Subject: Correct The Record Wednesday November 12, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 08:13:32 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Wednesday November 12, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*MSNBC: “Clinton camp to meet with progressive critics”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-camp-meet-progressive-critics>*

“Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,
one of the groups most closely associated with the so-called ‘Warren wing
of the Democratic Party,’ said his organization reached out to Clinton’s
camp before the election and that a meeting was coming ‘very soon.’”

*The Hill: “Hillary Clinton in no hurry to announce 2016 plans”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/223801-hillary-clinton-in-no-hurry-to-announce-2016-plans>*

“Democratic midterm thumping, Clinton is likely to stick to the timeline of
making her plans known early next year.”

*Washington Post: PostPartisan: “The central challenge for Hillary Clinton
and Democrats in 2016”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/11/11/the-central-challenge-for-hillary-clinton-and-democrats-in-2016/>*

“Here, then, is the central challenge for Hillary Clinton and Democrats in
2016: Convince enough voters that they have a credible plan to raise
incomes for the middle class through jump starting economic growth.”

*Washington Post blog: Plum Line: “Why a Bernie Sanders presidential
candidacy is good for Democrats — and for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/11/why-a-bernie-sanders-presidential-candidacy-is-good-for-democrats-and-for-hillary-clinton/>*

“By critiquing her from the left, he [Sen. Sanders] could pull her [Sec.
Clinton] in his direction in order to satisfy primary voters, which on many
issues would wind up being to her advantage.”

*Politico Magazine: “Why Wall Street Loves Hillary”
<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/why-wall-street-loves-hillary-112782.html#.VGNLdvldWSp>*

[Subtitle:] “She's trying to sound populist, but the banks are ready to
shower her campaign with cash.”

*MSNBC: “Potential Hillary Clinton challengers gear up for fight”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/potential-hillary-clinton-challengers-gear-fight>*

“Hillary Clinton’s allies may think the likely presidential candidate is
stronger now than she was before last week’s midterm elections, but that
hasn’t stopped her potential challengers from moving ahead with their own
plans.”

*The New Republic: “Hillary's Going to Have a Primary After All, and She
Should Be Grateful”
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120237/facing-hillary-clinton-jim-webb-bernie-sanders-and-martin-omalley>*

“It is appearing more and more likely, however, that Clinton will face
primary opponents. In fact, three potential candidates—Senator Bernie
Sanders, former Senator Jim Webb and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley—have
all signaled they will seek the Democratic nomination.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Bill Clinton: Hillary 'happy as a clam' even
without run”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223655-bill-clinton-hillary-happy-as-a-clam-even-without-run>*

“When DeGeneres joked that Clinton was going to make a ‘big announcement’
about his wife, Clinton replied, ‘She's the happiest grandmother.’”

*Mediaite: “Fox’s Cavuto Hammers Rand Paul for ‘Condescending Swipe’ at
Hillary’s Age”
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-cavuto-hammers-rand-paul-for-condescending-swipe-at-hillarys-age/>*

“And just to stick the knife in a little further, Cavuto invoked Paul’s
father, who happens to be a couple of years older than Clinton.”

*Politico Magazine: “Wave? What Wave?”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/nancy-pelosi-112799.html>*

"Many expect her to serve until at least Obama leaves office in 2017 — in
part to defend the 2010 Affordable Care Act from a Republican-led Congress.
Pelosi adamantly declined to say what she would do if Hillary Clinton won
the White House in 2016..."

*Articles:*

*MSNBC: “Clinton camp to meet with progressive critics”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-camp-meet-progressive-critics>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 11, 2014, 10:00 p.m. EST

Hillary’s critics on the left may finally have the opportunity they’ve been
waiting for.

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,
one of the groups most closely associated with the so-called “Warren wing
of the Democratic Party,” said his organization reached out to Clinton’s
camp before the election and that a meeting was coming “very soon.”

He declined to name the Clinton advisers with whom he’s been in contact,
saying discussions have so far been limited to “conversations about having
conversations.” “We want to keep as open a line of communication with
Hillary Clinton and her team as possible,” he told msnbc.

The meeting will hopefully be a precursor to a larger summit with more
progressive leaders and Clinton herself. “The more the merrier,” Green
said. “Individual meetings are useful, but progressive movement-wide
meetings would be really smart for her.”

Their message is that Clinton should adopt the kind of economic inequality
issues championed by Warren, both for substantive and political reasons.
“This is the path to victory in the primary and general election,” Green
and co-founder Stephanie Taylor wrote in an op-ed in The Hill.

Other liberal groups, which have sometimes been critical of Clinton, are
also interested in a chance to bend Clinton’s ear on these issues.
MoveOn.org, which has 8 million members and traces it roots to defending
Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, said that while noting is
planned at the moment, they anticipate some kind of interaction with
Clinton. “We would be open and expecting a meeting and interactions with
anybody looking for the Democratic nomination,” said a source at the group.

MoveOn and others say it will be especially important for Clinton to engage
with their members, who number in the millions and include some of the most
active Democratic grassroots volunteers and supporters. “We’re looking
forward to meeting with her team,” said Neil Sroka of Democracy for
America, which grew out of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. It’s
important that Clinton “find ways to connect with the grassroots
progressives our organizations represent,” he added, calling them the “foot
soldiers” of the party.

Clinton plans an unofficial “listening tour” after the election, according
to The New York Times, but Green says his group’s outreach pre-dated the
elections by several months.

Activists involved with several other labor and progressive groups said
they have not yet been contacted by Clinton’s team. One suspected the tour
will be confined to “known likely friends,” rather than people skeptical of
Clinton. Still, they acknowledged it’s early yet.

Dean’s DFA has gotten a jump on 2016 by trying to take the temperatures of
its more than 1 million members. Last week, it launched an internal poll
that, “demonstrates our commitment to making sure the fight for the
Democratic nomination is a contest, not a coronation,” Sroka said. The poll
is still ongoing, but this week, the group sent a series of emails to
supporters making “the progressive case” for several different candidates,
including Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton is a brawler, willing to take Republicans head on and
expose their lies. Can you imagine watching Hillary demolish Ted Cruz or
Rand Paul in a debate? It would be epic,” the Clinton email notes. It also
praises her experience and political strength, concluding: With “the
mistakes of her 2008 presidential campaign in her rearview mirror, Hillary
Clinton appears to be ready to win the White House.”

The other emails tout the progressive bona fides for Warren and Sen. Bernie
Sanders. There’s also an email for, curiously, former Labor Secretary
Robert Reich.

On a DFA conference call in February, Reich said, “I think that there will
be a lot of people – Elizabeth Warren, others, maybe even me – who will
toss our hats in the ring.”

