Subject: Correct The Record Sunday August 3, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 14:26:49 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

**

*Correct The Record Sunday August 3, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*SFGate: “House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack”
<http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/House-panel-No-administration-wrongdoing-in-5663509.php>*

“The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that
there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012
attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador
Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St.
Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.”

*Pittsburgh Tribune: “Clinton praises Trib publisher's fight 'for what he
believed'” [w/ VIDEO]
<http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6550109-74/clinton-scaife-trib#axzz39KoxnQys>*

“An unlikely friendship drew former President Bill Clinton to a sunny
hilltop in the Laurel Highlands on Saturday, where he paid tribute to the
late Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.”

*Politico: “Bill Clinton eulogizes Richard Mellon Scaife: Nemesis, then
friend”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-richard-mellon-scaife-eulogy-109670.html>*

“Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of
what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’”

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “Rubio Clarifies Hillary
Clinton Comments: Not About Her Age”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/08/03/rubio-clarifies-hillary-clinton-comments-not-about-her-age/>*

“‘You can be 40 years old and be a 20th-century candidate,’ said the
43-year-old Florida Republican, a possible member of the 2016 GOP
presidential field, on Fox News on Sunday.”

*CBS News: “Sen. Rand Paul: Hillary Clinton not ‘fit to lead the country’”
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-hillary-clinton-not-fit-to-lead-the-country/>*

“Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Hillary Clinton is not ‘fit to lead the
country’ Friday, mocking the former secretary of state's comments about her
wealth and condemning her response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S.
facility in Benghazi.”

*Salon: “Is Hillary Clinton the true heir of Ronald Reagan?”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/08/02/is_hillary_clinton_the_true_heir_of_ronald_reagan/>*

[Subtitle:] “Not since 1980 has a candidate seemed so unstoppable -- and
Hillary resembles the Gipper in other ways too”

*The Daily Beast: “For 2016, Take Martin O’Malley Seriously”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/for-2016-take-martin-o-malley-seriously.html>*

“But the most interesting thing about O’Malley is his exploration of an
intriguing, heart-centered strategy that could potentially shake up our
national political paradigm: using the language of faith and universal
moral values to ground public policy.”

*Washington Examiner: “Why some donors are giving to dark horse Martin
O'Malley”
<http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-some-donors-are-giving-to-dark-horse-martin-omalley/article/2551602>*

“Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic
frontrunner, leads by as much as 50 percent in some polls, there is some
evidence that some former supporters are looking with interest at Maryland
Gov. Martin O'Malley.”

*Articles:*

*SFGate: “House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack”
<http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/House-panel-No-administration-wrongdoing-in-5663509.php>*

By Carolyn Lochhead

August 1, 2014, 3:53 p.m. PDT

The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that
there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012
attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador
Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St.
Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.

The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years
of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to
approve making the report public.

Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no
military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was
given."

That conflicts with accusations of administration wrongdoing voiced by Rep.
Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), whose House Government Oversight
and Reform Committee has held hearings on the Benghazi attack.

Stevens, who grew up in Piedmont, and the other Americans died when Libyans
attacked the consulate on Sept. 11, 2012. Among the Intelligence
Committee's findings, according to Thompson:

-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat
environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before
it happened."

-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda,
(Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the
attack."

-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting
to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms
transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left
behind."

-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was
"flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence
assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."

Those talking points included assertions that those who attacked the
compound were angered by an obscure anti-Muhammad video posted to YouTube
in the U.S. There is disagreement to this day about whether that was the
case.

*Pittsburgh Tribune: “Clinton praises Trib publisher's fight 'for what he
believed'”
<http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6550109-74/clinton-scaife-trib#axzz39KoxnQys>*

By Salena Zito and Mike Wereschagin

August 2, 2014, 6:57 p.m. EDT

An unlikely friendship drew former President Bill Clinton to a sunny
hilltop in the Laurel Highlands on Saturday, where he paid tribute to the
late Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.

“If someone had asked me the day I left the White House what's the single
most unlikely thing I would ever do, this would rank high on the list,”
Clinton told about 150 Trib Total Media employees, who gathered around the
pool at Scaife's boyhood home in Penguin Court for the memorial. Scaife
died July 4, a day after his 82nd birthday.

A founder and funder of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups,
Scaife's opposition to Clinton marked much of the latter's two terms as
president. But the acrimony softened after Clinton left office in 2001, and
the two became friends, with Scaife supporting Clinton's foundation and his
wife's 2008 presidential campaign.

Clinton said he's “grateful” to former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a mutual
friend, for convincing Clinton that he and Scaife had more in common than
he thought. The two met on July 31, 2007, in the Harlem offices of the
Clinton Foundation. Scaife later donated more than $100,000 to the
foundation.

“Our differences are important. Our political differences, our
philosophical differences, our religious differences, our racial and ethnic
differences, they're important. They help us to define who we are,” Clinton
said. “But they don't have to keep us at arm's length from others.”

