Subject: Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 14:28:52 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

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

*Tweets:*

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> promoted U.S. development of clean
energy projects for Caribbean nations #HRC365
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash>
http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-fueling-americas-energy-future/ …
<http://t.co/Ii79e8Oh7G> [11/6/14, 3:52 p.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/530462671423168512>]

*Headlines:*

*FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “CNN Falls Into
Whitewater Trap”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/11/06/cnn-falls-into-whitewater-trap/201485>*

“Just two days after the midterm elections concluded, CNN is helping to
make ‘Whitewater’ lies part of the 2016 election.”

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Democrats’ Defeats Help
and Hurt Hillary Clinton”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/11/07/how-democrats-defeats-help-and-hurt-hillary-clinton/>*

“The midterm election Tuesday was a debacle for the Democratic Party, but
for Hillary Clinton the results aren’t so clear-cut.”

*Washington Post blog: Plum Line: “We just learned what the 2016
presidential race is going to be all about”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/07/we-just-learned-what-the-2016-presidential-election-is-going-to-be-all-about/>*

“Clinton can argue that a Republican president and a Republican Congress
would be a terrifying combination, and some of us might believe she’s
right. But if the only alternative is four more years of bitterness and
gridlock, lots of voters could chose to give the GOP the chance to do its
worst.”

*Huffington Post blog: Listen to Burns Strider Talk about the Midterms and
Hillary Clinton
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/06/listen-what-was-the-faith_n_6110414.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000055>*

[Burns' portion begins at 16:58]

Correct The Record’s Burns Strider: “First of all, I was just tickled pink
by Secretary Clinton out all over the country. If you look at it, she was
in the south, she was out west; she was in the rust belt and in New
England. She was all over the country standing up and speaking for
Democrats and encouraging folks to come out and support progressives. There
was no finger in the air, she was being a Democrat standing up for
Democrats and I love that. That’s who she is and I think she was doing the
right thing out there. Her desire and obvious interest in just doing what
she believes is the right thing and helping build a national party was
good. I think we’ll see that in the coming months.”

*Politico: “'Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren't Going Anywhere'”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/koch-brothers-democrats-2014-campaigns-112670.html>*

“There could also be additional incentive to keep up the Koch attacks for
American Bridge and other Democrat-aligned groups preparing for a Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. Not only is she is expected to come under
fire from the Koch political network, but she has long shown a fascination
with the funders of the conservative movement — and sources say that
interest extends to the Kochs.”

*MSNBC: “RNC chair: I ‘hope we’re running against Hillary Clinton’”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/reince-priebus-rnc-hope-were-running-against-hillary-clinton>*

“Republicans want to run against Hillary Clinton for president, the head of
the party insisted Friday, laying out how the GOP is already planning to
capitalize on their wins in 2014 to be ready to take on Clinton in 2016.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Paul: Clinton distancing from Obama won't
work”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223319-paul-clinton-distancing-from-obama-wont-work>*

“Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that are not ‘many, if any’ policies
that Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagree on.”

*Articles:*

*FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “CNN Falls Into
Whitewater Trap”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/11/06/cnn-falls-into-whitewater-trap/201485>*

By Jeremy Holden & Ellie Sandmeyer

November 6, 2014, 5:00 p.m. EST

Just two days after the midterm elections concluded, CNN is helping to make
"Whitewater" lies part of the 2016 election.

Doug Henwood, author of a Harper's magazine article headlined "Stop
Hillary!," appeared on CNN along with Elise Viebeck, a reporter for The
Hill, to discuss Hillary Clinton (whom Viebeck called "pathologically
ambitious" and "extremely opportunistic").  After Viebeck claimed that "the
past scandals that the Clintons have been involved with" could be used by
Republicans in any future election, Henwood mentioned Whitewater, a real
estate venture that failed in the 1970s and 1980s and was exhaustively
investigated in the 1990s, as key to any campaign to discredit Clinton.

"Every time you do Whitewater, the media will kind of roll its eyes, like
'We've been there; this is old,'" host Chris Cuomo replied. "Not the media,
but the media that wants to defend Hillary Clinton, or her defenders in
general. You say, oh no, no, no. The facts there mattered. She kind of got
a pass."

One key fact that mattered went unsaid by Cuomo or either of his guests:
exhaustive investigations by Republican prosecutors and legislators
concluded that there was no evidence that Bill or Hillary Clinton broke the
law in connection to the Whitewater land deal.

