Subject: ​Correct The Record Sunday December 14, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 14:49:28 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Sunday December 14, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*The Hill: “Schumer: I bet Hillary's running”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/227074-schumer-i-bet-hillarys-running>*

“Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to make you a bet: Hillary Clinton will
run for president.”

*New York Times: “G.O.P. Hopefuls Honing Attacks Against Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/politics/gop-hopefuls-honing-attacks-against-hillary-clinton.html>*

“The closed-door appraisals from Republicans eyeing the White House in 2016
capture an unseen but intense phase in the emerging presidential campaign:
auditions for the job of Clinton slayer.”

*New York Times: “Battle Over Spending Bill Exposes Democratic Rift”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/politics/battle-over-spending-bill-exposes-democratic-rift.html>*

“Hillary Rodham Clinton is considered such a prohibitive favorite in the
Democratic race — if she runs — that she has almost cleared the field of
strong challengers. And that has created a vacuum on the left that many
liberals, who believe the party is not being sufficiently bold or
aggressive in its efforts to connect with middle-class America, are
desperate to fill.”

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “MoveOn to Host ‘Draft Warren’
Rally in Iowa”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/13/moveon-to-host-draft-warren-rally-in-iowa/>*

“The overwhelming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is widely expected to announce her
candidacy next year.”

*MSNBC: “Warren and Clinton allies debate”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/elizabeth-warren-and-hillary-clinton-allies-debate>*

“Democrats in either of the emerging camps aligned with Hillary Clinton and
Sen. Elizabeth Warren are not quite ready to fight, as a mini-debate
moderated by msnbc’s Steve Kornacki Sunday demonstrated.”

*MSNBC: “It’s good to be Ready for Warren – just don’t mention Clinton”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/its-good-be-ready-warren-just-dont-mention-clinton>*

“As they build enthusiasm for Warren, her supporters still seem unsure how
to talk about the proverbial donkey in the room (these are Democrats, after
all): Hillary Clinton. The presence of the presumed front-runner for the
Democratic nomination could be felt, even if her name was hardly mentioned.”

*New York Times column: Frank Bruni: “The Many Faces of Jeb”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-jeb-bush-chris-christie-and-the-2016-presidential-campaign.html>*

“Hillary Clinton: liberal or moderate? Depends on which point in her past
you choose.”

*NBC News: “Meet the Press Transcript - December 14, 2014” [PARTIAL]
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-december-14-2014-n268181>*

DICK CHENEY: “I'm comfortable with my own views. And I've been very
forthright about them. And frankly I don't support either Hillary Clinton
or Rand Paul.”

*Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Jeb Bush to write e-book and release
250,000 e-mails”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/13/jeb-bush-to-write-e-book-and-release-250000-e-mails/>*

"As he prepares for a possible 2016 presidential campaign, Jeb Bush said
Saturday that he is writing an e-book and plans to release roughly 250,000
e-mails from his tenure as governor of Florida."

*Articles:*

*The Hill: “Schumer: I bet Hillary's running”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/227074-schumer-i-bet-hillarys-running>*

By Scott Wong

December 14, 2014, 9:47 a.m. EST

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to make you a bet: Hillary Clinton will
run for president.

"Hillary hasn't told me, and I haven't dared ask her," Schumer said Sunday
on CNN's "State of the Union." "But I'll bet she's running, I'll bet she'll
be a great candidate, I'll bet she'll win by a large majority. And then
Democrats can help the middle class whose incomes have been declining for
15 years in a very united way."

Schumer, who served alongside Clinton when she was a New York senator, said
the economic program Clinton will put together as a presidential candidate
"will have the support of every wing in the Democratic party."

