Subject: Correct The Record Tuesday November 11, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 13:33:31 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Tuesday November 11, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*BuzzFeed: “Rand Paul Takes Shot At Hillary Clinton’s Age”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/rand-paul-takes-shot-at-hillary-clintons-age>*

“Adrienne Elrod, the communications director for Correct the Record, a
research group backing Clinton, said, ‘It’s pretty funny that Rand Paul is
lecturing on the ‘rigors’ of a presidential campaign, given that last I
checked, he’s never been a presidential candidate, or even a candidate for
re-election to any office.’”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC hits 'high-flying Hillary' over travel
expenses”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223627-rnc-hits-high-flying-hillary-over-travel-expenses>*

“The pro-Clinton group Correct the Record released its own report on Monday
using polling data to argue that Clinton's campaign visits boosted support
for Democratic candidates among women. The report fights back against
Republicans who have been seeking to link Clinton to Democratic losses last
week.”

*MSNBC: “Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-too-old-be-president?cid=eml_mda_20141111>*

“Correct the Record, Clinton’s main defenders in the press, noted that
while Paul lectures on the rigors of a campaign, the freshman senator has
never run for president himself or even reelection. ‘The excitement and
enthusiasm Hillary Clinton will generate on the campaign trail should she
run for president will be far more than Rand Paul can handle,’ said
spokesperson Adrienne Elrod.”

*BuzzFeed: “Democratic Candidates Spent At Least $700K To Fly In Clintons”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/democratic-candidates-spent-at-least-700k-to-fly-in-clintons>*

"The millions the pair raised at fundraisers far surpassed any travel
expenses candidates had to cover. Every rally with a Clinton also garnered
attention from the national press — valuable earned media for campaigns."

*The Reflector: Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy grows with support
network in place
<http://www.reflector-online.com/opinion/article_4b90d47e-6931-11e4-95cc-bb4a67f4cd7c.html>*

[From Burns' #1 Ranked Mississippi Bulldogs]

"She is a lawyer, mother, first Lady of Arkansas and the United States,
U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of State and grandmother; could she
now be President? Hillary Clinton... has broken down many barriers in her
lifetime. What is next for her remains a mystery. Hillary Clinton would be
the first woman president if she decided to run and was elected. Although
historic, it is not the only thing to make her appear the most qualified
for the presidency..."

*BuzzFeed: “The Clintons Were Not The Losers Of The Midterms”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/clinton-romney-2014>*

“The idea of the Romney spreadsheet actually throws into perfect relief the
mad logic in the idea that the Clintons lost last week. The entire notion
obscures the real value of surrogates: mostly fundraising, plus earned
media.”

*Washington Post: “Mitt Romney filling post-midterm role as key
behind-the-scenes GOP player”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-filling-post-midterm-role-as-key-behind-the-scenes-gop-player/2014/11/10/61ca145e-68f9-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html>*

“In the days after the election, a group of Romney supporters began
circulating a memo that compared the success of his midterm endorsements
with those made by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016
Democratic presidential nomination. The documents — which were obtained by
The Washington Post — concluded that two out of three Romney candidates won
their elections, compared with one in three for Clinton.”

*Washington Post: “The tricky Obama-Clinton handoff begins”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-tricky-obama-clinton-handoff-begins/2014/11/11/0f650828-6605-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html>*

“If she becomes the nominee, Clinton will have to unlink herself from Obama
over the next two years, while positioning herself to inherit the coalition
of young people and minorities that helped put Obama in the White House.”

*MSNBC: “Rand Paul broaches the subject of Hillary Clinton’s age”
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rand-paul-broaches-the-subject-hillary-clintons-age>*

“What’s irksome, though, is the fact the chiding is coming from Rand Paul,
of all people, who probably hasn’t thought this one through. In 2008, a
Texas congressman by the name of Ron Paul launched his second presidential
campaign. He was, at the time, 73 years old.”

*Capital New York: “Rangel now ‘Ready for Hillary’ too”
<http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/11/8556416/rangel-now-ready-hillary-too>*

“Rep. Charles Rangel said he doesn't see any realistic challenger to
Hillary Clinton in 2016. ‘I'm ready for Hillary,’ said Rangel in an
interview on HuffPost Live. ‘But, you know, I don't like coronations. I
don't see where anyone is gonna challenge her, on the Republican side or
the Democratic side.’”

*Washington Post column: Richard Cohen: “Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’
only hope”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-hillary-clinton-is-the-democrats-only-hope/2014/11/10/5a5a41ce-690a-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html>*

“She [Sec. Clinton] is not the Democratic Party’s best hope. She is its
only hope.”

*Los Angeles Times column: Jonah Goldberg: “Democrats' loss is not a win
for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1111-goldberg-elections-hillary-dems-20141111-column.html>*

“The notion that this monumental rebuke of Clinton's party, and the
administration she served in, amounts to an unambiguous Clinton win invites
many to ask, ‘What you talkin' 'bout, Hillary?’”

*Bloomberg column: Francis Wilkinson: “Hillary Needs a Primary Challenge”
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-11/hillary-needs-a-primary-challenge>*

“The crushing Republican midterm victory is good for Hillary Clinton's
presidential ambitions. Or bad. I'm not much swayed either way. All I know
is that, if she runs, Clinton desperately needs a credible primary
opponent.”

*Talking Points Memo: “How Can Hillary Make Obamacare Her Own?”
<http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hillary-clinton-obamacare-2016>*

“Early hints at Clinton's 2016 message, themes that have been repeated
throughout her recent public speaking appearances, signal that it will
focus heavily on income inequality, the middle class, and growing wages.
That could then be her opening for health care, too: Obamacare initially
addressed insurance coverage, but its cost containment provisions were more
back-loaded and how effective they ultimately will be is still an open
question.”

*The New Yorker: “What the Bushes and Clintons Agree On”
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/jeb-bush-versus-hillary-clinton>*

“Given the new mood in Republican circles, one thing is clear: He won’t win
the nomination simply by telling Republicans they need someone to take on
Hillary.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Walker blasts Clinton's 'old, tired' approach
to government”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223621-walker-clinton-embodies-old-tired-approach-to-governing>*

“Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Tuesday decried Hillary Clinton as
embodying an ‘old, tired’ approach to government.”

*Washington Post blog: Jennifer Rubin: “Inside the Republican ‘oppo’
research operation”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/11/11/inside-the-republican-oppo-research-operation/>*

“In a nondescript building in Arlington, Virginia, a few dozen 20 or
30-somethings sit in an office with some GOP campaign posters on the walls,
eyes glued to their computer screens. If not for the GOP artwork, you would
think this was a trading floor or a technology firm. But it is America
Rising PAC…”

*Articles:

            *

*BuzzFeed: “Rand Paul Takes Shot At Hillary Clinton’s Age”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/rand-paul-takes-shot-at-hillary-clintons-age>*

By Ruby Cramer

November 10, 2014, 2:29 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The likely Republican presidential candidate suggests that
Clinton, who is 67, may not be able to handle the “rigorous physical
ordeal” of the campaign trail.

He brings her up in stump speeches. He freely attacks her in interviews
with the national press. He hammers her again and again for the attack on
the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and for a line she botched last month on
the campaign trail.

Sen. Rand Paul’s latest knock on Hillary Clinton — his potential rival in
the next presidential race — came in a Politico article, published on
Monday, in which he appeared to take a shot at her age and health. Clinton
just turned 67.

In the interview, Paul questioned whether Clinton would be able to
physically handle running for president. “It’s a very taxing undertaking to
go through,” he said. “It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able
to campaign for the presidency.”

Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, is 51 years old.

Asked if he wanted to clarify the remark, a spokesman for Paul said,
“Nothing to add here.” A Clinton spokesman did not respond to an email
about the comment.

Adrienne Elrod, the communications director for Correct the Record, a
research group backing Clinton, said, “It’s pretty funny that Rand Paul is
lecturing on the ‘rigors’ of a presidential campaign, given that last I
checked, he’s never been a presidential candidate, or even a candidate for
re-election to any office.”

The “excitement and enthusiasm” for Clinton on the campaign trail, Elrod
said, “will be far more than Rand Paul can handle.”

When Clinton campaigned for Democrats during the midterms this fall, she
kept a demanding schedule. In a 54-day period, she appeared at 45 events in
20 states, stumping for at least 26 different candidates, according to her
office.

If Clinton were elected president in 2016, she would be 69 on inauguration
day — the same age as Ronald Reagan when he took office in 1981.

The chair of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, has said he
considers Clinton’s age and health “fair game” in a possible presidential
race.

“What I do know is that the issue is going to come up as it does for any
person running for president,” said Reince Priebus NBC’s Meet the Press
earlier this year. “It was fair game for Ronald Reagan. It was fair game
for John McCain.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC hits 'high-flying Hillary' over travel
expenses”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223627-rnc-hits-high-flying-hillary-over-travel-expenses>*

By Peter Sullivan

November 11, 2014, 10:23 a.m. EST

The Republican National Committee hit Hillary Clinton on Tuesday over her
travel expenses, reprising a theme of trying to make Clinton's expenses
appear extravagant.

The RNC seized on an article by BuzzFeed using financial filings to report
that Democratic candidates spent at least $699,000 this year to fly the
Clintons on private jets to campaign events.

"High-flying Hillary" is the title of the email sent by the RNC
highlighting the BuzzFeed report.

"The Clintons were already under fire for their lavish campaign travel tabs
for weeks," the email continues. It points to a Bloomberg report that it
cost more than $50,000 to fly the Clintons to the Harkin Steak Fry in
September, when Hillary Clinton made her high profile return to the state.

The RNC also points to controversy over Clinton's $225,000 speaking fee for
an event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas earlier this year. "It's
not just political events where Hillary Clinton prefers to 'travel in
style,' "the RNC said.

Clinton has also come under fire from Democrats for her paid speeches,
particularly to Goldman Sachs, which could reinforce Democratic concerns
that she is too close to Wall Street.

The pro-Clinton group Correct the Record released its own report on Monday
using polling data to argue that Clinton's campaign visits boosted support
for Democratic candidates among women.

