Subject: ​Correct The Record Sunday October 12, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:27:17 -0400
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*​**Correct The Record Sunday October 12, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Bloomberg: “Bloomberg/DMR Iowa Poll: Republicans Within Striking Distance
of Clinton”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-10-11/bloombergdes-moines-register-iowa-poll-republicans-within-striking-distance-of-hillary-clinton>*

“If Hillary Clinton decides to run for president, she'll have her work cut
out for her in the first state to weigh in on the race: Iowa.”

*New York Times column: Frank Bruni: “Appetite, Bill and Barack”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-appetite-bill-and-barack.html>*

“In bold contrast to the easily embittered, frequently disappointing
occupant of the Oval Office right now, Bill Clinton was — and is — game.”

*New York Times: “Recent White House Memoirs Target Lame Duck Over a
Potential Successor”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/us/politics/recent-white-house-memoirs-target-lame-duck-over-a-potential-successor.html?_r=0>*

“Mr. Panetta’s memoir has drawn attention, and raised hackles in the White
House, for its criticism of President Obama, particularly about his
handling of Syria and Iraq. Less noticed is his discreet approach to Mrs.
Clinton, with whom Mr. Panetta has had a long, complicated relationship
since he was President Bill Clinton’s budget director and she was first
lady.”

*BuzzFeed: “Martin O’Malley Makes His Pitch In Iowa”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/martin-omalley-makes-his-pitch-in-iowa#2wk3999>*

[Subtitle:] “On Saturday, at the Maryland governor’s 17th event in Iowa
since last summer, the O’Malley brand takes shape. ‘A big generational
shift afoot.’”

*Washington Post: “In latest trip to Iowa, O’Malley credited for helping
candidates on the ballot there”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/in-latest-trip-to-iowa-omalley-credited-for-helping-candidates-on-the-ballot-there/2014/10/11/a6680d9c-51a6-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html>*

“During his fourth visit to Iowa since June, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley
got kudos Saturday for his efforts to help Democrats on the ballot there
this year.”

*The Hill blog: “Dick Morris: Clinton orchestrated Panetta's 'hit' on
Obama”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/220500-dick-morris-clinton-orchestrated-panettas-hit-on-obama>*

“Political strategist Dick Morris accused Hillary Clinton of conspiring
with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in his stinging critique of
President Obama's foreign policy.”

*National Journal: “West Virginia Democrats Embrace Panetta Despite Obama
Criticism”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/west-virginia-democrats-embrace-panetta-despite-obama-criticism-20141011>*

“But the raucous reception was a reminder that even though Obama has won
back-to-back presidential elections, he's never been popular in the
Mountain State – even within the Democratic Party here. It's why Hillary
Clinton won the state's primary easily here in 2008 and why Obama lost
nearly 40 percent of the vote to an unknown convicted felon in the 2012
primary.”

*Salon: “EXCLUSIVE: Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama: ‘They protected Wall
Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their
jobs. And it happened over and over and over’”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/exclusive_elizabeth_warren_on_barack_obama_they_protected_wall_street_not_families_who_were_losing_their_homes_not_people_who_lost_their_jobs_and_it_happened_over_and_over_and_over/>*

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “He [Pres. Obama] picked his economic team and when
the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.”

*Articles:*

*Bloomberg: “Bloomberg/DMR Iowa Poll: Republicans Within Striking Distance
of Clinton”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-10-11/bloombergdes-moines-register-iowa-poll-republicans-within-striking-distance-of-hillary-clinton>*

By Lisa Lerer

October 11, 2014, 6:00 p.m. EDT

If Hillary Clinton decides to run for president, she'll have her work cut
out for her in the first state to weigh in on the race: Iowa.

Three Republicans are within three points of the former Secretary of State,
suggesting a fierce fight ahead in a pivotal swing state, a new Bloomberg
Politics/Des Moines Register poll shows. In a general election match-up
among likely 2016 voters, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, a former vice
presidential candidate, trails Clinton by one point, at 43 percent, and
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is three points behind Clinton at 41 percent.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has said he's not running,
draws the backing of 44 percent of likely Iowa voters, giving the former
Republican presidential candidate a one-point lead over Clinton.

Governor Chris Christie, with 38 percent backing, trails Clinton by five
percentage points, while former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's 39 percent puts
him 7 points behind her. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz also lag
Clinton, by 8 and 10 percentage points, respectively.

The results reflect a measure of familiarity with some in the Republican
field. Romney and Ryan shared a national presidential ticket just two years
ago and Paul's father ran in two Republican presidential caucuses. But
Clinton's level of support also indicates political weakness for the former
first lady, who has said she will make a decision about entering the race
early next year. Despite the high approval ratings of her State Department
years, Clinton remains a nationally divisive figure.

“I always remember years ago watching her. I'm saying: 'This person wants
to run our country and she didn't know her husband had these tendencies,'”
said Terry Ecklund, 63, a moderate Republican in Dysart, Iowa. “But there
is this aura around the Clintons that's kind of hard.”

Almost half — 49 percent — of likely Iowa voters in the upcoming midterm
elections say they have an unfavorable view of Clinton, while 47 percent
rate her favorably. Fifty-seven percent of likely voters have a positive
opinion of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and 39 percent view
him negatively.

Also on Bloomberg Politics: Bloomberg/DMR Iowa Poll: Senate Candidates Just
a Point Apart

The Iowa caucuses have never been a field of dreams for the Clintons. In
their previous campaigns, Bill Clinton skipped the state caucuses in 1992
when favorite son Senator Tom Harkin made a run for the White House, and
Hillary Clinton recorded a third-place finish in the 2008 Democratic
presidential primary. Although Democrats have won Iowa in four of the last
five presidential elections, the margins have been close and it's expected
to be competitive again in 2016.

The new results come as Clinton returns to the political stage, kicking off
a series of campaign events for Democratic congressional candidates that
will take her across the country this month. On Thursday, she campaigned in
Philadelphia for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf. Next week,
she will travel to Kentucky and Michigan to support Senate candidates.

Her standing is better in some other purple presidential states. Clinton
held at least a ten-point lead over Christie, Paul, and Ryan in Virginia,
according to a Sept. 24 Roanoke College survey. In North Carolina and
Florida, she held a lead of about 10 percentage points over Christie,
according to two September surveys by Public Policy Polling.

