Subject: Correct The Record Thursday November 13, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 08:12:46 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Thursday November 13, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Politico: “The liberal media's not ready for Hillary”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-liberal-media-112841.html?hp=c2_3>*

“David Brock, a Clinton ally who runs both Media Matters and the
pro-Clinton group Correct The Record, attacked Henwood’s story as a
‘liberal screed’ that would have ‘no effect other than bolstering the
Republican case against her, and so we’re going to push back on them.’”

*New York Times: “In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/world/asia/in-climate-deal-with-china-obama-may-set-theme-for-2016.html>*

"Mrs. Clinton has not laid out a specific climate change policy that she
might pursue as president, but she has enthusiastically supported efforts
to reduce carbon pollution — including Mr. Obama’s regulations. At a
September conference on clean energy in Nevada she called climate change
“the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face
as a nation and a world,” and said that Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations put
the United States in “a strong position” in international negotiations."

*Business Insider: “George W. Bush Had The Perfect Response To Bill
Clinton's Twitter Challenge”
<http://www.businessinsider.com/george-w-bush-responds-to-bill-clinton-twitter-challenge-2014-11>*

“Bush responded on another social media site, Instagram. He asked why
Clinton didn't have an Instagram account. His message included the hashtag
‘#BrotherFromAnotherMother.’”

*U.S. News & World Report opinion: Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall:
“The War on One Woman”
<http://www.usnews.com/opinion/leslie-marshall/2014/11/12/hillary-clinton-will-face-sexist-attacks-if-she-runs-in-2016>*

“Even before the names are officially thrown into the hat, and certainly
before the former secretary of state has even announced whether she's going
to run or not, the attacks on her have already started.”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “64 percent say Obama is a ‘liberal’”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/12/64-percent-say-obama-is-a-liberal/>*

“By comparison, fewer Americans — 52 percent — see Hillary Clinton
qualifying as a liberal, while 54 percent call Mitt Romney a
‘conservative.’”

*New Republic: “The Big Question Democrats Need to Ask Themselves Before
They Nominate Hillary”
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120256/hillary-clinton-presidency-could-have-same-problem-obama>*

“Democrats need to find a way to appeal to an older, whiter electorate as
well. Specifically, they need to find a better way to appeal to the white
working class, which is where they’re getting clobbered.”

*MSNBC: “Robert Reich’s advice to Hillary Clinton: Ride the populist wave”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/robert-reichs-advice-hillary-clinton-ride-the-populist-wave>*

“Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is not running for president, but he
thinks any Democrat who is – including his ‘old friend’ Hillary Clinton –
should worry about Republicans outflanking them on populism.”

*Huffington Post: “Elizabeth Warren Could Join Senate Leadership: Sources”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/12/elizabeth-warren-senate-leadership_n_6148246.html>*

“Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is under consideration for a leadership
position in the Senate Democratic caucus, according to sources familiar
with the negotiations.”

*Politico: “The Rudy Giuliani guide to beating Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/rudy-giuliani-hillary-clinton-2016-112836.html>*

“Rudy Giuliani, the tough-talking former New York City mayor, has some
advice for Republicans who want to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016: Don’t be
mean.”

*U.S. News & World Report: “Rand Paul Outlines a 2016 Game Plan”
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/11/12/rand-paul-outlines-a-2016-game-plan>*

“More than two dozen advisers to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul converged inside a
boutique Washington hotel Wednesday to begin to form the skeleton of a 2016
presidential campaign.”

*Washington Post: “Mike Huckabee rebuilds political team with eye on
another presidential run”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-huckabee-rebuilds-political-team-with-eye-on-another-presidential-run/2014/11/12/8cb28ccc-69b3-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html>*

“Advisers are already scouting real estate in Little Rock for a possible
presidential campaign headquarters.”

*The Daily Beast: “Is Ready for Hillary Ready to Fold—or Work With
Candidate Clinton?”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/13/is-ready-for-hillary-ready-to-fold-or-work-with-candidate-clinton.html>*

[Subtitle:] “The group’s original purpose was to build up excitement and an
email list of supporters for a possible campaign—then disband if and when
she ran for president. Now it’s not so sure.”

*Articles:*

*Politico: “The liberal media's not ready for Hillary”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-liberal-media-112841.html?hp=c2_3>*

By Maggie Haberman and Hadas Gold

November 12, 2014, 7:28 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] She has no viable opponent, so progressive outlets are trying
to create one.

Elizabeth Warren says she’s not running. Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy
Klobuchar have said the same. Even Martin O’Malley has refused to take
shots at Hillary Clinton.

So the liberal media is taking matters into its own hands.

Absent a strong challenge to Clinton from the left so far, progressive
media outlets are trying to fill the void — propping up Warren, the
Massachusetts senator, Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator who has made
noise about running for president, and outgoing Maryland Gov. O’Malley, the
only one laying any groundwork toward a run. Even Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders, who styles himself a “Democratic socialist,” is getting some play
in an effort to avoid a coronation.

The fight is less about ideological purity than it is about motivating the
Democratic base, especially after the party’s wipeout in last week’s
midterms in which many of their voters stayed home.

The anti-Clinton drumbeat in progressive outlets picked up quickly as soon
as the midterms were over.

“The Lesson from the Midterms: Elizabeth Warren Should Run in 2016,” read
the headline the day after the elections from In These Times magazine.

“Bernie Sanders is the Presidential Candidate America Truly Needs,” added
Mic.com, a relatively new site aimed at progressive millennials, on Monday.

The Nation, which has been flexing muscle after a wave of economic populism
swept over the Democratic Party, has been beating the drums for a Clinton
challenger for months. At times, The New Republic has chimed in about
Clinton’s weaknesses. And in October, Harper’s Magazine ran a piece by
far-left writer Doug Henwood that ripped Clinton as a hawkish centrist out
of step with the spirit of the times.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and part owner of The Nation, is blunt about
her motives: The magazine, still an influential voice on the left and an
outlet experiencing renewed relevance in a populist Democratic Party, plans
to play a role in shaping the primary — with or without Warren.

“We believe that there’s a kind of economic populism and an agenda … that
we hope to drive into 2015 and 2016,” Vanden Heuvel said in an interview.
“And Hillary Clinton, because of her history, because of her team, has not
been part of that wing of the Democratic Party. … [E]ven the most ardent
Hillary fans should understand that sometimes not only her party and the
country — but her candidacy — would be better served if she has
competition.”

The Nation played a key role in 2013 in New York City’s mayoral primary,
endorsing little-known Public Advocate Bill de Blasio early and giving him
momentum among the primary’s deeply liberal voters. In this year’s
Democratic primary for governor in New York, the magazine endorsed Zephyr
Teachout, a virtually unknown law professor who became a painful thorn in
Andrew Cuomo’s side and kept his winning margin in the primary
uncomfortably low.

