Subject: Correct The Record Wednesday November 19, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 15:51:24 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Wednesday November 19, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: "As Secretary of State, [
@HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton>] put women's economic
participation on the foreign policy agenda"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melanne-verveer/driving-growth-through-wo_b_6179734.html
…
<http://t.co/nDPrpUb0yi> [11/19/14, 11:32 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/535108295841689601>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@melanneverveer
<https://twitter.com/MelanneVerveer> writes about @HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> and "Driving Growth through Women's
Economic Participation"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melanne-verveer/driving-growth-through-wo_b_6179734.html
…
<http://t.co/nDPrpUb0yi> [11/19/14,11:11 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/535102956954062849>]

*Headlines:*

*New York Times: First Draft: “As One Clinton Super PAC Winds Down, Another
Ramps Up”
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/11/19/?entry=5933>*

“Mr. Brock is expected to tell donors that Correct the Record, originally
conceived as a way respond to criticism of the potential candidate until a
campaign is officially underway, has decided to continue operating through
the November 2016 general election. The group plans to push back on
Republican attacks on Mrs. Clinton and serve as a counterweight to third
party groups that have already started to dig up opposition research on
Mrs. Clinton, her husband and the family’s philanthropic foundation. One
person included in the meeting described the group’s mission as 'tamping
down conservative media efforts to resurrect old scandals and gin up new
ones.'"

*Politico: “De Blasio on Clinton: Focus on income inequality”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/bill-de-blasio-hillary-clinton-113025.html>*

“New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says Hillary Clinton should start
speaking to income inequality issues, calling it a ‘necessary’ move for the
likely Democratic presidential contender.”

*Wall Street Journal: “De Blasio Urges Clinton to Lean Left in a
Presidential Run”
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/de-blasio-urges-clinton-to-lean-left-in-a-presidential-run-1416416331>*

“‘A lot about her history and origins suggest it’s natural for her. If you
go back to the work she did originally, it gets to these same issues, what
she did with the Children’s Defense Fund, what she did on family medical
leave, what she did on health-care reform,’ Mr. de Blasio said of Mrs.
Clinton.”

*Bloomberg: “How Hillary Clinton Has Dodged the Keystone Question”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-19/after-senate-defeat-keystone-hangs-over-hillary-clinton>*

“As the White House deliberates, the former secretary of State and
Democratic presidential front-runner has stayed particularly quiet about
whether she supports constructing the 1,179-mile pipeline to transport oil
sands from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries.”

*FiveThirtyEight: “Clinton Probably Can’t Expand The 2016 Map (And If She
Does, It Won’t Matter)”
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/clinton-probably-cant-expand-the-2016-map-and-if-she-does-it-wont-matter/>*

“Ready for Hillary’s logic appears to rest on the idea that President Obama
has underperformed in these states, so those states’ GOP-lean in the past
two presidential elections is misleading. But they’re red through and
through.”

*Vox: “Are Democrats out of new ideas?”
<http://www.vox.com/2014/11/19/7245775/democrats-new-ideas>*

"I asked Neera Tanden, the CAP's president, and a former policy staffer for
both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whether Democrats were
intellectually exhausted. No, she said, but the thinking on the left had
become too small; as a side-effect of being in power, Democrats had become
too obsessed with ideas that could plausibly pass. 'The difficulty for
progressives in the last few years has been that trying to think up ideas
that can make it through the House Republicans has limited the debate.'"

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Is the GOP bench now more diverse than the
Democrats’? Not really.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/19/is-the-gop-bench-now-more-diverse-than-the-democrats-not-really/?tid=hpModule_ba0d4c2a-86a2-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394>*

“In electing President Obama, Democrats broke one diversity barrier, and
with Clinton, they seem poised to break another. And in 2016, the most
viable options for the top of GOP ticket in 2016 still remain mostly white
and all male.”

*Articles:*

*New York Times: First Draft: “As One Clinton Super PAC Winds Down, Another
Ramps Up”
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/11/19/?entry=5933>*

By Amy Chozick

November 19, 2014, 10:25 a.m. EST

As supporters of Ready for Hillary, a “super PAC” pushing a 2016
presidential run by Hillary Rodham Clinton, gather in New York on Friday to
discuss how the group will wind down ahead of a likely campaign, another
group will convene a private meeting to explain to major donors how it
plans to ramp up in the coming months.