Some of the support for Clinton and Romney is intertwined with diminished
opinion of President Barack Obama, whose 2008 primary victory in the
state's caucuses propelled his first presidential bid. Among all Iowa
voters, 18 percent say they still back Obama but not as much and 7 percent
say they don't support him anymore. Just 27 percent say their enthusiasm
remains the same, with 48 percent saying the never backed him.

“I believe Clinton is a leader,” said Bill Graham, a retired teacher in
Cedar Rapids, who backed Obama in the 2008 caucuses. “I've had a question
about the last two presidents about their leadership qualities, and I think
we're due for someone who takes a stand whether it's popular or not.”

A majority, 54 percent, of likely Iowa voters say they have an unfavorable
view of the president compared with 44 percent who view him favorably. If
the 2012 presidential election was held today, 41 percent of the likely
voters say they would back Romney while 39 percent would back Obama.

Voters remain negative about the future of the country, with nearly 67
percent saying the nation is on the wrong track and just 24 percent saying
the country is headed in the right direction.

The poll was conducted by Selzer & Company from Oct. 3-8 with 1,107 likely
voters in 2016 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage
points. The sample of 1,000 likely 2014 voters has a margin of error of
plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

*New York Times column: Frank Bruni: “Appetite, Bill and Barack”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-appetite-bill-and-barack.html>*

By Frank Bruni

October 11, 2014

AFTER the latest meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up three
weeks ago, I thought I’d missed the perfect window to write about Bill
Clinton’s continued hold on Americans’ hearts, his sustained claim on the
spotlight.

Silly me. In short order and with customary brio, Clinton simply traded
that stage for the next one: the entire state of Arkansas, his old stamping
grounds, through which he barnstormed over recent days in the service of
Senate Democrats.

He remained in the headlines. He was still in the mix. Even when he’s not
running, he’s running — exuberantly, indefatigably, for just causes, for
lost causes, because he hopes to move the needle, because he loves the
sound of his own voice and because he doesn’t know any other way to be.
Politics is his calling. The arena is his home.

And that’s the real reason that he’s so popular in his post-presidency, so
beloved in both retrospect and the moment. In bold contrast to the easily
embittered, frequently disappointing occupant of the Oval Office right now,
Bill Clinton was — and is — game.

Nothing stops him or slows him or sours him, at least not for long. Nothing
is beneath him, because he’s as unabashedly messy and slick as the
operators all around him. He doesn’t recoil at the rough and tumble, or
feel belittled and diminished by it. He relishes it. Throw a punch at him
and he throws one at you. Impeach him and he bounces back.

It’s that very gameness that fueled his undeniable successes as a
president, and that’s worth keeping in mind when the midterms end and we
turn our attention more fully to the 2016 presidential race. Who in the
emerging field of contenders has his level of enthusiasm, his degree of
stamina, his intensity of engagement?

Neither of the two presidents who followed him do, and that absent fire
explains many of their shortcomings in office. Both George W. Bush and
Barack Obama felt put out by what they had to do to get there. Neither
masked his sense of being better than the ugly process he was lashed to.

Bush was always craving distance from the stink and muck of the Potomac,
and routinely averted his gaze: from the truth of Iraq, from the wrath of
Katrina. In a different way, Obama also pulls away, accepting stalemates
and defeats, not wanting to get too dirty, not breaking too much of a
sweat. “The audacity of mope,” his countenance has been called.

It comes into sharper, more troubling focus with each passing season and
each new book, including Leon Panetta’s, “Worthy Fights,” which was
published last week. The reservations expressed by Panetta, who served
under Obama as both C.I.A director and defense secretary, seconded those
articulated by so many other Democrats.

The president, Panetta wrote, “relies on the logic of a law professor
rather than the passion of a leader.” He exhibits “a frustrating reticence
to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause,” in Panetta’s
words, and he “avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities.”

As Washington absorbed Panetta’s assessment and debated whether it was an
act of disloyalty or of patriotism, Arkansas opened its arms to Clinton,
who beamed and pressed the flesh and talked and talked.

He talked in particular about Mark Pryor, the incumbent Democratic senator,
who seems poised to be defeated by Tom Cotton, a rising Republican star.
And while it’s doubtful that Clinton’s backing will save Pryor, it’s almost
certain that no other Democrat’s favor would serve Pryor any better.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC/Annenberg poll that came out last week suggested
that a campaign plug from Clinton would carry more weight with voters than
one from Obama, the first lady, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or Chris
Christie. He’s the endorser in chief.

That gives him an invitation and a license to step onto soapboxes wide and
far. Last month he stumped in Maine, North Carolina, Georgia and Maryland.
This month he’s bound for Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He’s wanted.
He’s welcomed.

And, yes, that’s partly because he’s a reminder of an epoch more
economically dynamic than the current one, of an America less humbled and
fearful. It’s also because he has no real responsibility and thus no real
culpability: He can’t let us down. On top of which, absence has always made
the heart grow fonder.

BUT he never really went away. He abandoned the White House only to begin
plotting by proxy to move in again. He’s the past, present and future
tenses all entwined, and that’s a clue that there’s something other than
just nostalgia behind the outsize affection for him. He’s missed because he
demonstrates what’s missing in the commanders in chief since.

He’s missed for that gameness, an invaluable asset that fueled so many
leaders’ triumphs but wasn’t abundant in leaders who suffered many defeats.

Jimmy Carter, for one. “He was not just detached and not just unfamiliar
with congressional politics but he also didn’t like it, didn’t want to play
it — and that was a huge obstacle for him,” said Julian Zelizer, a
Princeton University historian who has written books about Carter and Bush
and has one about Lyndon Baines Johnson, “The Fierce Urgency of Now,”
scheduled for publication in January. “It really damaged him.”

“Clinton was the last president we’ve had who loved politics,” Zelizer
added. “Bush — and you can see this in his post-presidency — didn’t have a
taste for what Washington was all about. Executive power was partly a way
to avoid Congress entirely. And Obama is just like Bush that way.”

It’s interesting to note that neither Bush nor Obama knew any really big,
bitter political disappointments en route to the White House. (Bush’s
failed 1978 congressional race, so early in his career and so distant from
his subsequent bid for Texas governor, doesn’t count.) Their paths were
relatively unimpeded ones, while Clinton suffered the humiliation of being
booted from his job as governor of Arkansas after one term, then having to
regain it.

Scars like that do a politician good. They prove that he or she loves the
sport enough to keep going, and has the grit for it. We’d be wise to look
for them in the politicians angling for the presidency next. The ugliness
of the job isn’t going to change. Might as well elect someone with the
appetite for it.