The report fights back against Republicans who have been seeking to link
Clinton to Democratic losses last week.

*MSNBC: “Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-too-old-be-president?cid=eml_mda_20141111>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 10, 2014, 8:29 p.m. EST

Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?

He won’t say it outright, but that’s the question Sen. Rand Paul is getting
at. “It’s a very taxing undertaking to go through. It’s a rigorous physical
ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency,” the likely
Republican presidential candidate told Politico Monday.

And he’s hardly alone among Republicans in wielding Clinton’s 67 years
against her. Rick Santorum called the former secretary of state “old,” Sen.
Mitch McConnell compared her to a cast member from “The Golden Girls,” and
Bobby Jindal called her an “old, tired candidate.” Meanwhile, longtime
Clinton foe Matt Drudge accused Clinton of using a walker during a magazine
cover photoshoot, and the conservative Free Beacon has had plenty of laughs
at the expense of Clinton’s age.

It’s obvious why a relatively young field of Republican presidential
hopefuls see benefit in painting Clinton as old, but it’s unfamiliar
territory for Republicans, who are used to defending their own nominees’
advanced ages.

In 1984, it was Ronald Reagan – still the oldest president in American
history – who had to contend with age questions, especially after he
stumbled in his first debate with Democrat Walter Mondale. “Sigh Ronald
Reagan sigh,” was all former Clinton aide Tracy Sefl said when asked to
respond to Paul.

Ed Rollins, who managed Reagan’s campaign that year, said Republican
attacks on Clinton’s age could prove counterproductive. “Republicans will
obviously try to make it an issue but I think those attacks won’t work and
may backfire. If she loses it won’t be because she is too old, and maybe
because she and her policies are too familiar with Obama,” he told msnbc.

Reagan neutralized the age issue by being “very vigorous, athletic” and
looking younger than his 73 years, Rollins said. “In the case of Mrs.
Clinton, the only issue will be her health and was she more seriously ill
then she let on during her secretary of state tenure,” he said.

“The fact that she won’t have a really serious primary challenge allows her
to control the tempo of her campaign,” Rollins continued. “Limited stops,
and less rigorous days will be the rule and she will not have to do as much
campaigning until she is the nominee. If she doesn’t stumble or misspeak
too often she will be fine. A major stumble and the game may change.”

Reagan pushed the age issue aside for good in a second presidential debate
with Mondale with a classic quip. “I will not make age an issue of this
campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s
youth and inexperience,” he said.

That’s essentially the tack Clinton’s allies have taken in responding to
Paul.

“A wise man once told me, ‘Champions don’t punch down.’ I believe that man
was former boxer Ed Rollins. So forgive me if I decline to engage Sen.
Paul,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton strategist who now advises the
pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.

Correct the Record, Clinton’s main defenders in the press, noted that while
Paul lectures on the rigors of a campaign, the freshman senator has never
run for president himself or even reelection. “The excitement and
enthusiasm Hillary Clinton will generate on the campaign trail should she
run for president will be far more than Rand Paul can handle,” said
spokesperson Adrienne Elrod.

After Reagan, Republicans had contend with the age of their presidential
nominees in 1996 with Bob Dole (73), and then again in 2008 with John
McCain (72).

Hillary Clinton would be younger than any of them at the point they would
have been inaugurated, and the same age as Reagan. And the National Journal
argued that thanks Clinton’s gender and recent advances in life expectancy,
he age is better compared to that of Gerald Ford’s (62 when he was sworn
in) than Reagan (69).

In fact, Rand Paul’s father, Ron, was 77 – a full decade older than Clinton
is now – when he ran for president in 2012. Rand Paul didn’t seem to have a
problem with that.

While running against a youthful Barack Obama, McCain often poked fun as
his seniority. “Usually, people watch my performance to see if I need a
drool cup, or stumble around, or anything like that,” he said while
stumping in Florida in 2007.

McCain’s allies were always on the lookout for perceived slights about his
age, like when Obama said McCain was “losing his bearings” during the GOP
primary. The campaign pushed back hard, and was sufficiently offended to
send a fundraising email to supporters calling the “attack” a “not
particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue.” The
campaign also trotted out science showing the cognitive abilities of
70-year-olds was up to snuff.

There concern was understandable. About a third of Americans said McCain’s
age could interfere with his presidential responsibilities, according to
numerous polls from the time. A similar portion expressed that concern
about Dole and Reagan as well.

Ironically, it was the Team Clinton raising age as an issue in 1996. One
top Bill Clinton White House aide called a Dole speech “tired, old,
worn-out.” Another, who would a decade later play a senior role in Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign, called Dole’s rhetoric “disconnected and
dysfunctional.”

“Age can be a factor. I think it was in my race, and it’ll be in hers,”
Dole told Politico earlier this year while honoring World War II veterans.

But one big difference between the Republican candidates and Clinton is
that the age of Reagan and Dole and McCain better matched the GOP base,
which skews older. Clinton’s supporters, meanwhile, include many young
people. Almost 60% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 say they would
vote for Clinton if the election were held today, while Republicans
typically do poorly among young voters.

Young people don’t even perceive Clinton as particularly old. According to
a recent Pew survey, an incredible 69% of 18-29 year olds think Clinton is
either in her 50s or younger. Just 27% accurately place her age as between
60 and 69, while only 2% say she’s older than 70.

That misconception will be quickly corrected if Republicans have anything
to do with it. But as Rollins noted, they also run the risk of backlash if
they go after her age too hard. Karl Rove was roundly condemned for
attacking Clinton’s health this summer.

But Paul may have another goal in mind in addition contrasting his youthful
51 with Clinton’s 69 – getting in her head. In 2008, Clinton was easy to
rattle and throw off course. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe took
deftly took advantage of this trait then, and is warning her of it now.

Paul’s attacks on her age and also those on Monica Lewinsky – perhaps the
two most sensitive areas of Clinton’s life – may be aimed at provoking a
response more damaging than the attack itself.

So far at least, Clinton seems to be experienced enough not to take the
bait.

*BuzzFeed: “Democratic Candidates Spent At Least $700K To Fly In Clintons”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/democratic-candidates-spent-at-least-700k-to-fly-in-clintons>*

By Ruby Cramer

November 11, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The first estimate of the costs of bringing in the Clintons to
campaign. The final total will likely top $1 million by the time more
filings become available.

Bill and Hillary Clinton were the most sought after surrogates in the
Democratic Party this year. He campaigned for more than 47 candidates. She
for more than 26. Supporters estimate that, together, the Clintons
headlined 75 rallies and fundraisers — and logged roughly 50,000 miles
jetting from state to state.

When the Clintons travel, they fly private. This year, their airfare cost
candidates at least $699,000, available state and federal campaign finance
reports show.

Payments from campaigns and party committees to Executive Fliteways, the
independent charter company the Clintons use, could be found for just under
half of the trips the former first family took on behalf of Democrats this
year.

The costs of two Clintons trips — one to Iowa, the other to Kentucky — were
reported earlier this fall by Bloomberg and Politico, respectively.

But the $699,000 figure is the first comprehensive estimate that
establishes the scope of the costs associated with using the Clintons as
surrogates. By the time the rest of the filings come in, the number will
likely exceed $1 million.

The Clintons couldn’t have paid for their own flights. Legally, candidates
are required to pay for surrogate travel or report the costs as an in-kind
contribution.

But not every campaigner flies on private charter planes. Sen. Rand Paul,
who was on the road nearly every week this fall on behalf of Republicans,
often flies commercial — and in coach. He travels alone or with one aide.
In contrast, Mike Huckabee, the former governor who sold himself as an
American everyman, racked up thousands in private air travel bills, as
Politico reported this year.

For the Clintons, flying commercial isn’t as viable an option.

Both fly with multiple members of their Secret Service security detail.
(One person familiar with the former secretary of state’s travel
arrangements said she is usually accompanied by about four people from the
detail.) Staffers also typically accompany the Clintons on their trips. At
rallies on the road this year, Hillary Clinton often appeared with at least
three aides from her personal staff.

As of this week, filings showed there were 32 total expenditures, some made
in installments of two, made this year by campaigns to Executive Fliteways.
Most of the finance reports that show expenditures made after Oct. 15 —
when the Clintons did a large share of campaigning — are not yet available
to the public.

Only candidates and committees that the Clintons supported showed
disbursements this year to Executive Fliteways, which is based in
Ronkonkoma, New York, on Long Island. No other candidate or surrogate
appeared to make use of the charter company. The 32 payments were each
recorded in filings for a campaign or party just before, or soon after, a
Clinton event for that entity.

The costs — which total $699,172.82 between both Clintons — are based on a
review of 2014 filings to the Federal Election Commission and to
secretaries of state, with use of the Congressional Quarterly Political
MoneyLine database.

The millions the pair raised at fundraisers far surpassed any travel
expenses candidates had to cover. Every rally with a Clinton also garnered
attention from the national press — valuable earned media for campaigns.

But the Clintons benefited from the trips too. The former secretary of
state, who is considering another run for president, reintroduced herself
to voters this fall on the campaign trail and honed a new stump speech.

The average cost for each Clinton trip was roughly $21,000.

Most of the listings for the flights are recorded in finance reports under
a memo like “travel expense” or “airfare.” A handful of the expenditures
listed by the campaigns with more specific notes — like “Charter Flight -
WJC” or “Flight - HC 10/16/2014.”

Bill Clinton, who campaigned aggressively for Democrats from the spring to
Election Day, racked up the majority of the costs that are so far public.
Filings for 25 of his events show he billed campaigns at least $610,370.30
for his air travel.

Because Hillary Clinton held most of her rallies and fundraisers in late
October, only a fraction of the expenses associated with her travel are
currently public.

Payments for the seven trips for which filings are available show her
travel cost campaigns at least $88,802.52.

One joint event with her husband at the Iowa Steak Fry, an annual
fundraiser hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin, cost $50,099.82 in airfare.

That bill was first reported by Bloomberg last month. The tab for another
Clinton trip, an Oct. 15 visit to Kentucky on behalf of Alison Lundergan
Grimes, who lost her race for Senate, was first reported earlier this month
by Politico.