Clinton used his reconciliation with Scaife and the friendship the two
forged as an example of what's missing in conflicts from Capitol Hill to
Gaza.

“I think the counterintuitive friendship we formed is a good symbol of
Richard Mellon Scaife's legacy. He fought as hard as he could for what he
believed, but he never thought he had to be blind or deaf” to re-evaluating
his positions, no matter how closely held, Clinton said.

The description “counterintuitive” was borrowed from his wife, former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used the word to describe her
meeting with Tribune-Review reporters and editors in 2008, during the hotly
contested Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania.

The paper's editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in the April primary
election, and Scaife penned an opinion piece praising the New York Democrat.

“You need to know that she treasures that column and that experience,”
Clinton said.

The sprawling hilltop estate in Ligonier, with sweeping views of the Laurel
Highlands, was named for the 10 penguins that once roamed the grounds after
Scaife's mother, Sarah, bought them following a famed Antarctic expedition
by Richard Byrd.

H. Yale Gutnick, Scaife's longtime friend and attorney, introduced the 42nd
president, saying Scaife asked him before his death to invite Clinton to
the memorial to make it a special day. Gutnick is chairman of the Trib
Total Media board of directors.

A 50-room mansion built by Scaife's parents once stood on the estate. After
they died, Scaife built his own estate, Vallamont, on a nearby mountain in
1961. He tore down the stone mansion at Penguin Court, but preserved a
portion of the broad stone foundation that extends from the hillside and
supports a wide, flat lawn, as well as the property's cobblestone driveway,
ornate stone benches and 120-foot-long greenhouse. A passionate
horticulturalist who kept fresh flowers throughout his homes, he built a
conservatory near where the house once stood.

Scaife willed the property and $15 million for its maintenance to the
Philadelphia-area Brandywine Conservancy, on whose board of trustees he
served.

Clinton said he was “moved” by a series of columns Scaife wrote in the
Trib, first announcing his terminal cancer and then explaining the passions
of his life, newspapers chief among them.

“I wish he'd have been able to write more,” Clinton said. “I was really
moved by what he said about all of you and journalism as a profession and
making sure that his papers were in a position to be there for our children
and our grandchildren.”

*Politico: “Bill Clinton eulogizes Richard Mellon Scaife: Nemesis, then
friend”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-richard-mellon-scaife-eulogy-109670.html>*

By Kenneth P. Vogel

August 2, 2014, 10:09 p.m. EDT

Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of
what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Speaking at a private memorial service in southwestern Pennsylvania for
Richard Mellon Scaife, who died last month, Clinton recalled how, after his
presidency, he built a “counterintuitive friendship” with the conservative
billionaire, according to an account of the speech in one of the newspapers
Scaife owned.

“He fought as hard as he could for what he believed, but he never thought
he had to be blind or deaf” to other views, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
quotes Clinton saying of its former publisher. A spokesman for Clinton
declined to comment.

Scaife, who inherited a fortune from the Mellon banking and oil empire,
steered millions of dollars to groups that savagely attacked the Clintons
throughout the 1990s. Scaife backed media outlets and nonprofits that
pushed scandal after scandal that buffeted the Clinton administration —
from the Whitewater real estate controversy to the Paula Jones and Monica
Lewinsky sex scandals to raising doubts about the deaths of Clinton aides
Vince Foster and Ron Brown.

Scaife confidant Christopher Ruddy, who rose to prominence on the Clinton
scandal beat at the Tribune-Review, arranged Clinton’s appearance at
Saturday’s memorial. Afterward, he acknowledged his former boss “was the
bete noire of the Clinton administration during those years, sort of like
what the Kochs are to the Obama administration today.”

But Scaife became enamored with Clinton’s post-presidential philanthropic
work on AIDS in Africa and other issues, and a thaw began, said Ruddy, now
CEO of the conservative Scaife-backed media outlet Newsmax.

Ruddy and the late former New York City Mayor Ed Koch helped broker a July
2007 meeting with Scaife and the former president in the Clinton
Foundation’s Harlem office, and Scaife donated more than $100,000 to the
foundation. Still, Scaife raised eyebrows by praising Hillary Clinton
during her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and
his Tribune-Review later endorsed her over Barack Obama ahead of the
Pennsylvania primary.

In introducing Clinton on Saturday, the chairman of Scaife’s media company,
H. Yale Gutnick, a longtime Scaife friend, said the former president and
Scaife “shared a mutual love of America,” according to Ruddy, who said
Clinton talked about how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams initially clashed
before finding common cause and becoming allies and friends.

And the Tribune-Review quoted Clinton saying, “Our differences are
important. Our political differences, our philosophical differences, our
religious differences, our racial and ethnic differences, they’re
important. They help us to define who we are. … But they don’t have to keep
us at arm’s length from others.”

The ex-president’s ability to find common cause with former adversaries is
a model that other political figures in an increasingly polarized
Washington would be wise to emulate, Ruddy said.

