Subject: ​Correct The Record Friday November 14, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 13:46:40 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Friday November 14, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Pres. Bill Clinton* @billclinton: I was "Happy" to be honored!  MT
@Pharrell: It was an honor to perform for @BillClinton w @herbiehancock at
Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute [11/13/14, 7:05 p.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/billclinton/status/533048034704490496>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> supported a job training and placement
program for court reporters #HRC365
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash>http://1.usa.gov/1pzBbdH
<http://t.co/TTRt9zIxUy>[11/14/14, 11:30 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/533295912236240896>]

*Headlines:*

*MSNBC: “Clinton network gathers in Little Rock to reminisce and plot”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-network-gathers-little-rock-reminisce-and-plot>*

“The formal program kicks Friday morning with an all-day symposium
featuring major Clinton administration figures and continues Saturday with
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. In-between, once-and-possibly future Clinton
staffers say there will be plenty of talk about Hillary Clinton’s future
plans.”

*Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Participants assess the (Bill)
Clinton legacy as Clinton library turns 10”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/14/participants-assess-the-bill-clinton-legacy-as-clinton-library-turns-10/>*

“The long weekend is sort of like a destination wedding for Clintonistas
past and maybe future.”

*New York Times: “Spurred by Midterm Losses, Liberal and Moderate Democrats
Square Off Over Strategy”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/politics/democratic-party-iberals-and-moderates.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0>*

“Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she run, will face tension between the
business-friendly wing of the party that was ascendant in the economic boom
during her husband’s administration and the populism of Senator Elizabeth
Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, that has gained currency of late.”

*U.S. News & World Report: “Terry McAuliffe: 60 Days Until Hillary
Decision”
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/11/14/terry-mcauliffe-60-days-until-hillary-decision>*

“Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says Hillary Clinton will know whether she's
running for president in 2016 within the next 60 days.”

*Bloomberg: “Jim Webb and the Lost History of the Pre-Obama Left”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-13/jim-webb-and-the-lost-history-of-the-preobama-left>*

“There's no soft-pedaling that criticism. The new Democratic Party expects
to win the 2016 election by, for the thirteenth consecutive time, losing
the white vote but racking up huge wins with minorities.”

*Articles:*

*MSNBC: “Clinton network gathers in Little Rock to reminisce and plot”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-network-gathers-little-rock-reminisce-and-plot>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

November 14, 2014, 7:18 a.m. EST

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas – The sprawling Clinton network will gather here this
weekend to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the former president’s
library – and to look forward to the likely next presidential franchise of
the Clinton enterprise.

All three Clinton family members, along with hundreds of friends, former
aides, donors, and supporters – not to mention a sprinkling of celebrities
– are expected in the city where Bill Clinton was once governor. It’s one
part alumni reunion, one part citywide festival, and one part pre-game
huddle ahead of an almost certain fourth Clinton family presidential run.

The city is hosting weeks of events and exhibitions to showcase its
favorite son, from an exhibition on Hillary Clinton’s handbags to a bike
tour of Bill Clinton’s favorite haunts.

The formal program kicks Friday morning with an all-day symposium featuring
major Clinton administration figures and continues Saturday with Hillary
and Chelsea Clinton. In-between, once-and-possibly future Clinton staffers
say there will be plenty of talk about Hillary Clinton’s future plans.

It’s one of two major Clinton network gatherings this month in the critical
interregnum between the midterm election and the start of Clinton’s
expected second presidential campaign, which is likely to come early next
year.

If the Little Rock event is colored with nostalgia for the last Clinton
White House, the other event, a meeting of the largest donors to the
pro-Clinton Ready for Hilary super PAC in the first family’s other home of
New York City, is decidedly more focused on a future Clinton White House.
That event will bring together later this month hundreds of the groups
largest donors, along with top strategists and Clinton insiders in the same
hotel that hosts the annual Clinton Global Initiative.

Together, the events will help chart the course for Clinton’s first moves
out of the gate next week. There will be plenty of unsolicited advice.

While Clintons may spend more time these days in Manhattan or Washington,
Arkansas may still be there place where their presence is most felt.

To get to William J. Clinton Presidential Center in downtown Little Rock,
you fly into Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, then head West past
the Clinton School of Public Policy at the University of Arkansas, before
turning onto President Clinton Avenue, which takes you past the Clinton
Presidential Park and the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. The city’s
visitor bureau offers a “Billgrimage” tour for those seeking more.