Executive Fliteways owns a fleet of private jets and has three bases across
New York, including one at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains —
a 15-minute drive from the Clintons’ home of 15 years in the hamlet of
Chappaqua.

Public flight records show a Falcon 900 jet housed at Executive Fliteways
charted the same course as at least two Clinton trips this fall. The
company’s website features a picture and description of the plane, which
seats 12 passengers.

Clinton has considered basing her possible presidential campaign out of
White Plains, Politico reported this month. If she does put her
headquarters there, the Westchester Airport could serve as a convenient
travel hub for the campaign.

A list of the costs associated with the 32 campaign trips is included below:

Feb. 25, WJC: Alison Lundergan Grimes fundraiser in Louisville, Kentucky

Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $28,670.00
(made in two payments: $25,000.00 and $3,670.00) on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21,
respectively, for “Transportation”

April 5, WJC: James Lee Witt rally in Hot Springs, Arkansas

James Lee Witt’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $21,831.66 on April 3
for “Flight for President Clinton”

April 6, WJC: Pat Hays fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas

Pat Hays’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $10,726.33 for “Airfare”

April 10, WJC: Marjorie Margolies fundraiser in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Marjorie Margolies’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $6,610.50 on Apr. 10
for “Travel”

April 26, WJC: Michigan Democratic Party fundraiser in Detroit, Michigan

The Michigan Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways
$37,919.61 on April 28 for “Travel expense”

May 3, WJC: Mike Ross fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas

Mike Ross’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $7,119.80 on May 4 for
“Travel Expenses”

May 13, WJC: Anthony Brown fundraiser in Potomac, Maryland

Anthony Brown’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $10,581.00 on May 21 for
“Charter Flight - WJC”

June 13, WJC: Ohio Democratic Party fundraiser in Columbus, Ohio

The Ohio Democratic Party paid Executive Fliteways $28,414.00 on June 22

June 20, WJC: Rahm Emanuel fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois

Rahm Emanuel’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $25,635.00 on July 1 for
“Event Costs - Travel Chicago for Rahm Emanuel”

June 28, WJC: Florida Leadership Blue Dinner fundraiser in Hollywood,
Florida

The Democratic Executive Committee of Florida paid Executive Fliteways
$47,088.77 on June 25 for “Air Travel”

Aug. 6, WJC: Alison Lundergan Grimes fundraiser and rally in Lexington,
Kentucky

Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $23,265.00 on
Aug. 11 for “Transportation”

Aug. 15, WJC: Arkansas Democratic Party fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas

The Democratic Party of Arkansas paid Executive Fliteways $20,366.89 on
Sep. 2 for “Fundraising Event Speaker Travel”

Aug. 27, WJC: Seth Magaziner fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island

Seth Magaziner’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $14,418.00 on Sept. 2
for “Travel & Lodging”

Sept. 2, WJC: Dan Malloy rally in New Haven, Connecticut

The Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways
$14,901.59 on Sept. 5 for “Airfare”

Sept. 2, WJC: Mike Michaud-Maine Democratic Party rally in Portland, Maine

The Maine Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways $14,901.59 on
Sept. 4 for “Travel”

Sept. 5, WJC: Charlie Crist rally in Miami, Florida

Charlie Crist’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $41,072.52 on Sept. 5 for
“Travel Expenses”

Sept. 6, WJC: Mary Landrieu fundraiser in New Orleans, Louisiana

The Big Easy Committee paid Executive Fliteways $41,072.52 on Sept. 8 for
“Travel”

Sept. 13, WJC: Michelle Nunn fundraiser in Atlanta, Georgia

The Nunn Victory Fund paid Executive Fliteways $34,831.86 on Sept. 12 for
“Fundraising Event Expense”

Sept. 14, WJC: Harkin Steak Fry fundraiser in Indianola, Iowa

The Harkin Steak Fry 2014 committee paid Executive Fliteways $50,099.82 on
Sept. 10 for “travel expenses”

Sept. 16, WJC: Fred DuVal fundraiser in Scottsdale, Arizona

Fred DuVal’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $38,000.00 on Sept. 18 for
“Event Expenses - Other”

Sept. 30, WJC: Anthony Brown fundraiser Potomac, Maryland

Anthony Brown’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $7,770.00 on Oct. 6 for
“Event expense”

Sept. 30, WJC: Kay Hagan fundraiser in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

The Hagan Forward NC committee paid Executive Fliteways $29,230.00 on Sept.
26 for “Travel”

Oct. 2, HRC: Charlie Crist fundraiser and retail stop in Miami, Florida

Charlie Crist’s campaign and the Charlie Crist for Florida committee paid
Executive Fliteways $20,000.00 on Sept. 29 ($10,000 each) for
“Travel/Airfare” and “Travel Expenses,” respectively

Oct. 6, WJC: Arkansas Democrats rallies in Arkansas

The Democratic Party of Arkansas paid Executive Fliteways $10,000.00 on
Sept. 19 for “Event Speaker Airfare”

Oct. 8, WJC: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fundraiser in
California

The DSCC paid Executive Fliteways $23,372.50 on Oct. 9 for “Travel Expenses”

Oct. 13, HRC: Mark Udall fundraiser and retail stop in Denver, Colorado

Mark Udall’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $4,339.00 on Oct. 14 for
“Airplane charter”

Oct. 15, HRC: Alison Lundergan Grimes rally and fundraiser in Louisville,
Kentucky

The Kentucky State Democratic Central Executive Committee paid Executive
Fliteways $17,192.50 on Oct. 14 for “Air Travel”

Oct. 16, HRC: Gary Peters-Mark Schauer rally/fundraiser in Rochester,
Michigan

The Michigan Democratic State Central Committee paid Executive Fliteways
$25,940.00 on Oct. 14 (Made in two payments: $20,233.20 & $5,706.80) for
“Travel Expense” and “Flight - HC 10/16/2014,” respectively

Oct 21, HRC: Mark Udall-John Hickenlooper-Andrew Romanoff rally in Aurora,
Colorado

Andrew Romanoff’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $542.38 on Oct. 14 for
“Travel”

Oct. 24, HRC: Gina Raimondo rally/fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island

The Rhode Island Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways
$10,394.32 on Oct. 23 for “Travel & Lodging”

Oct. 24, HRC: Mike Michaud rally/fundraiser in Scarborough, Maine

The Maine Democratic State Committee paid Executive Fliteways $10,394.32 on
Oct. 24 for “Travel”

Oct. 26, WJC: Charlie Crist rally in Tampa, Florida

Charlie Crist’s campaign paid Executive Fliteways $22,471.34 on Oct. 27 for
“Travel/Airfare”

*The Reflector: Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy grows with support
network in place*
<http://www.reflector-online.com/opinion/article_4b90d47e-6931-11e4-95cc-bb4a67f4cd7c.html>

By Frank Bradford
November 11, 2014, 7:00 A.M. EST

She is a lawyer, mother, first Lady of Arkansas and the United States, U.S.
Senator, United States Secretary of State and grandmother; could she now be
President? Hillary Clinton is a polarizing public figure who has broken
down many barriers in her lifetime. What is next for her remains a mystery.
Hillary Clinton would be the first woman president if she decided to run
and was elected. Although historic, it is not the only thing to make her
appear the most qualified for the presidency; she brings a great amount of
public service experience to the table. She has recently written a memoir
titled “Hard Choices” after leaving her post as head of the U.S. Department
of State about her time spent there.

After many decades in politics, many see her presidency as an opportunity
to keep the White House in the hands of the Democratic Party once President
Barrack Obama’s term is complete. Once a member of the Republican Party
while growing up, she decided to switch parties because of the different
directions the parties were taking in the era of Vietnam and civil rights.
Sitting as perhaps the most well-known potential candidate for presidency,
Hillary Clinton was viewed by many as the next democratic nominee in the
2016 presidential elections; even before the recent Republican power surge
in the U.S. Congress.

In the days since the 2014 midterm elections, there has been a spike in
articles from major news outlets,  such as MSNBC, Huffington Post and
Politico looking ahead at the next election and a possible Clinton White
House run.

If Hillary Clinton does indeed decide to run, she would have a lot of
support in her corner. A super political action committee, called Ready for
Hillary, which is already responsible for raising millions of dollars and
has only been operating for nearly two years. According to Hans Goff, the
organization’s southern regional organizing director, this organization is
the kind of grassroots support Clinton would need to win the presidency.

“Ready for Hillary is a national grassroots movement encouraging Hillary
Clinton to run for president,” Goff said. “From the very beginning of this
effort, we’ve sought to show Hillary that if she decides to run for
president, she would have millions of Americans standing behind her, ready
to help her win. What we are building is the type of early, grassroots
support that is necessary for a successful presidential effort.”

Goff said the organization is ready to mobilize at a moments notice.

“To date, our national grassroots network is nearly three million
supporters strong, and growing. Those are supporters we can engage the
moment she makes a decision,” Goff said.

This past summer I had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of Ready
for Hillary outside of Washington D.C. and was astonished by all of the
interns and staff members working there. I felt a sense of creativity and
innovation in the air while touring the office. Everyone seemed to be from
different places and enjoyed working on issues they saw as important to the
democratic platform. Ready for Hillary also uses a bus, The Hillary Bus,
which travels state to state to different communities and college campuses
building more support.

Another political organization called American Bridge is led by a group of
former Clinton advisers, including Mississippi native Burns Strider.
American Bridge and another organization called Correct the Record, are
helping fight for Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential
candidates from the Democratic Party by correcting attacks from the right
wing media and pundits and conducting opposition research.  Each of these
groups are taking advantage of the popularity of social media, which has
become a growing tool during election season.

The world of politics seems to be neverending. After each election, it’s
almost time to prepare for the next one. Almost everything candidates say
and do is analyzed and looked at as fair game for the opponents waiting for
the other to falter. All we can do now is just sit and wait for candidates
to start officially preparing and declaring in the coming months.

*BuzzFeed: “The Clintons Were Not The Losers Of The Midterms”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/clinton-romney-2014>*

By Katherine Miller

November 10, 2014, 6:11 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Mitt Romney has the stupidest spreadsheet. We must stop
surrogate madness.