Progressive media outlets are less attempting to prop up Warren as a
potential candidate than to make sure her populist crusades — like cracking
down on the banking industry — will define the debate. At times, that
involves promoting Warren, but it also will mean looking at people like
Sanders, who has started visiting early states and has said that Clinton
will need to explain her relationship with Wall Street. Even Webb, who was
Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary and claims to have told President Barack
Obama that health care reform would be a “disaster,” has gotten some love
on the left.

The various outlets’ focus on Warren and the field of potential
anti-Hillarys has caught the eyes of Clintonland, which views the
Massachusetts senator skeptically and is well aware that she has said
little positive about the former secretary of state, including when the two
appeared at the same political rally for failed gubernatorial candidate
Martha Coakley last month. Clinton insiders have said privately that they
see Warren as trying to keep some small ember alive about her own future,
even as she insists she’s not running for president.

• • •

If The Nation and The New Republic, which ran its own pro-Warren cover in
November 2013, are all about encouraging reasoned, healthy debate on the
issues, Harper’s Magazine is going in the opposition direction. In bright,
shining neon.

“Stop Hillary!” blared the headline on the magazine’s cover this month.

“It was just commissioned to be critical, and they got what they asked
for,” Henwood said in an interview about his article, in which he described
Clinton as part of a “widespread liberal fantasy of her as a progressive
paragon … in fact, a close look at her life and career is perhaps the best
antidote to all these great expectations.” (David Brock, a Clinton ally who
runs both Media Matters and the pro-Clinton group Correct The Record,
attacked Henwood’s story as a “liberal screed” that would have “no effect
other than bolstering the Republican case against her, and so we’re going
to push back on them.”)

The Clinton-questioning chorus isn’t just lefty magazines, either. Mika
Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” has repeatedly encouraged
Warren to go for it, and she was critical of Clinton’s gaffes about her
wealth during her book tour. On Wednesday, Brzezinski said Warren
challenging Clinton in a primary “would be great.” Her MSNBC colleague
Chris Hayes has publicly questioned Clinton in recent months, including
what he called her “bizarre” silence on the police shooting in Ferguson of
an unarmed black teen.

The questioning of assumptions about Clinton’s march to the White House —
and not just on the left — is partly a story of journalists looking for
sharp angles on a Democratic primary race that threatens to be deadly dull.
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, for instance, recently took a sober,
straightforward look at the “trap” Clinton could fall into assuming
inevitability, writing that the midterm election results could lead to “a
Republican Party that overinterprets its mandate in Congress and pushes its
presidential candidates far to the right, freeing Democrats to gamble on
someone younger or more progressive than Clinton.”

But the doubt among progressives is real, even though Clinton may be better
positioned with the base of the Democratic Party now than in 2008. Back
then, her media critics had more alternatives to work with — a slew of
sitting senators were openly running for the Democratic nomination,
including Barack Obama and John Edwards, a progressive favorite until his
marital troubles came to light.

Clinton’s record, particularly her vote for the Iraq War in 2002, was also
more unsettling to the left in 2008 — a weakness that Obama skillfully
exploited. Now, most of the debate over social issues such as same-sex
marriage has been settled within the Democratic Party, and the new frontier
is economic populism — the very cause that has fueled Warren’s rise.

So Clinton still has to guard her left flank, but she also has influential
defenders among progressives, too.

In the past two years, the Daily Kos, a hub of progressive online activism
that was a thorn in her side in the 2008 primary, has been far more
positive about her prospective candidacy this time around — and critical of
outlets that try to bolster anti-Clinton narratives. Its founder, Markos
Moulitsas has refused to engage in the speculation that Warren might change
her mind and run, and has described Clinton as the party’s best hope for a
second history-making victory after electing a black president in 2008.

“It’s a distraction,” Moulitsas, who wouldn’t comment for this story, wrote
in a February Daily Kos editorial. “With Clinton’s commanding general
election trial heats, not to mention demographic shifts shoring up our
electoral picture, we’ll have the luxury to look beyond the presidential
and take a more holistic approach to the cycle.”

Arianna Huffington also has been positive about Clinton since last year,
despite some Clinton allies recalling bitterly how the site she founded,
The Huffington Post, handled her in the 2008 race. In April of that year,
during the thick of the campaign season, Huffington Post ran a story that
called into question whether Clinton was the champion of working-class,
white voters that she claimed to be at the time.

Though Huffington has yet to express such full-throated support for
Clinton, she made an open plea for her to return to public life shortly
after she left the State Department. And when asked about a Clinton
candidacy, Huffington told talk show host Wendy Williams in June she thinks
“it would be fantastic to have a woman president.” (Huffington declined to
respond to a POLITICO request for comment.)

Salon writer Joan Walsh has repeatedly written favorably about Clinton, and
was set to appear at a panel for the pro-Clinton super PAC, Ready for
Hillary, on Nov. 21, though conference organizers say Walsh pulled out to
avoid appearing partisan.

Of all the anti-Clinton narratives, the Warren bubble remains the most
sustained. It swelled late last year when TNR, which enraged many on the
left when it endorsed Joe Lieberman over John Kerry in 2004, profiled her.
The reported essay by writer Noam Scheiber was headlined, “Hillary’s
Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth
Warren.”

Warren gave a rare interview for the story, in which Scheiber concluded
that “if Hillary Clinton runs and retains her ties to Wall Street, Warren
will be more likely to join the race, not less. Warren is shrewd enough to
understand that the future of the Democratic Party is at stake in 2016.”

Warren aides insisted at the time that nothing had changed and she wasn’t
planning to run. And the Warren intrigue seems to have passed fairly
quickly there — seven months later, Scheiber and TNR ran a follow-on story
about Clinton headlined, “How Hillary Won Over the Skeptical Left,” that
acknowledged the degree to which the party has coalesced around the former
secretary of state.

Yet the Clintons often have a way of keeping the longer goal in mind. A
year after that Warren piece set off alarm bells in Clintonland about
whether the senator was pushing the story — Warren aides reached out to
Clintonland at the time to soothe concerns, according to people familiar
with the discussions. And Bill Clinton is set to be the featured speaker at
a TNR gala to mark the magazine’s 100th anniversary in Washington next
month.

Still, the progressive outlets remain a potential force against Clinton —
their publishers have shown a willingness to lob a grenade in her
direction, and get attention doing it.

“You don’t have to be ‘left’ to object to stasis in politics,” said John
MacArthur, the president of Harper’s.

“Anytime you challenge the received wisdom, the people who benefit from the
received wisdom are threatened,” he added. “She’s happy with the situation
where people think it’s inevitable, she can’t lose … and somebody suddenly
raises the possibility of a challenge or the wisdom of a challenge. So
yeah, it has to make them somewhat nervous because it gives people ideas.”

Michael Tomasky, the Daily Beast columnist who has covered Hillary Clinton
as a candidate since her 2000 race for U.S. Senate, predicted the noise
against her will be more about trying to get the potential White House
candidate to embrace progressive economic issues like student loans and
ending tax breaks for the wealthy than genuine attempts to drum up a strong
primary challenger.