Clinton showed us the downside of unappeasable hunger, but he also showed
us the upside, and he’s showing us still. He gets love and he gets his way
simply by never letting up in his demand for them. There’s a lesson in that.

*New York Times: “Recent White House Memoirs Target Lame Duck Over a
Potential Successor”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/us/politics/recent-white-house-memoirs-target-lame-duck-over-a-potential-successor.html?_r=0>*

By Mark Landler

October 10, 2014

WASHINGTON — When Leon E. Panetta was director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, he had a shouting match with Hillary Rodham Clinton about who had
ultimate authority over drone strikes in Pakistan: the C.I.A. or the State
Department’s ambassador.

Mrs. Clinton alluded to the contretemps in her memoir “Hard Choices,” but
it does not appear in Mr. Panetta’s just-published book, even though it
seems tailor-made for a volume called “Worthy Fights.”

Mr. Panetta’s memoir has drawn attention, and raised hackles in the White
House, for its criticism of President Obama, particularly about his
handling of Syria and Iraq. Less noticed is his discreet approach to Mrs.
Clinton, with whom Mr. Panetta has had a long, complicated relationship
since he was President Bill Clinton’s budget director and she was first
lady.

The kid-glove treatment is not unique to Mr. Panetta. In the growing crop
of tell-all memoirs by former Obama administration officials including
Robert M. Gates and Timothy F. Geithner, Mrs. Clinton has emerged largely
unscathed — proof that in Washington, it is easier to kick a sitting
second-term president than a potential future one.

Mr. Obama, in Mr. Panetta’s telling, is a brilliant but vacillating figure
with “the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”
Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, “was a luminous representative for the
United States in every foreign capital, as well as a smart, forceful
advocate in meetings of the president’s top advisers.”

Mr. Panetta is more gimlet-eyed in discussing his dealings with Mrs.
Clinton during her husband’s presidency. They were on opposite sides of a
debate over Mr. Clinton’s early budgets, with Mr. Panetta the deficit hawk
fending off Mrs. Clinton the health reformer.

But even then, Mr. Panetta was not spoiling for a fight. “I don’t recall
ever confronting Hillary Clinton directly with my concerns,” he wrote,
noting that she vented about him to other officials.

Mr. Panetta’s gingerly treatment of Mrs. Clinton is partly a tribute to the
alliances she made in the Obama cabinet. She formed a virtual triumvirate
with Mr. Panetta and Mr. Gates, backing the troop surge to Afghanistan,
weapons for Syrian rebels, and leaving a residual force behind in Iraq.

Crucially for Mr. Panetta, Mrs. Clinton spoke up in favor of his
recommendation for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. She also joined
him in opposing a prisoner swap with the Taliban for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl —
an idea that was revived after they had both left the cabinet.

Still, there were other places where Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Clinton parted
company, not least in 2011 on the question of whether Cameron Munter, then
the ambassador to Pakistan, should have the right to veto C.I.A. drone
strikes if he believed they would cause serious diplomatic damage.

In a White House meeting, recounted by Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times
in his book, “The Way of the Knife,” Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Clinton clashed
bitterly, with her defending Mr. Munter’s prerogatives and Mr. Panetta
replying, “No, Hillary, it’s you who are flat wrong.”

In an interview in February, Mr. Panetta confirmed that he and Mrs. Clinton
disagreed over who had ultimate authority over counterterrorism operations,
the ambassador or the C.I.A. But he said it was a bureaucratic, not a
personal or policy dispute.

“She was supportive of what we had to do in order to deal with Al Qaeda,”
Mr. Panetta said. “Both of us knew very well that the key was to ensure
that Pakistan, regardless of their concerns, would stand back and allow us
to continue those operations.”

More curiously, Mr. Panetta does not mention Mrs. Clinton in his discussion
of the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic outpost that killed Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in September 2012. Then the
secretary of defense, he offers a granular account of the Pentagon’s
response, saying he wants to dispel suspicions that have come to enshroud
this episode.

But Mrs. Clinton plays no part in his telling of the tragedy or its
aftermath, when, he notes, David H. Petraeus, his C.I.A. successor, ordered
up the faulty talking points that described the attack as a protest gone
awry, and Susan E. Rice recited them on theSunday talk shows.

The Benghazi attack is certain to figure high on the list of Republican
attacks on Mrs. Clinton, but they will not get any ammunition from Mr.
Panetta. And that, say people who know him, is the key to understanding
him: At 76, he is not looking for a job in a Clinton White House. But as a
savvy Washington player and loyal Democrat, he recognizes that the stakes
in criticizing someone who may soon run for president are so much greater
than in criticizing a president who has run his last election.

On the growing bookshelf of Obama-era memoirs, in fact, it took a diplomat
to aim a genuine zinger at Mrs. Clinton. In his new book, “Outpost: Life on
the Frontlines of American Diplomacy,” Christopher R. Hill, who served as
ambassador to Iraq until 2010, recalled her first visit to Baghdad as
secretary of state.

As he was bidding farewell to Mrs. Clinton, she encouraged him to reach out
to her whenever he needed help. He waved goodbye, confident that she would
be back soon. “Three months later,” he wrote, “Vice President Joe Biden
took the lead on Iraq and she never returned.”

Mr. Hill said he meant his words not as criticism but as an expression of
his disappointment that “she went off to do other things.” And he was
nothing but diplomatic in recounting another episode that Mrs. Clinton’s
political rivals have seized on: her 1996 visit as first lady to Bosnia,
during which, she claimed years later, she had come under sniper fire.

Mr. Hill, it turns out, was on Mrs. Clinton’s C-17 transport plane that day
and listened in as a security official ominously briefed her about the
dangers of sniper fire after they landed. Instead, Mrs. Clinton was greeted
by Bosnian children, bearing bouquets of spring flowers. The trip went off
without a hitch or a hint of gunfire.

“But the threat of snipers seemed to be all most people could remember,”
Mr. Hill wrote, without elaborating.

*BuzzFeed: “Martin O’Malley Makes His Pitch In Iowa”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/martin-omalley-makes-his-pitch-in-iowa#2wk3999>*

By Ruby Cramer

October 11, 2014, 8:14 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] On Saturday, at the Maryland governor’s 17th event in Iowa
since last summer, the O’Malley brand takes shape. “A big generational
shift afoot.”