Henwood's explanation for why Whitewater still mattered centered on his
claim that Clinton "lied" about billing records and how much time she spent
as a lawyer working for a bank connected to the deal. Again, the public
record fully corroborates what Clinton has said about this.

Nevertheless, Cuomo encouraged his viewers to read Henwood's story in
Harper's, calling it an interesting take on Clinton.

Veteran reporters from the 90s see it differently.

"The most basic facts elude him," Gene Lyons observed in the Arkansas
Times. Lyons, who wrote a book that originated as a Harper's article on the
media's Whitewater failures, offers a devastating point-by-point rebuttal
to Henwood before concluding, "a journalist who chooses to question a
presidential candidate's character by dragging up 20-year-old controversies
owes it to readers to know two or three things about them."

And CNN owes it to its viewers to challenge its guests over basic,
verifiable facts.

In early October, Yahoo! News columnist Michael Isikoff revisited the
Whitewater saga that made him famous, touting a book written by the first
special prosecutor to look into the land deal before he was replaced by Ken
Starr. Dredging up old news and breaking no new ground, Isikoff warned that
Clinton foes would try to use Whitewater against her.

Joe Conason, who co-authored The Hunting of the President with Lyons, took
Isikoff to task for ignoring the facts and offered compelling guidance to
journalists who insist on discussing Whitewater. "If we must dredge up
Whitewater," Conason wrote, "then let's be specific instead of vague."
Conason urged journalists to "report all of the evidence."

Watch the CNN segment from the November 6 edition of New Day:

[VIDEO]

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Democrats’ Defeats Help
and Hurt Hillary Clinton”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/11/07/how-democrats-defeats-help-and-hurt-hillary-clinton/>*

By Peter Nicholas

November 7, 2014, 9:41 a.m. EST

The midterm election Tuesday was a debacle for the Democratic Party, but
for Hillary Clinton the results aren’t so clear-cut.

Here are five ways the elections helped Mrs. Clinton, and five ways they
hurt.

Why they helped:

 (1)  From the wreckage of the election, many Democrats are now looking to
Mrs. Clinton to rebuild the party and remind the rank-and-file that a big
prize is still within reach: retaining the White House. President Barack
Obama remains the titular head of the party, but he’s badly wounded. His
approval ratings have sagged to historic lows and he has lost his governing
majority in Congress.  In Mrs. Clinton, a demoralized party may see the
possibility of better days ahead. Speaking the day after the election, Alan
Kessler, a longtime Democratic fundraiser, said: “I will tell you now,
today, on a very gloomy morning, that’s what people see as a glimmer of
hope.”

(2)  The election was less a repudiation of the Washington establishment
than a rejection of Washington gridlock. After all, voters reelected the
ultimate Washington insider: Kentucky Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell, who got to the Senate 30 years ago. That might bode well for
Mrs. Clinton. She can position herself as an antidote to Washington
dysfunction, playing up her experience as a former senator and top diplomat
who knows how to reach consensus.  Some of her supporters believe the
target of voter anger was not Democratic policies or politicians, but Mr.
Obama.

“The disenchantment we saw in the election is a disenchantment with Obama,”
said Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a Clinton supporter and Democratic donor,
and outspoken critic of Mr. Obama. “It’s not about his policies – raising
the minimum wage or mainstream Democratic policies that Hillary supports.
Voters are fed up with the arrogance and incompetence that Obama has
demonstrated in office. Whatever the Republicans say about Hillary, they
can’t say those two things about her.”

(3)   The damage was so sweeping that Democrats may be more inclined to
coalesce behind a Hillary Clinton candidacy. Democrats lost the House in
2010 and the Senate on Tuesday. Losing the White House in 2016 would be an
unwelcome trifecta. Rather than endure a contested primary season in which
Mrs. Clinton is forced to spend money and political capital securing the
nomination, the party may be more inclined to unite behind her and give her
a running start for the general election showdown with the GOP. Democrats
went through a version of this in 2004, when the party rejected Vermont
Gov. Howard Dean’s insurgent campaign and instead tapped someone who seemed
a safer bet: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.  “A party that doesn’t have the
House and Senate becomes a lot more pragmatic about choosing a nominee,
because it can’t possibly fathom the possibility of losing it all,” said
Joe Trippi, who worked on Mr. Dean’s campaign.