Mitt Romney called 80 candidates last week after they won their elections.
He campaigned for almost as many. He campaigned for so many people,
actually, that the people around him kept a spreadsheet with wins and
losses tallied in it:

“In two spreadsheets circulated last week, Romney’s ‘winning percentage’ is
contrasted with Clinton’s. After listing the candidates that each of them
endorsed, the analysis claims that 66% of Romney’s picks emerged victorious
in the GOP midterm wave compared with 33% for Clinton.

“Clinton is marked down as having backed 39 candidates, while Romney
endorsed 76 candidates. There are descriptions of Clinton’s activities on
behalf of a candidate, whether it was a rally, a fundraiser, a robocall or
just an endorsement.”

This is the consultant’s version of yelling “SCOREBOARD, BITCHES.” But it’s
also insane. Who in America walked into a middle school gym or whatever and
thought, “I’m here today to vote for a Republican because Mitt Romney did a
fundraiser”?

The reasons given so far for the Republican wave have included: the
widespread unpopularity of President Obama, good Republican candidates and
campaigns in key races, bad Democratic candidates and campaigns in key
races, a failure to turn out core Democratic constituencies that left the
electorate significantly older and more conservative. No one has really
argued that Mitt Romney’s surrogacy drove the Republican wave, as though he
were Ursula at the end of The Little Mermaid.

And yet, the reverse idea has been applied to the Clintons.

The Clintons, together, campaigned about as much as Romney did,
individually. These ranged from people like Martha Coakley — who by the
time Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton got to her was already expected
to lose to a Republican in Massachusetts — to people in closer races like
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (winner) and Rep. Bruce Braley (loser). Their top
target was Alison Lundergan Grimes, the daughter of a prominent Clinton
ally, the beneficiary of a lot of Hollywood money, especially from a top
Clinton fundraiser, and the subject of polling that made the race look
closer than it ultimately was.

The idea of the Romney spreadsheet actually throws into perfect relief the
mad logic in the idea that the Clintons lost last week. The entire notion
obscures the real value of surrogates: mostly fundraising, plus earned
media.

A great example of this is Kay Hagan, a center-left Democrat with a whisper
of a public personality. She won in 2008 on the ballot with Obama. Despite
a working theory that she could not possibly win reelection in a redder
North Carolina that disapproves of the president, she held a polling lead
over Thom Tillis all fall. Ten days before the election, Hillary Clinton
did a drive by appearance in Charlotte, and gave a version of her October
speech (focus on families, wages, and women) tailored to North Carolina. At
no point during the event did Hillary Clinton stand on Kay Hagan’s
shoulders and shout, fire emanating from her eyes, A vote for Hagan is a
vote for meeeee. This, top to bottom, is about as generic as you get.

And as it turns out, the polls were terrible: Hagan lost.

Rand Paul trolled the hell out of these losses (why not?), posting an
entire album of #HillarysLosers on Facebook. Paul himself had campaigned
for Tillis; the album included one featuring Hagan and Clinton.

Earlier this year, though, a few days before North Carolina’s Republican
primary, Paul also stumped once for Greg Brannon, the libertarian doctor
who once ran a conspiracy website, running a long-shot bid against Tillis,
the speaker of the North Carolina House. Brannon got blown out by Tillis.
Was that Paul’s fault? No. He was there once — and Brannon was going to
lose.

Scott Walker actually told the truth a few weeks ago, in a public shot at
Chris Christie and the amount of money the Republican Governors Association
had given his campaign, days before the New Jersey governor flew to
Wisconsin.

“[Christie] is coming because he asked if he could come and we weren’t
going to say no,” Walker told Politico. “But we’re not looking for
surrogates. The people that have been campaigning with me are by and large
from Wisconsin.”

Money. We are looking for money. Who cares about surrogates?

*Washington Post: “Mitt Romney filling post-midterm role as key
behind-the-scenes GOP player”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-filling-post-midterm-role-as-key-behind-the-scenes-gop-player/2014/11/10/61ca145e-68f9-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html>*

By Robert Costa

November 10, 2014, 2:20 p.m. EST

Mitt Romney is not running for president. But since last week’s GOP
midterm-election romp, he has cemented his role as one of the Republican
Party’s key behind-the-scenes players, nurturing relationships with members
of Congress and keeping in close touch with longtime consultants.

According to several top Republicans, Romney made more than 80 phone calls
to GOP candidates last Tuesday and Wednesday to congratulate them on their
victories, including Senate candidates Joni Ernst of Iowa and Thom Tillis
of North Carolina. He spent election night in Boston watching returns at
the home of former aide Ron Kaufman, stopping in later at the Seaport Hotel
to congratulate Massachusetts governor-elect Charlie Baker (R) on his win.

Some longtime allies also continue to prepare the ground for another Romney
presidential campaign, despite his continued disavowals of interest. In the
days after the election, a group of Romney supporters began circulating a
memo that compared the success of his midterm endorsements with those made
by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic
presidential nomination.

The documents — which were obtained by The Washington Post — concluded that
two out of three Romney candidates won their elections, compared with one
in three for Clinton.

According to three Republicans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
be candid, Romney’s associates are convinced that if former Florida
governor Jeb Bush does not run, Romney could consider another White House
bid. He has told friends that he feels positive about the likely GOP field,
but also worries that many of the contenders may not have what it takes to
beat Clinton.

In two spreadsheets circulated last week, Romney’s “winning percentage” is
contrasted with Clinton’s. After listing the candidates that each of them
endorsed, the analysis claims that 66 percent of Romney’s picks emerged
victorious in the GOP midterm wave compared with 33 percent for Clinton.

Clinton is marked down as having backed 39 candidates, while Romney
endorsed 76 candidates. There are descriptions of Clinton’s activities on
behalf of a candidate, whether it was a rally, a fundraiser, a robocall or
just an endorsement.

The Republicans familiar with Romney’s inner circle said the medium is part
of the message. To nudge the data-driven Romney, they are deliberately
charting returns and his recent political activity in Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets, knowing that numbers are the best way to win his attention.
In chats with him, they also are talking up his standing in the party,
which they argue has been bolstered by his work for the party this year.

Romney, who was in Washington on Friday to speak at the Israeli American
Council’s national conference, has seen a resurgence of sorts in recent
months, as dozens of campaigns asked for his assistance. He spent the final
days before Tuesday’s election in Alaska, where he stumped for Republican
Senate candidate Dan Sullivan.

At Friday’s event, Romney sharply criticized President Obama’s foreign
policy. “It’s tempting to think he’s just inept,” Romney said, “but the
reality is, he does have a foreign policy” — one that is “weakening our
military and distancing us from our allies.”

A poll by Democracy Corps, a Democratic group, showed that those who voted
in Tuesday’s GOP-leaning elections favored Romney over Clinton by 52
percent to 46 percent. A Des Moines Register-Bloomberg News poll released
last month showed Romney as the only potential 2016 candidate who would
beat Clinton among likely Iowa voters, 44 percent to 43 percent.

In an interview with Fox News on election night, Romney dodged 2016
questions but noted that he campaigned in 27 states this year. “I am going
to continue to fight and campaign for people who I believe in, that can get
the country going in the right direction,” he said.

*Washington Post: “The tricky Obama-Clinton handoff begins”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-tricky-obama-clinton-handoff-begins/2014/11/11/0f650828-6605-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html>*

By Juliet Eilperin and Anne Gearan

November 11, 2014, 10:42 a.m. EST

As the presumptive Democratic front-runner to succeed President Obama,
Hillary Rodham Clinton has many of the same goals as the president,
starting with the need to reassemble and reenergize the coalition
responsible for Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012.

But if she becomes the nominee, Clinton will have to unlink herself from
Obama over the next two years, while positioning herself to inherit the
coalition of young people and minorities that helped put Obama in the White
House.

“Young people want to be inspired by someone and something,” said Stephanie
Cutter, a partner at the Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies
and Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012. “The president can and will
help energize them over the next two years, but he’s not on the ballot in
2016. The next nominee must also reach and inspire them.”

The poor showing by Democrats in last week’s midterm election means Obama
must reboot his second-term agenda and restore the Democrats to political
health as his own star as party leader begins to fade and Clinton’s is on
the rise.

Over time, the interests of the country’s two leading Democrats will not
always align.

For now, a prevailing view among Democrats holds that the Republican
Congress will make it easier for Clinton to define herself and blunt the
need to criticize or draw comparisons with Obama.

“President Obama’s legacy is now entirely dependent on the election of a
Democratic successor as president who will protect and extend it, not
demolish it,” said David Brock, a Clinton ally and chairman of the
pro-Democratic super PAC American Bridge. “Should she run, they both now
have a common enemy in a Republican Congress that will define politics
through 2016.”

As Clinton seeks to differentiate herself ahead of a presidential election
in which Obama will not be on the ballot, strategists said she probably
would try to show voters what she would do differently in key areas in
which Obama has disappointed many Democrats, such as immigration policy,
and would move even more aggressively on environmental issues.

“I would underline the fact that they have very, very different and
separate roles,” said Geoff Garin, a Clinton adviser and pollster in 2008.
“While there will be plenty of times when it will be in each other’s
interest to kind of reinforce the issues and messages of the other, I think
more frequently the imperative will be to stay out of each other’s way.”

One longtime Obama adviser said the president is well aware that Clinton
will have to distance herself from him, and complain publicly about things
he does. Obama is unconcerned about that, the adviser said, citing
Clinton’s somewhat pointed criticism of Obama this year over U.S. policy in
Syria.

“He didn’t care,” the adviser said. “He’s a pretty confident guy.”

In an interview, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer took the long view
of Obama’s common cause with Clinton and future Democrats. “If the Obama
coalition can become the Democratic coalition, it will shape the contours
of the debate for years to come and pave the way for a lot of things we
feel strongly about, that may not get done in our last two years,” Pfeiffer
said.

Although Obama is deeply invested in having his party hold on to the White
House, there may be times that he will pursue policies at odds with the
next nominee’s interests.

“History would say that the fortunes of other Democrats is not what drives
Barack Obama’s decision-making,” said Jamal Simmons, a principal with the
Raben Group, a Democratic consulting firm.