About 40 donors are expected to attend an event hosted by Correct the
Record, part of a Democratic super PAC that defends Mrs. Clinton against
attacks, including Republican criticism of her handling of the assault on a
U.S. mission in Benghazi.

James Carville and David Brock, who founded Correct the Record and its
parent group, American Bridge, have taken the lead on defending Mrs.
Clinton’s record as secretary of state, are both expected to deliver
remarks.

Others expected to attend include Tom Lee, Bob Rudin, Doug Band and Michael
Kempner, according to one person involved in the event who could not
discuss the private meeting for attribution. Representatives of Correct the
Record declined to comment.

Mr. Brock is expected to tell donors that Correct the Record, originally
conceived as a way respond to criticism of the potential candidate until a
campaign is officially underway, has decided to continue operating through
the November 2016 general election.

The group plans to push back on Republican attacks on Mrs. Clinton and
serve as a counterweight to third party groups that have already started to
dig up opposition research on Mrs. Clinton, her husband and the family’s
philanthropic foundation. One person included in the meeting described the
group’s mission as “tamping down conservative media efforts to resurrect
old scandals and gin up new ones.”

*Politico: “De Blasio on Clinton: Focus on income inequality”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/bill-de-blasio-hillary-clinton-113025.html>*

By Maggie Haberman

November 19, 2014, 11:49 a.m. EST

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says Hillary Clinton should start
speaking to income inequality issues, calling it a “necessary” move for the
likely Democratic presidential contender.

He also described Sen. Elizabeth Warren was an “indispensible” voice within
the Democratic Party and praised one of Clinton’s potential GOP rivals in
2016, Sen. Rand Paul, as “authentic.” He later said that he wanted to help
“set the table for a candidate, whatever candidate” to address the core
issues of the new Democratic progressivism.

The comments came during an interview Wednesday in Washington, D.C., with
POLITICO’s chief White House correspondent Mike Allen, who also asked the
first-term mayor about whether he smokes pot, why he is chronically late
and whether the Rev. Al Sharpton plays too big a role in shaping his
thinking.

De Blasio’s appearance came as aides to the former political operative have
tried to boost him as a national progressive leader. He was to speak later
Wednesday at a gathering hosted by the Center for American Progress.

Asked by Allen whether there is a space to the left of Hillary Clinton and
why she had not filled it, de Blasio replied: “I think there is a lot of
room for a Democrat to speak to these issues. I think it could be
[Clinton]… Look, I think she should. I think it’s necessary. I think a lot
about her history and origins suggest it’s natural for her.”

De Blasio, who was Clinton’s campaign manager in her 2000 Senate run, said
she was a good populist messenger in places such as Ohio during the 2008
presidential primaries. Still, the remarks were striking for de Blasio, who
had been seen by many as a potentially strong ally on the progressive left
for Clinton and who has often praised her.

He said he’d be “honored” to discuss his views with her or anyone else.

“I don’t want to talk about somebody who’s not a candidate,” he said when
pushed about Clinton. He added that he would discuss “what should the
Democrat do. The Democrat should speak to income inequality, should be
willing to challenge the status quo … (and) should marry that with the
grassroots organizing strategy that epitomizes the message.”

He praised Warren, who is poised to be a nuisance for Clinton on the topic
of income inequality, saying, “I think she’s saying some really important
things… [she’s] one of the indispensible voices” in the party. Warren has
said she’s not running for president, though some on the left are still
hoping to convince her otherwise.

As for Paul, the Kentucky senator, de Blasio said, “I do think he evinces a
certain authenticity.”

The mayor also addressed questions about stories focused on his wife’s
former chief-of-staff, Rachel Noerdlinger, and her personal problems.

“She decided it was time to attend to family members and I think that was
right for her to do,” he said.

When questioned about the criticism that he used his own family in his
campaign and then declared families “hands off,” De Blasio said his family
had “accepted” the public scrutiny that comes with being a political
candidate.

“I think that is very, very different than someone you appoint to a job,”
he said.

As for whether he smokes pot, the mayor said simply, “No,” then added that
he hadn’t smoked since college. And as far as Sharpton, who some New York
police brass have said holds too much sway over the mayor, de Blasio said
the African American reverend and TV personality is simply a person who
offers advice.