(4)  Now that Republicans control both the House and Senate, they’re under
renewed pressure to show they can govern. Can they pull it off? Will they
forge popular compromises with Mr. Obama that create jobs and jumpstart the
economic recovery? Or will they use their power to launch investigations
that prove embarrassing to Mr. Obama but strike many Americans as a
sideshow? If the GOP overreaches, that could be a boon to Mrs. Clinton. She
could make the point that the GOP has little to show for their majority
status. “The Democrats are off the hook in large measure,” said Harold
Ickes, a senior adviser in Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “It will depend
now on what the Republicans come up with in Congress.”

(5) No one can say Mrs. Clinton didn’t do her part to boost the Democratic
vote. She attended nearly four dozen fundraising events, rallies and
get-out-the-vote drives.  Along with her husband she was the main
Democratic surrogate in closely contested Senate races that Mr. Obama
avoided due to his low popularity. So, Mrs. Clinton campaigned repeatedly
for Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky senate candidate who wound up
losing big to Mr. McConnell. It’s doubtful Mrs. Clinton will face stiff
competition for the Democratic nomination. But if it’s a fight, Mrs.
Clinton built some good will with party leaders and activists by sticking
her neck out for longshot candidates. “She and President Clinton’s efforts
were certainly sought after. And their efforts to support Democratic
candidates were deeply appreciated and well received,” said Mack McLarty, a
former chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House.

Why the elections hurt Mrs. Clinton

(1) Election day loosed a Republican wave that showed the Democrats have
problems. Republicans will control both U.S. Senate seats and all four
House seats in Arkansas, the state that vaulted the Clintons onto the
national stage.  Democrats lost governor’s races in deep blue Maryland and
Massachusetts. In their post-mortem, Democrats have talked about how the
2016 elections will produce a better turnout and more favorable electoral
map for party candidates. Today, though, Mrs. Clinton stands atop a party
that is damaged goods, some analysts say. “The Democratic brand is in
trouble,” said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Third Way, a center-left think
tank. “Her task, in addition to shaking people out of their apathy, is that
she’s going to have to find a pretty new brand for the party.”

(2)  Distancing herself from Mr. Obama may have more urgency than Mrs.
Clinton believed. The election showed that for Democrats in tough races,
Mr. Obama is toxic. Mrs. Clinton faces a tough balancing act. If she
repudiates Mr. Obama, she appears disloyal and risks alienating core
Democratic voters. Embracing him would surely antagonize independents. One
way to navigate is to draw an implicit contrast with Mr. Obama. In ’08,
voters rejected her argument that she was the more seasoned political
figure, better equipped to operate in Washington. She can revive that
point. Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana said she can tell
voters:  “If you want someone who you’ve never heard of before, who is
going to speak to you in poetry, maybe I’m not your cup of tea. But that’s
not what the presidency is about. It’s about getting things done that will
help you with your daily lives.”

(3) The elections deepened the GOP bench. Had governors Scott Walker of
Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio lost re-election, neither would be a
serious potential Republican candidate in 2016. Both won. That gives the
Republicans two more potential candidates who could draw sharp contrasts
with Mrs. Clinton, casting themselves as Washington outsiders with
executive experience.

(4) Mrs. Clinton largely avoided gaffes in the course of her midterm
campaigning, but there was one that could stick. Speaking in Boston last
month, she said, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s
corporations and businesses that create jobs.” She later said she misspoke
and meant to say conservative tax policies hinder job growth. But
Republicans quickly made it known the quote will figure into an attack ad
some day.

(5) Overall, Mrs. Clinton didn’t do badly as a campaign surrogate in a
tough year for Democrats. She campaigned for 26 individual candidates. The
final tally: 12 won; 13 lost; and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) is in a
runoff. But the public focus will inevitably be on the high-profile
defeats: Ms. Grimes and Senate candidates Kay Hagan of North Carolina and
Bruce Braley of Iowa.

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a potential GOP candidate in 2016, told The Wall
Street Journal that those who ran as “Clinton Democrats” didn’t prove to be
more “popular” than those who ran as “Obama Democrats.”

*Washington Post blog: Plum Line: “We just learned what the 2016
presidential race is going to be all about”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/07/we-just-learned-what-the-2016-presidential-election-is-going-to-be-all-about/>*

By Paul Waldman

November 7, 2014, 12:51 p.m. EST

Was the Republican takeover of Congress terrific news for Hillary Clinton,
or terrible news for Hillary Clinton? At the moment, our nation’s brave
pundit corps is divided on the question.