Republicans view Obama as a doubled-edged sword against Clinton, because he
is both unpopular at the moment and the one who has been able to turn out
voters.

“When the Obama campaign won in ’08, it was a hostile takeover of the
Democratic Party,” said Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for Republican
Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “With two historic back-to-back
midterm defeats, all of their operations, their technology, have proven to
be ineffective when Barack Obama is not on the ballot.”

But Democrats do not believe that Republicans have won over those voters,
or can.

Mo Elleithee, communications director of the Democratic National Committee,
said that Democrats cannot “be complacent,” but that they had held onto key
groups even in off-year elections.

Still, on Saturday DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said she
was starting a review of “what went wrong” with the party’s performance,
saying, “The electoral success we have when our presidential nominee is
able to make the case to the country as a whole doesn’t translate in other
elections.”

Several of the groups that backed Obama in large numbers when he was on the
ballot — young people, Latinos and single women — either came out in lower
numbers on Nov. 4, or shifted somewhat away from the Democrats.

Latinos — who composed 10 percent of the electorate in 2012 and favored
Obama 44 points over Romney — backed Democrats by a 26-point margin this
time, according to exit polls. Asian Americans split evenly between the two
parties in the midterm election, compared with the last presidential
election, in which they supported Obama by 47 points.

Some of the president’s critics believe that Democrats abandoned their base
voters, who then returned the favor.

“If this November was any indication about what happens when you try to toy
with your principles and your beliefs, what did you get? Nothing,” Rep.
Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said recently, questioning why the White House
delayed issuing an executive order on immigration. “You lost the Senate and
you angered and disillusioned a community that has always been so loyal to
you as a party.”

Many inside and outside the White House are particularly concerned about
how the party can reconnect and recapture voters between the ages of 18 and
29, who had once been so much more enthusiastic about the president. Those
voters made up 19 percent of the electorate in 2012, but 13 percent this
year.

The White House and a potential Clinton campaign would have natural common
cause in bolstering Democrats’ traditional advantage among women over the
next two years, strategists said, whether rhetorically or through new
administration initiatives. Both Obama and Clinton are likely to draw
contrasts with the GOP Congress, and particularly anything it does on
abortion or contraception coverage.

An emphasis on reproductive rights did not save Democratic Sen. Mark
Udall’s reelection bid in Colorado on Tuesday. But Marcy Stech, spokeswoman
for the Democratic group Emily’s List, credits the themes of women’s
economic security and empowerment — which Clinton would be likely to carry
forward now — as reasons more women turned out this year compared with the
2010 midterms.

“That conversation will live on, especially when it comes to raising the
minimum wage, ending gender discrimination in pay, and women’s access to
health care,” Stech said.

However, Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, warned in
a memo Friday that last week’s results mean the playing field has become
much more difficult for Democrats.

Party officials, he said, need to acknowledge the new structural challenges
now that the GOP will control not only the House and the Senate but 32
governorships and 66 of the 99 state legislative chambers. Republicans’
wins outside the presidency “may even leave the GOP a stronger national
party” by virtue of its “strength of candidates, bench, staff and
consultant talent, fundraising capacity, use of technology and of course
control over government and policy.”

To the extent that that assessment is true, it is a shared problem for
Obama and the next Democratic nominee. The consequences of failing to
rebuild, however, are more dire for the 2016 nominee, and therefore many
expect that much of the rebuilding will fall to Clinton.

The GOP is eager to link Clinton to the Oval Office’s current occupant.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski sent reporters a
scorecard noting Democratic losses that said, “After a historic rebuke, the
Obama-Clinton policies will be on the ballot again in 2016.”

Major Obama donors already are lining up for Clinton, lessening worry among
Clinton advisers that very loyal Obama backers would be nonplussed by a
second Clinton candidacy.

The morning after the midterm election, political organizers working for
Hollywood mogul and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg began
securing promises for future donations to Priorities USA Action, the super
PAC that would serve as the big-money advertising vehicle for Clinton.

“We will be reaching out in the weeks ahead to set up one-on-ones and
meet-and-greets to talk about the urgency of the task ahead,” said Andy
Spahn, a political strategist who advises Katzenberg and other clients.
Meanwhile, Clinton is quietly setting up meetings with potential supporters
and advisers. A 10th anniversary celebration for the William J. Clinton
Library and Museum in Arkansas next week is expected to provide a setting
for sideline strategy sessions for a Hillary Clinton campaign. One key
tactical question will be how much distance she should put between herself
and Obama, particularly in light of last week’s dismal results. Rosenberg
argues that even those results suggest that the answer is not too much.

“Looking ahead to 2016, I think it would be wise for the entire party, but
particularly its presidential aspirants, to learn the lesson of [Al] Gore
2000 and the 2014 midterms,” Rosenberg said. “You cannot run away from the
president of your party.”

The grass-roots Ready for Hillary PAC, meanwhile, plans a major meeting of
donors and financial strategists in New York on Nov. 21. The group sent out
a fundraising appeal via e-mail to supporters last Wednesday.

“Don’t let last night’s results discourage you,” it said. “Now more than
ever, we need to show Hillary that we’re ready for her to get in this race.”

*MSNBC: “Rand Paul broaches the subject of Hillary Clinton’s age”
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rand-paul-broaches-the-subject-hillary-clintons-age>*

By Steve Benen

November 11, 2014, 9:27 a.m. EST

For reasons that should be obvious, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seems a little
preoccupied with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lately. Last
week, Republicans scored big election victories on Tuesday, and by
Wednesday morning, the Kentucky senator was running around calling the
results “a repudiation of Hillary Clinton.”

Yesterday, he went just a little further.

“Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president? He won’t say it outright, but
that’s the question Sen. Rand Paul is getting at.

“‘It’s a very taxing undertaking to go through. It’s a rigorous physical
ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency,’ the likely
Republican presidential candidate told Politico Monday.”

Politico added that in context, the senator was “none too subtly raising
the issue of her age.”

Asked about possibly clarifying the comments, a Paul spokesperson told
BuzzFeed, “Nothing to add here.”

At a certain level, it’s hard for even Clinton’s most ardent supporters to
get too worked up about stuff like this. It’s a certainty that Hillary
Clinton has heard more insulting comments than these, and Rand Paul’s
willingness to throw verbal jabs in her direction is only going intensify
as the process unfolds.

For that matter, the chatter itself is inevitable. Reagan, at age 69, faced
questions about his age in 1980, as did John McCain in 2008 at age 72 and
Bob Dole in 1996 at age 73. Clinton is 67 now, she’ll be 69 in 2016, and if
she runs she’ll have to talk about this. I rather doubt this will be a
problem for a possible Clinton campaign, but we’ll find out soon enough.

What’s irksome, though, is the fact the chiding is coming from Rand Paul,
of all people, who probably hasn’t thought this one through.

In 2008, a Texas congressman by the name of Ron Paul launched his second
presidential campaign. He was, at the time, 73 years old.

In 2012, Ron Paul, launched his third bid for national office, and ran an
even more competitive presidential campaign. He was 77.

Rand Paul, Ron Paul’s son, has spent a good chunk of his adult like
campaigning on his father’s behalf, promoting his father’s strange beliefs,
and urging voters to support his father’s presidential campaigns.

So maybe the senator should leave questions about Hillary Clinton’s age to
others?

As for the question on the merits, BuzzFeed’s report noted, “When Clinton
campaigned for Democrats during the midterms this fall, she kept a
demanding schedule. In a 54-day period, she appeared at 45 events in 20
states, stumping for at least 26 different candidates, according to her
office. “

It’s not unreasonable to think she’s prepared for “a rigorous physical
ordeal.”

*Capital New York: “Rangel now ‘Ready for Hillary’ too”
<http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/11/8556416/rangel-now-ready-hillary-too>*

By Conor Skelding

November 10, 2014, 5:39 p.m. EST

Rep. Charles Rangel said he doesn't see any realistic challenger to Hillary
Clinton in 2016.

"I'm ready for Hillary,' said Rangel in an interview on HuffPost Live.
"But, you know, I don't like coronations. I don't see where anyone is gonna
challenge her, on the Republican side or the Democratic side."

"Is she unbeatable?" asked host Marc Lamont Hill.

"Put it another way, Marc. Unbeatable against whom?" replied Rangel,
shrugging. "I mean, I can't say that, it's just that there is nobody,
Republican or Democrat, that has reached a level of confidence or ability
that could challenge her."

"I mean, anytime you're talking about Elizabeth Warren, then it means you
have a lot of respect for Elizabeth Warren, but has nothing to do with
becoming president," he said. "But, I could not believe that a guy named
Obama from Chicago was gonna beat [Hillary]. With all the work I had done
in New York State, and all the work she had done as a senator, and this guy
comes from Illinois."

Rangel touted Clinton's strength in 2000 too, when he rallied the state's
Democratic establishment around her ability to clear a crowded race that,
at the time, included Rudy Giuliani.

Rangel has continued to promote Clinton's credentials for a future
presidential race, even as he worried at this time last year that it was
"premature" to endorse her hypothetical candidacy.

But Democrats have expressed a newfound urgency for Clinton to plan her
2016 run since the disastrous midterms last week, and Clinton has
reportedly begun a listening tour to start the process.

Rangel said the Republican wave wasn't based on any affirmative message.

"The Republicans who clearly won—the bright spot is that they didn't win on
any issue that I would be proud to be associated with," Rangel said.

"It was negative. They took advantage of the lack of popularity of the
president," he said. "I don't remember any Republican talking about, 'Elect
me because something good is what I'm supporting.'"

He also rationalized the behavior of Democrats who distanced themselves
from Obama.

"Candidates for public office are not always mentally acute ... when we say
we're running, we're not reasonable people," he said. "And, if someone
says, 'Standing next to Mother Teresa in this election is going to be
difficult for you to win,' some people would say, 'And who is Mother
Teresa?'"