“There’s going to be a lot of anti-Clinton [sentiment] in the Democratic,
liberal left end of spectrum,” Tomasky told POLITICO. “Some of it will be
genuinely against her, and some of it will be for the purpose of trying to
push her in that direction.”

It gives Clinton an opportunity, he said, and she should view it that way –
and craft positions that appeal to the left accordingly: “She’ll have a
galvanized Democratic Party behind her, versus half a party which felt only
a little enthusiastic.”

As the field becomes clearer and Republicans ratchet up their attacks
against Clinton, those who might not be too happy with Clinton will quiet
down, David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, said
in an interview.

“It’s easy to gripe about Hillary. It’s a lot harder to find a solution.”

*New York Times: “In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/world/asia/in-climate-deal-with-china-obama-may-set-theme-for-2016.html>*

By Coral Davenport

November 12, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut
greenhouse gas pollution is a bet by the president and Democrats that on
the issue of climate change, American voters are far ahead of Washington’s
warring factions and that the environment will be a winning cause in the
2016 presidential campaign.

A variety of polls show that a majority of American voters now believe that
climate change is occurring, are worried about it, and support candidates
who back policies to stop it. In particular, polls show that majorities of
Hispanics, young people and unmarried women — the voters who were central
to Mr. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 — support candidates who back
climate change policy.

But Republicans are betting that despite the polls, they can make the case
that regulations to cut greenhouse pollution will result in the loss of
jobs and hurt the economy.

“This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to
double-down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the
impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole,” said Speaker
John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the soon-to-be majority leader, was no
less critical. “This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his
successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs,” he said
in a statement.

Mr. McConnell’s remarks were a hint of a line of attack Republicans are
certain to use on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for
president in 2016. The architect of Mr. Obama’s climate change plan is none
other than his senior counselor, John D. Podesta, who is likely to leave
the White House next year to work as the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s
campaign.

The climate plan that Mr. Podesta has drafted for Mr. Obama is expected to
serve as a blueprint for Mrs. Clinton’s climate change policy, should she
run.

Since the deal Mr. Obama made with China calls for the United States to cut
its planet-warming carbon pollution by as much as 28 percent from 2005
levels by 2025, he has effectively placed the obligation on his successor
to meet that goal.

That dynamic sets up climate change as a potentially explosive issue on the
2016 campaign trail, which may pit Mrs. Clinton against a field of
Republican candidates who question and deny the science that human activity
causes global warming. A number of prospective Republican presidential
candidates have already attacked what they say is Mr. Obama’s “war on coal.”

Mr. Obama has muscled through his climate change agenda almost entirely
with executive authority, bypassing a Congress that has repeatedly refused
to enact sweeping new climate change laws. In addition to the agreement
with China announced Wednesday in Beijing, Mr. Obama has used the 1970
Clean Air Act to issue ambitious Environmental Protection Agency
regulations intended to cut pollution from vehicle tailpipes and
power-plant smokestacks.

Mr. Podesta, a political veteran who was also President Bill Clinton’s
chief of staff, devised the 2025 targets to ensure that they could be
reached without new action from a future Congress. Abandoning them would
require the next president to overturn them. From the Republican point of
view, a Democratic candidate who might instead issue still more
environmental regulations would be a ripe target for 2016.

“They’re giving Republicans fertile ground for attack,” said Mike Murphy, a
longtime Republican strategist. “Overregulation is clearly a job killer and
jobs and the economy and middle-class wages are going to be a huge issue in
the 2016 presidential. And it does seem like an inside job, with Podesta
setting up Hillary’s position. Politically, they’re going to put themselves
in a weak position on this.”

As evidence, Republican strategists point to their recent wave of victories
in this year’s midterm elections, when they campaigned aggressively against
Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations.

But Democrats are increasingly emboldened by polls showing that in national
elections, candidates who push climate change policies will win support
from voters.

According to a 2013 poll by Stanford University, 73 percent of Americans
believe that the earth has been warming over the past 100 years, while 81
percent of Americans think global warming poses a serious problem in the
United States. In addition, 81 percent think the federal government should
limit the amount of greenhouse gases that American businesses can emit.

Twenty-one percent of Americans think producing electricity from coal is a
good idea, while 91 percent of Americans think making electricity from
sunlight is a good idea.

A 2014 poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, meanwhile,
found that majorities of women, minorities and young people support
candidates who strongly endorse climate action. That poll found that 65
percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 53 percent of unmarried
women support candidates who back climate change action.

It found that 44 percent of people in their 20s favor candidates who
support climate change action, compared with 17 percent who oppose climate
action.

“These groups were hugely important in the 2008 and 2012 elections,” said
Anthony A. Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale project. “And they will be
more important in 2016, because they are starting to make up a greater
portion of the electorate.”

Mrs. Clinton has not laid out a specific climate change policy that she
might pursue as president, but she has enthusiastically supported efforts
to reduce carbon pollution — including Mr. Obama’s regulations. At a
September conference on clean energy in Nevada she called climate change
“the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face
as a nation and a world,” and said that Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations put
the United States in “a strong position” in international negotiations.

Democrats also believe that Wednesday’s announcement weakens at least one
crucial Republican argument against climate action. For years, Republicans
have argued that the United States should not take unilateral action on
climate change because it would hamstring the economy while China, the
world’s largest carbon polluter, failed to act. But the agreement with
China undercuts that argument.

For Republicans, the issue of climate change, like immigration and same-sex
marriage, is one that potential candidates and their advisers are starting
to grapple with as they try to carve a path to the presidency, while
winning support from a new generation of more diverse voters.

Republicans who seek to win their presidential nomination will have to win
support from their conservative base — white and older voters, who, polls
show, are less likely to believe that climate change is a problem. More
important, Republicans do not want to be targeted by conservative outside
groups like Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group funded
by the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, has said that his
group intends to aggressively attack any Republican candidate in the 2016
primaries who endorses carbon regulations.

But some Republican strategists worry that the position on climate change
that could help win them their party’s nomination could hurt them in a
general election, particularly in a contest with a larger number of young
and minority voters.

*Business Insider: “George W. Bush Had The Perfect Response To Bill
Clinton's Twitter Challenge”
<http://www.businessinsider.com/george-w-bush-responds-to-bill-clinton-twitter-challenge-2014-11>*

By Hunter Walker

November 12, 2014, 8:21 p.m. EST

Former President George W. Bush sent an incredible reply after another
ex-president, Bill Clinton, asked why he wasn't on Twitter Wednesday
evening.

Clinton questioned Bush with a tweet saying he received his copy of "41: A
Portrait of My Father," Bush's biography of his dad, former President
George H.W. Bush.

In the message, Clinton asked why Bush had not joined Twitter.

Bush responded on another social media site, Instagram. He asked why
Clinton didn't have an Instagram account. His message included the hashtag
"#BrotherFromAnotherMother."

This is almost certainly the first time two former presidents have referred
to themselves as brothers from another mother.