But one thing is clear: In 2016, the relationship between the president and
Congress could have a larger effect on the outcome than in any race since
Harry Truman pulled out a surprise victory in 1948 running against a
“do-nothing Congress” controlled by Republicans.

For all the talk of Republicans now having an obligation to govern, you’d
have to be pretty naïve to think that the next two years are going to
feature much besides bitter conflict between President Obama and the
opposition. After years of debt ceiling crises, a government shutdown, and
general rising contempt on both sides, and likely more of the same for the
next two years, the Democratic candidate (and we’ll presume for now it will
be Clinton) will have to talk a great deal about how she’ll deal with a
Congress likely to be controlled by the other party after 2016.

In recent presidential elections, candidates have gotten away with a good
degree of vagueness on this question, arguing simply that they’d reach
across the aisle and transcend partisanship, because that’s what the
American people want. And it is what a majority of the American people want
(at least in the abstract), so the candidates who said that were rewarded:
Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all promised to be, in
Bush’s phrase, uniters and not dividers. All of them would genuinely have
liked to be uniters, but it didn’t work out that way.

Now think about the context in which the 2016 race will take place. For
much of the last six years, the most aggressive Republican moves, like the
dozens of Affordable Care Act vetoes, occurred in the House, and then died
in the Senate. President Obama has vetoed only two bills in his entire
presidency, fewer than any president since Millard Fillmore. Since
Republicans took over in 2010, it’s been a story of simmering resentment
punctuated by occasional crises (and one shutdown).

But in the new Congress, bills to directly attack the Obama agenda and
legacy won’t founder in the purgatory of the Senate docket. Depending on
how aggressively Democrats use the filibuster, they will pass both houses,
and end up being vetoed by President Obama — a much more high-profile
event. The news out of Washington will be a steady stream of direct, angry,
and loud confrontations between the White House and a unified GOP Congress.

Unlike Obama in 2008, Bush in 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1992, Hillary
Clinton wouldn’t be running with her own party controlling Capitol Hill.
Those candidates could say they’d reach out to the other party, but they
and voters knew that if their overtures were rejected, they could still get
things accomplished. But faced with the most conservative and
obstructionist congressional Republicans in memory, Clinton won’t be able
to wish the question away with lofty talk of sitting down to join hands and
find common ground.

Clinton may choose to just run against Capitol Hill Republicans: My
opponent and the do-nothing Congress are holding the country back, so elect
me. But the fact that the conflict between Barack Obama and these
Republicans is likely to be even more intense than it has been until now
means that the question of how the next president deals with Congress could
define the 2016 race.

Clinton can argue that a Republican president and a Republican Congress
would be a terrifying combination, and some of us might believe she’s
right. But if the only alternative is four more years of bitterness and
gridlock, lots of voters could chose to give the GOP the chance to do its
worst. If Clinton doesn’t already have a persuasive description of how she
will govern if faced with a legislature controlled by Tea Partiers and
Republicans afraid of Tea Partiers, who will fight her on every single
thing she wants to do, Clinton sure ought to come up with one soon.

*Huffington Post blog: Listen to Burns Strider Talk about the Midterms and
Hillary Clinton
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/06/listen-what-was-the-faith_n_6110414.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000055>*

[Burns' portion begins at 16:58]

By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

November 6, 2014, 9:36 a.m. EST

Welcome to this week’s ALL TOGETHER, the podcast dedicated to exploring how
religious ideas and spiritual practice inform and shape our personal lives,
our communities and our world. The show is hosted by Rev. Paul Brandeis
Raushenbush, the Executive Editor of HuffPost Religion.

This weeks All Together investigates The Faith Factor In The 2014 Midterm
Elections.

What a difference two years can make. In 2012, President Obama won every
faith group in America aside from White Christians. The looks to be true
for 2014, and yet White Evangelical voters appeared to have tipped the
scale towards the GOP in important Senate and Governor races across the
country.

What made the difference? Were voters convinced by the threat to religious
freedom rhetoric? Did gay marriage factor in? What about the Jewish vote?
And the growing nones? Or should politicians worry about the 'faith vote'
at all?