During his fourth trip to Iowa this year, the early-voting state where
presidential campaigns take hold or wilt, Gov. Martin O’Malley pitched his
brand of leadership to local Democrats during a two-day swing through the
Midwest.

The Maryland governor had three points for the crowd of 50 gathered at
Baratta’s Restaurant in Des Moines on Saturday morning — things “I’m
noticing,” he explained, as he travels from state to state on behalf of
Democratic candidates.

First, O’Malley said, the economy had not improved enough under President
Obama, for whom the governor was once an unapologetic surrogate. “It’s
working better than what it was,” O’Malley said. “But it’s not really
working well.”

Second, he argued that, especially among people under 40, there was “a big
generation shift afoot” in Americans’ perspectives. “Many of us were told,
those of us over 50,” said O’Malley, who at 51 years old barely qualifies,
“that the key to success is to specialize and separate from others. Young
people believe it’s proximity, closer to action to others. They are
multi-disciplinary, conceptually.”

And last, O’Malley sold what he described as a “new way of governing” best
embodied by mayors. (He was one for eight years in Baltimore.) “[It’s]
entrepreneurial, it’s collaborative, it’s performance-measured, it’s
individually responsive, it’s real-time, real fast, and really visible for
everyone to see thanks to technology and the internet,” he told the group
of volunteers and local officials, according to a transcript of the event
provided by an O’Malley aide.

The brief speech — a diagnosis of the stagnant economy, and a proposal for
fresh, executive leadership — read like the outlines of what could be
O’Malley’s message to national Democratic voters.

The governor has said he is making preparations to launch a possible White
House bid. O’Malley will finish his second and last term as governor in
January. He has spent months campaigning for other Democrats, appearing at
more than 80 fundraisers and traveling to as many as 19 states since the
start of 2013.

He has headlined 17 events in Iowa since last summer and donated more than
$31,000 to Democrats there, according to figures provided by an aide.

On the ticket this fall, the state will decide a governor’s race, two
congressional races, and one of the tightest U.S. Senate races of the
midterm elections. Iowa poll results published on Saturday night showed
Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat, trailing state Sen. Joni Ernst, the
Republican, by just one point.

Brad Anderson, the Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of state,
appeared with O’Malley at a second event on Saturday at the state party’s
Des Moines field office. Anderson praised the governor for his “hard work”
on behalf of candidates in the state. “I’m going to be very blunt here.
There are few people that have been more helpful to Iowa Democrats in 2014
than Governor Martin O’Malley.”

Earlier this year, O’Malley sent staffers, paid for through his PAC, to the
state to help on campaigns there. Ready for Hillary, an outside group
urging Hillary Clinton run for president again, also dispatched staff to
Iowa and 13 other states.

Despite his four trips to the state, O’Malley still barely registers on
national polls.

In Maryland, where his lieutenant governor and hand-picked successor is in
a tighter than expected race for governor, state surveys show the majority
of Marylanders don’t want O’Malley to run for president. More than 60% of
registered Democrats in the state said they wanted Clinton as their next
nominee. Only 3% chose O’Malley. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York,
and Bernie Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont, received the same level of
Maryland support.

After his two events in Iowa, O’Malley traveled to Minnesota to keynote the
state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Founders’ Day dinner in Minneapolis. On
Sunday, he is scheduled to return to Iowa for two Young Democrats
appearances.

*Washington Post: “In latest trip to Iowa, O’Malley credited for helping
candidates on the ballot there”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/in-latest-trip-to-iowa-omalley-credited-for-helping-candidates-on-the-ballot-there/2014/10/11/a6680d9c-51a6-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html>*

By John Wagner

October 11, 2014, 8:46 p.m. EDT

During his fourth visit to Iowa since June, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley
got kudos Saturday for his efforts to help Democrats on the ballot there
this year.

The potential 2016 White House aspirant has appeared at a string of
fundraisers and other campaign events with Iowa candidates in competitive
races in recent months, and his political action committee is also paying
for nearly a dozen campaign staffers in the state — which is part of a
broader investment in key states nationally.

“There are few people that have been more helpful to Iowa Democrats in 2014
than Governor Martin O’Malley,” Brad Anderson, the Democratic candidate for
Iowa secretary for state, told party volunteers Saturday at a
get-out-the-office in Des Moines, according to an audio recording of the
event. “He’s been an enormous help to me personally, and he has been an
enormous help to Democrats from the Missouri to the Mississippi River.”

In his remarks, O’Malley said that while the economy is recovering,
“middle-class wages are actually flat-lining or going down.”

“If we want an economy that’s going to work for all of us, then we need to
get back to work, and we need to figure this out and do the things our
parents and grandparents did that actually create jobs, that build new
industries … and craft a jobs agenda that is worthy of great people,”
O’Malley said.

The event was one of three advertised stops for O’Malley on Saturday in the
early presidential nominating state. He is scheduled to address a gathering
of Minnesota Democrats on Saturday night in Minneapolis and return to Iowa
for more events on Sunday.

O’Malley’s trip comes as a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll
shows markedly little enthusiasm from registered Democrats in his home
state for a presidential bid.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the choice for president for 63 percent of
Maryland Democrats, according to the poll, while O’Malley draws the support
of only 3 percent, no better than Bernard Sanders, the independent
socialist senator from Vermont. Vice President Biden also fares better in
Maryland than O’Malley, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) draws similar
support.

O’Malley has said he is preparing for a potential White House bid whether
Clinton runs or not, and will likely decide on moving forward before his
second term as governor ends in late January.

*The Hill blog: “Dick Morris: Clinton orchestrated Panetta's 'hit' on
Obama”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/220500-dick-morris-clinton-orchestrated-panettas-hit-on-obama>*

By Rachel Huggins

October 12, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EDT

Political strategist Dick Morris accused Hillary Clinton of conspiring with
former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in his stinging critique of President
Obama's foreign policy.

"I think Hillary put him up to it,” Morris said during an interview on John
Catsimatidis's radio show to air Sunday on New York's 970 AM.

“What Panetta is doing is a hit – a contract killing – for Hillary. Panetta
at core is a Clinton person, not an Obama person. By accurately and
truthfully describing the deliberations in the [Obama] cabinet, he makes
Hillary look better, and he makes Obama look worse … And I think he’ll get
his reward in heaven.”

Panetta made headlines earlier this week when he said the president has
been too willing to “step back and give up” when faced with challenges.