Progressives are encouraged by Clinton’s recent rhetoric on the stump for
Democratic midterm candidates, especially the speech she gave while
appearing with Warren in Massachusetts on behalf of failed Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley. “It’s clear that she’s listening,”
Sroka said.

*The Hill: “Hillary Clinton in no hurry to announce 2016 plans”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/223801-hillary-clinton-in-no-hurry-to-announce-2016-plans>*

By Amie Parnes

November 12, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EST

Hillary Clinton is in no rush to announce that she’s running for president.

Sources in Clinton World say while there’s been some chatter about an
earlier-than-expected announcement, given the

Democratic midterm thumping, Clinton is likely to stick to the timeline of
making her plans known early next year.

“She’s not going to get in early. Period. End of sentence,” said one
Clinton ally. “She’s not ready. She hasn’t fully decided that’s what she
wants to do.”

Clinton formally launched her first White House bid on Jan. 20, 2007, with
a statement on her website that said, “I’m in.”

And the expectation has been that she would follow a similar plan, at least
on the timing of an announcement, if she chooses to run for the presidency
again.

But suggestions that she should move up her plans have become more common
in recent weeks — particularly after the midterms.

Those arguing that Clinton should get in sooner rather than later say an
earlier bid would help her fundraising and organizing. It would also
provide some, much-needed energy to a party still reeling from an electoral
disaster.

“It would be a good reminder that we’ll see them on the playing field in
two years,” said one Democratic strategist. “To be continued.”

It could also downplay the storyline that Clinton is too cautious and is
taking cues from old playbooks.

David Plouffe, who ran President Obama’s 2008 campaign, recently advised
her to stop playing coy and push the go button as soon as possible,
according to a report in Politico.

And Clinton herself offered remarks last month during a Q-and-A in Ottawa
that left some wondering if she was readjusting her timeline.

“I’ve been dodging this question now for a year and a half or more,” she
said at an event hosted by a Canadian think tank. “I’m going to keep
dodging it, certainly until the midterm elections are over. I’m thinking
hard about it. But I’m not going to really bear down and think hard about
it in a way you make a decision until after these elections.”

Hillaryland sources say Clinton — who recently celebrated the birth of her
granddaughter — is currently in “listening mode,” as one put it. After
campaigning with Democratic candidates, she wants some downtime to really
mull the decision inside and out.

“I don’t see any reason to announce anytime in the next two months,” said
one Clinton insider. “Frankly, I’m thinking, ‘Take your time.’ ”

These sources maintain she will likely make a decision about her next steps
sometime over the holidays. Should she choose to run, she could then form
an exploratory committee, allowing her to have a soft launch of sorts.

The committee would in turn send a clear message of her intent without a
huge announcement or quick ramp-up of a large team, allowing her to remain
somewhat low-key for the time being.

Voters could suffer from an early dose of Clinton fatigue, argue those
saying Clinton should not get in early.

And once a campaign begins on the early side, there’s “more time for
negative coverage to set in and doubts in the media,” said Julian Zelizer,
a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

The longtime Clinton adviser maintained that the election results don’t and
shouldn’t affect the general timeline of an announcement.

For one thing, the aide pointed out, there is plenty of action already
taking place to eat up the political oxygen including the debate between
mainstream Republicans and Tea Partyers in addition to the string of
would-be presidential candidates on the GOP side.

Furthermore, the source added, issue-oriented debates on immigration reform
and other issues are also taking up space in the political stratosphere.

But most of all, Clinton — who spent the bulk of the year on a book tour,
giving speeches and then stumping for Democrats — needs more time.

“The timeline is what it is,” one longtime Clinton ally said. “And I don’t
see that changing.”

*Washington Post: PostPartisan: “The central challenge for Hillary Clinton
and Democrats in 2016”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/11/11/the-central-challenge-for-hillary-clinton-and-democrats-in-2016/>*

By Carter Eskew

November 11, 2014, 12:33 p.m. EST

David Leonhardt has an essential article today for those who wish to
understand the recent volatility in electoral outcomes generally, and the
misfortune of Democrats specifically.  The key driver of these outcomes,
according to Leonhardt, is stagnant middle-class incomes. The average
American worker, who is lucky enough to have a job, makes $3,600 less today
in inflation-adjusted wages than he did in 2001. That is an extraordinary
fact, and one that overshadows all other aspects of our politics. It is why
Obama and Democrats not only fail to receive any credit for a decline in
the unemployment rate, but also are currently seen as weaker than
Republicans on what was always their strength: running the economy for the
benefit of the middle-class. It is why the “war on women,” climate change,
health care, and Social Security, Democratic go-to issues, cut so little
this year, and seem exhausted for the foreseeable future. It’s not just the
economy, stupid; it’s the fact that people are working the same and making
less, moron.

Here, then, is the central challenge for Hillary Clinton and Democrats in
2016: Convince enough voters that they have a credible plan to raise
incomes for the middle class through jump starting economic growth. It
won’t be easy, as Leonhardt makes clear. Democratic ideas for the economy,
investment in infrastructure and education, to cite two favorites, take
years to pay dividends. A faster way to prime the pump, Leonhardt suggests,
would be to cut taxes on the middle class, offset by an increase in rates
for the wealthy, which echoes, to some degree, the platforms Bill Clinton
and Barack Obama campaigned on in 1992 and in 2008, respectively.

For Mrs. Clinton, of course, economic growth and raising stagnant wages
must be the sine qua non of her candidacy. It’s time to bring the “laser
beam” that Bill Clinton promised in 1992 out of storage and refocus it on
the economy. Politically, all else is distraction.

*Washington Post blog: Plum Line: “Why a Bernie Sanders presidential
candidacy is good for Democrats — and for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/11/why-a-bernie-sanders-presidential-candidacy-is-good-for-democrats-and-for-hillary-clinton/>*

By Paul Waldman

November 11, 2014, 1:44 p.m. EST

Ever since people started thinking about the 2016 presidential primaries,
the assumption has been that the Republican side will feature a fascinating
and bloody donnybrook with no initial frontrunner and as many as a dozen
potentially realistic candidacies, while the Democratic contest will be no
contest at all, but rather a coronation for Hillary Clinton.

But might we finally have a real clash of ideas on the Democratic side?
Yes, we might:

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has spent months fishing for a strategist to
guide his potential 2016 presidential campaign. On Monday, he hooked a big
one: Tad Devine, one of the Democratic Party’s leading consultants and a
former high-level campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis.

“‘If he runs, I’m going to help him,’ Devine said in an interview. ‘He is
not only a longtime client but a friend. I believe he could deliver an
enormously powerful message that the country is waiting to hear right now
and do it in a way that succeeds.’