To help me think through these questions I have assembled some veteran
faith and politics academics, pollsters and political operators including
Burns Strider, Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor in 2008, Joshua Dubois,
Head of President Obama's 2008 Campaign and the White House Faith and
Community Partnerships, Mark Silk, Professor of Religion in Public Life at
Trinity College, and Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute

*Politico: “'Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren't Going Anywhere'”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/koch-brothers-democrats-2014-campaigns-112670.html>*

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini Parti

November 7, 2014, 5:11 a.m. EST

Democrats are doubling down on their attacks against the Koch brothers.

Prompted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrats spent millions of
dollars spotlighting Republican ties to the billionaire conservative
megadonors Charles and David Koch. But despite Republicans — and some
Democrats — publicly decrying the strategy after Tuesday’s GOP wave as an
ineffective waste of money, Reid told allies on election night that he
planned to continue hammering the brothers, according to an operative close
to him.

And big-money liberal groups ranging from the Democrats’ Senate campaign
arm and House super PAC to the outfits run by billionaire Tom Steyer and
conservative-turned-liberal enforcer David Brock all signaled that they
intended to pursue anti-Koch spending and oppo tactics headed into the 2016
election.

Brock’s American Bridge outfit on Thursday began circulating a memo to
senior Democratic congressional aides and big money groups making the case
for redoubling the effort to make the Kochs into boogeymen.

Titled “Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren’t Going Anywhere,” the memo, obtained
by POLITICO from a source who received it, contends that the GOP takeover
of the Senate makes it more important — and potentially more effective — to
call attention to the Kochs’ influence in the GOP.

“This will be easier now that they are in power,” Brock wrote. Citing
polling showing that the Kochs — who were relatively little known at the
beginning of the midterms — became more disliked as attacks from his group
and its allies escalated, Brock said, “Our efforts will continue, because
the alternative — staying quiet as these secretive billionaires pour
hundreds of millions into politics to further their own bottom line — is
impossible. … We’re going to dig deeper into their business in states that
are key to 2016 — at the presidential, Senate and gubernatorial levels.”

The Kochs in recent years have emerged as a leading force in American
politics thanks to a network of affluent donors the brothers convened to
fund a series of nonprofit advocacy groups. Now overseen by an umbrella
outfit called Freedom Partners, the network, spearheaded by the aggressive
group Americans for Prosperity, spent around $290 million during the
midterms, playing a pivotal role in softening up vulnerable incumbent
Democratic senators such as North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Colorado’s Mark
Udall with tough ads linking them to the unpopular President Barack Obama.

As the network’s spending soared, so too did liberal scrutiny of the
brothers, with Reid assailing them on the Senate floor as “un-American” oil
barons who are trying “to buy our democracy.” His repeated premeditated
attacks on the Kochs emboldened Brock’s group and eventually others to pick
up the beat. And Reid suggested to allies Tuesday night that his intended
target may have been Republican politicians as opposed to voters. His
thinking, according to an operative close to him is that, despite
Democratic big money gains in 2014, the party will never be able to keep
pace with the Kochs and other conservative donors, so making them toxic to
Republican politicians is the best hope for tamping down the unlimited cash
race.

Some liberals involved in the Koch attacks argue that the strategy may have
helped win one Senate race — Democrat Gary Peters victory over Republican
Terri Lynn Land in Michigan — and kept others close.

There could also be additional incentive to keep up the Koch attacks for
American Bridge and other Democrat-aligned groups preparing for a Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. Not only is she is expected to come under
fire from the Koch political network, but she has long shown a fascination
with the funders of the conservative movement — and sources say that
interest extends to the Kochs.

Yet continuing the anti-Koch crusade is sure to irk some Democratic
politicians and consultants, who grumbled — mostly privately — that money
spent on the strategy was a waste of valuable resources.

“It’s utterly ineffective. Elections have to be about voters and what
candidates will do for them,” said Thomas Mills, a North Carolina-based
Democratic strategist who has worked on Senate campaigns. “And this
strategy is more about the candidates. It says, ‘Look at me! Help me — they
are spending money against me.’ There’s no connection between that and
voters.”

Mills, who called the strategists behind the strategy “fools,” had a front
row seat to one of the highest profile examples of it — the costly ad
campaigns to tar the state’s GOP Senate nominee, Thom Tillis, as a pawn of
the brothers. Koch-backed groups had in fact spent millions attacking
Tillis’ opponent, Hagan. While she accused the Kochs of trying to “buy this
seat,” there’s not much evidence that her attacks or those of her big-money
allies worked, and Tillis prevailed narrowly on Tuesday.

