Subject: Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 08:10:03 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*New York Times: “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/politics/midterms-for-clinton-aides-arent-all-gloom-.html>*

“Before any campaigning begins, Mrs. Clinton will first embark on a
listening tour that echoes what she did first as a candidate for the Senate
in New York and then as a freshman senator, gathering ideas and advice from
a cross-section of influential people about their concerns.”

*Politico: “Clinton may put campaign HQ in Westchester”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-headquarters-112652.html?hp=l1>*

“Her [Sec. Clinton’s] aides are all preparing for a campaign based in New
York – and talks about where to set up shop have increasingly focused on
Westchester County, according to several people familiar with the
discussions.”

*New York Times blog: The Upshot: “What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About
the 2016 Ones: Not So Much”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/upshot/what-2014-elections-can-tell-us-about-the-2016-ones-not-so-much.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1>*

“In particular, the widespread Democratic losses weren’t a ‘repudiation’ of
Hillary Rodham Clinton (who played a minor role). But despite claims that
they actually offer her a useful opportunity to contrast herself with a
Republican Congress, she doesn’t face a ‘great situation’ for her
prospective 2016 presidential candidacy either.”

*Bloomberg: “Is Clinton the Biggest Winner or the Biggest Loser of the
Midterms?”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/is-clinton-the-biggest-winner-or-the-biggest-loser-of-the-midterms>*

“The question creeping onto everyone’s mind is: How ought the sages of
ClintonLand read the midterm leaves?”

*Slate: “What Does It Mean for Hillary?”
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/republican_midterms_and_hillary_clinton_what_does_the_gop_s_success_mean.html>*

“The question for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is this: Will voters see her
as a singular figure—Hillary—standing against an unpopular Republican
Party, or will they see her as just another Democrat against just another
Republican?”

*Bloomberg: “Post Midterms, the 2016 Presidential Contenders Recalibrate”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/heres-what-the-2016-contenders-have-been-up-to-since-the-election>*

“Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any major appearances, or even minor ones, but
is still the talk of the town. What do the midterms mean for Hillary? One
thing we know for sure is that, according to the exit polls, more people
thought Clinton would be a bad president than a good president. Paul,
Christie and other GOP hopefuls fared worse, but it’s another sign that
running for president isn’t good for your popularity.”

*New York Times opinion: Timothy Egan, NYT correspondent: “The Big Sleep”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/timothy-egan-the-big-sleep.html>*

“Clinton would be running for a third term of her husband, the most popular
president of the last 20 years and the last Democrat who knew how to win
over white people in red states.”

*MSNBC: “The curse of the Obama coalition”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-curse-the-obama-coalition>*

“One silver lining here for Democrats is that Hillary Clinton tends to do
well among working class whites, and thus could make up for some of Obama’s
major losses among those groups in 2016.”

*Mediaite: “O’Reilly to GOP: Stop Fighting or Hillary Will Cruise to
Victory in 2016”
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-to-gop-stop-fighting-or-hillary-will-cruise-to-victory-in-2016/>*

“He [O’Reilly] warned that if Republicans “continue to fight each other
[and] don’t compromise,” they will lose and Hillary Clinton will glide to
victory in 2016.”

*Washington Free Beacon: “The Biggest Loser”
<http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-biggest-loser/>*

“The 2014 election was a disaster for Hillary Clinton.”

*Articles:*

*New York Times: “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/politics/midterms-for-clinton-aides-arent-all-gloom-.html>*

By Amy Chozick

November 6, 2014

In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid
speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas
from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek
advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind
the iconic “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign and a leading strategist at a
Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys.

The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency
on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential
candidacy, including exploring White Plains as a possible national
headquarters and digesting exit polls to determine what the midterm results
could mean for the presidential electoral map.

A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party’s
midterm defeats. Before then, opinions had been mixed about when she should
form an exploratory committee, the first step toward declaring a
presidential candidacy, with some urging her to delay it until late spring.

But over the past few days, a consensus formed among those close to Mrs.
Clinton that it is time to accelerate her schedule: She faces pressure to
resurrect the Democratic Party, and she is already being scrutinized as the
party’s presumptive nominee, so advisers see little reason to delay.

No action will be taken before the Dec. 6 runoff in Louisiana between
Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat and a Clinton friend, and her
Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, putting the likely date for the
establishing an exploratory committee in early next year, said several
Clinton advisers who insisted on anonymity in discussing private
conversations.

Donors, meanwhile, have already started to discuss a Clinton candidacy, at
times barely veiling a giddy excitement.

On Wednesday evening, Ready for Hillary, a “super PAC” that supports her
candidacy, sent a fund-raising email. “Now more than ever we need to show
Hillary that we’re ready for her to get in this race,” the plea for
donations read. “America needs Hillary’s leadership.”

In many ways, Tuesday’s election results clear a path for Mrs. Clinton. The
lopsided outcome and conservative tilt makes it less likely she would face
an insurgent challenger from the left.

And a Republican-led Senate creates a handy foil for her to run against:
Rather than the delicate task of trying to draw a stark contrast with an
unpopular president in whose administration she served, her loyalists say,
Mrs. Clinton can instead present herself as a pragmatic alternative to what
they predict will be an obstructionist Republican Congress.

"Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and their allies in the House" will be "pushing
Republican leadership hard," said Geoff Garin, a pollster who succeeded
Mark Penn as chief strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. "When that
happens it will give Hillary Clinton or whoever the Democratic nominee is a
better platform to run."

But before any campaigning begins, Mrs. Clinton will first embark on a
listening tour that echoes what she did first as a candidate for the Senate
in New York and then as a freshman senator, gathering ideas and advice from
a cross-section of influential people about their concerns.

“She’ll slow down a bit, get off the radar, get ready for this, and ready
includes being a good freshman senator, with a legal pad and lots of
conversations,” said one person with direct knowledge of her plans who
spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been made public.

Meanwhile, the people around Mrs. Clinton will speed up their efforts to
vet potential campaign aides, casually connect with donors and begin to
help Mrs. Clinton craft a clearer message, especially on the economy.
Although Mrs. Clinton’s midterm campaigning schedule took her to Iowa,
Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina and other important 2016 states, she
did not spend much time getting to know the specific concerns of voters,
something she would need to do ahead of a presidential campaign.