“Think about the outrageous things that were said about him, including by
me, and he was able to overcome that and reach out to his critics and his
adversaries and make them his friends and work together on the things we
agree with,” Ruddy said. “It’s on the level of Nelson Mandela — that type
of higher thinking and ability to forgive and forget, and it’s an example
of how people who have partisan and ideological differences can work
together for the common good.”

At Saturday’s memorial, which was held at the Ligonier, Pennsylvania,
estate where Scaife grew up and which was attended by more than 100
employees of his media outlets, Clinton was presented with a photo of
Hillary Clinton meeting with Scaife before the 2008 Pennsylvania primary.

And Ruddy predicted that her husband’s willingness to reach across the
aisle will cause some major Republican donors who fought the Clinton
administration alongside Scaife to be less hostile if Hillary Clinton runs
for president in 2016.

“There is a realization among high-level donors and sophisticated politicos
on the Republican side that Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is
pro-American business and is very strong on national security,” he said.
“There is a sense that she and her husband share a similar worldview.”

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “Rubio Clarifies Hillary
Clinton Comments: Not About Her Age”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/08/03/rubio-clarifies-hillary-clinton-comments-not-about-her-age/>*

By Brent Kendall

August 3, 2014, 1:20 p.m. EDT

Sen. Marco Rubio said on Sunday that his recent criticisms of Hillary
Clinton as a “20th-century candidate” weren’t a veiled reference to the 23
year age difference between the two potential White House contenders.

“You can be 40 years old and be a 20th-century candidate,” said the
43-year-old Florida Republican, a possible member of the 2016 GOP
presidential field, on Fox News on Sunday.

Sen. Rubio said Ms. Clinton, 66, was incapable of addressing the modern and
rapidly changing challenges facing America.

“We are going through the equivalent of an industrial revolution every five
years and I don’t think she or her party, and quite frankly, even some
people in my party, have answers to that,” he said.

Sen. Rubio made the 20th-century remarks in a recent interview with
National Public Radio.

*CBS News: “Sen. Rand Paul: Hillary Clinton not ‘fit to lead the country’”
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-hillary-clinton-not-fit-to-lead-the-country/>*

By Jake Miller

August 2, 2014, 2:25 p.m. EDT

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Hillary Clinton is not "fit to lead the
country" Friday, mocking the former secretary of state's comments about her
wealth and condemning her response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S.
facility in Benghazi.

Paul's scathing words could provide an early look at the arguments he will
deploy against Clinton if they both decide to run for president. They came
during a speech in Kentucky before a crowd of several hundred GOP activists.

Paul opened his speech by joking that he was losing sleep over Clinton's
money problems, according to National Journal.

During her recent book tour, Clinton drew flack for claiming at one point
that she and former President Bill Clinton were "dead broke" when they left
the White House in 2001. Although they were deeply in debt when Mr.
Clinton's presidency ended, they would go on to earn millions on the
speaking circuit.

Paul asked his audience to observe a "moment of silence" for Clinton's
finances.

"Somebody must have been praying for her," he said, "because she's now
worth 100, 200 million. I tell you, it was really tough giving those
speeches."

But at least she didn't suffer alone, Paul joked: "She had her limo driver
with her for the last 17 years to commiserate."

"I certainly wish she becomes preoccupied with something else," he added,
"because I don't think she's fit to lead the country."

Paul also ripped Clinton's response to the attack in Benghazi, which killed
four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Paul
faulted Clinton for neglecting to read the memos requesting additional
security for the Benghazi facility during her time as secretary of state.

She treated Benghazi "as if it were Paris," Paul said. "Benghazi's not
Paris. Benghazi is a lot like Baghdad ... if you don't read the cables from
one of the most dangerous spots on earth, frankly, you preclude yourself
from ever being our commander in chief."

The speech fired up GOP troops in Kentucky, but it was only a prelude to
Paul's swing through Iowa next week. Starting Monday, Paul will visit at
least eight different communities representing each of the state's major
media markets, according to the Des Moines Register.

Iowa, which holds the leadoff caucuses in the presidential nominating
process, is a must-visit state for anyone mulling a presidential bid. The
state has already seen a flurry of visits from potential 2016 contenders
this year.

In addition to Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is in Iowa this weekend, and
he's scheduled to attend an event sponsored by notable Iowa Republican
Bruce Rastetter, the Register reports.

Cruz, whose high-profile fights with Democrats and his own GOP leaders have
endeared him to grassroots conservatives, has emerged as a favorite among
the activists who traditionally power Iowa's Republican caucuses.

"Whenever we need a voice in Washington, he seems to be the most eager to
stand up for we out here in the grassroots," Steve Deace, a conservative
radio host based out of Iowa, told The Hill newspaper. "The more people
disdain him in D.C., the more they're going to improve his chances in 2016."

Paul and Cruz are also scheduled to attend the Family Leadership Summit in
Ames, Iowa, later this month, where they'll be joined by several other
potential presidential contenders, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.,
former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Govs. Rick Perry, R-Texas, and Bobby
Jindal, R-La.