Both Bush and Clinton could find themselves involved in the 2016
presidential race. Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton, is widely considered
the Democratic frontrunner and there is mounting speculation Bush's
brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, could run on the Republican side.

*U.S. News & World Report opinion: Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall:
“The War on One Woman”
<http://www.usnews.com/opinion/leslie-marshall/2014/11/12/hillary-clinton-will-face-sexist-attacks-if-she-runs-in-2016>*

By Leslie Marshall

November 12, 2014, 4:30 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Attacks on Hillary Clinton will be about everything but her
real qualifications.

The midterm elections are over, and in January Republicans will officially
have a majority in the Senate. With that behind us, it's time to start
hearing future presidential hopefuls announce their plans to run for the
Oval Office.

On the right, we'll perhaps see Rep. Paul Ryan, Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz
and Rand Paul, or even the last GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, to name a few.

And on the left: Hillary Clinton.

Even before the names are officially thrown into the hat, and certainly
before the former secretary of state has even announced whether she's going
to run or not, the attacks on her have already started.

That's not a surprise. And, as a woman, I can tell you what else is coming:
Nonstop attacks on her personal life, rather than an assessment of her
record as an attorney, first lady of Arkansas and the United States, U.S.
Senator for New York and secretary of state.

And Paul's first up on the dance floor of sexism. He wasted no time with
the personal attacks on his would be opponent. In an interview with
Politico's Mike Allen, Paul said, “I think all the polls show if she does
run, she’ll win the Democrat nomination ... But I don’t think it’s for
certain. 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.”
Obviously, Paul was referring to Clinton's age, which is 67.

And this is small potatoes compared to what others have said about Clinton.
In the past, whether it be in blog posts and articles or on radio or
television, she's been criticized for the way she dresses, the way her hair
is styled, her weight, her breasts; she's been called bitchy, catty, shrill
and ugly, and was even accused of looking awful while secretary of state.
Fortunately, Clinton has a sense of humor. She has often joked about her
hair, and calls her supporters "the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits."
When I met Clinton for the second time, before one of then President George
W. Bush's state of the union addresses, she joked about her pantsuit and
not wearing heels, and noted how crazy it is that people care so much about
what she wears, her height and her hair.

And I get it. As a woman who is on national television about three times
per week, I know what it's like to be judged on my appearance. I have the
"eat more Haagen Dazs" emails from people telling me how fat I was (when I
was eight months pregnant).

Television is a visual medium, so it comes with the job. But should a
woman's appearance matter when running for office? Any office? This is
clearly where there is a double standard.

Does anyone talk about the level of attractiveness of a man running for
president? Does anyone ask about, talk about or write about his choice of
ties, suits, shirts or shoes? About his hair or lack thereof?

When Hillary was first lady, she was attacked for being too tough because
she didn't want to bake cookies. When she got emotional in New Hampshire
during the 2008 primary and tears fell, she was accused of not being tough
enough. Later, when Clinton truly showed her anger; she was accused of
having a meltdown. (That's code for hormonal, folks.) But when a man's
angry, he's strong, aggressive, in command and a leader.

If you ever questioned whether there was a "war on women," the answer is
yes. But it's not just in legislation that tries to reverse decades of
progress for women's rights; it's alive and well in the campaign arena, too.

In the upcoming presidential election, it will be a War on One Woman. And
to paraphrase Margo Channing in "All About Eve," "fasten your seat belts,
it's going to be a bumpy race."

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “64 percent say Obama is a ‘liberal’”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/12/64-percent-say-obama-is-a-liberal/>*

By Aaron Blake

November 12, 2014, 3:36 p.m. EST

President Obama's losses in the 2014 election come as an increasing number
of Americans view him as a "liberal," according to a new post-election
survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.

The poll shows 64 percent of Americans view Obama as a "liberal" — up from
57 percent after Obama's reelection two years ago. Another 19 percent say
Obama is a "moderate," while 12 percent label him "conservative" or "very
conservative." (Back in 2012, 27 percent viewed Obama as a moderate.)

By comparison, fewer Americans — 52 percent — see Hillary Clinton
qualifying as a liberal, while 54 percent call Mitt Romney a
"conservative." Obama is also seen as slightly more ideological than former
president George W. Bush, whom 61 percent of Americans define as a
conservative.

But for Bush, just 12 percent say he's "very" conservative; for Obama,
about one-third of Americans — 34 percent — say he's "very" liberal.

In fact, Obama scores more liberal than than the Democratic Party as a
whole (62 percent "liberal," including 24 percent "very") and about as
ideologically extreme as the tea party (60 percent "conservative,"
including 36 percent "very").

Obama's record in the Senate was one of the most liberal in the chamber,
but he campaigned as a uniter who could bring together Republicans and
Democrats.

Six years later, the former is the prevailing image of his presidency.

*New Republic: “The Big Question Democrats Need to Ask Themselves Before
They Nominate Hillary”
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120256/hillary-clinton-presidency-could-have-same-problem-obama>*

By Noam Scheiber

November 12, 2014

By most accounts, Hillary Clinton had a good election night. Or at least
her 2016 chances did. The New York Times reported that voters and
operatives woke up the next day counting on her to “resurrect the
Democratic Party.” And that “the lopsided outcome … makes it less likely
she would face an insurgent challenger from the left.” Washington Post
columnist Richard Cohen went even further, asserting that the past two
midterms have so decimated the Democratic ranks Clinton is no longer simply
the party’s best hope, “She is its only hope.”

I’m inclined to agree with this analysis, as far as it goes. Last week’s
results certainly make me pine for a Democratic nominee with the political
experience, organization, gravitas, and fundraising potential to crush
whatever candidate emerges from the GOP clown show set to play out over the
next year-and-a-half. There don’t seem to be many Democrats other than
Clinton who fit all those criteria. It’s possible that there are none.

On the other hand, if there’s one thing the past two midterms have taught
us, it’s that it’s not enough to build a coalition that wins the
presidency. Democrats need one that also turns out in non-presidential
years to have any hope of enacting an agenda (or, for that matter, even
staffing their cabinet). And, at this point, it’s far from clear that
Hillary Clinton is a candidate built for both 2016 and 2018. In fact, it’s
pretty easy to imagine an Obama-like coalition of young people, Latinos,
African-Americans, and single women electing Clinton to the White House,
then taking a breather two years later.

So Democrats need to find a way to appeal to an older, whiter electorate as
well. Specifically, they need to find a better way to appeal to the white
working class, which is where they’re getting clobbered. In last week’s
midterms, whites without a college degree accounted for 36 percent of
voters; Democrats lost them by a 30-point margin. In 2012, the margin was
26 points.

At first blush, the white working class would appear to pose a real
dilemma.1 The set of issues on which the Democratic Party is most coherent
these days is social progressivism. It’s very difficult to find a
Democratic politician that doesn’t support immigration reform, LGBT rights,
women’s reproductive rights, affirmative action, steps to reduce climate
change, etc. (It’s even more difficult after last Tuesday’s election.) But
while these issues unite college-educated voters and working-class minority
voters, they’ve historically alienated the white working class.