Exit polls from Tuesday are being pored over for signs about what voters’
opinions could mean for Mrs. Clinton’s message and approach. Midterm voters
expressed frustration with government, but also economic unease.

“One of the questions for 2016 is: Which of those will 2016 be about? Will
it be about the size and cost of government, or will it be about who the
economy works for?” Mr. Garin asked. “If it’s an election about who the
economy works for, then the Democratic nominee will be in a much better
position to win,” he added.

To help Mrs. Clinton do just that, several advisers are already being eyed
for senior positions in a potential 2016 campaign. People close to Mrs.
Clinton often point to a potential campaign manager in Robby Mook, a
34-year-old operative who managed the campaign for the Clintons’ longtime
money man, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. In addition to her small
personal staff, Mrs. Clinton also receives advice from Minyon Moore, a
savvy former White House adviser who works at the Dewey Square Group, a
Boston-based consultancy with an office in Washington. A spokeswoman for
Dewey Square said the firm has no formal relationship with Mrs. Clinton.

Ms. Moore is close to other potential campaign aides like Guy Cecil,
executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and who
previously worked at Dewey Square.

Other advisers are more far-flung. Roy Spence, the Austin advertising
executive who helped develop the state’s ubiquitous “Don’t Mess with Texas”
anti-littering campaign and who has known the Clintons for decades, is
offering advice about image and messaging.

Mrs. Clinton turned to Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor and presidential
historian, for advice on shaping her stump speech ahead of Tuesday’s
election. During the 2008 Democratic primary, Professor Wilentz, a longtime
Clinton defender, accused Barack Obama’s campaign of “the most outrageous
deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988.”

(A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton declined to comment, and Mr. Spence and
Professor Wilentz did not respond to requests for comment.)

During the midterm campaign, Mrs. Clinton raised more than $10 million for
Democrats, and she and former President Bill Clinton attended at least 75
events on behalf of more than 30 candidates, building and rebuilding the
relationships she and her husband are known for.

The Clintons worked hard on behalf of Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate
for Senate in Kentucky, and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and were
somewhat startled by their double-digit losses. But it was former Gov.
Charlie Crist’s loss to Gov. Rick Scott of Florida that carried the biggest
implications for a 2016 presidential campaign, as the Clintons had hoped
for Democratic leadership in a critical battleground state.

Other Democratic defeats had a silver lining. The Maryland governor’s race
in which a Republican, Larry Hogan, defeated the Democrat, Anthony G.
Brown, 51.6 percent to 46.9 percent, for example, diminished the likelihood
that former Gov. Martin O’Malley, another Democrat, could emerge as a
serious primary challenge to Mrs. Clinton.

As the outline for a campaign is drawn, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters describe
what they envision as a “New Clinton Map” that they believe could create a
winning coalition for 2016, drawing on the white working-class women who
have long supported Mrs. Clinton and the young voters and African-Americans
who helped elect Mr. Obama.

*Politico: “Clinton may put campaign HQ in Westchester”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-headquarters-112652.html?hp=l1>*

By Maggie Haberman

November 6, 2014, 3:51 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton has yet to say for certain whether she’ll run for
president, or for that matter who her campaign manager or what her message
would be.

But this much she has settled one: if a second presidential campaign
happens, it will not be run out of Washington, D.C.

Her aides are all preparing for a campaign based in New York – and talks
about where to set up shop have increasingly focused on Westchester County,
according to several people familiar with the discussions.

Westchester is Clinton’s home county – she lives in Chappaqua, an affluent
hamlet north of New York City. Having the campaign there would not just
keep it close to Clinton – but it would place it far away from New York
City and the hordes of political reporters and elites who live there.

It will be a far cry from Ballston, the Virginia suburb where Clinton’s
campaign was based in 2008, in a onetime Immigration and Naturalization
Services building. While a few of Clinton’s advisers at the time wanted her
to put her campaign in upstate New York, most of her senior advisers wanted
it based near Washington so they wouldn’t have to move.

This time, the only question is how far away from Manhattan it will be.

Clinton advisers say no decision has been made about where she will put a
campaign, and they continue to insist there is a chance – no matter how
small – that she doesn’t run.

Still, one group of Clinton insiders has advocated for White Plains, a city
in the south-central part of Westchester County replete with office parks.
It’s more socioeconomically diverse than some other parts of a county best
known as a haven for wealthy suburbanites who commute to Manhattan.

“It’s close to the city,” one Clinton insider explained, adding that it’s
easily accessible by rail service.

Other sources have said that officials like Westchester because many places
there are more than an hour’s car ride away from the city.

Brooklyn has also been under discussion for the campaign headquarters,
according to people close to Clinton. And Queens and Long Island have also
been in the mix.

“We’re certainly ready for Hillary Clinton if Hillary Clinton’s ready for
us,”said Brooklyn Congressman Hakeen Jeffries, a Barack Obama supporter in
2008, who called the borough “one of the coolest… most diverse places on
the planet.”

But others say that separation from New York City — and proximity to the
Clinton household — weigh in favor of Westchester.

“That tendency is to have it close the family house and convenient to
them….and [Westchester is] better than the West Side of Manhattan,” said
James Carville, a longtime Clinton ally. In 1992, Carville said, the family
chose Little Rock, Ark. for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign “because
that’s where they lived.”

“It’s not about the place, it’s about an attitude,” Carville, who has
provocatively suggested locating the campaign in Buffalo.

That attitude, according to a number of operatives and veterans of past
campaigns, is that people are opting to make the campaign their lives. So a
less centrally-located headquarters may allow for a more complete focus on
the job.

President Obama’s campaign aides have often said that being in Chicago in
2008 was crucial to their success. It kept them out of the Beltway feedback
loop, kept their staffers focused on the task at hand and stanched the
viral spread of gossip from operatives to political reporters.

The same was true for George W. Bush, who chose Austin as a base for his
2000 campaign.

“I’m not saying that lobbyists, hangers on, and special pleaders couldn’t
find there way to the campaign, but at least they couldn’t just walk across
the street,” said former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon.