The library opened under inauspicious circumstances in 2004, as a cold rain
dampened the outdoor event as then-Presidents George W. Bush, his father
George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter huddled under umbrellas along with
30,000 onlookers.

The $165 million-dollar library, built on a formerly blighted plot of land
downtown on the river, has revitalized the area. The library and museum
complex has been responsible for $2.5 billion in economic development, the
city’s tourism board is eager to note, and helped put Little Rock on
several magazine’s list of best places to live.

Its downtown is now filled with restaurants and bars, and the city touts
that it is “home to the most LED-illuminated bridges, spanning a major body
of water, in the country.”

The dedication ceremony included a performance by U2 frontman Bono, while
this year’s celebration centers around a major concert Saturday night
featuring pop star Nick Jonas, Kool and the Gang, “House of Cards” star
Kevin Spacey and others.

*Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Participants assess the (Bill)
Clinton legacy as Clinton library turns 10”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/14/participants-assess-the-bill-clinton-legacy-as-clinton-library-turns-10/>*

By Ann Gearan

November 14, 2014, 11:40 a.m. EST

LITTLE ROCK — Cabinet members, senior advisers and a long list of loyalists
and retainers gathered Friday for an all-day retrospective of Bill
Clinton's two terms as president that also crackled with the possibility of
another Clinton White House.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Center here, the
Clinton library scheduled panel discussions on foreign, domestic and
economic policy decision-making during the two Clinton terms. The
discussion Friday inaugurated a four-day celebration of all things Clinton.

The long weekend is sort of like a destination wedding for Clintonistas
past and maybe future. On the schedule after Friday's wonky start are an
event highlighting Hillary Rodham Clinton's work on behalf of women and
girls, a discussion of how the Clinton library has improved the economic
bottom line of Little Rock, a free concert and a barbecue.

The University of Virginia's Miller Center will be releasing a trove of
more than 130 oral history interviews with Clinton administration
participants later Friday. The project is in collaboration with the Clinton
Center, a gleaming modernist glass and steel affair that has anchored an
economic revitalization of a formerly blighted waterfront industrial zone.

Neither former president Bill Clinton nor former secretary of state Hillary
Clinton was on hand as former national security adviser Sandy Berger and
others began an examination of Clinton national security policy Friday.
Haitian refugees, North Korean nuclear weapons and Balkan chaos were among
the topics at hand Friday morning.

Some of Hillary Clinton's besties were there, however, including Capricia
Marshall and Cheryl Mills. Both served both in the Clinton White House and
at Hillary Clinton's State Department, and are expected to be part of a
2016 campaign should Clinton mount one.

Berger put the task of any White House in coping with fast-moving world
events in colorful context. Being national security adviser, Berger said,
"is like riding on the elephant and then having to clean up after the
elephant when you're done."

*New York Times: “Spurred by Midterm Losses, Liberal and Moderate Democrats
Square Off Over Strategy”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/politics/democratic-party-iberals-and-moderates.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0>*

By Jonathan Martin

November 14, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Democrats’ widespread losses last week have revived a
debate inside the party about its fundamental identity, a long-running feud
between center and left that has taken on new urgency in the aftermath of a
disastrous election and in a time of deeply felt economic anxiety.

The discussion is taking place in post-election meetings, conference calls
and dueling memos from liberals and moderates. But it will soon grow
louder, shaping the actions of congressional Democrats in President Obama’s
final two years and, more notably, defining the party’s presidential
primary in 2016.

“The debate will ultimately play out in a battle for the soul of the
Clinton campaign,” said Matt Bennett, a senior official at Third Way, the
centrist political group.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she run, will face tension between the
business-friendly wing of the party that was ascendant in the economic boom
during her husband’s administration and the populism of Senator Elizabeth
Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, that has gained currency of late.

“I want her to run on a raising wages agenda and not cater to Wall Street
but to everyday people,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said of
his expectations for Mrs. Clinton.

Straddling the two blocs could prove difficult. Progressives have been
emboldened to criticize party leaders after the Republican rout,
particularly given a lack of a coherent Democratic message to address the
problem of stagnant wages.

Sifting through returns showing that lower-income voters either supported
Republicans or did not vote, liberals argue that without a more robust
message about economic fairness, the party will continue to suffer among
working class voters, particularly in the South and Midwest.