*Salon: “Is Hillary Clinton the true heir of Ronald Reagan?”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/08/02/is_hillary_clinton_the_true_heir_of_ronald_reagan/>*

By Andrew O’Hehir

August 2, 2014, 1:00 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] Not since 1980 has a candidate seemed so unstoppable -- and
Hillary resembles the Gipper in other ways too

No doubt it’s the height of folly to forecast the results of a presidential
election that’s still more than two years away. But most observers of any
political orientation, regarding the landscape right now, would conclude
that it’s more likely than not that America’s first black president will be
directly followed by our first female president. Are you celebrating yet?

Of course we don’t know for sure whether Hillary Clinton is running in
2016, but at this point she’s just toying with us, like a cat with a badly
injured mouse. She stands in a virtually unprecedented position of
dominance, relative to her own party and the electorate as a whole. While
the Democratic left harbors impotent fantasies of defeating her (Bernie
Sanders LOL!) and the Republican right prepares for a predictable series of
apoplectic seizures about how she’s a lesbian murderess who personally shot
up the Benghazi consulate, the public seems generally OK with Clinton’s
impending coronation. As numerous commentators have observed, her principal
opponent is probably not Jeb Bush or Rand Paul but herself, or at least the
possibility that we’ll all feel sick of her before she gets elected. It’s a
strange situation, and not a healthy one.

Let’s take a second to recognize that I’m a white dude delivering a
dismissive take on events of undoubted historical and symbolic significance
that were, or will be, immensely meaningful for many people. But after the
disheartening first three-quarters of the Obama era, it’s difficult to
avoid the conclusion that symbolic meaning is the last layer of meaning
left in our quadrennial electoral circus. Maybe it’s not Hillary Clinton’s
fault that her likely ascension feels like the event that will mark the
final Dracula-suckage of lifeblood from American electoral politics, just
as it’s not entirely Barack Obama’s fault that his “transformational
presidency” blundered into a stagnant swamp infested with whining
Republican mosquitoes and never got out again. They are just two people,
after all! Two imperfect people with the best intentions, supposedly trying
to do their best in a screwed-up situation.

Except that I don’t really buy that argument. Obama and Clinton and
everybody else in the partisan duopoly are simultaneously the casualties,
beneficiaries and perpetrators of a broken system, in which Democrats and
Republicans draw their voters from opposing social castes (not classes) but
actually represent the interests of rival cliques within a tiny moneyed
elite. The onetime Seven Sisters student radical “had to” evolve into a
mouthpiece for Wall Street and the entrenched foreign-policy establishment,
just as the onetime Chicago community activist “had to” leave the financial
sector in the hands of exactly the same criminals who wrecked it and renege
on a whole range of hopey-changey campaign promises. I’m well aware of the
spin their defenders will put on that stuff – politics is a dirty business
and we all need to grow up and anyway SCOTUS! – and we’re not going to
settle that debate today, or at any other time.

As you will no doubt recall, people got immensely excited on both sides of
the heated Obama-Clinton primary battle in 2008, hurling all kinds of
invective about racism and sexism at each other, predicting catastrophic
defeat for the other candidate and promising to rip the fragile Democratic
coalition apart. (Remember the PUMA demographic, angry Clinton supporters
who threatened to bolt for the McCain-Palin ticket out of spite? Ah,
memory!) Whatever that was really about – and my former Salon colleague
Rebecca Traister has explored it in depth – it had very little to do with
those two candidates, except in their roles as symbols or signifiers.

All that fevered discussion about who rigged the Nevada caucus and who made
the most obnoxious comments on TV feels like a lifetime ago, the product of
an innocent age when politics seemed charged with possibility and hope. But
the thing is, it wasn’t all that long ago and we weren’t innocent. We
should have known better and basically did. It’s just that presidential
elections exert a seductive allure that keeps suckering us back into the
tent, like a bunch of Ohio farm boys at a 19th-century carnival, hoping
against hope that this time the magic will turn out to be real. It’s a lot
easier to write snarky, dispassionate analysis now than it will be in a
year or so, when progressives are trying to gin up excitement for a
nonexistent Elizabeth Warren campaign or we all have to have a hysterical
meltdown about Ted Cruz’s “surprising” poll numbers from a fondue dinner
held in an Iowa cornfield.

There’s no precise historical parallel, at least in the contemporary
party-politics era, for the commanding position Hillary Clinton appears to
hold roughly 16 months out from the first caucuses and primaries. It’s not
that there haven’t been heavy favorites or heirs apparent in previous
elections – that’s a feature of the system. But it seems not just possible
but probable that Clinton will face no serious or significant opposition
within her own party, which as far as I can tell is a brand new situation
for a non-incumbent candidate. Warren is nowhere near foolish enough to
torch her political future on a futile campaign of resistance. While Joe
Biden will almost certainly run if Clinton doesn’t, he’s not enough of a
masochist to take her on directly and endure yet another public
humiliation. If Sanders runs (and he’d have to change his political
registration, for one thing) he’ll make the Dennis Kucinich campaigns of
2004 and 2008 look like devastating political whirlwinds.