“It had a fundamental impact on our entire attitude, our DNA, and the core
approach and messaging of the campaign. We were not by, of, or sponsored by
Washington. We were from outside the beltway and, therefore, better
understood voters and what they wanted.”

Being sponsored by New York is not necessarily a selling point for the rest
of the nation. Neither is Westchester, a wealthy and fairly homogenous
area. But Clinton’s advisers believe it’s preferable to Washington.

For months, Washington-based operatives have been preparing to move to New
York; they just weren’t sure exactly where. Even when it isn’t explicit,
New York as the new center of Democratic political gravity seems to be
understood.

For instance, allies of Robby Mook — a potential Clinton campaign manager
whose legion of former staffers talk on a “Mook Mafia” listserv and go on
vacation together yearly — recently posted that their annual retreat will
likely be held in New York next year.

Being in Westchester “would pose some logistical challenges, but look,
everything’s done these days electronically,” said Judith Hope, a longtime
friend of the Clintons and a former New York State Democratic Party chair.

“It might be a good thing to do,” she added. “And it would be a
suburban-based campaign, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.”

*New York Times blog: The Upshot: “What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About
the 2016 Ones: Not So Much”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/upshot/what-2014-elections-can-tell-us-about-the-2016-ones-not-so-much.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1>*

By Brendan Nyhan

November 6, 2014

America has again embraced our long history of electoral overreaction.
While it’s true that Republicans won a major victory at the polls, the
results tell us far less about future elections than some commentary has
suggested.

In particular, the widespread Democratic losses weren’t a “repudiation” of
Hillary Rodham Clinton (who played a minor role). But despite claims that
they actually offer her a useful opportunity to contrast herself with a
Republican Congress, she doesn’t face a “great situation” for her
prospective 2016 presidential candidacy either.

Historically, midterm results, which are typically unfavorable to the
president’s party, tell us relatively little about the coming presidential
election, as the accompanying chart illustrates. The record shows that the
president’s party can rebound from major losses to win at the polls in two
years. Bill Clinton, for instance, bounced back from the 1994 Republican
landslide to easily win re-election in 1996. Similarly, President Obama,
whose party suffered major losses in 2010, went on to defeat Mitt Romney in
2012, and George Bush won the 1988 election after Republicans suffered
major losses in 1986, President Reagan’s sixth year in office.

Candidates from the president’s party can also perform poorly immediately
after a favorable midterm election. Most notably, Democrats performed
unusually well for the party of the incumbent president in 1998, gaining
seats in the House and avoiding losses in the Senate in what was seen as a
repudiation of the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton. However, Al Gore
significantly underperformed what most forecasting models expected just two
years later, winning the popular vote only narrowly (and losing the White
House) despite campaigning against the G.O.P. Congress. Similarly, George
Bush was soundly defeated by Mr. Clinton just two years after his party
lost only one Senate seat.

The reality is that the fundamental factors that dictate presidential
elections will again matter in 2016 – principally, the state of the economy
in the months before the vote. Mrs. Clinton faces an additional headwind
because Democrats have held the presidency for two terms, which seems to
reduce incumbent party performance.

From that perspective, party control of Congress is a relatively minor
issue for future presidential elections. If the economy is strong, Mrs.
Clinton won’t need to distance herself from Mr. Obama – she’ll be rushing
to take credit for the prosperity Democrats have brought to America. If
Americans are still feeling pessimistic about wages and jobs, however, she
is likely to lose no matter who or what she tries to run against.

A more significant consequence of the recent election results may be the
effect it has on the pool of candidates in future campaigns. Wave elections
decimate lower-level officeholders on the losing side, depleting a party’s
ranks and depriving it of possible aspirants for higher office in future
races (though some may be able to mount comebacks). Senator George Allen of
Virginia, for example, was once thought to be a promising Republican
presidential candidate, but lost in 2006 and is now forgotten. By contrast,
wave elections can help fuel – or preserve – political careers for the
winning party. In 1994, George W. Bush easily defeated the incumbent
Democrat, Ann Richards, for the Texas governorship, starting a career in
elected office that took him to the White House just six years later.

In this sense, it’s far more likely that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin or
one of the other G.O.P. candidates who narrowly won on Tuesday will be the
ultimate beneficiaries of Tuesday’s result, not Mrs. Clinton.

*Bloomberg: “Is Clinton the Biggest Winner or the Biggest Loser of the
Midterms?”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/is-clinton-the-biggest-winner-or-the-biggest-loser-of-the-midterms>*

By Emily Greenhouse

November 6, 2014, 6:11 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The answers to that question were surprisingly diverse.

The Republicans won big on Tuesday—or, depending on which part of the
bifocals you’re peering out of, the Democrats lost bad. President Obama is
terribly unpopular, and Americans, on the whole, do not feel their country
is going in the right direction—not close. But Obama is done facing
national election, and he knows it; he was practically chipper with relief
at yesterday’s press conference. So the question creeping onto everyone’s
mind is: How ought the sages of ClintonLand read the midterm leaves?

*She's a loser*

In the very first hour of the first day after midterms—and therefore to
some the very first day of the 2016 campaign—Sen. Rand Paul unleashed this
clot of virality, complete with a new hashtag:

[IMAGES OF SEN. PAUL’S #HILLARYSLOSERS]

In his rundown of the Midterm winners and losers, Mark Halperin, the
managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, put her squarely in the “Loser”
column. Whatever her plan was before, Halperin said, “it’s all thrown up in
the air because no one expected the result they got. . . The party is now
in disarray. Hillary Clinton and her team are so cautious–they overthink,
overanalyze everything–this gives them a lot of new complexity to deal
with.”

*She needs a vision*

In The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin reduced “Clinton’s main selling
point [to] her gender identity," then wondered if Clinton would be “as
delusional and defiant about the state of the Democratic Party as Obama
is.” She added:

As the GOP becomes harder to typecast, it becomes harder to think of
Clinton as the future of a major political party and a movement that likes
to think of itself as progressive. What exactly is she progressing toward
and how is she going to get there?