While promoting his new book, Power Grab, Morris, — a former adviser to
Bill Clinton — said Obama's policies on immigration and voting laws are an
effort to put Democrats in control of the Federal government.

“The real goal, I believe, is to make sure the Democratic Party is
permanently in power – just as it is in California and statewide in New
York, where Republicans are really an afterthought and can never really win
an election," he said.

*National Journal: “West Virginia Democrats Embrace Panetta Despite Obama
Criticism”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/west-virginia-democrats-embrace-panetta-despite-obama-criticism-20141011>*

By Alex Roarty

October 11, 2014

[Subtitle:] Former Defense Secretary's new book is no hindrance in a state
that dislikes the president.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- On Tuesday, Leon Panetta published a sharply critical
new book about his former boss, President Obama. On Saturday, the
ex-Defense Secretary traveled here to deliver the keynote address at the
West Virginia Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.

Awkward, right? Not in West Virginia.

The harsh critique of their party's leader didn't seem to faze the hundreds
of rank-and-file Democrats gathered here, about half of whom gave Panetta a
standing ovation as he walked across the stage during an introduction of
the night's speakers. If there were jeers, they were drowned out by
applause and cheers.

Panetta – who received a second standing ovation after a warm introduction
from Sen. Joe Manchin -- didn't address his criticism of the president
during his speech, opting to mention Obama in passing only once and instead
sharing old stories about the state's late longtime senator, Robert Byrd.

But the raucous reception was a reminder that even though Obama has won
back-to-back presidential elections, he's never been popular in the
Mountain State – even within the Democratic Party here. It's why Hillary
Clinton won the state's primary easily here in 2008 and why Obama lost
nearly 40 percent of the vote to an unknown convicted felon in the 2012
primary.

Earlier this year, the state's Democratic nominee for Senate, Natalie
Tennant, ran a TV ad that depicted her shutting off the White House's
lights to declare her opposition to the president. Obama's social
liberalism and, above all, his administration's new carbon emission
standards alienate him from a party that's culturally conservative and
views coal as the state's lifeblood.

"West Virginia, at a state level, is so much different than national
politics," said Belinda Biafore, the state's party's vice-chair. "I think
they remember [Panetta] more as Bill Clinton's chief of staff – they love
Bill Clinton."

She said she watched several Democrats ask Panetta to sign his book.

"It's not awkward," said Biafore, who added that Panetta had been asked to
speak at the night's events months ago, before the content of his book was
known.

Democrats elsewhere, especially in the White House, haven't been so warm
toward Panetta. Vice President Joe Biden called the publication of his book
inappropriate. Other former White House aides have offered harsher
criticism. Its timing – the publication came exactly one month before
Election Day – was unquestionably difficult for a president whose
unpopularity is already being blamed for expected Republican gains in the
House and Senate.

But interviews with Democrats here made clear that none of them thought
Panetta's appearance was off-putting. Most were glad just to have someone
of his stature speaking at the dinner.

"Well, you got to remember, Barack Obama is not the most popular in West
Viriginia," said John Gainer, 28-year-old on hand to support his father, a
congressional candidate in the state. "[Panetta] has got an impressive
resume."

"West Virginia Democrats are not national Democrats," said Amy Stowers, a
45-year-old local Democratic Party official. "Our attitudes are not the
same as theirs, to a degree."

Other Democrats suggested the timing of Panetta's book could have been
better, and they said they didn't agree with its criticism. But none said
they thought he should have been replaced as the keynote speaker.

"He's been a big part of our party for many years," said Billy Pack, of
Hurricane, W.Va. who is 75 years old. "I don't think he'd try to
intentionally tear it down. I guess everyone has to sell a book."

Obama was rarely mentioned in any context for most of the dinner. Democrats
here face a series of critical elections in November, headlined by the
fight to retain Sen. Jay Rockefeller's seat in the Senate, and most of
their campaigns focus on trying to distance themselves from the president.

Manchin, while introducing Panetta, offered the most direct comment on
Obama of the night, saying he while he disagrees with the president, he
hopes he succeeds. His comment was greeted by applause.

*Salon: “EXCLUSIVE: Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama: ‘They protected Wall
Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their
jobs. And it happened over and over and over’”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/exclusive_elizabeth_warren_on_barack_obama_they_protected_wall_street_not_families_who_were_losing_their_homes_not_people_who_lost_their_jobs_and_it_happened_over_and_over_and_over/>*

By Thomas Frank

October 12, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] "There has not been nearly enough change," she tells Salon,
taking on Obama failures, lobbyists, tuition. So 2016?

Senator Elizabeth Warren scarcely requires an introduction. She is the
single most exciting Democrat currently on the national stage.

Her differentness from the rest of the political profession is stark and
obvious. It extends from her straightforward clarity on economic issues to
the energetic way she talks. I met her several years ago when she was
taking time out from her job teaching at Harvard to run the Congressional
Oversight Panel, which was charged with supervising how the bank bailout
money was spent. I discovered on that occasion not only that we agreed on
many points of policy, but that she came originally from Oklahoma, the
state immediately south of the one where I grew up, and also that high
school debate had been as important for her as it had been for me.

In the years since then, Professor Warren helped to launch the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau (which will probably be remembered as one of
the few lasting achievements of the Obama Administration); she wrote a
memoir, A Fighting Chance; and she was elected to the United States Senate
from Massachusetts.

This interview was condensed and lightly edited.

*I want to start by talking about a line that you’re famous for, from your
speech at the Democratic National Convention two years ago: “The system is
rigged.” You said exactly what was on millions of people’s minds. I wonder,
now that you’re in D.C. and you’re in the Senate, and you have a chance to
see things close up, do you still feel that way? And: Is there a way to fix
the system without getting the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United or
some huge structural change like that? How can we fix it?*

That’s the question that lies at the heart of whether our democracy will
survive. The system is rigged. And now that I’ve been in Washington and
seen it up close and personal, I just see new ways in which that happens.
But we have to stop and back up, and you have to kind of get the right
diagnosis of the problem, to see how it is that—it goes well beyond
campaign contributions. That’s a huge part of it. But it’s more than that.
It’s the armies of lobbyists and lawyers who are always at the table, who
are always there to make sure that in every decision that gets made, their
clients’ tender fannies are well protected. And when that happens — not
just once, not just twice, but thousands of times a week — the system just
gradually tilts further and further. There is no one at the table…I
shouldn’t say there’s no one. I don’t want to overstate. You don’t have to
go into hyperbole. But there are very few people at the decision-making
table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