“Devine and Sanders, who first worked together on Sanders’s campaigns in
the 1990s, have been huddling in recent weeks, mapping out how the brusque
progressive senator could navigate a primary and present a formidable
challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic
presidential nomination.”

The height of Devine’s influence may be in the recent past, but he still
brings establishment credibility that could lead people in the media to
give Sanders more attention. His involvement is also a sign that Sanders
isn’t just thinking he’ll get a van and drive around New Hampshire, but
instead that he’d mount a serious campaign, no matter how formidable the
obstacles to victory. That could mean a genuinely interesting debate about
the problems America confronts and how the Democratic party should address
them.

Sanders says he’ll center his campaign on economic inequality and the
struggles of the middle class, and this is what Clinton needs to address as
well. That may be the most important message for Democrats of the 2014
election, not to mention Barack Obama’s continuing low approval ratings:
Democrats need to figure out how to address persistent economic insecurity,
stagnating wages, and the failure of the recovery’s gains to achieve
widespread distribution.

If you look at most economic measures, the Obama administration seems
spectacularly successful. Since the economy stopped hemorrhaging jobs at
the end of 2009, it has added 10 million. We’ve now had nine straight
months with over 200,000 jobs created, which hadn’t happened since the
mid-1990′s. Unemployment is below 6 percent, GDP growth is steady, and the
federal deficit is less than half what it was when Obama took office. Yet
his approval on the economy is an anemic 40 percent.

The reasons why are many and complicated (the most important is that wages
are not increasing), but one problem Democrats face is that they don’t have
a coherent story to tell on the economy that explains what they’ve done
right, connects with people’s current displeasure, and shows a way forward.
If by focusing on the economy Sanders forces Clinton to articulate that
story and support it with a specific agenda that she could implement if she
wins, he will have done her a great service.

Of course, he’d say he isn’t running to do Hillary Clinton any favors. But
the reality is that he would. By critiquing her from the left, he could
pull her in his direction in order to satisfy primary voters, which on many
issues would wind up being to her advantage. At the same time, the broader
message their debates would communicate to the general electorate is that
she’s a moderate. When Republicans try to argue that she’s some wild-eyed
Alinskyite radical bent on turning America socialist (just as they did with
Obama), she can say, “I ran against an actual socialist in the primaries,
and it’s pretty obvious we aren’t the same person.”

A strong Sanders candidacy will do something else: make liberal Democrats
feel that their opinions and their concerns are getting a fair hearing in
the 2016 process. Sanders is an eloquent and unapologetic voice for
liberalism. His presence as a real contender on the campaign trail would
assure liberals that their party can still be a vehicle for their ideology,
even if the candidate who triumphs is the more centrist establishment
figure. And that’s something they could use right now.

*Politico Magazine: “Why Wall Street Loves Hillary”
<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/why-wall-street-loves-hillary-112782.html#.VGNLdvldWSp>*

By William D. Cohen

November 11, 2014

[Subtitle:] She's trying to sound populist, but the banks are ready to
shower her campaign with cash.

An odd thing happened last month when, stumping just before the midterms,
Hillary Clinton came in close proximity to the woman who has sometimes been
described as the conscience of the Democratic Party. Speaking at the Park
Plaza Hotel in Boston as she did her part to try to rescue the failing
gubernatorial campaign of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Clinton paid
deference to Senator Elizabeth Warren, the anti-Wall Street firebrand who
has accused Clinton of pandering to the big banks, and who was sitting
right there listening. “I love watching Elizabeth give it to those who
deserve it,” Clinton said to cheers. But then, awkwardly, she appeared to
try to out-Warren Warren—and perhaps build a bridge too far to the left—by
uttering words she clearly did not believe: “Don’t let anyone tell you that
it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,” Clinton said,
erroneously echoing a meme Warren made famous during an August 2011 speech
at a home in Andover, Massachusetts. “You know that old theory,
trickle-down economics? That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed
rather spectacularly.”

The right went wild. See? Hillary Clinton has finally shown her hand. After
having sat out the financial crisis and all the economic turmoil that has
followed in the past six years—and with good reason, since for most of that
time she was tending to the nation’s diplomacy as secretary of state—she is
proving to be an anti-Wall Street populist too, and as much a socialist as
her former boss, President Obama.

But here’s the strange thing: Down on Wall Street they don’t believe it for
a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big
bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president.
Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman
Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a
powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase
and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone
to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all
benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays
into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None
of them think she really means her populism.

Although Hillary Clinton has made no formal announcement of her candidacy,
the consensus on Wall Street is that she is running—and running hard—and
that her national organization is quickly falling into place behind the
scenes. That all makes her attractive. Wall Street, above all, loves a
winner, especially one who is not likely to tamper too radically with its
vast money pot.

According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke
to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not
anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff
comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record,
she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments
about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that
corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about
Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to
Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being
very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how
things work and that she’s not a populist.”

The bottom line for Wall Street, says this executive—echoing many others—is
that Clinton understands that America’s much-maligned financial industry
wants to be part of the solution to the country’s problems. “Everybody who
makes money feels a shared responsibility,” he continues. “Everybody sort
of looks at her with a lot of optimism because they feel she doesn’t mind
making hard decisions. She’ll do what she needs to do, but it’s not a ‘Let
me blame you.’ It’s, ‘Hey, here’s what you’ve got to do.’ And I think
that’s very different.” During a speech last December at the Conrad Hotel,
in New York, her message could not have been more different from Obama’s
hot, anti-Wall Street rhetoric: “We all got into this mess together, and
we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.”

During the 2012 presidential election, Wall Street felt burned by Obama’s
rhetoric and regulatory positions and overwhelmingly supported with their
money Republican candidate Mitt Romney, co-founder of private-equity firm
Bain Capital. Now, though, there’s a significant momentum back behind the
Democratic contest. “The money is already behind her,” the Wall Street
money manager says. “I don’t think it’s starting to line up behind her:
It’s there for her if she wants it.”

The informal head of her informal Wall Street outreach effort for her
informal campaign is a finance executive she knows well—and recruited to
work for her at the State Department. Tom Nides, 53, the Morgan Stanley
executive, knows both New York and Washington intimately. Today he speaks
with Clinton regularly and has begun to play the role of gatekeeper on Wall
Street to her embryonic campaign. He also has been known to run
interference between the Obama administration and the leaders of the
Israeli government, in order to try to patch up their dysfunctional
relationship. “Tom at the end of the day is the guy—she trusts him, she
knows him,” says the Wall Street investment manager.