Mr. Obama’s wide popularity among activists and his attempt to transcend
the traditional moderate-versus-liberal divide have largely papered over
Democratic divisions on economic policy for the last six years. The party
was also brought together by passage the health care law, a goal of
Democratic presidents since Harry Truman. But with Mr. Obama’s popularity
flagging, and an economic recovery largely benefiting the affluent,
Democrats are clashing anew.

Unlike the 1980s, when heavy losses prompted moderates to plead with the
party to move away from liberal interest groups and toward to the middle,
it is now progressives who are the most outspoken.

And they are seizing on the election results to reorient the party. “Too
many Democrats are too close to Wall Street, too many Democrats support
trade agreements that outsource jobs and too many Democrats are too willing
to cut Social Security — and that’s why we lose elections,” said Senator
Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio.

Mr. Brown said he had talked to over 60 Ohio Democrat leaders and activists
since they got trounced in every statewide election and saw their state
chairman quit. “The message I heard from all of them was: the Democratic
Party should fight for the little guy.”

Continue reading the main story

To help provide a bridge to liberals, Senate Democrats on Thursday named
Ms. Warren as part of their leadership.

While overwhelmingly in sync on the substance of cultural issues, some of
the populists believe Democrats placed too much emphasis on such matters
and not enough on economic fairness, depressing voter turnout.

"Gay marriage, abortion and birth control are important,” said Terry
O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union. “But people join
our organization for their livelihood, and that’s what our people vote on:
their economic self-interest. I do think the party needs to re-examine what
it stands for and get back to bread-and-butter issues.”

Labor is having its own struggles, with membership declining and
Republican-controlled states moving to limit union power. Democrats lost
crucial races in part because of their candidates’ struggles in traditional
union enclaves like eastern Iowa, suburban Detroit and parts of Wisconsin.

For example, in losing to the Republican they perhaps most wanted to beat,
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, unions saw their members’ turnout slip.
After making up 32 percent of all voters in the 2012 recall attempt against
Mr. Walker, union households made up just 21 percent of the Wisconsin
electorate last week.

Part of that drop is a result of Mr. Walker’s pushing through changes to
collective bargaining law that thinned the ranks of his state’s union
members. But what exasperates some labor leaders is that Mary Burke, the
Democrat who tried to unset Mr. Walker, would not even commit to undoing
the changes that have crippled unions.

Echoing many liberals, Steve Rosenthal, a longtime Democratic strategist
with ties to labor, said progressive organizations and unions should become
more engaged in primaries and push candidates to stand for their agenda
just as the right tries to make Republican candidates hew to conservative
orthodoxy.

“I think it’s critical for folks on the left to do more of the same,” Mr.
Rosenthal said

There were a handful of bright spots in an otherwise dismal year for
Democrats, and progressives are holding up as models the success of three
Senate candidates who ran as populists: Senator Al Franken of Minnesota,
Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Senator-elect Gary Peters of Michigan.

Mr. Merkley won by 19 percentage points with a campaign centered on the
loss of well-paying jobs, the spiraling cost of college tuition and his
opposition to trade deals that he said send jobs overseas. While Democrats
nationally were losing whites without a college degree by 30 percentage
points, Mr. Merkley narrowly carried that bloc of voters.

“We didn’t lose them here in Oregon because we talked about what they care
about,” Mr. Merkley said.

But some center-left Democrats believe that this is the exception and that
the party should give up on winning a majority of such voters.

“Slowly and steadily since 1968, culture has trumped economics with voting
and the white working class,” said Kenneth Baer, a former Obama
administration official who has written a book on modern liberalism. “It’s
become the great white whale for a shipful of Democratic strategists. Obama
proved that while we cannot get wiped out with that demographic, the future
of the coalition is among growing parts of the electorate which are neither
white nor working class.”

The question of which voters to pursue captures the party’s broader debate
about its agenda. Centrist Democrats have chalked up the party’s losses to
an insufficient performance among moderate and middle-class voters.

“We talk about policies helping the middle-class, but the ones we promote
the most are ones that don’t speak to the middle-class, like raising the
minimum wage,” said Al From, who founded the moderate Democratic Leadership
Council in the 1980s to counter the party’s move to the left and helped
propel Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992.

Many liberals believe the disconnect between the politics of the party’s
grass-roots and the message they hear from Democratic administrations has
left blue-collar voters unenthused. “We do not have to struggle for an
agenda that connects with working-class voters,” said Representative Rosa
DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut. “We have an agenda that does that, but it
does not get vocalized at the top.”