*Wall Street Journal: “De Blasio Urges Clinton to Lean Left in a
Presidential Run”
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/de-blasio-urges-clinton-to-lean-left-in-a-presidential-run-1416416331>*

By Michael Howard Saul

November 19, 2014, 11:58 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON—New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday encouraged
Hillary Clinton to embrace the message of income inequality and other
left-leaning issues if she decides to run for president.

“The Democrat should be willing to challenge the status quo,” Mr. de Blasio
said at a breakfast forum when asked about the 2016 presidential campaign.
“The Democrat should be willing to challenge wealthy and powerful interests
and should marry that with a grass-roots organizing strategy that
epitomizes the message.”

Mr. de Blasio’s spin on the national stage Wednesday suggests he hopes to
play a high-profile role as a liberal voice in the 2016 presidential
campaign. Earlier this week, Mr. de Blasio dismissed the notion that he
would be a presidential candidate himself, saying he plans to run for
re-election to City Hall in 2017.

Mr. de Blasio, who served as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager on her
successful 2000 bid for U.S. Senate in New York, said there is space for a
left-leaning Democrat in the 2016 presidential campaign and “it could well
be Secretary Clinton.”

“One way or another the Democrats have to speak to these issues,” he said,
pointing out that Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state, has a strong
background on liberal policy issues. When she ran for president in 2008,
Mrs. Clinton was viewed as more of a moderate Democrat, opening up a space
on her left for Barack Obama in the primary.

“A lot about her history and origins suggest it’s natural for her. If you
go back to the work she did originally, it gets to these same issues, what
she did with the Children’s Defense Fund, what she did on family medical
leave, what she did on health-care reform,” Mr. de Blasio said of Mrs.
Clinton.

Asked how confident he is that Mrs. Clinton would move to the left in a
2016 campaign, Mr. de Blasio, replied, “I’m hopeful. Look, I think she
should. I think it’s necessary.”

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton didn’t immediately respond to a request for
comment.

Mr. de Blasio said he hasn’t spoken to Mrs. Clinton about his thoughts on
2016 in any detail but that he would be “honored” to speak with her
further, or for that matter with any of the 2016 Democratic contenders. Mr.
de Blasio pointed out that Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department in the
aftermath of the economic crisis, so “I don’t think we’ve had an
opportunity to hear her in this new reality.”

Mr. de Blasio has a long, storied relationship with the Clinton family,
having worked in President Bill Clinton ’s administration as an official at
the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He grew closer to the
family during the 2000 Senate campaign; both Clintons attended Mr. de
Blasio’s inauguration at City Hall in January.

At the Politico-sponsored breakfast Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio described U.S.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is discussed as a potential
left-wing challenger to Mrs. Clinton in 2016, as “one of the really
indispensable voices in our national debate.” He declined to discuss Ms.
Warren in the context of 2016, pointing out that she hasn’t announced a
candidacy for president.

On the Republican side, Mr. de Blasio suggested he is most concerned about
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky as a potential threat to Democrats in 2016. “He
evinces a certain authenticity that any good Democrat should worry about,”
Mr. de Blasio said.

*Bloomberg: “How Hillary Clinton Has Dodged the Keystone Question”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-19/after-senate-defeat-keystone-hangs-over-hillary-clinton>*

By Lisa Lerer

November 19, 2014, 8:22 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] As Washington debates, the former secretary of State stays mum.

Just about everyone in politics seems to have an opinion about the Keystone
XL pipeline—except Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday night, the Senate narrowly rejected a bill that would have
approved the construction of the pipeline, setting the stage for another
showdown early next year. If it gets though the incoming
Republican-controlled Senate, the legislation will head to the White House
and force President Barack Obama to finally make a decision on the project,
after a six-year review period.

As the White House deliberates, the former secretary of State and
Democratic presidential front-runner has stayed particularly quiet about
whether she supports constructing the 1,179-mile pipeline to transport oil
sands from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. That hasn't changed, even as
debate within the Democratic party over whether to authorize the project
burst into public view this week. After Delaware Senator Tom Carper decided
Tuesday to allow a vote on the pipeline in the Senate, environmental
activists took over his Washington lobby in protest by singing songs and
chanting.