If there’s a historical precedent to Hillary-zilla it is to be found in the
Republican Party, where big-money donors and a Washington-based
establishment have long done their best to control the presidential
nomination process and quell populist uprisings. Specifically, it’s Ronald
Reagan in 1980. Most Republicans assumed going into that campaign that
Reagan – who had been waiting around as the conservative savior since
nearly wresting the nomination from Gerald Ford in 1976 – would sweep to
victory in the primaries and then drive cardigan-clad malaise-monger Jimmy
Carter from the White House and restore America to its true greatness. They
were ultimately correct about all that (except for the “true greatness”),
but Reagan actually faced brief but spirited opposition from George H.W.
Bush, who played the role of responsible centrist in that campaign and
memorably denounced Reagan’s “voodoo economics.” Bush emulated the
Carter-McGovern strategy of slogging through all the meaningless straw
polls and small-town dinners in the fall of 1979 while Reagan stayed home
in California, and after winning the Iowa caucus Bush momentarily looked
like the front-runner. Reagan ultimately swamped him in the South, of
course, but Bush won six primaries and more than 3 million votes,
essentially forcing himself onto the ticket as the vice-presidential
nominee. Who’s going to put up that level of resistance to Hillary Clinton?

I guess the 1988 Republican campaign also looks similar, but only at first
glance and only in the rear-view mirror: After two terms as Reagan’s vice
president, Bush coasted to the nomination just as everybody expected. (And
then to victory over Michael Dukakis, one of the more bathetic also-rans of
recent political history.) But those who remember that era in Republican
politics can testify that the intra-party divisions were highly
acrimonious. Sen. Bob Dole won the Iowa caucus and several Midwestern
primaries, and deserves a special footnote in American history for decrying
the lies and dirty tricks of Lee Atwater, Bush’s infamous campaign
strategist. Televangelist Pat Robertson terrified the world that year by
packing a few caucuses with his followers (he got 82 percent of the vote in
Hawaii!), thereby compelling all future Republican candidates to pay ritual
obeisance to the Christian right.

There is certainly a cadre of disgruntled liberal Democrats who aren’t
thrilled about the incoming tsunami of the Clinton campaign, and in the age
of social media they’ll get to vent their spleen repeatedly in the months
ahead by promising to draft Warren or vote Green or get so stoned that Rand
Paul appears palatable. But it’s not at all clear that they represent a
significant voting bloc, or that any plausible candidate wants to be their
standard-bearer. This tells us a number of things about the contemporary
Democratic Party and about politics in general, none of them terribly
encouraging.

Among the obvious notes here is the fact that electoral politics has
increasingly become an oligarchic or dynastic enterprise, open only to the
immensely wealthy and/or the immensely well connected. If we get a Clinton
facing a Bush in the 2016 general election – which is not just plausible
but reasonably likely – that would mean that 50 percent of the major-party
presidential nominees over the last 28 years and eight electoral cycles
have had one or the other of those surnames. If politics is a blood sport
for the new aristocracy — an American cognate to fox hunting, with you and
me as the fox – that does more than symbolize our widening social
inequality. It embodies it, and enacts it. You can’t separate the fact that
only rich people can run for president from the fact that both parties are
fueled by rich people’s money, or from the fact that beneath all their
partisan bickering Democrats and Republicans have vigorously collaborated
for more than 20 years on a set of deregulatory, low-tax and cheap-credit
economic policies that have made rich people a whole lot richer. It’s not
like those are unrelated coincidences.

I’m not saying there are no differences between the two parties, or that
given the binary choice with a gun to my head, I might not prefer Hillary
Clinton as president to whomever the Republicans nominate. (This is a topic
for another time, but Democrats clearly have the most to fear from Rand
Paul, who represents a potentially significant reboot of the Republican
brand.) Generally speaking, the Democratic Party stands for what might be
termed the metropolitan caste in American life, a diverse group of people
who live in or near major cities and tend to support a range of
rights-based issues around race, gender, sexuality and related factors. You
can’t say the party represents that caste with much force or courage, and
it does so more by following than by leading. Democrats took years to
commit fully to a pro-choice position, were late to the party on marriage
equality, and are still way behind their metropolitan base on marijuana.
Nonetheless that’s a big contrast to the Republicans, who at least for
marketing purposes view the metropolitan caste as a bunch of socialistic
tree-huggers who will take away your guns and your F-150 and compel you to
drive a Prius to your gay marriage.