Yet many progressives concur that simply pushing an increase in the minimum
wage is an inadequate solution. Liberals want tougher restrictions on
banks, more generous federal student loan aid, enhanced collective
bargaining rights and a reassessment of the country’s trade policy.

Mr. Obama has made clear he intends to work with congressional Republicans
to push for fewer restrictions on trade. Some union leaders said they
intended to fight those efforts, and would be looking for an ally in Mrs.
Clinton.

“The next six months we’re going to be relentless on trade,” vowed Larry
Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. “I hope she
comes to our side on this fight. The president is not starting out there.”

*U.S. News & World Report: “Terry McAuliffe: 60 Days Until Hillary
Decision”
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/11/14/terry-mcauliffe-60-days-until-hillary-decision>*

By David Catanese

November 14, 2014, 12:35 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The close Clinton friend says Hillary will decide on 2016 by
mid-January.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says Hillary Clinton will know whether she's
running for president in 2016 within the next 60 days.

That's the timeline the Clinton confidante outlined to U.S. News' Nikki
Schwab Thursday night during a conversation at the Knock Out Abuse gala, an
anti-domestic violence charity event held at The Ritz-Carlton in Washington.

Here's what McAuliffe said:

"She’s got to make that decision and she’s got to spend the next 60 days
making that decision. Obviously I’m close friends with the Clintons, I
chaired her last campaign. If you know Hillary, she’s going to make up her
own mind. I tell you, I hope she runs. It’s time for a woman president of
the United States of America. Put the woman issue aside for a minute –
she’s tough, she is smart, she is very pro-business, she will get this
economy going. She will help the middle class. So I’m hoping she runs, but
you know, it’s her decision. But I’m really hoping she runs, but I’m
leaving that decision to her."

Sixty days from now would place Clinton's decision around mid-January. When
she reveals that decision is an entirely different question.

When Schwab floated a Clinton-McAuliffe ticket, the former Democratic
National Committee chairman and legendary fundraiser just laughed.

"I'm just happy to support her," he replied.

*Bloomberg: “Jim Webb and the Lost History of the Pre-Obama Left”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-13/jim-webb-and-the-lost-history-of-the-preobama-left>*

By David Weigel

November 13, 2014, 11:57 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The “centrist” critic of Hillary Clinton is not centrist at all.

In post-election stories about Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign—and its
discontents—one-term Virginia Senator Jim Webb is sometimes described as a
challenger from Clinton's right. The latest example comes from Maggie
Haberman and Hadas Gold's sharp story about the left-wing media's approach
to Clinton: "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."

But Webb isn't exactly a figure of the right, or even the center-left. In
2006, when he was writing books and columns critical of the Iraq War, Webb
was drafted into Virginia's U.S. Senate race by progressives. Virginia's
blue blogs (like the defunct Raising Kaine) and the progressive hub Daily
Kos were hotbeds of pro-Webb sentiment. As Daily Kos founder Markos
Moulitsas wrote in 2013, community members "raised millions of dollars and
generated on-the-ground activism" for Webb and other candidates who were
not traditionally left-wing.

Has anything changed? "Webb was the best we could do in a state like
Virginia in 2006," wrote Moulitsas in an e-mail. "He was the epitome of
Netroots ideological pragmatism. That same pragmatism tells us that we
could do far better than Webb today pretty much anywhere outside the Deep
South or Idaho, and he certainly isn't someone who could credibly run to
Hillary's LEFT. So his flirtations are pretty much a joke."

Fair enough. But Webb's criticisms of the Obama-era Democrats are not
particularly right-wing. His anger over the Affordable Care Act started
with the process, in which "five different congressional committees voted
out their version of health-care reform, and so you had 7,000 pages of
contradictory information." Few progressives disagree with that. Webb never
took back his vote for the law, or for the idea of universal health care.
When he called it a "disaster," he was describing the process that created
a law that's heading toward its second Supreme Court challenge. His beef
with the Democratic Party was not that it moved left per se, but that it
"evolved too strongly into interest groups rather than representing working
people, including small business people."

There's no soft-pedaling that criticism. The new Democratic Party expects
to win the 2016 election by, for the thirteenth consecutive time, losing
the white vote but racking up huge wins with minorities. (The national
"white vote" is skewed by the Democrats' abysmal numbers with white voters
in the South.) Most Democrats now believe that Hillary Clinton can bend the
map enough to win. Webb is a specter from a recent Democratic past when
activists hoped that the party could do much more—without abandoning any
"left" principles.