All the noise isn't prompting a peep out of Clinton. Here's how she
answered a question on the project in a June interview with Canada's Globe
and Mail newspaper:

"Our relationship is so much bigger and more important than any one
decision—even one as important as this is. Canada is critical to who we are
and what we hope to do together in the future. We have no better
relationship. [But] this particular decision is a very difficult one
because there are so many factors at play. I can’t really comment at great
length because I had responsibility for it and it’s been passed on and it
wouldn’t be appropriate, but I hope that Canadians appreciate that the
United States government—the Obama administration—is trying to get it
right. And getting it right doesn’t mean you will agree or disagree with
the decision, but that it will be one based on the best available evidence
and all of the complex local, state, federal, interlocking laws and
concerns."

When pressed on her "personal views," she replied: "I can't respond."

She gave no additional details during an appearance in Ottawa last month.

Clinton is certainly familiar with the issue: The State Department, which
she headed during Obama's first term, has spent years conducting an
environmental assessment of the project, putting the agency at the center
of the debate. Staff there have suspended their review until a court
challenge in Nebraska over the route’s path in that state is settled. And
Obama has said he will not make a final decision on the project until the
State Department review is complete.

There's little upside for Clinton in detailing her views. If she backs the
pipeline, she risks angering environmentalists, a key part of the
Democratic base that strongly opposes the project. That includes climate
activist Tom Steyer, a wealthy investor who poured $58 million into this
year's midterm elections and plans to spend big again next cycle. But
coming out against Keystone could alienate moderate voters in such
energy-sensitive states as Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana and West Virginia.
While the latter three have leaned Republican in recent years, Clinton
advisers think her appeal with white, working-class voters could make those
areas somewhat competitive in 2016.

Perhaps most importantly, taking a position now locks Clinton into a debate
that could look entirely different a year from now, when she's likely to be
in midst of a presidential election.

*FiveThirtyEight: “Clinton Probably Can’t Expand The 2016 Map (And If She
Does, It Won’t Matter)”
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/clinton-probably-cant-expand-the-2016-map-and-if-she-does-it-wont-matter/>*

By Harry Enten

November 19, 2014, 7:30 a.m. EST

Ready for Hillary, a Super PAC supporting a Hillary Clinton White House run
in 2016, thinks she can expand the electoral map. First, it wants to target
Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri because of her white, working-class appeal.
Second, it’s aiming for Arizona and Georgia because the group thinks the
states are trending toward Democrats demographically.

It’s possible, but unlikely. If anything, the first three states have
become less sympathetic to Democrats in recent years. And there’s no
evidence that Clinton is the exception. Georgia and Arizona have become
more diverse, but they’ve yet to become more Democratic.

Ready for Hillary’s logic appears to rest on the idea that President Obama
has underperformed in these states, so those states’ GOP-lean in the past
two presidential elections is misleading. But they’re red through and
through.

Gallup has provided party identification data for each state since 2009.
(We only have 2014 data for Arkansas and Georgia, which had key Senate
races.) I took the Democratic advantage in party identification over
Republicans in each state and compared it with the Democratic edge
nationwide to see how these states compare to the nation.

In all five states, the Republican lead in party identification is at least
5 percentage points greater in the past two years than it was nationwide.
It’s not just that voters in these states dislike Obama. They dislike
Democrats.

In the first “bucket” Clinton targets — Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri —
voters were about as Democratic-leaning as the nation in 2009. Since then,
however, voters there have shifted away from the Democratic brand. The
Republican lead in party identification among Arkansans, Hoosiers and
Missourians is now about 10 percentage points greater than it is nationwide.

Republicans hold more than 60 percent of the seats in both houses of the
state legislatures in these states. And the GOP majorities in all three
states increased after the 2014 elections. So, it’s not like Clinton can
localize these races. These states are solidly Republican from the top down.

Arizona and Georgia have long been listed by Democrats as potential pickup
opportunities because of each state’s growing racial diversity. And it’s
possible they’ll become presidential battlegrounds. But there isn’t any
sign that will happen in the next two years.

Voters in Arizona and Georgia leaned more Republican than the nation five
years ago, and they continue to do so. If these states were becoming more
Democratic, you’d expect at least some movement toward the Democrats in
terms of party identification. There hasn’t been any.

And like in the first bucket states, Republicans hold clear majorities in
both houses of Arizona and Georgia’s legislatures.

None of this is to say that Clinton can’t win these five states in 2016.
But if she does, then chances are she will have already won the White House
— Arkansas’s, Indiana’s, Missouri’s, Arizona’s or Georgia’s electoral
college votes would be superfluous.