The Democratic focus on the billionaire industrialists simply didn’t
resonate, asserted Rob Collins, executive director of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee. “It was a dumb debate; it was stupid,” he
told reporters Thursday. “It didn’t move a voter.”

In fact, some Republicans believe the strategy may have backfired,
including in the House race in which Democrats leaned most heavily on it —
Rep. Nick Rahall’s unsuccessful reelection bid in West Virginia.

“The Democratic strategy in this race was completely off the mark,” said
Andy Seré, campaign strategist for Evan Jenkins, the Republican state
senator who defeated Rahall on Tuesday. “Evan Jenkins has been in the state
Legislature for 18 years. By the very nature of that, you’ve got a million
votes to work with. They didn’t use a single vote that Jenkins made on TV.”

Seré said the ads hurt Jenkins’ image among Democrats who support President
Barack Obama, but those weren’t the voters they were targeting anyway.
“What the Koch strategy inadvertently did is it polarized the race pretty
quickly,” he said. “That was helpful, because we hadn’t done a lot of
advertising yet, but we became pretty well-known and liked among
Republicans and independents.”

Yet House Majority PAC, which spent about $2.2 million on the race and
repeatedly tied Jenkins to the Kochs, has no plans to back down from
targeting the brothers. The super PAC used the strategy in at least five
other races to protect Democratic incumbents in 2014.

“I know Republicans are out there saying, ‘Oh, they wasted time and money
on it,’” said Ali Lapp, executive director of House Majority PAC. “But they
are saying that because they don’t want to make the Koch brothers
uncomfortable with the attention. If the Koch brothers keep throwing
millions at our candidates, I think we’re going to make sure people know
where the money is coming from and what their agenda is.”

Steyer, the retired San Francisco hedge fund billionaire, sees the Kochs as
a way to turn voters against Republicans who oppose his key issue —
fighting climate change.

Steyer donated at least $67 million to a super PAC he created to elevate
the issue, which lost most of the races in which it played. One notable
exception was in Michigan, where it spent heavily on ads connecting the
piles of petroleum coke contaminating the Detroit River area to the Koch
brothers and Land.

Those ads worked, said Steyer’s political adviser Chris Lehane.

“As Michigan demonstrated, in an ecology where voters justifiably feel like
they are not getting a fair shake, connecting the dots between a polluter a
science-denier candidate and the specific harms being felt by a community
is a powerful message,” Lehane said.

Brock’s group, which provided research on the Kochs’ connection to Land
that was featured in ads against Land, said in its memo that “the Kochs
were toxic to Terri Lynn Land.” The memo concedes “the anti-Koch campaign
isn’t a silver bullet — no one ever said it was — but we know it has the
potential to move races even if it’s only at the margins, which can make
the difference between who holds the Senate or wins the White House.”

But James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, said that overall the
election results showed voters care more about policies than people who
aren’t even on the ballot. “Rather than focusing on the issues concerning
the American people, Harry Reid’s strategy was to attack job creators who
spoke out against Reid and Obama’s failed liberal policies,” he said.
“Voters said enough is enough — they’re more interested in solutions.”

Democrats who want to double down on the Koch strategy argue that 2014 is
not a good measure for judging the effectiveness of the strategy.

If there was a mistake in targeting the Kochs this cycle, said Geoff Garin,
a top Democratic pollster and chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008
presidential run, it was that Democrats did not go all out on the ads tying
the billionaire brothers to Republican candidates.

“With the benefit of hindsight, if anything we took the foot off the gas
pedal too quickly and moved on to other frames even though the Koch frame
was proving to be an important one for voters,” Garin said. “If there’s any
regret, it’s not that we did too much of the Koch ads, it’s that we did too
little and didn’t do it for deeper into the campaign.”

It was the anti-Koch messaging that kept red-states Democrats competitive
for months, said Justin Barasky, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee, adding that it fired up the donor base and made it
easier for them to attack the Republican candidates’ record. “Anytime you
have a wave like this,” he said, “it masks a lot of what really went on.”

*MSNBC: “RNC chair: I ‘hope we’re running against Hillary Clinton’”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/reince-priebus-rnc-hope-were-running-against-hillary-clinton>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 7, 2014, 12:13 p.m. EST

Republicans want to run against Hillary Clinton for president, the head of
the party insisted Friday, laying out how the GOP is already planning to
capitalize on their wins in 2014 to be ready to take on Clinton in 2016.