Yuval Levin took a more overtly aggressive tack, in the National Review,
writing that “people are bored of her and feel like she has been talking at
them forever.” Levin saw Tuesday’s results as evidence of the Democrats'
"overwhelming intellectual exhaustion”—nothing fresh to offer or say. He
wrote of Clinton, “She is a dull, grating, inauthentic, over-eager, insipid
elitist with ideological blinders yet no particular vision and is likely to
be reduced to running on a dubious promise of experience and competence
while faking idealism and hope.” Ouch.

At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart used milder terms, but similarly considered
the Democratic voter’s hunger for inspiration. “Her gender alone won’t be
enough,” he wrote. “She lost to Obama in 2008 in part because she could not
overcome her penchant for ultra-cautious, hyper-sanitized,
consultant-speak.”

*Actually, she is now golden*

So Clinton may have to work on energizing and rebranding, but what
candidate doesn’t? She sure has the energy—she did 45 campaign events for
26 candidates in 18 states (and Washington, D.C.) in less than two months.
It may be her fame and the bath of inevitability around her, but many feel
that Hillary’s day has come. A good number of journalists found silver
linings for Clinton in Tuesday’s news.

Writing for Politico, Maggie Haberman noted that "Clinton’s major problem
was always going to be running as the candidate of the two-term party in
power ... But a newly minted Republican Senate helps her to solve the
problem of how to run against Washington.”

This logic was found in many pockets online. Rick Ungar, in Forbes,
energetically announced that the Republican sweep will “make it easier to
let Hillary be Hillary.” He concluded, “Inside the Clinton camp, the
results of the 2014 midterms no doubt feel like a large steam valve has
been turned, allowing all that left-wing pressure to release and
dissipate.” Make no mistake, he said, it is she who emerged on top.

Andrew Romano at Yahoo News followed the same line of thinking, with
greater verve and a little more wonk talk. The "easy answer" for 2014
midterm election winner is the Republican Party—but the "long-term winner"
is Hillary Clinton. He wrote:

Under the surface, almost everything about last night’s midterm results —
and the map, the math and the legislative morass that lies ahead in the
run-up to 2016 — suggests that the former first lady and secretary of state
could have a better next two years than the party currently guzzling
champagne.

He detailed how many seats were likely to open up to the Democrats in 2016,
and pointed out that, for Mitch McConnell, who “says he wants to compromise
with Democrats, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll be able to control his
party’s vehement Just Say No caucus for long.” Fox News took after
NewsBusters in running a headline, “Hillary Clinton won the 2014 midterms?
That's what Yahoo says,” in which Tim Graham, author of "Collusion: How the
Media Stole the 2012 Election and How to Stop Them From Doing It In 2016,”
lightly mocked Romano. But mostly he just pasted in paragraphs of Romano’s
column, without bothering to add any words by way of disagreement.

*One thing is for sure*

Competition is necessary for evolution, and the Democratic party, the week
proves, certainly needs to evolve. Clintons always survive, but it’s yet to
be seen if Hillary Clinton will be the fittest. Inevitability smells stale,
especially after Tuesday's shake-up. Her political brand needs spontaneity.

*Slate: “What Does It Mean for Hillary?”
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/republican_midterms_and_hillary_clinton_what_does_the_gop_s_success_mean.html>*

By Jamelle Bouie

November 6, 2014, 1:33 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The Republicans ran the table on Election Day. What does it
mean for the Democrat in waiting?

The night was hardly over before Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul had his take on
Tuesday’s election results. “I think this election was basically a
repudiation of the president, but also Hillary Clinton,” he said. “The
Democrat [in Kentucky] ran and wouldn’t admit that she voted for President
Obama. She was very specific—‘I am a Clinton Democrat.’ ”

As political explanations go, this is unusually self-serving. Yes, the
Clintons campaigned for Alison Lundergan Grimes, but there’s no evidence
Kentuckians were voting against Clinton as much as they were voting against
Obama. Paul’s take is purely a product of his aspirations; he’s running for
the Republican presidential nomination, and he wants you to think that he’s
the only one who can take on Hillary Clinton and win. Still, his comment
raises a question: What does Tuesday mean for the unofficial—but very
real—Clinton campaign?

Writing for Yahoo News, Andrew Romano says that the Republican win is a
boon for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Because it’s “hard to imagine”
soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “will be able to control
his party’s vehement Just Say No caucus.” In fact, there’s a great chance
Washington will stay broken, allowing Clinton to “run as the antidote to
D.C.’s dysfunction,” writes Romano.

On the other side, the National Review says this is nonsense. “Let’s get
something clear: Watching your party get stomped like a narc at a biker
rally in a midterm election is not something that helps a party’s
presidential frontrunner,” writes Jim Geraghty for the conservative
magazine. “America is not happy with Washington, and particularly furious
with Obama and Democratic governance as a whole.”

Both takes get part of the picture right. The new Senate Republican
majority is filled with Tea Party politicians—like Joni Ernst of Iowa and
Tom Cotton of Arkansas—who have no interest in compromising or even working
with the president, much less the Democratic minority. What’s more, the
most extreme lawmakers—like Sen. Ted Cruz and the hard-right caucus of the
House—likely feel vindicated. After two years of obstruction—including a
government shutdown and a debt ceiling standoff—they won a huge midterm
victory. Why change course? What’s the incentive?

In which case, the antics of an irresponsible Republican Congress will
burden the eventual Republican presidential nominee, which only helps a
Clinton candidacy. At the same time, the Democratic Party is in utter
disrepair. Some progressives have comforted themselves by noting the
popularity of Democratic ideas: Otherwise conservative states have raised
the minimum wage, legalized marijuana, and protected abortion rights from
draconian “personhood” laws. But this only highlights the problem with the
Democratic brand, which is so unpopular it weighs down candidates who push
otherwise popular proposals.

The question for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is this: Will voters see her as
a singular figure—Hillary—standing against an unpopular Republican Party,
or will they see her as just another Democrat against just another
Republican? If it’s the former, then Tuesday doesn’t mean much for her
prospective candidacy; voters will see her as Clinton first and a Democrat
second, and may even see her ideas as Clinton ideas and not Democratic
ones, which could help if she tries to expand the national issue space to
include things like universal child care.