But what Hillary Clinton and Obama and most other prominent Democrats of
the 21st century definitely don’t represent is any form of progressive or
class-based economic philosophy. Elizabeth Warren’s election to the Senate
caused such a stir because she appears to be a mild exception to this rule.
As former Bill Clinton aide Bill Curry wrote recently in Salon, the
deregulation of the telecommunications and financial services industries
under his onetime boss in the ’90s was a more far-reaching and
corporate-friendly policy shift than anything in Ronald Reagan’s wildest
trickle-down dreams. That marked the moment, Curry says, when “issues of
economic and political power [grew] invisible to Democrats.” When Ralph
Nader ran for president in 2000 on precisely those issues, he was viewed as
a traitor who cost Al Gore the White House. But if the Democrats had
nominated a pro-lifer and Gloria Steinem had run as an independent, it
might well have split the party in half.

All of which brings me back to the final point of similarity between
Hillary Clinton and Reagan, the man who dominated one election cycle from
end to end and the woman who hopes to repeat that feat. They could hardly
be more different as political personalities and (one imagines) as human
beings, and their electoral appeal is directed at totally divergent
audiences. But both function in the political marketplace first and
foremost as powerful symbols: Reagan was a symbol of American manhood and
the mythical American past, while Clinton stands (I guess) for the upward
progress of American women and a more egalitarian future. (It’s not
entirely accidental that both have provoked exaggerated hatred among their
opponents.)

I write about the movies, and would be the last person on Earth to tell you
that symbols don’t matter. But they often do not mean what they seem to
mean, and neither Clinton nor Reagan actually represents what they seem to
represent. Reagan did little or nothing for the working-class white
Americans who elected him, and if Clinton reaches the White House she will
not be there to serve metropolitan women. Beneath the scrim of symbolic
meanings, which are meant to reassure and distract and most importantly to
win elections, the same force works through both of them: the force of
money and those who wield it.

*The Daily Beast: “For 2016, Take Martin O’Malley Seriously”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/for-2016-take-martin-o-malley-seriously.html>*

By Jonathan Miller

August 3, 2014

[Subtitle:] The Maryland governor is a problem-solver and a social-justice
Catholic who can transcend the left-right divide. Keep an eye on him.

As Martin O’Malley dips his ankles into the deep end of national politics –
most recently with his full-throated plea earlier this month against the
deportation of immigrant children — I recalled the first time I saw him on
a national stage.

I had a pretty good view: I was standing right next to him.

The two of us were being paraded as rising stars by the Democratic
Leadership Council at the 2000 Democratic National Convention -- and even
featured together on the cover of The New Democrat magazine.

Alas … may the DLC rest in peace. (So too with my own political career.)
But give the late Third Way vanguard some crystal ball credit: O’Malley
could be the next President of the United States.

In his potential White House run, however, O’Malley won’t be pursuing the
DLC’s lurch-to-the-center path. Nor will he be following the liberal
orthodoxy. Indeed, it’s the Maryland Governor’s uniquely post-Clinton,
post-Obama positioning that makes him this handicapper’s pick to emerge as
the dark horse with the most potent stretch kick in the 2016 presidential
derby.

The most compelling reason? As O’Malley demonstrated in the immigration
debate, he’s the rare progressive to frame his strongly felt policy
positions in the language of faith. It’s the passionate application of
universal moral values by this devout Catholic that has the potential to
upend the usual partisan and ideological categories that are choking
today’s body politic.

I sat down with O’Malley on July 11, a few hours after he stole the
platform at the National Governors’ Association annual conference in
Nashville and broke with the President by forcefully and emotionally
calling for a more compassionate policy on the treatment of Central
American children who’ve recently come to the United States illegally: “It
is contrary to everything we stand for to try to summarily send children
back to death.”

With the potential primary still flooded with fluid contingencies, O’Malley
demurs about the prospects of challenging Hillary Clinton. "I haven't even
decided if I'm running yet, so I'm not thinking about other potential
candidates,” he told me. “I'm focused on governing Maryland, helping
Democrats win in 2014, and preparing responsibly so that I can make a
decision when the time is right."

O’Malley’s record as governor of Maryland, and before that mayor of
Baltimore, provides plenty of manna to nourish starving progressives.  Long
before his immigration comments, the Governor punched through a succession
of liberal hot-buttons:  Marriage equality? Check. Gun control? Check.
Death penalty repeal? Check. Decriminalizing pot and legalizing medical
marijuana? Check and check. Some might argue that he’s even been too
liberal for solid blue Maryland. In fact, some do, and vociferously:
Discontented residents of four western counties have been pushing an
initiative for months to secede from the rest of the state.

O’Malley has ticked off plenty of liberals as well.  Inheriting a $1.7
billion structural deficit and then plunging into the headwinds of the
Great Recession, the Governor pushed through more than $9.5 billion in
budget cuts, requiring sizable state employee layoffs, and the downsizing
of critical health and transportation programs. And the state’s largest
public employee unions expressed considerable displeasure with O’Malley’s
signature pension reform efforts

Overall, however, O’Malley can point to a fiscal track record that most
progressives would embrace: investing record sums in education to produce
the nation’s top ranked public schools five years in a row and lowest
college tuition hikes since 2007; expanding the earned income tax credit
and increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour; and recovering all of
the jobs lost in the national recession.