True, Democrats could theoretically appeal to the white working class with
a more populist economic agenda—a recent Pew study turned up a group of
voters who typically lean Republican nursing a deep frustration with the
economic system. They might call for breaking up big banks and limits on
CEO pay, for example. Or a tax on financial transactions to rein in
speculation. But this strategy has its own problems—namely, that populism
has historically alienated college-educated voters.

So we have a situation in which the issues that hold together the
Democratic coalition appear to be anathema to the white working class; and
the issues that could appeal to the white working class are a deal-breaker
for part of the Democratic coalition.

How to square this circle? Well, it turns out we don’t really have to,
since the analysis is outdated. The white working class is increasingly
open to social liberalism, or at least not put off by it. As Ruy Teixeira
and John Halpin observed this summer, 54 percent of the white working class
born after 1980 think gays and lesbians should have the right to marry,
according to data assembled from the 2012 election. (This tolerance
diminishes as people get older, but even middle-aged working class voters
are relatively open-minded on this issue.)

Teixeira and Halpin also cite a recent Center for American Progress poll
that asked people about their views on racial and ethnic diversity. In that
poll, 64 percent of white working class voters (overall, not just
Millennials) agreed that “Americans will learn more from one another and be
enriched by exposure to many different cultures.” Sixty-two percent agreed
that “diverse workplaces and schools will help make American businesses
more innovative and competitive.” A slight majority even agreed that “the
entry of new people into the American workforce will increase our tax base
and help support our retiree population.”

For their part, college grads are increasingly sympathetic toward economic
populism, according to recent polling from Pew. The percentage of college
grads who believe “[t]here is too much power concentrated in the hands of a
few big companies” has jumped 16 points since it bottomed out in the
mid-1990s at 59 percent. The percentage who believe “corporations make too
much profit” has jumped eight points since its low of 42 percent in the
late ‘90s. The percentage who believe “Wall Street makes an important
contribution to the American economy” has dropped 12 points since 2009
(when Pew first asked the question), to 66 percent.

Long story short, there’s a coalition available to Democrats that knits
together working class minorities and college-educated voters and slices
heavily into the GOP’s margins among the white working class. (As Teixeira
and Halpin point out, Democrats don’t need a majority of the white working
class to hold their own in the midterms. They just need to stop getting
crushed.) The basis of the coalition isn’t a retreat from social
progressivism, but making economic populism the party’s centerpiece, as
opposed to the mix of mildly progressive economic policies (marginally
higher taxes on the wealthy, marginally tougher regulation of Wall Street)
and staunchly progressive social policies that define the party today. The
politics of this approach work not just because populism is a “message”
that a majority of voters want to hear. But because, unlike the status quo,
it can actually improve their economic prospects, as Harold Meyerson
recently pointed out.

Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton. It’s possible that Clinton has it
in her to channel people’s frustration with big business and Wall Street
and figure out how to spread corporate profits more evenly across workers.
She’s certainly had her moments of late. On the other hand, it’s also
possible that Hillary’s extensive ties to the one percent will strangle the
populist project before it ever gets going, in which case some of those
unnamed lefty challengers the Times wrote off start to look pretty
attractive. However you feel about it, though, it’s the question for
Democrats to consider once they realize they need a lasting majority, not
just control of the White House.

1 Hillary Clinton partisans will point out the Clinton did very well among
white working-class voters during the 2008 presidential primaries. This is
true, but it's not at all clear that support would translate to a general
election. These were working-class voters who vote in Democratic primaries,
after all, meaning they're already pretty loyal to the party. And she was
running against a candidate who, for all his virtues, has performed
historically badly among white working class voters. (It's hard to believe
race wasn't at least part of the story.)

*MSNBC: “Robert Reich’s advice to Hillary Clinton: Ride the populist wave”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/robert-reichs-advice-hillary-clinton-ride-the-populist-wave>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 12, 2014, 8:31 p.m. EST

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is not running for president, but he
thinks any Democrat who is – including his “old friend” Hillary Clinton –
should worry about Republicans outflanking them on populism.

Reich, now a professor at the University of California Berkeley, first met
Hillary Clinton when she was a freshman at Wellesley and they marched in
civil rights demonstrations together. He met Bill Clinton around the same
time at Oxford, when they were both Rhodes Scholars. He went on to work on
both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, and joined the
administration.

In the Clinton cabinet, he was seen as the ideological counterweight to
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs before
joining the administration and then returned to Wall Street afterward.

So, if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, will she be more in the
Reich or Rubin schools? “It’s not clear yet. We’ll find out. I think she
has that choice,” Reich told msnbc.

If she wants to ride the populist wave, Reich said, she needs to focus on
growing economic inequality, wage stagnation, and the decline of the middle
class. While he said her husband could get away with “alluding” to those
issues, “now the situation has changed. It’s got to be central.”

His suggested platform includes some ideas Clinton already supports (paid
family and medical leave, increasing the minimum wage, reforming student
debt), some she might come out for (a tax hike on the top sliver of income
earners), and some she’s unlikely to ever endorse (reinstating the
Glass-Steagall banking regulation).

The Democratic Party’s favorability rating reached a record low after last
week’s election, but progressives are doubling down on their calls for the
party to embrace the kind of economic populism championed by people like
Reich and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Reich insists these issues are neither progressive nor populist, but simply
“mainstream.” “I’ll help anybody. If Rand Paul calls, I’d be happy to help
him,” Reich says.

In fact, he says Democrats should worry about Republicans assuming the
anti-establishment mantle. “Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have been talking about
these issues, if maybe not exactly in ways that Democrats would always
appreciate. The frontline in American politics, maybe not in 2016, but over
the next 5 to 10 years, is not Democrat versus Republican, it’s
establishment versus non-establishment,” he explained.

“If Democrats don’t understand this dynamic, they are going to be on wrong
side of history,” he said.

This message has earned Reich heaps of praise on the left, where the
economist stands among a rarefied pantheon of progressive thought leaders.

Some have even called on Reich to run for president himself. Democracy for
America, an organization which grew out of Howard Dean’s presidential
campaign, included the former labor secretary on a list of potential
candidates it might support in 2016. And in a recent email to supporters
making “the progressive case” for why each should make a run at the White
House, the group called Reich “a strong progressive leader who has
experience in the federal government taking on income inequality.”

Reich has heard the talk, but dismisses it offhandedly. “I’m too short and
too outspoken to run,” he says. “I hear it from people, but I don’t take it
seriously.” What if he were drafted? “I don’t know what it means to be
‘drafted.’ I really don’t think there’s any serious possibility.”

And Reich doesn’t see Democrats’ wipe-out in last week’s election as a
setback for his cause. “The message from the White House was that the
economy is better. That’s the wrong message when most people are feeling
the economy is worsening,” he said. “That message sounds like Democrats are
out of touch.”