If it’s the latter, however, then Team Clinton has a new challenge: to turn
the Democratic brand into something worth supporting in 2016. But even that
comes with the important caveat that presidential candidates have done just
fine following a bad midterm year and have failed after a good one. George
H.W. Bush won the election after the Republican failure of 1986—the closest
analogue to Hillary Clinton’s situation—and Al Gore lost it after the
Democratic success of 1998.

I should say that there’s a third option in all of this: that Tuesday
didn’t matter at all, and in a way that has nothing to do with Clinton’s
persona. Put simply, there’s a good chance that 2014—like 2010—was driven
by the demographics of American politics, in which Republican voters
dominate midterm elections, and Democratic voters dominate presidential
years. In which case, Clinton doesn’t have to worry about 2016 since she
won’t be speaking to the people who elected a Republican Congress; she’ll
be speaking to the people who twice elected Barack Obama. And that is a
good position to be in.

*Bloomberg: “Post Midterms, the 2016 Presidential Contenders Recalibrate”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/heres-what-the-2016-contenders-have-been-up-to-since-the-election>*

By Arit John

November 6, 2014, 2:47 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Some candidates are already gearing up for 2016, while others
are nowhere to be found.

The 2014 midterm elections may be in the books, but for the crop of
contenders who hope to be elected president in 2016, the next chapter is
already being written. For some that means jumping into campaign mode, for
others it means laying low and nursing political wounds, and for Texas
Governor Rick Perry it means spending the morning in court.

Here’s how the politicians expected to run for their party’s nomination
have spent their time since Tuesday.

*Rand Paul*

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s main goal since the GOP's D-Day has
been to tie Democrats’ losses not just to Obama, but to favored 2016
nominee Hillary Clinton. “Today, voters sent a message to President Obama
and Hillary Clinton, rejecting their policies and many of their
candidates,” he wrote in a Facebook post late Tuesday called
#HillarysLosers. Paul has also said that he would push for tax reform in
January.

*Paul Ryan*

Republican Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan is the favorite to become the
Ways and Means Committee chairman. Given the nature of the job—proposing
sometimes unpopular reforms to entitlement programs—it would probably not
be helpful to a presidential bid. Like Paul, Ryan also went after Hillary
Clinton. During an appearance on the "Hugh Hewitt Show" Thursday, Ryan said
that the substantial Democratic loses showed that she could lose in 2016.
“It just tells you that she’s not inevitable,” he said. “I think she’s very
beatable.”

*Rick Perry*

Not all Republicans are having a great post-election week. After being
allowed to miss the first two pretrial hearings, Republican Texas Governor
Rick Perry will made his first court appearance on Thursday morning. The
governor was indicted in August by an Austin grand jury on abuse of power
charges, which his team has called a politically-motivated attack from
Democrats. His lawyers will attempt to get the case dismissed on
technicalities.

*Bernie Sanders*

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has made it clear that he thinks
Americans made a mistake on Tuesday. “I fear that the American people who
want change … I think perhaps they have just voted for some folks whose
agenda is very different than what they want and need,” Sanders said
Wednesday during an appearance on CNN. Sanders, also retweeted a link to a
statement he released last month, making it clear that he’s not going to
caucus with Republicans. In the statement, he said he intended to caucus
with the party that supports stances like rebuilding infrastructure,
raising the wage, pay equity for women and a single-payer health-care
system. “I could be wrong,” Sanders said, “but my guess is that will not be
the Republican Party.”

*Hillary Clinton*

Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any major appearances, or even minor ones, but
is still the talk of the town. What do the midterms mean for Hillary? One
thing we know for sure is that, according to the exit polls, more people
thought Clinton would be a bad president than a good president. Paul,
Christie and other GOP hopefuls fared worse, but it’s another sign that
running for president isn’t good for your popularity.

*Scott Walker*

Winning re-election means Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gets
to stay on the 2016 presidential long list. Earlier this year he declined
to commit to serving his full term if elected, but on Tuesday night he told
the Associated Press that his decision on running “will have to wait
[until] long after” he passes the next state budget, which might be next
spring.

*Mitt Romney*

*Gov. Mitt Romney* @MittRomney: Big tent Republicans win big races.
Congratulations. [11/5/14, 10:24 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/530017943573520384>]

*Ted Cruz*

In an interview with The Daily Beast Tuesday night, Republican Texas
Senator Ted Cruz said he was prepared to work with the White House. But on
Wednesday he and a few likeminded senators sent a letter to Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, threatening to use “all procedural means necessary” to
prevent Obama from following through with his promise to “lawlessly grant
amnesty.” Cruz, who will likely be the bane of Mitch McConnell’s existence,
has also repeatedly refused to say whether he supports him for Majority
Leader.

*Jeb Bush*

Jeb Bush released a statement Tuesday night congratulating “Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell” on a great night. “Republicans in Congress now have the
opportunity–and the responsibility–to demonstrate to American voters that
our party can effectively govern,” he wrote.

*Marco Rubio*

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio released his own statement, saying
he looks “forward to working in a Senate Republican majority to advance the
reform agenda I’ve presented this year.” In January the senator released a
plan to help families lift themselves out of poverty, which doesn’t include
raising the minimum wage.

*Chris Christie*

After visiting 19 states in 5 days to help rally the troops for Republican
governors, New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie probably took a
well-deserved nap. On Wednesday, he has a fancy two-course lunch at the
four Seasons Grill Room with a few billionaires.

*Bobby Jindal*

Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal gave a late endorsement on
Wednesday to Republican Representative Bill Cassidy, who’s heading into a
runoff election to try to unseat Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. "I don't
think Mary, anymore, represents Louisiana's values in Washington D.C.,"
Jindal said of Landrieu.

*Martin O’Malley*

After watching his second in command lose, Maryland Democratic Governor
Martin O’Malley has spent his post-election days being taunted by Governor
Christie. The outgoing governor’s lieutenant, Anthony Brown, suffered a
surprise defeat for governor against Republican Larry Hogan and many saw
the race as a referendum on O’Malley, including Christie. “Even for
Maryland, it got to be too much,” Christie said Wednesday of O’Malley’s
policies. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

*Joe Biden*

On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife hosted a reception
commemorating Breast Cancer Awareness month, but otherwise he has kept a
low profile. Given that he predicted on Monday that Democrats would keep
the Senate and that Greg Orman would likely caucus with his party, that’s
probably for the best.