Of course, you can’t win enough electoral votes in our purple nation by
tacking completely left — especially in 2016, when Obama fatigue likely
will be weighing on the nation.

But O’Malley understands that the left/right/center paradigm isn’t
important to the Americans who actually determine our national elections in
today’s deeply polarized polity. Swing voters and independents aren’t
clamoring for moderation or centrism: They are looking for leaders who will
put aside party and ideology on occasion and actually get stuff done.

Over the past few years, the national bi-partisan grassroots organization
No Labels (I’m a co-founder) has been polling and focus-grouping these
voters.  Our surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Americans
are looking not at party or ideology; but rather for problem-solving. And
O’Malley can make a plausible case that he’s been a problem-solver above
all.

Time’s best mayor of 2005 and Governing’s public official of 2009 has
defined his brand as a stickler for non-partisan, data-driven management
and administrative competence. In his coming out speech in Iowa – keynoting
this June’s state Democratic convention — O’Malley devoted several minutes
to discussing the technocratic approach he used to fight crime: “When I was
elected mayor in 1999 … Baltimore had become the most violent, most
addicted, most abandoned city in America … So we set out to make our city
work again. We saw trash in our streets and alleys, so we picked it up
every day. We saw open air drug markets, and we began to relentlessly close
them down … Over the next 10 years, Baltimore went on to achieve the
biggest reduction in part 1 crime of any major city in America.”

He has used the same non-ideological approach on issues ranging from
biotechnology and aerospace to roads, bridges, transit projects, new
schools, and rural broadband connectivity.

But the most interesting thing about O’Malley is his exploration of an
intriguing, heart-centered strategy that could potentially shake up our
national political paradigm: using the language of faith and universal
moral values to ground public policy. Republicans have owned the faith
space since the Reagan era. Presidential candidate Barack Obama tried
valiantly to take it back in 2008, but after the embarrassment of Reverend
Jeremiah Wright and the right wing’s maniacal campaign to brand him a
Muslim, Obama’s rhetorical strategy was mostly abandoned.

O’Malley appears to be reaching to pick up the scepter.  The regular
weekday Mass attendee — who brings to mind the beer-drinking, Irish
Catholic everyman rather than the pious moral scold — described his
religious beliefs to me as the underpinning of his public vocation. He
referred me to a speech he delivered to his high school alma mater way back
in 2002 in which he connected his Catholic education with his passion for
problem solving:

“I learned … to search for Christ in the faces of others including, and
especially, the faces of the poor, the faces of the homeless men who lined
up for a meal every morning alongside the foundations of this church … I
learned … to recognize and confront the enemy within – the original sin of
our own culture and environment that would have us think less of people who
– because of race, or class, or place – are not like us … And I learned
that it is not enough to have faith, you must also have the courage to risk
action on that faith, to risk failure upon that faith: the faith that one
person can make a difference and that each of us must try.”

It’s no wonder, then, that he grounded his angry denunciation of Obama’s
immigration policy in the faith tradition: “Through all of the great world
religions, we are told that hospitality to strangers is an essential human
dignity. … It is a belief that unites all of us.”

Note that he didn’t mention his Christianity, nor even the slightly more
politically correct construct of “Judeo-Christian values.”  Instead, he
reached to a broader audience, with the understanding that all religious
and spiritual traditions in world history share at their core the same
universal moral values, of welcoming the stranger and loving one’s neighbor
— of compassion and community. This appeal to unity — to a common higher
ground — can potentially disrupt the GOP’s monopoly on faith, without
frightening religious minorities, or even agnostics, from the Democratic
fold.

Most significantly, by embracing shared moral values, O’Malley might even
find the path to counter today’s dominant politics of self-interest that
underlies both Tea Party libertarianism and the more cynical,
transactional-based politics that serves as Washington’s greatest
bi-partisan consensus.

Perhaps that’s enough dreaming. Back here in the real world of politics,
O’Malley has quite an arduous journey ahead of him, especially if Clinton
decides to run. He can expect bruising personal and professional scrutiny
from a cruel and punishing new media, which may constrain his ability to
define himself and articulate the vision. Most pertinently, recent critical
focus on a Baltimore jail scandal and Obamacare’s rocky roll out in
Maryland could directly undermine both his problem-solver and moral paladin
narratives.

But at least from my vantage point, Martin O’Malley could be the right
messenger with the right message. And the rising star still standing just
might be in the best position to offer some elixir to our deeply ailing
political system.

*Washington Examiner: “Why some donors are giving to dark horse Martin
O'Malley”
<http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-some-donors-are-giving-to-dark-horse-martin-omalley/article/2551602>*

By Rebecca Berg

August 3, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EDT

As it turns out, not everyone is ready for Hillary.

Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic
frontrunner, leads by as much as 50 percent in some polls, there is some
evidence that some former supporters are looking with interest at Maryland
Gov. Martin O'Malley.