Instead of papering over the weak economic recovery, Democrats should have
been calling attention to chronic underlying problems for the middle class.
“There was no reason for the White House or Democrats to be defensive about
inequality widening and people being on a downward escalator, because it’s
been the Republican Party that’s been the most adamant opposition to every
proposal” to address the problems, he said.

“I think the Democrats have an opportunity over the next two years to sound
the alarm and come up with a powerful message for saving the middle class,
for taking on the forces the have kept most Americans down,” he said.

*Huffington Post: “Elizabeth Warren Could Join Senate Leadership: Sources”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/12/elizabeth-warren-senate-leadership_n_6148246.html>*

By Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim

November 12, 2014, 5:15 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is under consideration for a
leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucus, according to sources
familiar with the negotiations.

Senate Democrats will be holding their leadership elections Thursday
morning. A source saw Warren coming out of Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid's (D-Nev.) office Wednesday.

A spokesman for Reid declined to comment on why Warren was there, and
Warren's office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Having Warren in a leadership position would give the Senate's most
high-profile progressive member a voice in setting the caucus' policy
agenda. She recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed, reflecting on the
party's midterm losses, that called on Congress and the administration to
push forward with progressive proposals instead of cutting deals with
Republicans simply for the sake of doing so. From her op-ed:

“Before leaders in Congress and the president get caught up in proving they
can pass some new laws, everyone should take a skeptical look at whom those
new laws will serve. At this very minute, lobbyists and lawyers are lining
up by the thousands to push for new laws -- laws that will help their rich
and powerful clients get richer and more powerful. Hoping to catch a wave
of dealmaking, these lobbyists and lawyers -- and their well-heeled clients
-- are looking for the chance to rig the game just a little more. [...]

“Yes, we need action. But action must be focused in the right place: on
ending tax laws riddled with loopholes that favor giant corporations, on
breaking up the financial institutions that continue to threaten our
economy, and on giving people struggling with high-interest student loans
the same chance to refinance their debt that every Wall Street corporation
enjoys. There’s no shortage of work that Congress can do, but the agenda
shouldn’t be drawn up by a bunch of corporate lobbyists and lawyers.”

Although Democratic candidates suffered severe losses in the midterm
elections, progressive policy issues that were on the ballot -- such as the
minimum wage -- performed well. Reid's office has already said it will be
pushing progressive policies in the new year, when Democrats are in the
minority.”

Many Democratic activists are already looking forward toward the 2016
elections, when the party facesa much friendlier landscape than it did in
2014. In two years, just 10 Democrats will be facing re-election, compared
with 24 Republicans -- many of whom are in blue states that voted for
President Barack Obama.

*Politico: “The Rudy Giuliani guide to beating Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/rudy-giuliani-hillary-clinton-2016-112836.html>*

By Kyle Cheney

November 12, 2014, 5:59 p.m. EST

Rudy Giuliani, the tough-talking former New York City mayor, has some
advice for Republicans who want to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016: Don’t be
mean.

“The wrong way is to be too aggressive, and be too mean, and to ever get
personal,” he said Wednesday in an interview with POLITICO. “The right way
to do it is on policy and on true contribution.”

In a wide-ranging, blunt and occasionally expletive-laden interview,
Giuliani — whose own 2008 bid for the White House fizzled quickly — said
Clinton’s central vulnerability will be what her allies have long argued is
a strength: her policy résumé. He compared President Barack Obama’s
political charisma to Ronald Reagan’s and had a few choice words for former
ally Charlie Crist.

But he reserved his sharpest comments for Clinton, who represented New York
in the Senate toward the end of Giuliani’s second term at City Hall and who
has yet to announce whether she’ll make a second run for the White House.

“She’s a candidate who, with her baggage, can be beaten by the right
candidate who handles it the right way and by the right campaign who
handles it the right way,” he said.

“As a first lady she tried one thing and failed,” he continued, referring
to her drive to pass a national health reform agenda, an effort Giuliani
noted provided at least some of the underpinnings of Obamacare. “As a
secretary of state, she traveled the world, and I would argue every place
she traveled, maybe an exception here or there that don’t mean very much,
is in worse shape today than it was then.”

Although he was unsparing in his criticism of Clinton and Obama, her former
boss, on policy matters, Giuliani made it clear that he sees the president
as a rare political talent.

That opinion was informed in 2007, when Giuliani was in the middle of his
bid for the GOP presidential nomination and Hillary Clinton was considered
the front-runner on the Democratic side. At the time, his wife urged him to
watch the tape of Obama’s first speech as a candidate, predicting that the
then-Illinois senator would be the Democrat to beat. Giuliani said he
scoffed.

“I said, ‘Honey we’re running against Hillary. He’s a nice guy. He’ll run
for a little while. He’s going to make a point, move Hillary a little bit
to the left,’” Giuliani recalled saying. But at his wife’s insistence, he
watched the tape anyway and came away with a different attitude.

“I said, ‘Holy s—-! This guy could win,” he said. “I mean this is special.
This is Reagan. This is [Bill] Clinton.’”

Asked about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a longtime Giuliani ally who
also may run for the White House in 2016 on the Republican side, the former
mayor offered both praise and caution.

“Chris has some of what we were talking about with Obama — Reagan,
Clinton,” he said. “I don’t know at that level, but he’s got — if you’ve
ever watched him speak, he’s got a charm and a thing that draws you to him
that’s terrific.”

Giuliani called Christie decisive, smart and a fast learner. He said the
Bridgegate scandal that plagued the governor early this year (in which his
aides and allies are accused of engineering traffic jams in an alleged
political retribution scheme) was unlikely to harm Christie politically.

“He’s innocent,” Giuliani said. “I think it’s going to come out that way,
and I think it will not hurt him.”

But he also said the New Jersey governor has to broaden his focus — and
that he still needs to learn to alter his confrontational demeanor.

“I think the donors like him. The donors are establishment Republicans who
like tough guys … and I think an antidote to this present president who’s
too mild might be a strong president,” Giuliani said. “But I think Chris
has to start thinking whole country rather than just what appeals to New
Jersey.”

Giuliani, who’s now a security consultant, operates a law firm and is on
the international speaking circuit, told reporters he briefly considered
running for president again in 2012 before deciding to stick to the private
sector.

He recalled with bitterness an episode from his 2008 bid in which
then-Florida Gov. Crist — a Republican at the time, but now a Democrat —
had planned to back his candidacy only to endorse Sen. John McCain days
before the Florida primary.

So Giuliani took no small pleasure in Crist’s narrow loss to incumbent
Republican Rick Scott in last week’s gubernatorial election. Footage of
Giuliani savaging Crist’s integrity was featured in a pro-Scott ad in the
final days of the campaign.

“I do have a little bit of an obsession with Charlie after the way he
screwed me,” Giuliani told POLITICO. “Everything I said in that ad, I
defend under oath, and I could defend it before St. Peter.”

*U.S. News & World Report: “Rand Paul Outlines a 2016 Game Plan”
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/11/12/rand-paul-outlines-a-2016-game-plan>*

By David Catanese

November 12, 2014, 5:32 p.m. EST

More than two dozen advisers to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul converged inside a
boutique Washington hotel Wednesday to begin to form the skeleton of a 2016
presidential campaign.