*Vox: “Are Democrats out of new ideas?”
<http://www.vox.com/2014/11/19/7245775/democrats-new-ideas>*

By Ezra Klein

November 19, 2014, 9:30 a.m. EST

The last few years has been a period of policy ferment on the right in a
way it hasn't been on the left. The Republican Party is thick with
ambitious young politicians arguing over big ideas. Rep. Paul Ryan's
budgets have taken over the GOP. Sen. Rand Paul has begun a war with the
neoconservatives. Sen. Mike Lee has been fighting to move Republicans
beyond supply-side tax reforms.

There is less energy in the Democratic coalition. The Obama administration
has been a factory of policy ideas but now its agenda is stalled — and it's
not clear what comes next. "For Democrats, the election should in part be a
warning about their overwhelming intellectual exhaustion," wrote Yuval
Levin, a leader among conservative reformers, in a triumphalist, but sharp,
post-election analysis.

On Wednesday, the Center for American Progress, which is the most
influential of the liberal think tanks, is holding its annual policy
meeting (you can stream it here). The line-up is a who's who of ambitious
Democratic comers: Julian Castro, the newly minted Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, gives the morning keynote; Kamala Harris, the attorney
general of California, gives the midday keynote; John Hickenlooper, the
narrowly reelected governor of Colorado, gives an afternoon keynote; and
Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, gives a second afternoon
keynote.

(If you think that's a lot of keynotes for one day, well, welcome to
Washington.)

I asked Neera Tanden, the CAP's president, and a former policy staffer for
both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whether Democrats were
intellectually exhausted. No, she said, but the thinking on the left had
become too small; as a side-effect of being in power, Democrats had become
too obsessed with ideas that could plausibly pass. "The difficulty for
progressives in the last few years has been that trying to think up ideas
that can make it through the House Republicans has limited the debate."

But now, she continued, "we'll have to think beyond the Obama era, beyond
the congress of today, to what we should be doing in the long term."

*The middle-class squeeze*

"We did this report," Tanden says, "that showed that if you look at the
prototypical family — double earner, two kids — their wages have stood
still since roughly 2000, but their cost of living has gone up by about
$10,000 because of things like child care and health care. We have had tax
policy that has ameliorated that challenge by about $5,000. But they still
have $5,000 less than they did before. So you can see why they're getting
kind of irritated."

Tanden argues that this is the key issue going forward: the vise of
stagnating wages and rising costs. And on it, "Republicans have heretofore
put forward ideas that are counterproductive. But Democrats have put
forward ideas that are insufficient."

A possible venue for intellectual renewal is the 2016 primary. And you can
count me among the doubters that Hillary Clinton's path to the nomination
will be the smooth coronation some expect, but still: the anti-Hillarys in
the field are limited in their appeal, and Clinton's dominance is likely to
make it unusually difficult for more marginal candidates — who are often
the most intellectually exciting participants in primaries — to be heard.

But Tanden doesn't buy the premise that primaries are an engine of policy
renewal. Look back to 2008, she says. "While there were some disagreements,
they were on the margins. These were character-led debates. At the end of
the day, the three top contenders had broad agreement on policy issues."

*The Democrats' problem in the states*

The real innovation for Democrats, she argued, is happening at the state
level. She ticked off New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio's support of
universal pre-kindergarten as an example, and Harris's efforts to create
new coalitions around criminal-justice policy, and Hickenlooper's work on
educational equity.

But that speaks to Democrats' problems. After the 2014 election, Democrats
control the state legislatures in only 11 states, while Republicans control
30 (the remainder have one chamber held by Democrats and another by
Republicans). Similarly, Republicans hold 31 governorships to the
Democrats' 18. Democrats don't have enough traction in the states for it to
be a powerful engine of policy innovation. Their bench is weak.

The other difficulty for Democrats is that the media likes ideas to be, or
to seem, "new". But the Obama administration has, at one time or another,
pushed most of the policies in the liberal playbook. They've proposed
universal pre-k, for instance, and they've backed a raft of ideas to cut
inequality. They've also passed versions of some of the big ideas that
animated the Democratic coalition, like health reform. The result is that
even if Obamacare is imperfect and universal pre-k didn't pass, it's going
to be hard for Democrats to offer an agenda that looks new — much of what
they propose will be dismissed as Obama-era retreads, even if the
underlying idea is sound.