Nides returned to Morgan Stanley in 2013 after two years working for
Clinton at the State Department as deputy secretary of state for management
and resources. Nides (with whom I once shared a one-week summer rental on
Nantucket) epitomizes the revolving door that has long existed between
Washington and Wall Street. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, he served in a
senior leadership role for a diverse group of Washington politicians, from
Representatives Tony Coehlo and Tom Foley to, as chief of staff, Mickey
Kantor, Bill Clinton’s U.S. trade representative. He worked at Fannie Mae
for six years, ran Joe Lieberman’s 2000 vice-presidential campaign and
served a brief stint as CEO of Burson Marsteller, the public relations firm.

In 2001, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack took Nides under his wing. When Mack
was named CEO of Credit Suisse, Nides went along with him as chief
administrative officer. When Mack returned to Morgan Stanley as CEO in
2005, Nides accompanied him again as chief operating officer and then
stayed another year serving in the same role for James Gorman. Then Nides
returned to Washington to work for then-Secretary Clinton at the State
Department, replacing Jack Lew, who became head of the Office of Management
and Budget. Many thought Nides’ time at Morgan Stanley was over, especially
with Mack’s retirement at the end of 2011. But Gorman—also a Hillary
supporter—surprised people by bringing Nides back to the firm as a
vice-chairman.

Now Nides is the first stop in New York for many a visiting dignitary and
for those ambitious Wall Street types hoping to get access to Clinton.
Nides declined to comment on the record, as did other Wall Street
executives with whom Clinton is said to confer, among them Blair Effron,
one of the three founders of Centerview Partners, an investment banking
boutique, and Marc Lasry, the founder of Avenue Capital, a New York hedge
fund, who was almost named Obama’s ambassador to France.

But Greg Fleming, Nides’ partner at Morgan Stanley and the president of
Morgan Stanley Wealth and Investment Management, was pleased to discuss his
enthusiastic support for Clinton. He says that the “broad perception”
across Wall Street, among both Democrats and Republicans, is that she,
“like her husband, will govern from the center, and work to get things
done, and be capable of garnering support across different groups,
including working with Republicans.” He agreed that, as a former senator
from New York, Clinton is trusted by Wall Street and will tackle issues,
such as fiscal and tax reform, that have been long neglected thanks to the
intractable polarization that rules Washington these days. “She will be
trying to govern from the center with a problem-solving bent like her
husband,” Fleming says.

Beyond that, Hillary Clinton—and the Clintons generally—have always courted
Wall Street assiduously and without apology. In June, the biggest donors to
the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation met with the Clintons at
Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in lower Manhattan for a day-long discussion
about the foundation’s goals. Goldman has donated hundreds of thousands of
dollars to the Clintons’ foundation, and in October 2013, Hillary Clinton
gave two speeches at Goldman. Her usual speaking fee is $200,000, and
Goldman is known to be a full payer on the speaking circuit. Goldman is
hardly alone—Clinton is popular in the financial industry: In 2013, she
also gave speeches to KKR and the Carlyle Group, two private-equity
behemoths.

Wall Street does not seem to be the slightest bit shy about coming out for
Hillary—and are now contributing their money to prove it. While Priorities
USA Action, a super PAC dedicated to getting Clinton elected in 2016, does
not have any Wall Street banks among its top 50 donors to date, there have
been large contributions from wealthy hedge funds, such as Renaissance
Technologies, which has donated $4 million (the largest single
contribution); D.E. Shaw, which has donated $1.375 million; Khosla Ventures
and Soros Fund Management, which have each donated $1 million; and
Ripplewood Holdings, a private equity firm, which contributed $400,000.
There are many Wall Street financiers who have donated $25,000—by design,
the maximum contribution—to the Ready for Hillary superPAC.

Goldman is an interesting case study. As in nearly every other way, it has
always been careful to hedge its bets where electoral politics is
concerned. Historically, although trending Democratic, Goldman employees
have managed to give nearly equally to both parties in presidential
elections. And a lot of it: Since 1990, Goldman’s employees have given $47
million to political candidates and various political action
committees—more than any other single group of company employees. But that
calculus changed dramatically in 2008 when Goldman employees gave about $1
million to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, according to the Center
for Responsive Politics, second only to that given to Obama by the
employees of the University of California, who donated nearly $1.8 million.
By contrast, Goldman employees gave only $235,000 to Senator John McCain,
the Republican Party nominee.

By 2009 the bloom was off the rose. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Obama
not only referred to Wall Street as the “fat cat bankers” but also blamed
Wall Street for causing the financial crisis. “People on Wall Street still
don’t get it,” he said. In July 2010, just weeks after a much-vilified
Goldman agreed to pay a $550 million fine to the Securities and Exchange
Commission—then the largest fine ever—to settle charges stemming from
Goldman’s underwriting and selling of a synthetic collateralized debt
obligation, the details about which the SEC believed Goldman had failed to
properly disclose to investors, Obama joked at the White House
Correspondents Dinner: “All of the jokes here tonight are brought to you by
our friends at Goldman Sachs. So you don’t have to worry—they make money
whether you laugh or not.”

By 2012, in an historic turnaround, Goldman went full force for Romney.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Goldman employees gave
$1.2 million to the Republican National Committee and another $1 million or
so to Romney directly. By contrast, Obama received a mere $210,000 from
Goldman employees (who also gave $493,000 to the Democratic National
Committee). “In the four decades since Congress created the
campaign-finance system, no company’s employees have switched sides so
abruptly, moving from top supporters of one camp to the top of its rival,”
the Wall Street Journal observed. So far this year, Goldman remains a
Republican shop. Some 63 percent of the firm’s political contributions, or
$1.75 million, has gone to support Republican candidates.

That will change if Clinton decides to run. For starters, as the former
U.S. senator from New York, she is well known to many of Goldman’s leaders.
They have seen her at numerous Goldman events over the years or at
fundraisers in the Hamptons. Blankfein ran into the Clintons in August at a
party in the Hamptons at Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s house, and
there are the many pictures of Blankfein smiling broadly at her side during
September’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York. A few weeks later, they
spent time together at a dinner celebrating the Goldman Sachs “10,000 Women
Initiative,” a Goldman-funded training and education program for female
entrepreneurs.

Many Goldman employees, especially women, are also excited about the
historic potential of the 2016 presidential election since Clinton could
become the first female president. “They’re not going to reflexively
support any woman, but she’s a woman that seems more or less in sync with
the way they think about the world,” says another former Clinton
administration official who now works on Wall Street. “And she’s
successful, and they just like her.”