*They need to get a lobbyist. Why haven’t they got on that yet?*

Yeah. Why aren’t they out there spending? In the context when people talk
about “get a lobbyist,” the big financial institutions spent more than a
million dollars a day for more than a year during the financial reform
debates. And my understanding is, their spending has ratcheted up again. My
insight about that, about exactly that point, [is] in the book [A Fighting
Chance], in the second chapter, which is when my eyes first get opened to
the political system. Here I am, I’m studying what’s happening to the
American family, and just year by year by year, I’m watching America’s
middle class get hammered. They just keep sliding further down. The data
get worse every year that I keep pulling this data. Bankruptcy is the last
hope to right their lives for those who have been hit by serious medical
problems, job losses, a divorce, a death in the family — that accounts for
about 90 percent of the people who file for bankruptcy. Those four causes,
or those three if you combine divorce and death. So, how could America, how
could Congress adopt a bankruptcy bill that lets credit card companies
squeeze those families harder?

*What year was that?*

When they finally adopted it was 2005. But the point was, it started back
in — actually it started in 1995, the effort [to change the bankruptcy
laws]. And that’s when I got involved with the Bankruptcy Commission. When,
first, [commission chairman] Mike Synar came to me, and then Mike Synar
died. It was just awful. And Brady Williamson [the replacement chairman]
came to me. But what I saw during that process is, this was not an
independent panel that could kind of sit and think through the [problem]:
“Let’s take a look at what the numbers show about what’s happening to the
families. Let’s take some testimony, get some people in here who have been
through bankruptcy, and some creditors who have lost money in bankruptcy,
and let’s figure out some places where we could make some sensible
recommendations to Congress.” That wasn’t what it turned out to be at all.

It turned out that it was all about paid lobbyists . . .

*And what they wanted.*

And what they wanted. I tried as hard as I could, and there were almost no
bankrupt families who were ever even heard from. And you stop and think
about it — why would that be so? Well, first of all, to show up to
something like that, you’ve got to know about it and you’ve got to take a
day off from work. Who’s going to do that? These are families who are under
enormous stress and deeply humiliated about what had happened to them. They
had to make a public declaration that they were losers in the great
American economic game.

*I know exactly the kind of people you’re talking about. I wanted to ask
you, not specifically about people declaring bankruptcy, but about the
broader working people of this country. You’re from Oklahoma. I’m from
Kansas. You’ve seen what’s happened in those places. There are lots and
lots of working people in those places and a lot of other places…*

Hardworking people. People who work hard. That’s what you want to remember.
Not just people who kind of occasionally show up.

*Yeah. The blue collar backbone of this country. And in places like I’m
describing, it gets worse every year—well, I shouldn’t say worse, because
it’s their choice, but a lot of them choose Republicans. I was looking at
Oklahoma, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, I’m pretty sure you are, 16
percent of the vote went for Eugene Debs in 1912 and today it’s going in
the other direction as fast as it can. How is this ever going to change?*

I have at least two thoughts around that and we should explore both of
them. One of them is that we need to do a better job of talking about
issues. And I know that sounds boring and dull as dishwater, but it’s true.
The differences between voting for two candidates should be really clear to
every voter and it should be clear in terms of, who votes to raise the
minimum wage and who doesn’t. Who votes to lower the interest rate on
student loans and who doesn’t. Who votes to make sure women can’t get fired
for asking how much a guy is making for doing the same job, and who
doesn’t. There are these core differences that are about equality and
opportunity. It can’t be that we don’t make a clear distinction. If we fail
to make that distinction, then shame on us. That is my bottom line on this.

You know, during the Senate race that I was in — I mean, I was a first-time
candidate, I’d never done this before — the thing that scared me the most
was that the race wouldn’t be about the core differences between my
opponent and me. I wanted people to understand where I stood on investments
in the future, investments in education and research that help us build a
future. Where I stood on the minimum wage and equal pay. And where he stood
on the other side. The point was not to blur the differences and to run to
some mythical middle where we agreed with each other. The point was to say
that, here are really big differences between the two of us. Voters have a
chance to make a choice.

*In some ways that’s exactly the problem. When I talk to people, they often
say Democrats aren’t the party of working people at all. And they talk
about NAFTA and deregulating Wall Street, and they say, look at these guys,
they won’t prosecute the financial industry. They say, Democrats talk a
good game, but they’re always on the side of the elite at the end of the
day. What do you say to these people?*

We’re the only ones fighting back. Right now, on financial reform, the
Republicans are trying to roll back the financial reforms of Dodd-Frank. In
fact, Mitch McConnell has announced that if he gets the majority in the
Senate, his first objective is to repeal healthcare and his second is to
roll back the financial reforms, and in particular to target the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau — the one agency that’s out there for American
families, the one that has returned more than four billion dollars to
families who got cheated by big financial institutions. That’s in just
three years.

So, Democrats have not done all that they should, but at least we’re out
there fighting for the right things. We’re fighting and I think trying to
pull in the right direction. So if the question is, hold us to a higher
standard, man, I’m there. You’re right. [If] you want to criticize and say,
“you should do more!,” the answer is: Yes, we should! You bet! We should be
stronger. We should be tougher. But understand the difference between the
Democratic Party and the Republican Party right now. It’s pulling as hard
and fast as it can in the opposite direction.

*No doubt about that. I should ask you about — and we’re talking about the
financial crisis and the failure to prosecute anyone, and the…I’m sorry,
I’m going to get the name confused, the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.*

That’s okay. It was named by Republicans to be as confusing a name as
possible. (laughs) I used to think of it as the four random initials.
(laughs) I just call it my consumer agency. So that’s it, just the consumer
agency.

*So here’s another aspect of this: Eric Holder is stepping down as attorney
general, and you in the Senate are going to have to confirm a successor.
And one of the things, I don’t know if you’ve followed this or not, but one
of the things the Department of Justice has been doing, if you look at the
actual prosecutions they’ve been making, they essentially blame the
financial crisis on little people. People who lied on their loan
applications. And I wonder, are you going to demand something different out
of his successor? You’re going to have a chance to confirm this guy and
talk to this guy…*

You bet I am. I want to be clear on this. It’s the Justice Department. But
it’s also the banking regulators. And the SEC. So the most recent hearing
we held that had them all in together — you know we get them in twice a
year — and, boy, you want to ask me if I’m glad to be in the United States
Senate? (laughs) I get to be on the Banking Committee, and twice a year we
haul the banking regulators in front of us for supervision. For oversight I
should say, not supervision. So we had them all in. . . . We had them all
in, in July. And that was the question I asked: How many big bank
executives have you referred to the Department of Justice for criminal
prosecution?