*Washington Post column: Richard Cohen: “Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’
only hope”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-hillary-clinton-is-the-democrats-only-hope/2014/11/10/5a5a41ce-690a-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html>*

By Richard Cohen

November 10, 2014, 7:52 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton looms over the Democratic Party like Evita from her
balcony. She is the presumptive presidential nominee, the likely one, the
inevitable one, the one and only, the one before all others run in awe and
panic. Behold the biggest and, in a sense, only thing in the Democratic
Party. All she lacks is a song.

In contrast, the GOP is like a preschool class before nap time: seemingly
dozens of potential presidential candidates crawling all over each other.
Some, such as Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, we have seen before. Others,
such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have not yet run for president, but they
probably will. So might Rob Portman, John Kasich, Scott Walker and Mike
Pence — solid Midwestern types all. And then there’s Paul Ryan, who was on
the ticket last time, and Mike Huckabee, who has done this sort of thing in
the past (won Iowa, remember?) and also Chris Christie and Rand Paul. It
will be a banner season for political consultants.

Not mentioned yet — but here he comes — is Jeb Bush. His brother, the
former president, put Jeb’s chances of running at “50-50.” Continuing in
that vein, George W. told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that his brother “is
not afraid to succeed” nor, he said a moment later, “is he afraid to fail.”
He might be afraid of the impact that a campaign and the presidency could
have on family life, but the former president said even all this can be
overcome. Their father, George H.W., did it.

The prospect of another Clinton-Bush presidential race has to fill many
Americans with dread. It’s not that either one is unacceptable. It’s rather
that their candidacies will mean countless stories about political
dynasties and why they are, for some reason, bad. We will hear comparisons
to the Roosevelts, the Adamses, the Tafts, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys
and even lesser dynasties such as the Cuomos of New York — Mario, the
father, Andrew, the son, and, had Andrew stayed married to Kerry Kennedy,
just about every office in the land.

Dynastic politics has, in effect, become the American way. Udalls run in
the West, Carters and Nunns in Georgia, a Brown is inevitably the governor
of California and a Daley mayor of Chicago, just not at this moment. But
none dominates their party as Hillary does the Democrats. You could see her
as the consequence of dynastic politics — her husband was the president,
after all — but right now her dominance is more a product of what has
happened to the Democrats than anything she has done as a politician. As my
colleague Dan Balz has pointed out, the past two midterm elections have
done to the Democratic Party what World War I did to the French political
elite — decimated it. What was lost was not just individual races but the
future. Republicans will now control 23 states — the governorship and the
legislature — while the Democrats will have just seven. States, in the
coinage of Justice Louis Brandeis, are the laboratories of democracy.
They’re where both interesting ideas and personalities often come from.

I have grave doubts about Hillary Clinton’s viability. She still has no
resounding message, and in an anti-Washington era she is the very
personification of the loathed capital city. Her credentials, her
experience, her marriage to Bill and her association with President Obama
will be used against her. By many measures, she may be the best candidate,
but this is a country that punished George W. Bush for an unnecessary war
by inexplicably electing him to a second term. He was, as they say, likable.

At this point in the election cycle of 2008, Obama was a very junior
senator from Illinois. By the end of that year, he was the president-elect.
We are in a dizzying era of dizzying change. The United States is now at
war with the Islamic State, which seemed to come out of nowhere. Netflix,
Amazon and the smartphone were mere rumors, it seems, just yesterday. We
are psyched on the juice of change. Somehow Clinton needs to embody that
zeitgeist — to be an insider with an outsider’s revulsion for what she’s
seen.

It’s not possible that Clinton is actually mulling over whether to run. Not
only does she have a moral obligation to do so — she’s repressing other
potential candidacies and vacuuming up their funds — but the sooner she
drops the standard political pose and exudes genuine feelings, the better a
candidate she will be. She is not the Democratic Party’s best hope. She is
its only hope.

*Los Angeles Times column: Jonah Goldberg: “Democrats' loss is not a win
for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1111-goldberg-elections-hillary-dems-20141111-column.html>*

By Jonah Goldberg

November 10, 2014, 4:25 p.m. EST

In the old Soviet Union, Kremlinologists would read the state party
newspaper Pravda not so much for the news it contained, but to glean what
the commissars wanted readers to believe the commissars were thinking. The
closest we have to that in America is the New York Times. Obviously, it's
not a state organ and there are many fine journalists there, but it does
play a similar role for the Democratic Party, often reporting less on what
Democrats actually think and more on what Democrats want readers to believe
is the current state of Democratic thinking.

Two days after the midterm Democratic Gotterdammerung, Team Clinton let it
be known that it thinks the election was good news for it. "Midterms, for
Clinton Team, Aren't All Gloom," proclaimed the understated headline in the
Times. "A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the
party's midterm defeats," reports Amy Chozick. There's no mention of any
advisors seeing a downside. Indeed, a few sentences later, Chozick tells us
there is a "consensus … among those close to Mrs. Clinton that it is time
to accelerate her schedule."

"In many ways," Chozick continues, "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."

Maybe it's true that that there is a silver lining for Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the shellacking her party took last week. Maybe her ineffective
stumping for Democrats means nothing. Maybe a 17-percentage-point loss for
putative Clinton Democrat Mark Pryor in Clinton's home base of Arkansas is
a blessing in deep, deep, deep disguise. Maybe the staggering indifference
of the Democratic coalition of young people and minorities on display last
week is proof that they are really just husbanding their voting energies
for 2016. And maybe the fact that the "war on women" shtick proved as stale
as a 1980s sitcom catchphrase is irrelevant for a candidate so invested in
her gender.

But the notion that this monumental rebuke of Clinton's party, and the
administration she served in, amounts to an unambiguous Clinton win invites
many to ask, "What you talkin' 'bout, Hillary?"

You can always tell you're being spun if the opposite facts would yield the
same result. Does anyone doubt that if the Democrats Clinton vigorously
campaigned for had held on to the Senate that the same people would be
telling the New York Times that the election results were a boon for
Clinton? If the midterm results are scaring away potential left-wing
insurgents, why is Clinton Inc. expediting its schedule? Shouldn't the lack
of a challenger make it easier for Clinton to lay low for a while longer?

Not according to this alleged consensus among her brain trust.

Chozick quotes from a "Ready for Hillary" fundraising email: "Now more than
ever we need to show Hillary that we're ready for her to get in this race."
"America needs Hillary's leadership."

Ah, so at a time when an unpopular president — in profound denial about
what the voters were saying on election day — is tarnishing the whole
Democratic brand, it makes irrefutably good sense for Clinton to further
merge her own brand with her party's?

How will President Obama respond to the notion that Clinton must now assume
the mantle of leader of her party, never mind the nation? What, exactly,
can an out-of-work politician do that will actually provide tangible proof
of her "leadership"? How will it help Clinton to distance herself from an
incumbent president still popular among the base voters she will inevitably
need in 2016? Frankly, I have no idea.

Although Obama and much of the media establishment are convinced that the
midterms were a revolt against, variously, Washington, incumbents,
gridlock, obstructionism and/or a deep-seated desire among Americans for
Washington to "get stuff done," the actual election returns were almost
uniformly about throwing out incumbent Democrats, reelecting
"obstructionist" Republicans or electing a new generation of Republicans
who vowed to stand up to Obama.

I think it's obvious Democrats could use a fresh face or at least a
politician more adept navigating such problems. The consensus thinks
differently — or at least wants you to think it does.

*Bloomberg column: Francis Wilkinson: “Hillary Needs a Primary Challenge”
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-11/hillary-needs-a-primary-challenge>*

By Francis Wilkinson

November 11, 2014, 8:35 a.m. EST

The crushing Republican midterm victory is good for Hillary Clinton's
presidential ambitions. Or bad. I'm not much swayed either way. All I know
is that, if she runs, Clinton desperately needs a credible primary opponent.

The subtext -- and too often substance -- of Democratic national politics
since 2010, when Republicans scored a midterm landslide that stopped the
Democratic agenda cold, is that Democrats are tethered to reality and their
opponents are not. This argument has gone through a series of phases, from
highlighting the intellectual blight of Palinism and the fetishes of Tea
Partyism to discrediting the Republican mainstream in the form of Mitt
Romney, Paul Ryan and the bulk of the House Republican conference.

The results speak for themselves. In effect, Democrats have twice proven
that the nation's expanded presidential electorate does not trust
Republicans with executive power. And Republicans have twice proven that
their base is sufficiently large and motivated to dominate midterm
elections and stymie a Democratic executive's initiatives.

Two midterm debacles in a row should drive home just how precarious the
Democratic hold on the electorate is. Yet it's easy for Democrats to feel
superior when their opponents approach the age of climate change and rising
inequality by promising to burn more fossil fuels and hand additional tax
advantages to the wealthy.

It's possible that the Republican presidential primary could be similar in
form and content to the madhouse of 2012. But Clinton has no cause for
complacency. The overall quality of Republican candidates in 2016 should be
dramatically better than the 2012 crop; one or more of the contenders could
even wriggle out of the party's straitjacket and start talking sense. In
any case, Republicans appear firmly committed to quashing the kinds of
debates that make their candidates sound especially unhinged.

As E.J. Dionne and others have pointed out, the Democratic agenda looks
good only by comparison. A Democratic presidential candidate won't be able
to generate a fresh agenda by trashing Republicans; new policies, energy
and language are far more likely to emerge from a spirited internal debate.
That's especially true for Clinton, who is too innately cautious (over the
next two years we can argue whether that's driven by prudence or
insecurity) to reach for a more ambitious agenda without provocation.
Whether it's Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Senator
James Webb, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren or a player to be named
later, a capable Democrat should challenge the nomination -- for Clinton's
sake if no other. (It turns out that running for president is often a
pretty good career move for the losers.)

There are tactical benefits, as well. By engaging in an intraparty fight,
Clinton can focus on a positive message and sidestep more of the ugly
Washington slugfest that is certain to bleed into 2016. A Democratic
sparring partner would enable Clinton to concentrate on an economic agenda
while helping her shake off the rust that inevitably has accrued since her
last run for office. And no one in U.S. politics -- the news media least of
all -- likes a coronation, especially one that is as heavily dependent on
family inheritance as Clinton's would be.