More significant, the 10,000 Women Initiative was designed by Clinton
operatives and is being implemented at Goldman by people who still have
close ties to her. For instance, Goldman paid Gene Sperling, a longtime
Washington insider who was director of the National Economic Council under
both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, nearly $900,000 in 2008 for his help in
creating the 10,000 Women Initiative. Noa Meyer, who runs the program at
Goldman, once wrote speeches for Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady.
“The whole idea to spend money on women and women’s education in developing
countries came straight out of her playbook,” says someone familiar with
the origins of the 10,000 Women Initiative. “The same people who got her
interested in that issue are the people who …design[ed] the program.”

Of course, the ties between Goldman Sachs and Washington run deep, very
deep, and many analysts have argued that the broad deregulatory moves
pushed by former Goldman senior partner Robert Rubin—who later became Bill
Clinton’s National Economic Council director and then Treasury
secretary—were a major part of the process that led to the subprime
mortgage disaster. But Rubin was only among the latest in a long line of
Goldman executives who went to Washington and helped create the
talent-and-ideas nexus that later became derisively known as “Government
Sachs.” Sidney Weinberg, the longtime senior partner at Goldman Sachs in
the 20th century, was a confidante of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s who enticed
him to Washington on several occasions before, during and after World War
II. In 1938, Roosevelt offered Weinberg the position of ambassador to the
Soviet Union, but Weinberg thought better of it because he did not speak
Russian, was a Jew from Brooklyn and didn’t want to leave Goldman. In
November 1943, FDR did succeed in enlisting Weinberg to go to the Soviet
Union “openly” as a representative of the Office of Strategic Services—the
predecessor of the CIA—although what he did there and for how long has been
lost to history.

In 1968, Henry Fowler joined Goldman Sachs as a partner, and thus became
the first former Treasury secretary to spin the revolving door and land a
Wall Street job. John Whitehead, who was the co-senior partner of Goldman
Sachs in the 1970s and the early 1980s, became deputy secretary of state in
the second Reagan Administration, after he retired from the firm. John F.
W. Rogers, a former close Reagan advisor, has been the longtime consigliore
at Goldman and oversees both the global communications and government
relations departments. Rubin, who had befriended Fowler during his time at
Goldman and who went on to run Goldman Sachs in the 1980s, along with Steve
Friedman, left Goldman in January 1991 to join the Clinton administration.
In 1995, he succeeded Lloyd Bentsen as Treasury secretary. Friedman,
meanwhile, became chairman of the National Economic Council under George W.
Bush, and, of course, Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman, was Bush’s
Treasury secretary during the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.

Rubin, apparently, is not content to go gracefully into the good night when
it comes to wielding power, and lingering questions about his continued
influence inside the Clinton camp are at the center of an issue that is
likely to dog Hillary through 2016. From his perches as co-chairman of the
Council on Foreign Relations and as a founder of the Hamilton Project at
the Brookings Institution, Rubin—long considered a Washington
kingmaker—continues to cast his spell on the Obama administration, which
has been, and continues to be, chock full of appointees with close ties to
him, including Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Gene Sperling,
Jason Furman, Jack Lew, Michael Froman and Sylvia Matthews Burwell. While
Rubin’s reach is both unprecedented and stunning, it remains to be seen
whether he is able to work his magic and position Blankfein into an
important role in a Hillary Clinton administration, should there be one and
if he aspires to such a thing.

***

All of which raise the most pertinent question of all: rhetoric and
fundraising aside, where does Clinton really stand on Wall Street? If she
becomes president, is she going to side with the Rubinites—or has she come
to realize, as even her husband apparently has, having conceded in remarks
that he naively supported too much deregulation, that Wall Street must be
carefully watched and kept at arm’s length?

She’s been fairly cagey about this issue, eager to assuage both sides.
Where Obama blamed Wall Street—not inaccurately—for behavior that caused
the 2008 financial crisis and championed new Wall Street regulations like
the Volcker Rule and the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that really stick in the craw
of money men—all while presiding over a veritable profit boon for the
financial industry—Clinton said hardly a word on the topic of Wall Street
shenanigans.

Her nascent populism has only appeared in the last year or so, as the
Elizabeth Warren movement took off. For instance, in a speech at the
progressive New America Foundation, she spoke about the dangers of the
growing inequality in the country. “Americans are working harder,
contributing more than ever to their companies’ bottom lines and to our
country’s total economic output, and yet many are still barely getting by,
barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work
should have merited,” she said. “And where’s it all going? Well, economists
have documented how the share of income and wealth going to those at the
very top—not just the top one percent, but the top one-tenth percent or the
top-hundredth percent of the population—has risen sharply over the last
generation. Some are calling it a throwback to the Gilded Age of the Robber
Barons.”

She also lamented how government regulators had “neglected their oversight”
of Wall Street and “allowed the evolution of an entire shadow banking
system that operated without accountability.”

Asked about these issues, Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill is quick to
point out times she has called for more regulation—an eagerness that
underscores how the Clinton operation wants to appear populist even as it
collects the Wall Street money. Merrill noted that back in March 2008, as a
presidential candidate, she called for “much more vigorous government
oversight and enforcement of the subprime mortgage market.” He also said
that she staked out positions, in the year or so before the financial
crisis hit, on reducing or eliminating the carried interest of private
equity partners being taxed at capital gains rates; on a financial
transaction tax; and on repatriating overseas income by U.S. corporations.
In a 2007 press release from her campaign, for example, Clinton declared:
“Our tax code should be valuing hard work and helping middle class and
working families get ahead. It offends our values as a nation when an
investment manager making $50 million can pay a lower tax rate on her
earned income than a teacher making $50,000 pays on her income. As
president I will reform our tax code to ensure that the carried interest
earned by some multi-millionaire Wall Street managers is recognized for
what it is: ordinary income that should be taxed at ordinary income tax
rates.” Clinton said she would use the funds generated by the tax
change—which some have estimated at $4 to $6 billion per year—to invest in
middle-class and working families.

There’s no question, when and if she decides to run, that she’s going to
have an incredible support foundation from Wall Street.”

Yet all of these efforts seem at best a combination of campaign trail
rhetoric or minor tweaks around the edges—rather than the wholesale change
that an Elizabeth Warren-type populist would want to impose on the
financial industry.

Probably the best answer to the question of what Clinton will do to Wall
Street comes from Wall Street’s own support of her. Wall Street executives,
bankers and traders have already shown their hand in support of the two
Clintons individually as well as of the causes they care about most
deeply—money they wouldn’t contribute if they thought her political future
would be detrimental to their economic future. And, in return, one thing we
know about the Clintons: They value loyalty profoundly. They are unlikely
to turn their backs on the banks, especially since it seems highly unlikely
that Warren will mount the kind of outsider challenge to Hillary in 2016
that Barack Obama did in 2008. Instead, Clinton will find ways to work with
Wall Street on issues it cares about, rather than vilifying it for
political gain.

Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen says that Hillary’s hope is that she can
use supposed slips like the one in Boston to appeal just enough to the
liberal wing of the Democratic party to ward off Warren, who offers a “far
more resonant message with the Democratic base than Hillary’s.” Without a
strong national ground organization and a strong financial network,
Warren’s message alone won’t get her very far, but the Clintons want to
avoid repeating the mistakes of 2008, when an idealism-based campaign
derailed her inevitability campaign.

She will also have much of her former opponent’s network behind her again
in 2016. Robert Wolf, the former president of UBS’ investment bank who now
has his own advisory boutique, 32 Advisors, has long been described as
Obama’s BFF (Best Friend in Finance), and although he has little direct
involvement with Clinton or her campaign team, he plans to support her
fully when the time comes. He is one of the hosts of a December 16 gala in
New York City where she will be honored. By his rough calculus, six in 10
Wall Street types are Democrats, three are Republicans and just one is
independent. He predicts that the independents, who voted for Obama in 2008
and then defected to Romney in 2012, will return to Clinton in 2016. As he
says, “There’s no question, when and if she decides to run, that she’s
going to have an incredible support foundation from Wall Street.”

As we have all seen repeatedly, Wall Street often gets what Wall Street
wants. Will it get a President Hillary Clinton, and will she be the
president Wall Street expects?

*MSNBC: “Potential Hillary Clinton challengers gear up for fight”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/potential-hillary-clinton-challengers-gear-fight>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 11, 2014, 2:11 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton’s allies may think the likely presidential candidate is
stronger now than she was before last week’s midterm elections, but that
hasn’t stopped her potential challengers from moving ahead with their own
plans.

Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who says he is seriously
considering a presidential run as a Democrat, has hired veteran Democratic
strategist Tad Devine, while the group trying to draft Sen. Elizabeth
Warren is also staffing up.

With a career in presidential politics stretching more than three decades,
Devine is highly respected in Democratic political circles. His involvement
with Sanders will instantly lend credibility to the progressive senator,
who has sometimes struggled to be taken seriously as a viable national
candidate.

“I believe he could deliver an enormously powerful message that the country
is waiting to hear right now and do it in a way that succeeds,” Devine told
The Washington Post. Devine played senior roles in Al Gore and John Kerry’s
presidential campaigns, as well as those of 17 winning Senate races.

Sanders and his message of “political revolution” have been well received
on recent trips to New Hampshire and Iowa, both key early presidential
states. And some Clinton allies fear he could find a following on the left.

“In terms of fundraising, there would be real interest in him at the
grassroots level,” Devine told the Post. “He knows how to do the organizing
that’s required. As a mass media person, I also think he would be a great
television candidate. He can connect on that level.”

Meanwhile, Ready for Warren announced Monday that it had hired a deputy
campaign manager to help run its day-to-day operations. Kate
Albright-Hanna, who is also an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker,
worked with Ready for Warren founder Erica Sagrans on Obama’s 2008
campaign. This year, she served as communications director for Zephyr
Teachout, who mounted a surprisingly competitive Democratic primary
campaign against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The group is also in the
process of hiring several field directors in key states. Warren has
repeatedly said she is not running.

At the same time, former Virginia senator Jim Webb, an anti-war moderate,
is more seriously considering a run that previously disclosed. “I do
believe that I have the leadership and the experience and the sense of
history and the kinds of ideas where I could lead this country,” he told
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza for a profile of the Democratic field published
Monday. “We’re just going to go out and put things on the table in the next
four or five months and see if people support us. And if it looks viable,
then we’ll do it.”

And then there’s Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has the most complete
infrastructure in place of anyone not named Clinton, but now to has figure
out whether or not to dismantle it after the election. His political action
committee dispatched 32 staffers to help Democrats in key states, and now
has to decide how many to keep. Many of the staffers were fairly junior,
but earned positive reviews from Iowa Democrats. O’Malley was seen as
damaged by the loss of lieutenant governor Anthony Brown in last week’s
race to replace him in the Maryland statehouse.

Clinton still has an enormous lead in early public opinion surveys, and
allies think her party’s drubbing last week will encourage Democrats to
rally around Clinton and help clarify her message against a Republican
Congress. At the same time, many Democrats, especially in early states, say
they want to see a vigorous primary campaign.

*New Republic: “Hillary's Going to Have a Primary After All, and She Should
Be Grateful”
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120237/facing-hillary-clinton-jim-webb-bernie-sanders-and-martin-omalley>*

By Danny Vinik

November 11, 2014

With the midterms over, political operatives and professional pundits are
quickly turning their attention to the 2016 presidential election. Their
interest, though, is unbalanced, focused on the wide-open Republican field.
Many don’t expect a competitive Democratic primary. Will anyone even
challenge Hillary Clinton? Some Democrats worry Clinton's supposed
inevitability will come across as arrogance. “She's an enormously capable
candidate and leader,” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told CNN in
May. “But I do worry about the inevitability thing, because I think it's
off-putting to the average voter."

It is appearing more and more likely, however, that Clinton will face
primary opponents. In fact, three potential candidates—Senator Bernie
Sanders, former Senator Jim Webb and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley—have
all signaled they will seek the Democratic nomination.

Of the three potential candidates, Sanders seems most serious about running
for president. The clearest sign came Tuesday when Tad Devine, a major
Democratic consultant who worked closely with Al Gore, John Kerry, and
Michael Dukakis, said that he would work with Sanders. “If he runs, I’m
going to help him,” Devine told the Washington Post. “He is not only a
longtime client but a friend. I believe he could deliver an enormously
powerful message that the country is waiting to hear right now and do it in
a way that succeeds.”

Sanders, who is a socialist, has been a vocal critic of President Obama and
the Democratic Party for failing to go after Wall Street and being too
close to big-money interests. He believes Clinton is no different, and this
has made him consider a presidential run. On Saturday, he appeared on
C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” and talked about a potential campaign as well. "If
there is not that support, I will not run,” he said. “I want to run a good
campaign and a meaningful campaign and a winning campaign. If I can't do
that, I'm not interested in running."

Ryan Lizza documents Sanders’s commitment to challenging the Democratic
Party in a new piece for The New Yorker focusing on Clinton’s supposed
inevitability. Lizza does not assess whether Clinton is actually
inevitable. Instead, he describes how O’Malley and Webb, along with
Sanders, are both positioning themselves for presidential campaigns. For
instance, O’Malley spent time in Iowa campaigning for Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Jack Hatch. Hatch lost by nearly 22 points, but
O’Malley still used the campaign to introduce himself to Iowa voters. On
Sunday, the Washington Post reported that O’Malley, whose term is up in
January, sent 32 staffers to battleground states across the country during
the midterms—another sign he is thinking about 2016.