*That’s a very good question. I was going to ask you that, too.*

Exactly right. Because that’s the other half of how the game is rigged. You
know, we think of it in terms of Congress, and we should, because it’s
definitely rigged in Congress and this is a place where people can do
something about it. But the wind always blows from the same direction
through the agencies. Those agencies, the banking regulators, who do they
hear from, day in and day out? Big banks. They don’t hear from people who
got cheated on their mortgages, people who got tricked on their credit
cards. They hear from the big financial institutions, day after day after
day. That’s, in part, what this whole Fed — this latest scandal at the Fed
— you know with Carmen Segarra who has the tapes. Part of what that shows,
if you just back up and think about what you’re seeing there, it’s that the
supervisors, or regulators as they’re called — everybody commonly calls
them that — the regulators all meet with Goldman Sachs executives and
employees day after day after day. They don’t see the people who get
tricked, the people who get cheated, the people who get fooled by the
products that Goldman turns out.

*That’s right. Regulatory capture, this is an old problem. I was writing
about it, obviously, in the Bush days. But President Obama had a golden
opportunity when he came in to change the system and I just don’t feel like
it has changed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aside. I mean, are
the regulators now referring things to the Justice Department? Are the
wheels turning again?*

There has not been nearly enough change. Not nearly enough. The consumer
agency — this is why I argued for it — the consumer agency is structural
change. So basically, the premise behind it was that there were plenty of
federal laws out there, but no agency would step up and enforce them. And
the responsibilities of these laws were scattered among seven different
agencies and not one of those agencies saw its principal job as looking out
for American families. So the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency] was all about bank profitability, the Fed was all about monetary
policy. Everybody had something that they were about, but consumer
protection was everybody’s job and therefore nobody’s job. You know, it was
down seventh, or tenth or hundredth on the list and they never got to it,
even as the big financial institutions were selling mortgages that should
have been described as grenades with the pins pulled out. Really! My whole
thing about toasters—remember, that was based on fact. At the time I wrote
that piece on it, that was before the crash, one in five mortgages that
were being marketed by the biggest financial institutions were exploding
and costing people their homes. No one would permit toasters to be sold
when one in five exploded and burned down somebody’s house. But they were
selling mortgages like that and every regulator knew about it.

*And those people who had it blow up in their faces, those are the ones
we’re prosecuting.*

Oh God. So exactly right. Well, to the extent we do [prosecute] anyone. But
that’s exactly right. And so the idea behind the consumer agency was to
say: structural change. We need an agency that has one and only one goal,
and that is to look out for American families. To level the playing field,
to make sure that people are not getting tricked and trapped on these
financial instruments. And so it was a big shift, and it’s a shift worth
thinking about. We took away — Dodd-Frank took away — all this
responsibility that had nominally been spread among the other agencies,
concentrated it in one agency, and now holds that agency accountable. So
you give the agency the tools and then hold them accountable. The reason I
think that story is so important is because it is structural. It’s not just
a question of, “Gee, get good people and somehow things will work better.”
There are structural changes we have to make. . . . The idea, the question
that haunted me at the agency was: How do we make sure the agency is true
to its mission, not just today with the people that we hire in the first
plume of excitement, but 30 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years
from now…

*Yeah, that’s the problem, when President Huckabee has . . .* [At this
point Senator Warren conferred with an aide about her schedule.] *Can I
skip to another subject real quick?*

You can.

*Let’s get back to the mindset of a lot of people. They look at you and
they say, Elizabeth Warren, she’s part of the elite too. She was a
professor at Harvard. And people would also say, look at the student loan
disaster which you talk a lot about these days, the root cause of it is
college tuition, which has increased by a thousand percent in 30 years. You
look at the advertised price at Harvard right now, I know that not
everybody pays it, but the advertised price is sixty grand a year. If you
have three kids and all of them have to pay that much for four years—you
know what I’m talking about?*

I do.

*Nobody can afford that. Is it time to do something about college tuition?*

Absolutely. Yes it is. But let’s get the right frame on this. Because I
think this is really important, and it’s the right question to ask. But
start with this: three out of four kids in college are in public
universities. A generation ago, state support for public universities was
strong enough that three out of four dollars to educate those kids came
from taxpayers and the family had to make up the difference for the fourth
dollar. Today, that has basically reversed itself. That is, that the states
are putting up, just generally across the country, about one out of four
dollars and the families have got to come up with the other three out of
four dollars. This matters because it is the state universities that are
the backbone of access to higher education for middle class families, and I
think that’s the place you have to start the conversation. I’m not going to
let anybody off the hook, but I think it’s the critical part of the
conversation. And I say this — it’s like I talk about in the book — this is
personal for me. I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a
semester in Texas.

*Those were the days.*

That’s right. It opened a million doors for me. And that happened because I
grew up in an America that was investing in its kids. That America is gone.
We’re not doing that anymore. So I start there at the heart of it. . . .
And then there’s a second piece that we’ve got to factor into the equation,
and that is: one in 10 kids in college is in a for-profit university.
Actually, here are three numbers. They’re not perfect, but they’re just
about right: 10, 25, 50. Ten percent of our kids are in for-profit
universities, colleges. Those for-profit universities are sucking down 25
percent of federal loan dollars, and they are responsible for 50 percent of
all student loan defaults.

*It’s an outrage.*

So we are, the federal government is currently subsidizing a for-profit
industry that is ripping off young people. Those young people are
graduating — many of them are never graduating — and of those that are
graduating, many of them have certificates that won’t get them jobs, that
don’t produce the benefits of a state college education.

You know somebody to talk to sometime if you want to ever do a separate
story on this is Marty Meehan [who] is the president of the University of
Massachusetts at Lowell. And what he talks about is, particularly, the
young vets who come to UMass-Lowell already sixty or seventy thousand
dollars in debt without a single college credit that will transfer to an
accredited university. Now, think about that.