The best reason for a primary challenge, however, is that it would spur
Clinton to plot an economic agenda that's more ambitious than raising the
minimum wage and protecting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion
for the poor and subsidies for the middle class (provided the latter
survives the Republican ward heelers on the Supreme Court).

This is a fitting role for one of President Bill Clinton's most influential
advisors. Clinton's husband arguably did more than anyone to convince
American workers that they could compete in a rapidly globalizing economy
where prevailing wages for the unskilled were (and remain) a fraction of
what it takes to sustain a middle-class American family.

Democrats signed onto globalization, but they never developed an effective
way to mitigate the downward pressures on wages. (Republicans didn't try.)
More than a generation of working-class Americans has paid the price for
the globe's cheap shoes, toys and electronics. A higher minimum wage and
subsidized access to health care matter a lot. But they're insufficient. If
Clinton faces a challenge, it will most likely have a populist cast.
Confronted by calls for wider redistribution, she will either have to
capitulate to such arguments, co-opt them or present an alternative. That's
the debate that Democrats and the nation need.

*Talking Points Memo: “How Can Hillary Make Obamacare Her Own?”
<http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hillary-clinton-obamacare-2016>*

By Dylan Scott

November 10, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EST

During the first Clinton White House, First Lady Hillary Clinton became the
public face of the administration's push for health care reform. She
testified at public hearings, headed a task force, and the policies
coalesced under the moniker "Hillarycare." When those proposals died in
1993, it arguably set comprehensive health care reform back for more than a
decade.

Then in 2008, the political environment was ripe for reform for the first
time since. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, now running for president, laid out
her plan, which per the Washington Post, would have sought "to build on the
existing health-care system, but ... make it easier for adults without
health insurance to buy it through tax credits." But she lost the
Democratic primary to a senator from Illinois and, six years later, those
policies have a different name ascribed to them: Obamacare.

More than 10 million have gained health coverage because of that law, the
Affordable Care Act, with the second enrollment period set to start later
this week. So if, as is almost universally expected, Clinton decides to
seek for the White House again, what will there be left for her to do?

A lot actually, according to one of her closest former advisers: Center for
American Progress president Neera Tanden, who was policy director for the
2008 Clinton campaign, worked in the Clinton White House and worked for the
Obama administration on health care reform.

Like most people close to the former secretary of state and first lady,
Tanden refused to entertain any direct questions about Clinton's 2016
plans. But in an interview with TPM, she did talk about the role that
health care might play in the coming presidential campaign and how
potential Democratic candidates, and Clinton in particular, might approach
it.

Early hints at Clinton's 2016 message, themes that have been repeated
throughout her recent public speaking appearances, signal that it will
focus heavily on income inequality, the middle class, and growing wages.
That could then be her opening for health care, too: Obamacare initially
addressed insurance coverage, but its cost containment provisions were more
back-loaded and how effective they ultimately will be is still an open
question.

With all the controversy over Obamacare, people forget that expanding
insurance coverage was the easy part. It's good politics, people got a
tangible benefit, and the health care industry received a boon of new
paying customers. Cost containment -- even the term makes eyes sag -- is
the heavier lift. The obvious political attack is "rationing" and "death
panels." Consumers see no immediate benefits and industry has to grapple
with less revenue and begins squabbling over exactly whose costs should be
contained.

"I think that health care is an issue that she cares deeply about. There
are still issues that remain, not coverage issues," Tanden said, "but there
are still issues around health care costs that remain and those are
important issues to voters."

"Health care expenditures have gone down, but people's individual costs are
rising because out-of-pocket costs are going up because employers are
shifting costs to employees, which was a long-term trend that started way
before the ACA," she continued. "So I think the issues around costs are an
area for her."

The problem is that there isn't a lot of consensus about what the next
steps in cost containment should be. In May 2007, during her last campaign,
Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University that outlined her
vision for health care. The first priority was lowering costs. Insuring
everyone was third. But a lot of the ideas that she proposed for cost
control were adopted into Obamacare. Free preventive care, electronic
health records, increased competition through bigger insurance pools (i.e.
exchanges) were all part of her plan and are now being tackled through the
law.

Tanden specifically cited medical-loss ratios -- which require insurance
companies to spend a minimal percentage of premiums on health care costs --
as something that Clinton proposed during the 2008 campaign but Obama
didn't that made its way into the ACA.

"It's really quite remarkable how many of the elements of the ACA can be
traced back to what she and President Obama and the other candidates were
saying back in the 2008 campaign," Larry Levitt, vice president at the
Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM of the 2007 speech. "The ACA contains
some of almost all of what she talked about."

That leads to the dilemma, though: Nobody is sure what comes next. Health
care costs have grown more slowly since the law took effect, but experts
expect as the economy improves and more people get coverage through
Obamacare, cost growth will pick back up.

"If health costs do start to accelerate and enter the political debate,
it's hard to say where that debate might go," Levitt said, "since there's
very little consensus about what approach to take."

Democrats might propose policies like adding a public option or a regulated
system for setting payment rates for all health care payers like Maryland
has, Levitt theorized, but each comes with political risk. And Clinton
hasn't spent the last six years building a detailed domestic policy agenda.

So while health care costs might be opening, she'll also be starting
largely from scratch in finding solutions in what could be politically
treacherous territory.

"It is my view that health care costs will be a big issue for everybody,"
Tanden said. "But I don't know where Hillary is going to land on that or
where Biden's going to land," ticking off some of the presumed presidential
contenders.

Then there is the open question of whether Republicans will still try to
wield Obamacare against Democrats as they have for the last three election
cycles. The new GOP Congress seems intent on taking symbolic votes for
repeal and then chipping away at the law in a more piecemeal fashion over
the next two years. Conservative legal challenges are also still active
against the law, and one is soon heading to the Supreme Court.

The Congressional Budget Office projected earlier this year that 36 million
people will be covered under the law by private insurance and Medicaid in
2016. There were already signs in 2014 that Obamacare, while still a
favored topic for the GOP on the campaign trail, was no longer viewed as
the silver bullet that it might have been in 2010. Whether that political
trend accelerates heading into 2016 is one of the major outstanding
questions for Clinton and other Democrats.

"The big driver of the change in views on gay marriage is people came out
and people knew someone. Knowing someone's who's gay is the big difference
between supporting gay marriage or not, right?" Tanden said. "If we get to
20 million people who have health care, people are going to know somebody
who got health care through the exchange."

"Two years from now," she concluded, "it could be a positive thing."

*The New Yorker: “What the Bushes and Clintons Agree On”
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/jeb-bush-versus-hillary-clinton>*

By John Cassidy

November 10, 2014, 4:35 p.m. EST

The former President George W. Bush is taking some time out from painting
and playing golf to promote his new book about his father, George H. W.
Bush, which is being published this week. According to the promotional
blurb, it is a “unique and intimate biography” of Bush the Elder, covering
“his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the
Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S.
Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice
President, and President.”

The forty-first President has indeed led an interesting life, which
included going from an eighty-nine per cent approval rating in the wake of
the First Gulf War to packing his bags in the White House eighteen months
later, after Bill Clinton defeated him in the 1992 election. But that’s
considered ancient history now. As Dubya does the media rounds, what
interviewers really want to ask him is whether his younger brother, Jeb, is
up for taking on Hillary Clinton, in a dynastic rematch, come 2016.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer, fresh from interviewing
President Obama, went at it this way: “If you had to make an estimate right
now, what—what—do you think is going to happen?” To which Forty-Three
replied: “I think it’s fifty-fifty. He”—Jeb—“and I are very close. On the
other hand, he’s not here knocking on my door, you know, agonizing about
the decision.”

That last bit is good to know. Nobody wants to elect a President who has to
ask his big brother’s permission to use the bathroom, especially when said
elder sibling blundered into a disastrous war in the Middle East from
which, more than a decade on, there still doesn’t appear to be any escape,
and then staged an Air Force One fly-by over a grand old American city that
was drowning below him. Being viewed as a younger version of George W.
would probably doom any candidate, and even the former President, whose
grasp on reality was never the strongest, is well aware of this. While he
talked up his little brother, he was also keen to put some distance between
the two of them. “I know this about Jeb,” he told Schieffer. “He’s not
afraid to succeed. In other words, I think he knows he could do the job.
And nor is he afraid to fail.”

Another star on the former Florida governor’s report card. But what about
those who say—regardless of what they may think of Jeb or Dubya or even
George Senior—that two Presidents from the same family in twenty years is
enough? Schieffer, whose courtly manner doesn’t prevent him from asking
some awkward questions, reminded George W. that his mother, Barbara, had
publicly declared herself a member of the “enough Bushes” crowd. (In an
interview with Matt Lauer on the “Today” show last year, she said, “It’s a
great country. There are a lot of great families…. There are other people
out there who are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”) In
response to Schieffer’s question about his mother, Dubya made one of his
little jokes. “Sometimes her prognostications haven’t been very accurate,”
he pointed out. Then, perhaps realizing that slapping down your mom on
network television isn’t a great idea, he added, “And, no, no. I think you
have to earn your way into politics. I don’t think anything is ever given
to you.”

Even the former President surely realized that this was hardly a definitive
answer to the dynasty question. In an interview with NPR’s “Morning
Edition,” he took a different tack, pointing out that the Bushes aren’t the
only prominent political family with a stake in the 2016 election:

So Jeb has to think about whether he wants to be President. Just like
Hillary Clinton has to think about whether she wants to be President. Some
guy at one time said to me, “You know, I don’t like the idea of Bush,
Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush.” I said, “Oh, O.K.” I said, “How do you like
the idea of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton?” And the point is that
these may be the two best candidates their party has to offer.

On his second try, Dubya had nailed the case that supporters of the Bushes
and the Clintons will both be making. To Republicans: If you don’t support
Jeb you’ll be letting in Hillary. To Democrats: If you don’t support
Hillary you’ll be letting in Jeb. Either we beat the other team at its own
game, or it wins. The arguments are urgent, symmetrical, and mutually
reinforcing. But given the ugly realities of primary elections, Super PACs,
disgruntled voters, and negative advertising, how plausible are they?