Webb has done the least to prepare for a presidential run, but he is
certainly flirting with the idea. “I do believe that I have the leadership
and the experience and the sense of history and the kinds of ideas where I
could lead this country,” he told Lizza. “We’re just going to go out and
put things on the table in the next four or five months and see if people
support us. And if it looks viable, then we’ll do it.” He travelled to New
Hampshire in October to discuss his memoir, a chance to introduce himself
to voters in the pivotal state.

All three of these campaigns are in their infancy but there’s a very good
chance that at least one—and possibly several—of them will run. Each would
likely challenge Clinton from the left on economic issues, attempting to
tie her to Wall Street. Webb and Sanders have also been critical of her on
foreign policy issues such as the interventions in Libya and Syria. In
addition, there’s always the chance that Vice President Joe Biden or
Senator Elizabeth Warren enter the race as well.

Can any of them derail Clinton as Obama did in 2008? Unlikely. Clinton is
even better positioned now to ward off Democratic challengers than she was
six years ago. But at the very least, a Sanders, O’Malley, or Webb campaign
will force Clinton to defend her record and persuade primary voters that
her agenda is best for the country. She may still be the inevitable
candidate. But at least she’ll be prepared as well.

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Bill Clinton: Hillary 'happy as a clam' even
without run”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/223655-bill-clinton-hillary-happy-as-a-clam-even-without-run>*

By Peter Sullivan

November 11, 2014, 1:28 p.m. EST

Former President Clinton says that Hillary Clinton would be "happy as a
clam" even without running for president in 2016.

Appearing on the "Ellen DeGeneres Show" in a segment airing Tuesday,
DeGeneres jokingly presented Clinton with two baby's onesies. One said "My
grandma's running for president in 2016" and the other read "My grandma's a
stay-at-home granny."

"If I pick that one, it would be best for the country," Clinton said,
pointing at the 2016 onesie.

Pointing at the "granny" onesie, he said "If I pick that one, she would be
happy as a clam and so would I."

"So keep 'em both and give her the right one when she decides," he said.

The Clintons' granddaughter, Charlotte, was born in September, and Hillary
Clinton has made clear in her speeches since then how much she values being
a grandmother.

When DeGeneres joked that Clinton was going to make a "big announcement"
about his wife, Clinton replied, "She's the happiest grandmother."

"I don’t know what Hillary’s going to do, that’s the truth," Clinton said,
as he has said before. "If I did I wouldn’t tell you, but I don’t know."

Clinton pointed to a program at the Clinton Foundation to encourage parents
to read to their children to boost development. "Whatever she wants to do
I’m for, she’s the ablest public servant I ever worked with, but I’m more
interested, now that I have a granddaughter, than I ever have been in this
project she and Chelsea started at our foundation called Too Small to
Fail," Clinton said.

Despite these comments, Hillary Clinton is seen as all but certain to run.
She has campaigned across the country for Democrats, including trips to
Iowa and New Hampshire, and there have been several reports of strategy
meetings lining up a campaign.

*Mediaite: “Fox’s Cavuto Hammers Rand Paul for ‘Condescending Swipe’ at
Hillary’s Age”
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-cavuto-hammers-rand-paul-for-condescending-swipe-at-hillarys-age/>*

By Josh Feldman

November 11, 2014, 5:36 p.m. EST

Fox’s Neil Cavuto scolded Senator Rand Paul today for his “condescending
swipe” at Hillary Clinton for maybe being too old to be president. Paul
said yesterday that Hillary might not be ready for the “rigorous physical
ordeal” of a presidential campaign.

Well, Cavuto thought that was a pretty cheap shot, worse than Chris
Christie shouting at someone to “shut up.” He pointed out that Ronald
Reagan was 69 on inauguration day, as Clinton would be, and no Republican
would say he wasn’t up to the job.

And just to stick the knife in a little further, Cavuto invoked Paul’s
father, who happens to be a couple of years older than Clinton. Cavuto said
Paul’s done some “damage with that condescending swipe” and told him to
stop “pull[ing] this nonsense.”

*Politico Magazine: “Wave? What Wave?”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/nancy-pelosi-112799.html>*

By Lauren French and John Bresnahan

November 12, 2014, 5:03 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] An exclusive interview with an unbowed Nancy Pelosi.

House Democrats ended Election Day controlling fewer seats than they have
in nearly 80 years, but Nancy Pelosi isn’t conceding anything.

“I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave,” Pelosi said in
her sit-down first interview since Democrats lost a dozen House seats to
Republicans on Nov. 4. “There was no wave of approval for the Republicans.
I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave
of approval for anybody. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.”

As for whether she would consider stepping down as minority leader, Pelosi
said she’s needed now more than ever.

“Quite frankly, if we would have won, I would have thought about leaving,”
Pelosi declared, a remark that will likely surprise both admirers and
detractors.

Pelosi’s take on the midterms is this: It wasn’t a Republican wave, her
party’s message is fine and while President Barack Obama thinks Democrats
need to play better politics, she believes Democrats just need to better
engage voters.

As Pelosi prepares to run for another term as House minority leader, a
position she’s expected to win unchallenged next week, the powerful
Californian is unrepentant about a brutal election night.

Seated in her Capitol Hill office on Friday, the 74-year-old Pelosi offered
her thoughts on the state of her caucus in a Republican-controlled
Congress, revealing a leader who is standing by her principles, policies
and strategies.

From plans to harness her power among fellow Democrats to keep her job as
minority leader, to digging in on Obamacare and the party’s economic
messaging, Pelosi is setting up her party to fight to take back the House
in 2016 on similar grounds as this year, apparently without a dramatic
shakeup of the Democratic leadership team.

“It’s always time for fresh leadership, but my members have asked me to
stay,” she said. “If they want me to stay, I stay. If they don’t want me to
stay, I won’t stay.”

Some of this is the spin that any party leader uses. Some of it is vintage
Pelosi — she shrugs off defeats as lessons learned, and never overplays her
victories. She is an experienced enough pol to know that both happen
routinely in a political career that has spanned nearly four decades.

It’s also a reflection of her own power inside the House Democratic Caucus.
She’s built loyalty around her incredible fundraising prowess, raising more
money than anyone else for House Democrats — $65 million for the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee and another $35 million for members this
cycle alone, her office said. She hit 750 fundraisers and events in the
past two years, spending 200 days on the road this year raising money.