It's possible that Democrats don't need much in the way of a new vision to
win in 2016. It might be enough for Hillary Clinton to simply unify the
Democrats' larger presidential coalition against the Republicans. But
historically, it's rare for parties to win a third consecutive term in the
White House, and it's particularly rare for it to happen at a moment when
the public is deeply unhappy about the direction of the country.

The Clinton team knows this, and so too do the Democratic Party's top
strategists and thinkers. The question is whether they know how to fix it.

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Is the GOP bench now more diverse than the
Democrats’? Not really.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/19/is-the-gop-bench-now-more-diverse-than-the-democrats-not-really/?tid=hpModule_ba0d4c2a-86a2-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394>*

By Nia-Malika Henderson

November 19, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EST

Tim Mak at the Daily Beast raises an interesting point in a piece headlined
"The Republican Rainbow Coalition is Real": That the GOP has managed to
amass more top-flight minority candidates for president (or vice president)
than Democrats have.

Mak conjures the image of Hillary Clinton surrounded on a debate stage by
other white candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),  Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) and outgoing Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. The GOP side,
on the other hand, could -- and likely will -- be significantly more
diverse. Mak writes:

Then picture the Republican presidential debate stage: two Hispanic
Americans, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; an African American, Ben Carson; and
an Indian American, Bobby Jindal. Add to that Jeb Bush, a Spanish-speaking
former governor with a Mexican-born wife; and Rand Paul, a senator who has
made appealing to black voters a central part of his political identity.

At its highest levels, the Republican Party is building a noticeably more
diverse group of talent — call it the GOP’s Rainbow Coalition.

Mak is obviously focusing on ethnicity as a marker of diversity -- not so
much gender -- with Bush and Paul making the cut through marriage and
outreach efforts, respectively. That is a certain form of diversity math.
And speaking of math, it's probably best to subtract Ben Carson from the
mix, because he is just not top-flight candidate for 2016 -- if by
top-flight we mean candidates with a reasonable shot at, you know, winning.

Part of Mak's argument is that the Republican National Committee's
diversification efforts -- first led by then-Chairman Ken Mehlman in the
mid-2000s -- are finally paying off, with a crop of minority politicians
now in the pipeline and ready to move on to the national stage. People like
Rep.-elect Mia Love (Utah), Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Rep.-elect Will Hurd
(Texas) are now in the GOP fold as a result, Republicans argue.

Since in some ways this is about numbers, let's play around with them a bit.

In 2016, Democrats seem to be Hillary or bust. But what if we subtract
Hillary? Who is added to the picture then?

Take a look at this roster for an event on Wednesday at the Center of
American Progress, a liberal think tank: Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.),
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Julian Castro, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (using Mak's
metric for diversity, he has a black wife), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(outreach efforts to minority voters, ala Paul, and has claimed some Native
American ancestry).

Then, just because, let's add outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to
the mix as well, given that he has been a governor and gave a barn-burner
of a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. (He is no less
credible a 2016 candidate than Jindal, if we are comparing resumes, though
he has been pretty unequivocal that he won't run in 2016.)

That's a fairly diverse bench, never mind adding any of the Democratic
women senators like Kirsten Gillibrand or Amy Klobuchar. And it's just as
strong as the GOP bench in terms of diversity. Beyond 2016 candidates, Love
and Hurd are new faces on the GOP side.  And when they are sworn in,  they
will join people like Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Donna Edwards (Md.) and
Joaquín Castro (Tex.) -- Julian's twin brother -- who are part of a pretty
diverse bench of House Democrats. Black and brown Republicans stand out
largely because they remain exceptions not rules in the GOP. Democrats, in
terms of voting coalitions and elected officials, are simply a more diverse
party than the GOP.

Republicans have certainly been better at electing minorities to
statehouses of late -- among them Jindal, Nikki Haley (S.C.), Susana
Martinez (N.M.) and Brian Sandoval (Nev.). And there is a real question
about whether Democrats fail to groom and court minority candidates for
statewide offices or just go with the white guy. In other words, do
Democrats actually grow their bench of minority (excluding women)
candidates? So far the answer is no.

Perhaps Love and Hurd's trajectory will be different, and when Senate seats
come open in their home states, the party will look to them to make the
same type of leap that Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner and Bill Cassidy made in
running for the Senate from their respective House seats.

Still, in electing President Obama, Democrats broke one diversity barrier,
and with Clinton, they seem poised to break another. And in 2016, the most
viable options for the top of GOP ticket in 2016 still remain mostly white
and all male.