The first-term GOP senator hasn't definitively settled on a White House
run, and a potential formal launch remains at least five months away. But
the meeting of Paul's political brain trust under one roof for a daylong
marathon of strategy sessions marks a significant indication of his
ambitions to become a top-flight contender for the Republican nomination.

Paul's team gathered at The Liaison hotel off Capitol Hill in Washington,
where rolling private meetings in conference rooms touched on a laundry
list of subjects, from communications and fundraising to technology and the
early state primary map. The confab came just a week after sweeping GOP
victories in the 2014 midterm elections, for which Paul campaigned in 35
states.

It was the first time his emerging political team from across the country
came together, allowing an opportunity to familiarize each other with their
goals, priorities and challenges. Doug Stafford, Paul's top political
lieutenant, served as master of ceremonies, highlighting the team's past
accomplishments and outlining goal posts and benchmarks for 2015.

“A lot of different people were sharing pieces of the puzzles they’ve been
working on. So many of them are dependent on each other for things to
work," says one Paul confidante who attended the gathering but was not
authorized to speak about it publicly. "It's black, it's white, it's mostly
young. It's male and female. It's tech-savvy, smart, mission-oriented. A
lot of campaigns are three people in the room. These people are going to
leave this place empowered."

Paul, who was personally engaged in the meetings throughout the day,
appeared at a 9 a.m. session to welcome his troops and reiterate his call
to create a "bigger, bolder Republican Party."

After his remarks, he fielded questions and posed his own, creating a
give-and-take atmosphere that quickly turned into a pseudo-brainstorming
session.

"What are you doing in your area of expertise? What suggestions do you
have? This is what I'd like to see," Paul said, according to an attendee.

Paul has assembled a network of allies and advisers in all 50 states,
including veteran political hands in the early primary states of Iowa and
New Hampshire, as well as in Michigan. Since 2013, he's made 15 trips to
the first three early primary states, according to a U.S. News tally of his
travels.

*Washington Post: “Mike Huckabee rebuilds political team with eye on
another presidential run”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-huckabee-rebuilds-political-team-with-eye-on-another-presidential-run/2014/11/12/8cb28ccc-69b3-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html>*

By Tom Hamburger and Robert Costa

November 12, 2014, 10:46 p.m. EST

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who turned his stunning victory in
the 2008 Iowa caucuses into a thriving talk-show career, is reconnecting
with activists and enlisting staff to position himself in a growing field
of potential Republican presidential candidates.

This week, Huckabee is leading more than 100 pastors and GOP insiders from
early primary states on a 10-day overseas trip with stops in Poland and
England.

Huckabee’s newly formed nonprofit advocacy group, America Takes Action, has
begun to serve as an employment perch for his political team, recently
bringing on a number of experienced campaign operatives.

Advisers are already scouting real estate in Little Rock for a possible
presidential campaign headquarters.

Huckabee is scheduled to spend part of this month holding private meetings
with powerful GOP financiers in Las Vegas, New York and California, gauging
their interest in being bundlers for his possible campaign and asking for
pledges of five-to-six-figure donations to his aligned organizations. And
he is planning two strategy sessions next month, in Little Rock and Destin,
Fla., near his new Gulf Coast home, to discuss timing, potential staffing
and an opening pitch to voters.

In January, Huckabee will publish “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” his latest
manifesto on politics and culture.

Huckabee, 59, who was governor of Arkansas for a decade, is one of the more
enigmatic candidates in a potential Republican field. He has kept a
relatively low political profile since 2008, largely staying out of the
internal debates that have animated his party in the past few years.
Nevertheless, Huckabee maintains a connection with many conservative voters
and regularly polls along with former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen.
Rand Paul (Ky.) at or near the top of a potential Republican field.

An ordained Southern Baptist preacher with an easygoing demeanor, Huckabee
presents himself as both a social conservative and an economic populist. He
would be a potent draw for the bloc of religious conservative voters that
plays a big role in choosing Republican nominees. His entry would
complicate matters for other potential GOP candidates, such as Paul, Sen.
Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who have each sought to win over
religious conservatives as a core base of early support.

Huckabee’s “heart is into it,” daughter and political confidante Sarah
Huckabee told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday. “He is
personally engaged and more aggressive in taking on meetings. He can’t wait
to get back to South Carolina and Iowa.”

For the elder Huckabee, host of a weekly Fox News show that bears his name
and a regular commentator on the network, exploring another presidential
bid requires finesse: Fox News, as a policy, terminates its relationships
with commentators who create exploratory committees or otherwise show
serious intent to run for office.

“I have to be very careful about this,” Huckabee said in an interview
Tuesday with The Post.

He noted that he has “obligations in broadcasting,” and that, when it comes
to running for president, “I am not doing anything official at this point.”

On Wednesday, after The Post story about him appeared online, a Fox News
executive said the network would review Huckabee’s status.

Asked about potential competition in pursuit of evangelical Christian
voters, Huckabee said: “That’s part of the whole process of having a
primary election period. . . . It provides an opportunity for comparisons.”

Huckabee declined to say whether he admired the pugnacious approach taken
by Cruz, who favored a government shutdown last year and takes a more
militant approach than that taken by GOP congressional leaders.

“I wouldn’t want to evaluate his direction or tactics,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee’s shift from semi-retirement to being on the cusp of another
presidential run began in July 2013, said Republicans close to him who
requested anonymity to speak freely.

As Huckabee sat on the beach one day with his family, he was joined by Chip
Saltsman, the longtime political strategist who had managed his 2008
campaign.

Saltsman asked Huckabee whether he was interested in running again.
Huckabee shrugged and said he was not sure. Saltsman replied that if he had
any inclination to do it, he needed to start mapping out a run as soon as
possible in order to keep up with his potential rivals. Saltsman’s parting
message: Call me when you’re ready. A couple days later, Huckabee rang
Saltsman and said, “Let’s go.”

Since then, Huckabee has checked off a list provided to him by Saltsman and
another strategist, Bob Wickers, said people familiar with his
deliberations. First, Huckabee talked it over with his family, who
encouraged him. Next, he began calling donors, just to talk, so that those
relationships were warmed.

A startling moment for Huckabee came when he reviewed polling of GOP voters
in Iowa and South Carolina. One survey, commissioned by allies, showed him
running ahead of other possible GOP candidates by double digits.

“There were polls done that surprised me and got my attention — and led my
friends to urge me to think of this again,” Huckabee said.

An additional key move came in the formation this year of the nonprofit
advocacy group to serve as a landing spot for staff and money. The group,
formed as a “social welfare organization” under a provision of the U.S. tax
code, employs Saltsman, Wickers, Sarah Huckabee and a communications
director, Alice Stewart, who is also a veteran of the 2008 Huckabee
campaign. Chad Gallagher, another Huckabee aide, will continue to run Huck
PAC, a political action committee separate from the nonprofit outfit. All
would probably be players in a Huckabee campaign.