Democrats don’t often rebuke her publicly, but since the election, a number
of younger members and staffers have begun to say privately it’s time for
new blood in leadership to energize the party ahead of the 2016 elections —
they don’t want Pelosi gone but want her to cast a wider net within the
party for advice.

On a conference call with members last Thursday, just two days after the
election, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said Democrats need to “rethink”
their message after a number of young people voted for Sen.-elect Cory
Gardner, a Republican, over Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat.

Pelosi cut her off, sources on the call said.

Other Democratic aides and insiders have grumbled privately, too, that they
want more dramatic moves on the policy and messaging front.

“As a party, we need to change,” a senior Democratic aide said. “[Voters]
like our policies. All this leftie [talk], the country likes, but somehow
the message about us as individual members of the conference isn’t breaking
through. There is great unrest.”

Pelosi is giving ground that Democrats need to do a better job at bringing
young people to the polls — suggesting that Democrats launch an aggressive
voter engagement drive for 2016 just one day after the election.

“We have to engage people in voting again. Two-thirds of the electorate did
not vote in this election the other night,” Pelosi said. “That’s shameful.”

Pelosi suggested the new effort has to go far beyond just registering
likely Democratic voters — the party needs to provide an “inspiration” to
get people to the polls.

“It’s not just registration. You can’t just go up to someone and say, ‘Will
you register to vote?’ You have to have an inspiration. It’s not just
registration, it’s the whole engagement of it,” Pelosi said.

On Nov. 4, as the Election Day drubbing for Democrats unfolded, Pelosi
gathered with a small group of supporters and staffers at Rep. Chellie
Pingree’s (D-Maine) home on Capitol Hill to watch the results. Attendees
described the event as “somber” and “downbeat.” Congressional Campaign
Committee Chairman Steve Israel of New York talked about turnout and the
party’s effort to defend all incumbents — unlike when in 2010 the DCCC had
to cut off some vulnerable members because of stretched resources.

By the time she left the event at 11 p.m., a number of high-profile
Democrats in California and New York were in tight — and unexpected —
battles for their careers.

Flanked by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), her husband and Democratic
staffers, Pelosi went back to the DCCC’s Capitol Hill headquarters. By 1
a.m., when races across the country were still turning against Democrats,
Pelosi began drafting a letter to colleagues, asking for their support as
minority leader. At the center of her pitch was the voter engagement drive.

Pelosi argues that House Democrats aren’t getting enough credit for
preventing a total rout. Compared with losses in the Senate, the losses
among incumbent House Democrats were better than expected, she says.

She also disputes that the White House had a “failure of politics” — a term
Obama used after POLITICO’s interview with Pelosi — during the midterm that
hurt Democrats.

“I don’t think it was a failure of his message; it was the extent of his
success. Let’s say it in a more positive way. This president has
accomplished many great things,” Pelosi said of the president. “You know
there is always an October eclipse. We couldn’t catch a break.”

Instead, Pelosi faulted a series of international crises — fighting in
Ukraine, the terrorist group ISIL and the deadly outbreak of Ebola — for
distracting the media and voters from Democrats’ economic message.

Pelosi’s outlook was wildly optimistic running into the homestretch. She
insisted in July that Democrats were going to win 25 seats and take back
the House. As Congress adjourned in September, Pelosi was still claiming
that Democrats had a “60 percent” chance of winning the House, even when
all the polls said the exact opposite. “The momentum is coming our way,”
Pelosi said at the time. In private, members-only conference calls before
Nov. 4, Pelosi was predicting Democrats would break even on Election Day.

Pelosi isn’t backing away from the liberal economic message that House
Democrats based their campaign on, such as their focus on equal pay for
women and an increased minimum wage. Those messages were poll tested,
Pelosi said, and did well in districts that weren’t distracted by
higher-profile statewide races.

“The message that is important for everybody is financial stability … our
message was about that,” Pelosi said. “[It was] jump-start the middle
class, stop tax breaks that send jobs overseas … [the idea that] when women
succeed, America succeeds, equal pay for equal work and investments in
education.”

Democrats were also hit by an onslaught of outside money, Pelosi said. Even
in the minority, the DCCC had a huge fundraising advantage over the GOP,
buoyed by Pelosi’s network of deep-pocketed donors. Yet despite outraising
the National Republican Congressional Committee, Democrats couldn’t compete
with a torrent of late spending by Republican super PACs.

“We controlled the damage enormously. They were coming endlessly without
one fact. Endless money, no commitment to truth. They will say anything,”
she said.

Pelosi isn’t nearly ready to give up on her tenure as the House Democrat’s
top fundraiser and leader. The veteran lawmaker said she has no plans to
leave or stay past 2016, but she said that to win back the House, Democrats
will need access to her expansive donor network.

As for leaving after a tough loss, Pelosi said she is committed to helping
Democrats regain the majority. In fact, Pelosi insisted that she would have
only considered stepping down had Democrats won the House, returning her to
the speaker’s chair.

Many expect her to serve until at least Obama leaves office in 2017 — in
part to defend the 2010 Affordable Care Act from a Republican-led Congress.

Pelosi adamantly declined to say what she would do if Hillary Clinton won
the White House in 2016, turning into a joke about her relationship with a
presidential front-runner.

“You know what I’ve read? I’ve read that my lifelong dream is to serve as
speaker with Hillary Clinton as president. So what? My lifelong dream …”
Pelosi deadpanned.

House Democrats remain intensely loyal to Pelosi. She’s known for
impressing donors with handwritten “thank you” notes and personal phone
calls. Members say she pushes them not with threats or strong-arming but by
asking them what they need from certain legislation or votes.

That bond with her rank and file explains why Pelosi has been able to stave
off any challenge to her leadership post. It helps that no current Democrat
could take up her fundraising network. Pelosi has raised more than $400
million since 2002.

She does it by attending roughly 750 fundraising and campaign events in the
past two years, her office said.

“We would have lost more than 15 [seats] without Nancy Pelosi,” Israel
said. “She’s the one who raised the money that gave us the resources to
build the firewall that mitigated against even worse losses.”

With Republicans in the majority in both sides of the Capitol, Pelosi now
faces a new Congress that will be more conservative than in the past four
years of just a GOP-controlled House. Already, GOP hard-liners are
demanding a series of votes on Republican-friendly legislation that will
anger Democrats. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.), poised as the next Senate majority leader, already pledged to hold
an Obamacare repeal vote early in the new session.

The 2010 health care law is one of the cornerstones of Pelosi’s legacy in
the House — and the California Democrat said she would remain in leadership
to defend the law at least for another term.

“I’m honestly here to protect the Affordable Care Act from the clutches of
… whatever,” Pelosi said.

*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>
)