*Elizabeth Warren*

The general consensus is that unlike Biden, O’Malley and Clinton, Senator
Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and populist hero, backed
winners. Her record on the trail (of the 11 candidates she campaigned for,
six won and five lost) is decent given the circumstances, and while she’s
still a “no” on running in 2016, her supporters saw the results as more
proof that Democrats need to get with the Warren program.

*New York Times opinion: Timothy Egan, NYT correspondent: “The Big Sleep”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/timothy-egan-the-big-sleep.html>*

By Timothy Egan

November 6, 2014

Maybe it’s best to close your eyes and fall into a Rip Van Winkle slumber
for the next two years. The party that has refused to govern for half a
decade and ran a substance-free campaign will now play at governing and not
take up anything of substance.

Of course there will be votes, investigations and intrigue. Having worked
tirelessly to make the Senate inert, Mitch McConnell now says he wants it
to be relevant again. The man most likely to head the Environment and
Public Works Committee, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, would flunk a
high school science class. He claims climate change is a huge hoax. The new
senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, vowed to bring at least one thing to the
capital. “I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter and it goes
with me virtually everywhere,” she cooed.

Did you vote for that? No, you voted against President Obama. Why? David
Letterman had the best line of the campaign. “Take a look at this: Gas
under $3 a gallon — gas under $3 a gallon! Unemployment under 6 percent —
who ever thought? Stock market breaking records every day. No wonder the
guy is so unpopular.”

Democrats would not embrace that record, or even try to explain it as a
decent start for a country shaken by two decades of income stagnation. And
so they were trounced. Where substance was allowed on Tuesday’s ballot —
minimum wage increases in four red states, gun background checks in a blue
state — big majorities did what the new Congress never will.

But enough with the postmortems. On to 2016!

Hill and Jeb. Can we get to it now, and treat the next two years as a fog
of fractious do-nothingism that has already passed? Hillary Clinton and Jeb
Bush are poised to complete some unfinished business. Bush would be running
for the second term of his dad, the now beloved George H.W., and to make
everyone forget the two terms of his brother. And Clinton would be running
for a third term of her husband, the most popular president of the last 20
years and the last Democrat who knew how to win over white people in red
states.

Call it monarchy in a country that got its start by throwing off a king, or
a dynasty in a nation that still likes to think of itself as a model of
egalitarianism. But a moderate Bush and a problem-solving Clinton are
really the only choices. Everyone else is flawed in special ways.

Take Senator Rand Paul, who always manages to look like a guy who just woke
up from a long nap and missed a button on his shirt. Sure, he has some of
his kooky father’s baggage, the 18th-century view of 21st-century issues.
But of late, Paul’s been trying a little outreach beyond the Republican
base of old white Southerners. He thinks our prisons shouldn’t be stuffed
with drug offenders, predominantly black. He says Republicans should not be
passing laws making it harder for the poor, minorities and students to
vote. And he says his party’s brand “sucks” — his word — in many, many
parts of the country.

All of this will get him nowhere, and be replayed in attacks ads, when the
Republican presidential primary moves to its whitest of bastions in the
South.

We saw a lot of Gov. Chris Christie in the last week of October. If you
liked seven days of a red-faced guy shouting “shut up” and “get in line”
and medical diagnosis from afar — “She was obviously ill,” he said of a
healthy nurse — you’ll love a Christie presidency. The New Jersey governor
demonstrated, again, the character traits we don’t want in a president:
poor judgment, a temper, pettiness. He’s all bombast without even the belly
anymore.

Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor re-elected Tuesday after taking on and
taking down organized labor, will be a flavor of the month. That’s part of
the problem: Scott is personality-free. But more important, an anti-labor
candidate will not fare well in old-school blue-collar states like Michigan
and Pennsylvania.

Ted Cruz will be around — a microphone, that is. He’ll be shadowed by his
female doppelgänger, the new Iowa senator, Ernst. His problems are myriad.
He loves brinkmanship and shutdowns, but more than that, he really loves
himself. Nearly everyone who comes in contact with him in the Senate, no
matter the party, can’t stand him.

That leaves Jeb Bush, a seemingly sensible nonpartisan. He’s for
immigration reform, the kind his base despises. If he can get over that
hurdle, he’s the nominee. And then he’ll face one final problem: his name.
He is, of course, the younger brother of a man who will long remain on the
list of worst presidents. Take it from his mother, the reliably
blunt-speaking Barbara Bush, last of the flinty New Englanders. The
country, she said, has had “enough Bushes” in the White House.

Hillary Clinton, it’s yours to lose. You’ve already started co-opting the
progressive flank, making nice with Senator Elizabeth Warren. And yet, Wall
Street likes you! The best thing Hillary has going for her right now is
what happened in this week’s midterms. Republicans will overreach, because
they always do, prompting much nostalgia for the days when Stuff Got Done.

Two years is a long time to wait if, say, you are a fan of the New York
Jets and believe that professional football teams should get more than one
win every now and then. But it’s nothing in politics. It’s here now. Take a
long snooze, and then wake up to 2016.

*MSNBC: “The curse of the Obama coalition”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-curse-the-obama-coalition>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald and Trymaine Lee

November 6, 2014, 4:40 p.m. EST

Barack Obama’s coalition has become a curse for Democrats, in addition to a
blessing.

In 2008, running to become the first black president, Obama made history by
inspiring Americans who don’t typically vote to get to the polls. The
problem is that it’s difficult to reliably capture that kind of lighting in
a bottle on the first Tuesday of November every two years.

There may be more people in Democrats’ “coalition of the ascendant” – young
people, minorities, single women and others – than in the GOP grouping,
which skews white and male and old. But the Democratic coalition is much
more fragile, as Tuesday night’s victory proved.

There are lots of important numbers that help explain Democrat’s drubbing,
but here’s the underlying landscape of Tuesday’s vote, as well as virtually
every other election: There are more conservatives in America. Far more.
And they vote in every election, not just in presidential years.

Exit polls from Tuesday night show 37% of voters identify themselves as
conservative, compared to just 23% who say they’re liberals. About 40%, say
they’re moderate.