Speaking at a breakfast with reporters hosted by the The Christian Science
Monitor in Washington, D.C., Republican National Committee Chairman Reince
Priebus said Republicans are keeping staff in key presidential swing states
such as Florida, Ohio and Virginia, and explained how the GOP plans to
avoid the “circus” of the 2012 nominating process.

The RNC is overhauling its rules to shorten the primary and caucus
calendar, and reducing the number of debates, which numbered a whopping 23
in the 2012 cycle. “We’re taking it from a six month slice and dice fest to
about weeks,” Priebus said. “We’re going to contain the process so we don’t
end up with rogue debates that provide the temptation for candidates to
break the rules.”

They’re also improving their voter mobilization efforts, which has
traditionally been a strength for Democrats, he said, explaining that
2016’s “ground game” will have to be at least three times larger than in
2014. “I think we’ve got to be about perfect to win a national turnout vote
in this country. I think Democrats can be good and win, we’ve got to be
great,” he added.

Are Republicans worried about running against Clinton, the presumed
Democratic nominee? “I sure as heck hope we’re running against Hillary
Clinton,” Priebus said.

Clinton allies have been trying to spin Tuesday night’s Democratic drubbing
as a secret victory for Clinton, who will now have a clear villain to run
against in the GOP-controlled Congress.

Nonsense, Priebus responded Friday. “If your job was to unify the party and
raise a ton of money and get a ton of volunteers on the ground, I promise
you, you would want no other opponent to run against than Hillary Clinton,”
he said. Priebus also said voters rejected the Clintons when they rejected
candidates endorsed by the Clintons.

Of course, that is exactly what a Republican leader would say, since it’s
his job to project confidence and rally donors and activists. If the RNC
were really so eager to take on Clinton, for instance, one might wonder why
they bothered sending a staffer dressed as a squirrel to stalk the former
secretary of state this summer.

Priebus said Tuesday’s wins were obviously very good for Republicans, but
declined to say the party now had a mandate to govern. “I would call that a
pretty sweeping victory, but whether it’s a mandate or not, that’s a
different question,” he said.

Voters in Wisconsin, for instance, “accepted” conservative Republican
ideas, Priebus said. “Perhaps embraced might be a little over the top.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Paul: Clinton distancing from Obama won't
work”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223319-paul-clinton-distancing-from-obama-wont-work>*

By Peter Sullivan

November 7, 2014, 11:35 a.m. EST

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that are not "many, if any" policies
that Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagree on.

The comments could be a preview of a line of attack in the 2016
presidential race, if Paul faces Clinton.

"I think she is going to try to say 'Oh, I’m different than President
Obama, he’s very unpopular, but I have different policies," Paul said on
Fox News. "Well, she was part of his administration, and I really don’t
know of many, if any, policies they disagree on."

It is an open question how far Clinton will try to distance herself from
Obama. The main instance so far was an interview with The Atlantic in
August, where she criticized Obama's Syria policy and "Don't do stupid
stuff" mantra, but then walked back the comments after a backlash.

Paul has been trying to tie Clinton, who campaigned heavily for Democrats
in the midterms, to the losses on election night, branding Democrats who
lost "Hillary's losers."

"She is seen as the leader of their party and the potential leader in their
nominating process," Paul said in the interview Friday.

"I think it’s a mistake to let someone—I’m not talking about whether I’m
running—but to let someone run unopposed. And I think in the past we
haven’t gone after the opposing party’s nominee to say who they are and
what they represent."

As for whether he is running, Paul said, "I am thinking maybe, and we’re
going to keep looking at it for the next six months or so."

He emphasized his efforts to attract African-Americans and mostly
Democratic supporters to the Republican Party.

"We did a lot better on election night, but we still struggled in Michigan,
we’re struggling in Pennsylvania, we’re struggling in California and New
York," Paul said. "We have to change the demographic of who we attract and
I think you only do that by bringing fresh, new ideas."

He pointed to the Republican gubernatorial winner on Tuesday in Illinois,
Bruce Rauner, as winning with an emphasis on school choice, noting ideas
like that could help Republicans in cities.

"I would dramatically lower the taxes in Detroit, a billion dollars, and
that would be the stimulus for Detroit, and I don’t think Democrats really
have anything to counteract that with, or really have shown much concern
for those who live in Detroit," Paul said.