a major issue in the 2016 race. Lawyers
affiliated with her campaign have already filed suit against restrictive
voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin and have hinted that more lawsuits are to
come.

It’s unfortunate that voting rights has become such a partisan issue. For
many years both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly supported the VRA.
Only recently, particularly after the election of Barack Obama, has the
issue become so politicized, with GOP lawmakers passing new laws curtailing
access to the ballot.

Many in the media will no doubt report that Hillary’s policy proposals are
intended to boost her campaign and core Democratic constituencies.
Regardless of the motive, expanding voting rights is good for everybody.
There’s no equivalence between policies that make it easier to vote and
policies that make it harder to vote.

*Alexandria Phillips*

*Press Assistant | Communications*

Hillary for America | www.hillaryclinton.com