So who do you think gets targeted by these for-profit universities? It’s
kids who are the first in their family to go to college. It’s not happening
to the sons and daughters of graduates from elite schools. It’s happening
to young people who are the first in their family to graduate from college.
Many of them have come out of the military, they’ve gone into the military
straight from high school. They’ve now completed their military service.
These are strivers, boot-strappers, hard-working kids who are the very kids
we most want to make sure the doors of opportunity are open for. You know
who else goes [to these schools]? It’s young, single mothers who are trying
to make something out of their lives, many of them are working two and even
three jobs, who believe that if they can get a college education, their
children will have opportunities that would otherwise be closed off, and
yet that’s not what they’re getting. They’re getting preyed on by these
schools. So I mention this only by way of saying, when we look at college —
you’re not wrong — we have got to use the leverage of the federal
government investment to bring down the cost of college across the board.
But we’ve got particular problems to focus on, both in support for public
universities and the resources that are being drained away by the
for-profit schools.

*Here’s the penultimate question: everything you’re saying are issues that
have been important to me most of my adult life. In 2008, I thought I had a
candidate who was going to address these things. Right? Barack Obama.
Today, my friends and I are pretty disappointed with what he’s done. I
wonder if you feel he has been forthright enough on these subjects. And I
also wonder if you think that someone can take any of this stuff on without
being president. You know, there are a lot of good politicians in America
who have their heart in the right place. But they’re not the president.
Well anyhow. You understand my frustration…*

I understand your frustration, Tom and, actually, I talk about this in the
book. When I think about the president, for me, it’s about both halves. If
Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have
a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period. I’m completely convinced of
that. And I go through the details in the book, and I could tell them to
you. But he was the one who refused to throw the agency under the bus and
made sure that his team kept the agency alive and on the table. Now there
was a lot of other stuff that also had to happen for it to happen. But if
he hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have gotten the agency. At the same time,
he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team
picked Wall Street.

*You might say, “always.” Just about every time they had to compromise,
they compromised in the direction of Wall Street.*

That’s right. They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing
their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were
struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over. So
I see both of those things and they both matter.

*Is there anything someone can do about all the things we’re describing,
short of being president?*

But we keep fighting back. The way to think about this is not…. Yes, we
want the right person for president. You bet. But it’s all of us fighting
back. . . . This is, and actually, this is where we almost started this
conversation — how, as a people, we reclaim our government. How we, as a
people, force Washington to work for us, not just for those with money and
power. So I just gave a speech this morning. It’s interesting you would
catch me on this particular day. I spoke to the New England Council so we
had lots of CEOs and COOs — about 300 people — and I spoke on a not very
sexy topic, on infrastructure and basic research. And I made the pitch
about the importance of both of those. You know, gave some of the basic
stats on why both are so important to building a future for this country.
Then I did the basic stats on how we’re falling short. Where we’re cutting
our investments — where we’ve been cutting our investments for 30 years.
The Society of Civil Engineers says we’ve got $3.4 trillion in
infrastructure underfunding — work that we need to do to bring our
infrastructure up to current standards. So I talked about this and about
the importance of it in building a future.

But the third part of the speech was the political part. It was the
democracy part. I said, “So how could this happen in a country like
America? I mean, I’m sitting here with you. You’re business leaders. Nobody
would run a business like this. To under-invest in the key pieces to help
build a future. So how does this happen?” It happens because there are a
lot of people in Washington who say the answer to everything is, cut taxes.
And when you’ve cut them as much as you can, cut them some more. And a lot
of people have the corollary to that, and that is — cut spending. And it’s
spending in all of the basics that help build a future: cut spending in
education, in resource management, in infrastructure, in research, in core
pieces we need to build a future.

“It’s there,” I said. “Look, get out there and fight back against this. I’m
glad to do it. But I can’t do it alone. You have to get out there. You’re
business leaders! You have to say ‘enough is enough.’ We have to build a
future going forward.” And I said, “We need your voices. You have to be out
there on the front lines. I’m glad to be out here. I’ll take the point.
I’ll be in the leadership spot. I’ll talk about it, I’ll be loud, I’ll be
blunt. But we need your voices in this. That’s the way we build a future.”
And I feel like it’s all this series of issues we talked about, we have got
to bring more people in.

You know, the other side has its advantage, and boy have they played it out
for 30 years now — concentrated money and concentrated power. And you can
do a lot with concentrated money and concentrated power. But our side—we
have our voices and we have our votes. If people get engaged on the issues,
the votes are on our side. Seventy-five percent of America wants to raise
the minimum wage. That’s where we’ll head.

*There’s a lot of issues like that.*

But that’s the point. Look, there are two ways you can look at that. You
can look at that and say, “Well, obviously, democracy doesn’t work.” Or the
other way you can look at that is to say, “We have the opportunity. The
moment is upon us.” We push back hard enough, we’re pushing for America’s
agenda. Not an agenda to help a small group of people, an agenda to build a
future for this country. And I believe we win. I believe it.

*Calendar:*

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

·  October 12 – San Diego, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes the American Academy
of Pediatrics annual conference (Twitter
<https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/status/520267871654805508>)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton and Sen. Reid fundraise for the
Reid Nevada Fund (Ralston Reports
<http://www.ralstonreports.com/blog/hillary-raise-money-state-democrats-reid-next-month>
)

·  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 14 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes
salesforce.com Dreamforce
conference (salesforce.com
<http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/highlights.jsp#tuesday>)

·  October 15 – Louisville, KY: Sec. Clinton campaigns for Alison Lundergan
Grimes (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/alison-lundergan-grimes-hillary-clinton-111779.html>
)

·  October 16 – MI: Sec. Clinton campaigns for Rep. Gary Peters and Mark
Schauer in Michigan (AP
<https://twitter.com/KThomasDC/status/520243743170236416>)

·  October 20 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for House
Democratic women candidates with Nancy Pelosi (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-nancy-pelosi-110387.html?hp=r7>
)

·  October 20 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for Senate
Democrats (AP
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/03fe478acd0344bab983323d3fb353e2/clinton-planning-lengthy-campaign-push-month>
)

·  October 24 – RI: Sec. Clinton campaigns for Rhode Island gubernatorial
nominee Gina Raimondo (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/hillary-clinton-gina-raimondo-rhode-island-elections-111750.html>
)

·  November 2  – NH: Sec. Clinton appears at a GOTV rally for Gov. Hassan
and Sen. Shaheen (AP
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/03fe478acd0344bab983323d3fb353e2/clinton-planning-lengthy-campaign-push-month>
)

·  December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton keynotes a League of
Conservation Voters dinner (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-green-groups-las-vegas-111430.html?hp=l11>
)

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