That’s consistent with survey data going back decades, and the numbers have
held more or less steady over time. In 1996, 20% of Americans said they
were liberal and 40% conservative, according to Pew.

Ideological partisans tend to be the most dedicated voters and the ground
troops of the party, so Democrats start every election with a deficit here.
Lately, Democrats have only overcome that drag with the intensity of a
presidential campaign and the inspirational force of a charismatic leader.

“There’s basically two Americas – there’s midterm America and there’s
presidential-year America,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer told
The Washington Post. “They’re almost apples and oranges. The question was,
could Obama voters become Democratic voters?”

The answer to that question looks like a resounding “no.”

Part of what attracts Democrats to Hillary Clinton 2016 is the
groundbreaking possibility of electing the first woman president. But is a
reliance on history-making presidential contenders really a sustainable
approach?

In North Carolina, which hosted this year’s most expensive Senate race,
progressives have been trying to create a more durable coalition under the
Moral Monday Movement banner.

Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP and leader
of the Moral Monday Movement, is trying to move past the “messiah” politics
of the Obama era.

Barber said the task moving forward would be building a wider coalition
that isn’t simply charged by one charismatic politician, in this case,
Obama. “If you’re going to change America you’ve got to break through
that,” Barber said after a speech and rally the night before the election
in Greensboro.

“If you get whites, blacks and women and young people and Latinos to begin
to come together and begin to change their language and not be trapped by
Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative, but really begin
to talk about coming together around five issues,” Barber said. He listed
among those issues: Poverty and labor rights, educational opportunity,
healthcare for all, fairness in the criminal justice system and protecting
voting, LGBT, women’s rights and immigration reform.

“Those five areas can garner and pull together a different kind of movement
and we’ve seen that right here in North Carolina that does not back away
from the race critique but allows people to come together across many, many
different lines,” he said.

Still, the effort was ultimately unsuccessful in reelecting Sen. Kay Hagan.
Even with the most sophisticated and expensive turnout operation ever
deployed in a congressional midterm election, Democrats got crushed when
the Obama coalition didn’t show up.

The electorate skewed along racial and generational lines, very much
similar to what happened four and eight years earlier. The drop-off among
young voters, who fueled Obama’s insurgency in 2008, was particularly
pronounced. Nationally, 18-29-year-olds made up only 13% of the electorate
this year, while a quarter of voters were seniors, who lean Republican.
That’s a steep drop from 2012, when 21% of the electorate was young.

Across the country, voters were much older and whiter than they were in
2012, according to William Frey, a demographer with The Brookings
Institution who analyzed exit polls and data from Tuesday’s election.

Still, Frey said demographic and cyclical factors point to the sweeping
Republican victory as more of an “aberration” than a trend indicator.

Frey also said there are a few key points to distill from the election
data. He said the data suggests less of a referendum on the president than
a pattern consistent with a cultural and generation gap, where older whites
are resistant to policies associated with a younger, progressive and more
diverse America.

In a way, Frey said, North Carolina even in this Democratic loss, is a sign
that the Democratic coalition of hardcore whites, young and diverse voters
isn’t going anywhere – even if it didn’t work this time.

“They just didn’t turn out. They weren’t as interested,” he said.

Democrats will have a much better shot during the presidential election in
2016, but Republicans will try to head them off at the pass. “What GOP
really won yesterday was a huge opportunity to recast our brand before
2016, when the terrain will swing back toward the Ds,” longtime GOP
strategist Mike Murphy tweeted.

What Democrats gained among minorities and young people with Obama, they’ve
lost among whites and older voters, who still make up the larger single
segments of the voting population. And worse – those demographics are more
likely to vote regularly. For instance, Democratic Senate Candidate Bruce
Braley was been leading among women by several percentage points in the
final polls, but Ernst easily doubled that margin in her lead among men.
And in a state that’s 95% white, no amount of minority turnout could make
up for Braley’s 11 point deficit among whites.

One silver lining here for Democrats is that Hillary Clinton tends to do
well among working class whites, and thus could make up for some of Obama’s
major losses among those groups in 2016. But she’ll also have to contend
with the possibility that blacks won’t turn out in the record numbers they
did in 2008 and 2012 to vote for an African-American president.

Clinton does have the potential to electrify a diverse coalition if she
decides to run. But once again, Democrats may be lurching from one messiah
to another.

*Mediaite: “O’Reilly to GOP: Stop Fighting or Hillary Will Cruise to
Victory in 2016”
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-to-gop-stop-fighting-or-hillary-will-cruise-to-victory-in-2016/>*

By Josh Feldman

November 6, 2014, 8:18 p.m. EST

Bill O’Reilly kicked off tonight’s Factor with some advice for Republicans
on how to fix the country, and predicted President Obama would be
remembered as a “villain” if he vetoes any of it. In order to establish
their authority, O’REilly said, Republicans should lower corporate income
tax, grant a six month tax amnesty on corporate money so that companies
will have a window to bring money back into the U.S., and raise the minimum
wage, among other things.

O’Reilly said all of this would bring an immediate boost to the economy and
if Obama dares veto any of it, he “will go down in history as a villain.”

That being said, O’Reilly did have some cautions for the GOP to keep in
mind. For one thing, they shouldn’t try to kill Obamacare while there’s a
president in office who will veto it every time. And he warned that if
Republicans “continue to fight each other [and] don’t compromise,” they
will lose and Hillary Clinton will glide to victory in 2016.

Watch the video below, via Fox News:

[VIDEO]

*Washington Free Beacon: “The Biggest Loser”
<http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-biggest-loser/>*

By Matthew Continetti

November 7, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EST

The 2014 election was a disaster for Hillary Clinton. Why? Let us count the
ways.

She will have to run against an energetic and motivated Republican Party.
If the GOP had failed to capture the Senate, the loss would have been more
than demoralizing. It would have led to serious discussion of a third
party. Donors would have reconsidered whether their spending was worth the
reputational cost. Candidate recruitment efforts would have stalled.
Republican voters would have asked why they bother to show up. The
Republican circular firing squad, always a problem, wouldn’t use
conventional weapons. They’d use ICBMs.