As many Democrats might have expected, O’Malley has attracted respectable
support from within Maryland, as well as from some prominent former Obama
supporters, such as the bundler Stewart Bainum.

But, more surprisingly, O’Malley’s early base of support also overlaps
somewhat with Clinton’s network, even as she appears as poised as ever to
run for president and swamp him in the race, at least at the outset.

There are several reasons why potential donors or aides might eschew
supporting Clinton for O’Malley, at least for now.

On the staffing side, there is a sense among some young, up-and-coming
Democratic operatives that the waiting list for a potential Clinton
presidential campaign is already closed — but not so with a fresh candidate
like O’Malley, whose campaign could be a prime launching pad for new
political talent.

One senior position on O’Malley’s political team has already been scooped
up by a Clinton alum. Adam Goers, who served as Clinton’s midwest finance
director during her bid for president, is the executive director at
O’Malley’s federal political action committee, O’ Say Can You See PAC,
known colloquially as “O’PAC.”

A similar story is being told in donations to the PAC, which brought in
nearly $800,000 during the most recent fundraising quarter. Already, two
former Clinton bundlers — so-called “Hillraisers” from the 2008 campaign —
have stepped up to contribute thousands of dollars to O’Malley: Lainy
Lebow-Sachs of Maryland and C. Thomas McMillen of Washington.

The donations don’t necessarily reflect dissatisfaction with Clinton.

Paul DiNino served as the Democratic National Committee’s national finance
director under President Clinton, and he supported Hillary Clinton in 2008
— but he’s steering potential donors to O’Malley, making the case that it
is a wise investment. Because O’Malley does not possess a vast donor
network on par with Clinton’s, each big-money donor could wield that much
more influence within O’Malley’s campaign, should it take flight.

DiNino, who lives in Maryland but has deep ties to Iowa politics, has also
stressed O’Malley’s role as a party surrogate during the 2014 midterm
elections. The Maryland governor has, unlike Clinton, been crisscrossing
the country to campaign for Democrats — in early presidential primary
states, of course, but in others as well.

“Right now, it's Martin O’Malley, and it's only Martin O’Malley,” DiNino
said. “He’s filling a giant void for Democrats.”

A spokesperson for the pro-Clinton group Ready For Hillary told the
Washington Examiner earlier this year that the group would “look to amplify
the efforts that Hillary engages in for the midterms.” But those efforts,
if they develop, likely won’t come to fruition until late in the fall.

In the meantime, O’Malley is one of the few Democrats making all the
overtures characteristic of a would-be presidential candidate, including
frequent, publicized trips to early primary states.

He has traveled on multiple occasions to Iowa, including last week, when
O’Malley, the former chair of the Democratic Governors Association,
campaigned with the state’s Democratic nominee for governor, Jack Hatch.

O’Malley has also traveled twice to New Hampshire to raise money for Gov.
Maggie Hassan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, campaigned in South Carolina in May
for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen, and even made a
trip in May to Nevada, another early primary state.

O’Malley has not yet decided, officially and publicly, to run for
president, although he has been candid about seriously considering that
avenue. There is also a sense, however, fortified by hints from O’Malley’s
allies, that he might not follow through with a campaign should Clinton run
for president.

O’Malley, after all, does not have an adversarial history personally or on
policy with the Clintons. In fact, he was a bundler for Clinton during her
2008 campaign. O’Malley, 51, is also young enough to wait to run for
president later should he decide the opportunity is not ripe this time.

“He's not going anywhere,” DiNino said. “He has a long political career
ahead of him.”

And at least as long as Clinton publicly hems and haws about whether she
will run for president, O’Malley will welcome some of her allies into his
fold in support of that career, wherever it might lead.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  August 6 – Huntington, NY: Sec. Clinton signs books at Book Revue (
HillaryClintonMemoir.com
<http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/long_island_book_signing>)

·  August 9 – Water Mill, NY: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the Clinton
Foundation at the home of George and Joan Hornig (WSJ
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/17/for-50000-best-dinner-seats-with-the-clintons-in-the-hamptons/>
)

·  August 13 – Martha’s Vinyard, MA: Sec. Clinton signs books at Bunch of
Grapes (HillaryClintonMemoir.com
<http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/martha_s_vineyard_book_signing>)

·  August 16 – East Hampton, New York: Sec. Clinton signs books at
Bookhampton East Hampton (HillaryClintonMemoir.com
<http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/long_island_book_signing2>)

·  August 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes Nexenta’s OpenSDx
Summit (BusinessWire
<http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140702005709/en/Secretary-State-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-Deliver-Keynote#.U7QoafldV8E>
)

·  September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean
Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today
<http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html>
)

·  October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network
Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network
<http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation
Annual Dinner (UNLV
<http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>)

·  ~ October 13-16 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes
salesforce.com Dreamforce
conference (salesforce.com
<http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/keynotes.jsp>)

 ·  December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts
Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)