Republicans familiar with Huckabee’s efforts said the new advocacy group is
designed to allow him to retain his Fox News contract, since the group is
not overtly political.

On Wednesday, Bill Shine, Fox News vice president for programming, said the
network would be “taking a serious look at Governor Huckabee’s recent
activity in the political arena.”

Huckabee’s allies said that the Fox News show has been useful to Huckabee’s
political brand, keeping him in front of Republican primary voters but not
turning him into a political celebrity whose every move draws attention. He
can counsel candidates, travel, and organize without much notice, all while
keeping his name floating across the airwaves on Saturday evenings.

Surveys show Huckabee would be a top-tier contender should he decide to
enter the race. He drew more favorable responses than any other potential
candidate during an exit poll in Iowa, with 19 percent of Republican voters
there saying they wanted Huckabee to be the next presidential nominee.

Yet Huckabee could face challenges engaging anew in the fractious,
modern-day GOP. Huckabee said in 2013, for instance, that the Common Core
State Standards, which have infuriated many tea party conservatives, were
“near and dear to my heart.” He has since walked back those comments and
called the program “toxic.”

Huckabee’s overseas trip this week is being organized by Christian
political strategist David Lane as a tribute to three conservative icons
and the role they played in the fall of communism. Called the “Reagan,
Thatcher, Pope John Paul II tour,” it was billed to participants as a
“spiritual awakening.”

The courtship of the crucial social conservative wing of the GOP — and the
wide-open nature of the race — is evident in the comments of Brad Sherman,
an Iowa pastor who backed Huckabee in 2008 and is joining him on this
week’s trip. A year ago, Sherman traveled to Israel with Rand Paul on
another trip financed by the American Renewal Project. Sherman has also
heard from Cruz, Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — and he is open to
all of them.

“I still think Huckabee would make a great president.” said Sherman, pastor
of Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville, Iowa “At this point, it’s so
early, I can’t say that he is the favorite.”

*The Daily Beast: “Is Ready for Hillary Ready to Fold—or Work With
Candidate Clinton?”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/13/is-ready-for-hillary-ready-to-fold-or-work-with-candidate-clinton.html>*

By David Freedlander

November 13, 2014

[Subtitle:] The group’s original purpose was to build up excitement and an
email list of supporters for a possible campaign—then disband if and when
she ran for president. Now it’s not so sure.

When Ready for Hillary was started by two Hillary Clinton superfans in a
Washington, D.C., living room, its ambitions were modest: Build up an email
list of dedicated supporters to convince Clinton that there was enthusiasm
for a campaign. Then, once she hit the hustings, sell those email addresses
to the Clinton campaign and shut down.

But that was before Ready for Hillary emerged as a pre-campaign powerhouse,
raising more than $10 million and compiling more than 3 million email
addresses, attracting big-time Democratic donors and big-name political
operatives in the process.

Now, both outside and inside its sprawling network of organizers, some
donors and operatives are wondering if Ready for Hillary could somehow live
on after Clinton becomes a candidate in earnest.

“There is a view within the organization, and it’s getting louder, that it
makes no sense to shut down when you have an organization and a brand that
has so much momentum,” said one official with the group.

Sticking around would put the group at risk of criticism for reneging on
its original and stated mission to fold up the tent at the appointed hour.
But some Democrats say Ready for Hillary could provide a unique resource to
an eventual campaign by building on the get-out-the-vote skills it honed
during the midterms, when Ready for Hillary organizers worked to get every
candidate that Clinton endorsed elected. (That endeavor, it should be
noted, largely failed, with just one-third of Clinton’s chosen candidates
winning. Whether that was due to Clinton, local GOTV efforts, or the
Republican wave is a matter of a some dispute.)

In 2016, Ready for Hillary essentially could act as a super PAC field
operation, much as Americans Coming Together did for John Kerry in 2004.
Super PACs traditionally focus on messaging and advertising but are
hamstrung by having to pay higher rates than the campaigns do to get on the
air. A super PAC focused on GOTV efforts would free a campaign to target
its resources and energy elsewhere or could work alongside a campaign’s
field operation.

“What Ready for Hillary could do is stay ahead of the primary cycle,” said
one Democrat. “No campaign manager [for Clinton] is going to say, ‘Let’s
campaign and organize in South Dakota,’ but a Ready for Hillary could do
that.”

If Ready for Hillary remained viable and outside the campaign
infrastructure, the group could act as a scout team for the campaign,
getting its supporters to rallies for her and signing up those who arrive
on their own. It has some experience with that kind of thing, helping to
bring crowds to locations on Clinton’s summer book tour and registering
supporters in the process. Over the next three weeks, Ready for Hillary is
planning more than a dozen events around the country, mostly at college
campuses.

Ready for Hillary also has managed to do something the Clinton campaigns of
the past have not been able to do: Excite young voters and turn the
potential candidacy of someone who has been in public life for three
decades into an event. Ready for Hillary fundraisers have often been
fun—and packed, even at high-dollar New York City establishments like The
Standard Hotel, where $18 signature cocktails had names like “The Ceiling
Breaker.”

“I think those in the leadership [of Ready for Hillary] will look at the
landscape and determine what the tools are at their disposal to help
Hillary Clinton get elected president of the United States,” said Jeff
Johnson, a communications specialist who has hosted Ready for Hillary
fundraisers and who has performed outreach to the black community for the
group. “Whether that means Ready for Hillary stays on as a super PAC or
moves forward and gets absorbed by the campaign, it depends on what the
other pieces are on the chessboard.”

Political operatives involved in the organization said the real question
was whether an eventual Clinton campaign would want to take over the Ready
infrastructure, with its email lists and its nationwide network of
organizers, or whether it would prefer to build its own infrastructure.

And to be sure, there are risks associated with keeping the organization
alive, not least of which is that an organization with Clinton’s name
attached to it would be operating on her behalf but would be unable to
coordinate with the campaign. Plus, even if the group focused narrowly on
GOTV efforts, its inability to coordinate would mean it would not be able
to narrowcast messages quite like an in-house field operation would be able
to. Finally, many of the organizers who have signed on did so in the hopes
that they would have the inside track to work on the official campaign and,
later on, in the administration. Would they want to stay with an outside
group?

“Ready for Hillary is remarkably simple. It has one mission—to build up a
database of supporters for Hillary Clinton, and then one day be able to
say, ‘Mission Accomplished,’” said Tracy Sefl, a senior adviser to the
group.

Any speculation about what happens should Clinton announce a candidacy,
Sefl said, is just speculation.

“It sounds like the kind of decision that a candidate and a campaign would
be instrumental in shaping,” she said. “But because there is no candidate
and no campaign, I know of nothing being planned.”

*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 19  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the National
Breast Cancer Coalition (Breast Cancer Deadline
<http://www.breastcancerdeadline2020.org/donate/fundraising-events/2014-NY-Gala-Evite.html>
)

·  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>
)