On the Democratic side, I would say that they are still holding up. Six
months into Hillary’s undeclared candidacy, doubts persist about her
abilities as a political campaigner. In addition to making a number of
gaffes—most recently during a speech in Massachusetts, when she made the
statement, gift-wrapped for makers of Republican ads, that corporations
don’t create jobs—she has yet to spell out her message. Clearly, she’s
going to talk about inequality and wages, and about getting a fair deal for
ordinary Americans; that was what she was trying to do when she goofed in
Massachusetts. But what does a rhetorical shift to the left mean in
practical terms, and how does it jibe with the reputation she forged in the
Senate as a pro-business, pro-Wall Street Democrat? As yet, we don’t know.

Hillary still has a great deal going for her, though. She has an awful lot
of support within the Democratic Party, she’s loaded with actual and
potential donors, and, crucially, she doesn’t have a strong challenger. In
this week’s issue of the magazine, my colleague Ryan Lizza has a must-read
piece, in which he talks to three possible Democratic candidates: Martin
O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland; Jim Webb, the former senator
from Virginia; and Bernie Sanders, the sitting senator from Vermont. All
three of them have interesting things to say. But none of them, at this
stage, looks like a future President, or even a candidate who could put a
real scare into the Clintons.

On the Republican side, things are a bit different. A year ago, it could be
(and was) argued that Jeb Bush and Chris Christie were the only plausible
candidates for 2016. Since then, a lot has happened to expand the field.
Right now, at least half a dozen people look like they could mount a
credible campaign: Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ted
Cruz, and John Kasich. There’s also Christie (that’s assuming the
Bridgegate investigation doesn’t offer up some evidence directly
implicating him, which, so far, it hasn’t), Rick Perry, and maybe even Mitt
Romney.

O.K., I’m stretching it, but you get the idea. History has moved on, and
Jeb Bush no longer looks like Mr. Inevitable, or even Mr. Most Likely. At
the online-betting sites, he’s now considered the second most likely person
to get the Republican nomination, behind Rubio. In an opinion poll carried
out for the conservative Web site Breitbart.com last week, almost seventy
per cent of G.O.P. voters said that they would prefer “a new generation of
Republican leaders” over Jeb Bush.

Doubtless, Jeb’s slipping poll ratings have something to do with the fact
that he, unlike Hillary, has chosen to stay out of the limelight. However,
they also reflect a growing self-confidence inside the Republican Party,
which the midterm results will only have strengthened. Rather than looking
over their shoulders at past disasters, many G.O.P. supporters are looking
ahead. To many non-Democrats, politicians such as Rubio, Paul, and Walker,
for all their quirks and limitations, have an appealing freshness and
optimism about them.

With his surname and his reputation serving as a stolid administrator
rather than a messenger of hope, Jeb, if he does decide to run, will face a
challenge in adapting to this new environment. He’s not out of it—not by
any means. He’s got money, he’s got a track record, and, according to a new
ABC News/Washington Post poll, he’s still running slightly ahead of other
likely G.O.P. candidates on the question of whether he’d make a good
President. But given the new mood in Republican circles, one thing is
clear: He won’t win the nomination simply by telling Republicans they need
someone to take on Hillary.

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Walker blasts Clinton's 'old, tired' approach
to government”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223621-walker-clinton-embodies-old-tired-approach-to-governing>*

By Peter Sullivan

November 11, 2014, 9:23 a.m. EST

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Tuesday decried Hillary Clinton as
embodying an "old, tired" approach to government.

"I think the biggest loser a week ago was Hillary Clinton," Walker, a
possible Republican White House conteder in 2016, said in comments on Fox
News.

"She embodies Washington. She embodies that old, tired top-down approach
from the government. I think in the states as governors, we offer a much
better alternative and I think there's a number of us who would be good
prospects out there."

Clinton is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic White House
nomination for 2016 if she chooses to run, and Walker greatly enhanced his
chances for a White House bid last week when he won reelection.

"Not only do I care about this great state, I care about this country,"
Walker said, echoing a line from his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press"
on Sunday.

Walker joins other Republican possible presidential contenders, including
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) in linking Clinton to
Democratic losses on Tuesday.

After previously signalling he needed more financial support in his race,
Walker also played down any feud with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the
chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and a possible
presidential rival.

"In the end, Chris and I are good friends," Walker said. "He came in a week
out and campaigned with me. The RGA played strong in my race. The
difference was there's just a lot more money than anybody ever expected
from the unions."

*Washington Post blog: Jennifer Rubin: “Inside the Republican ‘oppo’
research operation”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/11/11/inside-the-republican-oppo-research-operation/>*

By Jennifer Rubin

November 11, 2014, 9:00 a.m. EST

In a nondescript building in Arlington, Virginia, a few dozen 20 or
30-somethings sit in an office with some GOP campaign posters on the walls,
eyes glued to their computer screens. If not for the GOP artwork, you would
think this was a trading floor or a technology firm. But it is America
Rising PAC, the Republican opposition (“oppo”) research firm founded in the
wake of the 2012 defeat as a counterpoint to American Bridge PAC, its
Democratic counterpart founded a few years earlier. America Rising PAC may
have been, next to the NRSC (which recruited superb Senate candidates), the
most important entity in the GOP’s 2014 sweep.

If you heard about Michelle Nunn’s strategy memo or saw her duck the
question about whether she voted for President Obama; if you heard Sen.
Mark Udall (D-Col.) proclaim that the Islamic State “is not an imminent
threat” to the U.S.; if you heard about Sen. Kay Hagan’s use of stimulus
funds to benefit her family; or if you learned about the extensive
Democratic donor network supporting the supposedly independent Greg Orman
in Kansas, you were receiving information that surfaced or was amplified in
the media thanks to America Rising.

Maybe the most important gaffe of the cycle — Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa)
insulting Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as just “farmer from Iowa who never
went to law school” – was not picked up directly by America Rising, but the
group did elevate it, tie it to other gaffes (e.g. complaining about no
towel service during the shutdown) and help confirm what many voters
suspected, namely that Braley was a not-very-nice trial lawyer at odds with
Iowans’ political sensibilities.

A separate entity, America Rising LLC overseen by Matt Rhodes, a veteran of
numerous campaigns, has signed up over 40 clients, some outside groups,
some individual campaigns and the NRSC. These clients receive voluminous
research, which can be used in debates, ads, and a myriad of ways. America
Rising PAC, on the other hand, is in the business of collecting and
uncovering opposition research, which it then puts up on its Web site and
sends through the media food chain

How they find, analyze, circulate and highlight Democrats’ self-inflicted
wounds? Two experienced GOP hands, Joe Pounder and Tim Miller, sent out
dozens of trackers all over the country, assigning them to one of 14 Senate
races, one of nearly every competitive House race or one of eight
gubernatorial contests. Pounder tells me these people are “young, from
diverse backgrounds and [generally] working on their first job in
politics.” Some of them have been political junkies or college Republicans,
but one of the best in the field this cycle was a former manager at an
Abercrombie and Fitch store. Their job is to follow the candidate to which
they are assigned everywhere, trying to record every statement and
encounter with voters or media. They listen to local radio and become
experts in that race’s issues.  They are trained to be professional, polite
and not lie about what they are doing. Some campaigns tolerate their
presence while others freak out, trying to bar them from events. “We just
use different methods,” says co-founder Tim Miller. (Maybe a one-time
tracker gets into an event unrecognized.) Ironically the campaigns that try
to keep the trackers out often generate the worst moments, giving his or
her opponents footage of the candidate running from the press or
unleashing aides to manhandle pesky trackers. Nothing makes a candidate
look more like he or she has something to hide than such scenes, and in
fact some of these incidents get used over and over again in campaigns.

A team consisting of a tracker, a researcher and a person in the room in
Arlington is assigned to each race. That puts three sets of eyes on mounds
of material, scanning it for useful pieces. Together they learn all there
is to know about a candidate, spotting inconsistencies and outright lies
and flagging outlandish statements. Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia, for
example, held a Google hangout with all of 8 people participating, two of
whom were with America Rising. They captured his memorable remark that “two
of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico.
And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give
everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.” Oops. His opponent
Republican Carlos Curbelo will make a fine congressman, says Pounder.

The operation proved immensely successful and will only grow in 2016 when
it will have a presidential race on top of contests for Senate,
governorships and House. Because the group was just starting, America
Rising did not get going as early in the 2014 cycle as its founders would
have liked. That will not be a problem for 2016. And pushing material out
early really does pay off. “We were correct in deciding to push out stuff
early, ” says Miller. “Conventional wisdom is to wait until October.” But
with early voting many ballots are already cast by then. Moreover, with an
electorate awash in material it often takes time for information to
percolate through the system, or for other events to occur that suggest a
pattern of behavior.

Opposition research works best when it reinforces a pre-existing image.
Sometimes it is hard to gauge what will “pop” and sometimes material comes
up too late to use to great effect. But of course there is nothing to
surface so long as the candidate does not lie, does not misrepresent
himself and does not act like a jerk. “Phonies are the most susceptible,”
says Pounder. Moreover, the quality of your own candidate matters. “You
need a Joni Ernst candidate to be everything Braley was not,” Pounder tells
me.

America Rising isn’t sitting on its laurels. It keeps adding to the mound
of information on people they have previously tracked and tries to spot the
likely Democratic candidates for 2016 races. They have already been out in
force gathering information on Hillary Clinton, who created a treasure
trove of oppo with her frequent gaffes on her book tour and then
campaigning for others. Even her own book provided material, such as her
false assertion that there were Marines based in Tripoli. America Rising is
beginning to track other potential Democratic presidential candidates, but
with a Democratic bench as weak as this one America Rising’s trackers and
researchers can focus the lion’s share of their efforts on the presidential
level on her, thereby gaining an advantage against Democrats who must
follow a long list of potential presidential aspirants.

The key to America Rising’s success is simple: Good content. With weak
Democratic opponents, the GOP had the opportunity to scoop it up, but until
America Rising there really had been very little ability to do so and then
to make sure the voters knew about it. In 2016, Pounder says, “We’re going
to get bigger with even more trackers.” Miller adds, “Demand will be
enormous.”

*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>
)