Clinton would have loved to capitalize on this scenario. It would have
enabled her to prolong strategic decisions such as how and when and to what
degree she breaks from Obama. She would have claimed partial credit for
saving the Senate. She would have promised to build on Democratic success.
You would have been able to see her aura of inevitability for miles.

But she has been denied. Instead she must calculate how to salvage the
wreckage of 2014. She must convince Democrats that their savior is a
grandmother who lives in a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue. It is her party
that is shell shocked, not the GOP. Trust me: You don’t want to be in that
position.

The results also showed that the electorate looks forward rather than
backward. Clinton’s 2016 argument will be based in part on recollection.
Her message: If you liked the 1990s, the last period of broad-based growth
and full employment, put my husband and me back in the White House.

But voters are not retrospective. They judge based on the conditions of the
moment. In 2010, Democrats tarred Rob Portman as a former Bush official. In
2014, they tried something similar with congressional candidate Elise
Stefanik. Both Portman and Stefanik won.

This year, several candidates ran explicitly as “Clinton Democrats.” They
tried to associate themselves with fond and gauzy memories of a better
time. They lost. Arkansas—the birthplace of Bill Clinton, the test tube of
Clintonism—became a GOP stronghold. Tom Cotton defeated Mark Pryor by 17
points. The Clintons’ star power, such as it is, was overwhelmed by the
Republican wave of discontent and anger at liberal incompetence.

The Clintons aren’t gods. They are human beings—extremely, terribly,
irredeemably flawed human beings.

Their specialty: Mitigating Democratic losses among whites without college
degrees. In 2014, the Clintons couldn’t stop the bleeding. Republicans won
the white working class by 30 points. And it will be difficult for Hillary
Clinton to reduce this deficit over the next two years.

That is because of her problematic position as heir apparent to an
unpopular incumbent. Her recent talk of businesses and corporations not
creating jobs illustrates the dilemma: She has to identify herself with her
husband’s legacy in Elizabeth Warren’s left-wing Democratic Party, while
dissociating herself with the repudiated policies of the president she
served as secretary of State. Has Clinton ever demonstrated the political
skill necessary to pull off such a trick?

A failed president weighs heavily on his party. He not only drags it down
in midterm elections such as 2006, 2010, and 2014. He kills its chances in
presidential years. Think Hubert Humphrey. Think John McCain.

The McCain-Clinton comparison is worth considering. Both would be among the
oldest presidents in American history. Both are slightly at odds with their
party: McCain on campaign finance and immigration, Clinton on corporatism
and foreign policy. Both lost the nomination to the presidents they sought
to replace. Both campaigned for rare third consecutive presidential terms
for their parties in the cycle after those parties lost Congress.

The environment was so hostile to Republicans by the time Election Day 2008
arrived, and the Democrats had so successfully defined themselves in
complete opposition to the incumbent, that McCain didn’t have a chance. But
who in 2006 had predicted that a financial crisis would be the most
important issue of 2008? Who in 2012 had the slightest idea that the
Islamic State and Ebola and illegal migration would be factors in 2014? Who
in 2014 knows with even the faintest degree of certainty what will loom
over the electorate on Election Day 2016?

Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and al Qaeda are not moving to
another planet. The Federal Reserve is not about to acquire the power of
prophecy. The business cycle is exactly that—a cycle.

I do know this: Whatever voters are upset about two years from now, they
are unlikely to hold it against John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They are
more likely to direct their ire at the president and his party: Hillary
Clinton’s party.

Do the Democrats begin presidential campaigns with the advantage?
Absolutely. The distribution of the population, the composition of the
presidential electorate, and the clustering of liberal voters in major
metropolitan areas give the party of government a head start in the race to
270 electoral votes. Republicans can win. But, like in 2000 and 2004, it
will be close.

What the 2014 results suggest, however, is that the “coalition of the
ascendant” that elected and reelected Barack Obama may be more tied to him
personally than to a generic Democrat. The panicked racial appeals to
motivate black turnout failed not only because conditions are poor, but
also because Obama was not on the ballot. The significance of electing the
first black president, and then of legitimating his first term, did not
apply. Nor will it in 2016, in which voters are likely to once again face a
choice between two white people.

A lot will depend on those two candidates. If there was a sure lesson in
2014, it was that candidate performance matters. Colorado, Iowa, and
Arkansas are the clearest examples of states where the Democratic Senate
candidate became an embarrassment, and his Republican opponent made no
unforced errors. The importance of candidates was also the lesson of
Virginia, where Ed Gillespie used substance, clever advertising, and a
winning personality to come within striking distance of Mark Warner. It was
the lesson of New Hampshire, where Scott Brown’s reputation as a
carpetbagger may have prevented a tenth GOP pickup. And it was the lesson
of Maryland, a deep blue state where the Democratic gubernatorial
candidate, Anthony Brown, stumped so poorly coming off two terms of Martin
O’Malley that partisan and demographic advantages could not save him.

Hillary Clinton is famous, ambitious, methodical, and clever. As I write,
she faces no significant challengers for the Democratic nomination. She is
the frontrunner to win the 2016 election. But she is not flawless. Her
political skills are limited. She says things she later walks back. She
represents the past. There are so many skeletons in her family’s closets
that the skeletons have closets. Her favorable numbers have already
returned to Earth, and she will spend the next two years under attack by
both Democrats and Republicans.

Faced with a younger, positive, appealing Republican candidate who avoids
gaffes and runs not on amnesty and entitlement reform, but on a platform
aimed at middle-class families and working-class whites, there is no
telling how Hillary Clinton would look, how she would perform, what choices
she would make. And if she slips and falls, who’s going to rescue her?
David Brock?

*Calendar:*

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

·  November 14  – Little Rock, AR:  Sec. Clinton attends picnic for
10thAnniversary
of the Clinton Center (NYT
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/10/17/?entry=2674&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0>
)

·  November 15  – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton hosts No Ceilings event (NYT
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/10/17/?entry=2674&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0>
)

·  November 21  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton presides over meeting of the
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Bloomberg
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race>
)

·  November 21  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the New York
Historical Society (Bloomberg
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race>
)

·  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/>)

·  December 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton honored by Robert F. Kennedy
Center for Justice and Human Rights (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-ripple-of-hope-award-112478.html>
)