*New York Times: “G.O.P. Hopefuls Honing Attacks Against Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/politics/gop-hopefuls-honing-attacks-against-hillary-clinton.html>*

By Michael Barbaro

December 13, 2014

Gov. Chris Christie offered a cutting assessment of Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s electoral weaknesses recently, telling a group of energy
executives that she lacked her husband’s political talents and personal
appeal. To punctuate the point, the New Jersey governor mischievously
quoted President Obama from a 2008 campaign debate. “You’re likable enough,
Hillary,” Mr. Christie said, according to two participants.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was unsparing in his critique, citing lackluster
sales of Mrs. Clinton’s latest memoir as evidence that Americans have tired
of her. “She’s had a hard time selling books and filling auditoriums,” he
observed to a table of campaign contributors, recalled a guest who heard
him.

And Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has mocked the wealthy Mrs. Clinton as out of
touch with working-class voters, calling a country music video produced on
her behalf recently so contrived that “I almost fell out of the chair
laughing.”

The closed-door appraisals from Republicans eyeing the White House in 2016
capture an unseen but intense phase in the emerging presidential campaign:
auditions for the job of Clinton slayer.

At political fund-raisers and party conferences, over intimate dinners and
in casual telephone calls, top contenders for the Republican presidential
nomination are constructing an image of Mrs. Clinton that is relentlessly
unappealing: as rusty and unloved, out of step and out of date, damaged and
vulnerable.

To win the party’s nomination in a contest over which Mrs. Clinton looms so
large, likely candidates are now jockeying to appeal to several overlapping
constituencies, including Republican activists who loathe her, donors who
respect and fear her fund-raising prowess and party leaders who view her
candidacy as a test of their attempts to modernize the Republican brand.

For a candidate to be taken seriously, said Rick Wilson, a Republican
consultant, “party leaders need to know that you have a game plan and a
path to victory against Hillary.”

So to an unusual degree, given that she holds no office, Republican White
House hopefuls are pitching their potential candidacies in relation to Mrs.
Clinton’s, building their message around her strengths and weaknesses and
making the case for why they are best suited to challenge her, according to
those who have spoken to them. These people — donors, operatives and
advisers — talked on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly betraying
the confidence of powerful officials who may seek the presidency.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, for example, has argued that his
noninterventionist outlook on foreign policy would offer unique advantages
in a head-to-head race against Mrs. Clinton. His argument: by 2016, Mrs.
Clinton will be viewed as a champion of American military action abroad,
alienating younger voters of both parties exhausted by a decade of wars.
Given the hawkishness of his likely Republican rivals, he alone, Mr. Paul
says, can appeal to such disaffected youth.

It is a message Mr. Paul has delivered repeatedly, to the likes of David
and Charles Koch, the billionaire conservative industrialists, according to
a person familiar with their conversations.

Mr. Cruz takes an entirely different approach, telling donors that Mrs.
Clinton’s reputation as a moderate, and one who can appeal to elements of
the Republican Party, necessitates the selection of a true conservative
like himself. He says his brand of raw, unapologetic right-wing politics
and policy can excite conservative voters long frustrated, in his telling,
by the Republican Party’s tendency to nominate ideologically bland,
watered-down figures, like former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and
Senator John McCain of Arizona.

His argument: moderate Republicans rarely win the White House, and their
chances would diminish still further in a race against Mrs. Clinton.

Republicans eyeing the White House are eager to diagnose Mrs. Clinton’s
liabilities and shortcomings, however real or imagined. The biggest of
them, they contend, is her deep connection to the Obama administration as
secretary of state.

At a dinner for wealthy donors last week in Texas, a guest said, Mr. Perry
predicted that Mrs. Clinton would become ensnared in the “Barack Triangle”
— a play on the Bermuda Triangle — and was indelibly linked to what Mr.
Perry said was the president’s mixed economic record, foreign policy
struggles and detached governing style. Mr. Cruz, latching on to the same
theme, has begun referring to the “Clinton-Obama” agenda.

Asked about the Republicans’ remarks, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick
Merrill said, “It’s no secret they attack what they fear.”

There may be fear on both sides. American Bridge, a Democratic organization
staffed with Clinton loyalists, published a book this week that compiles
unflattering research about her possible Republican rivals, including Mr.
Christie (“notorious temper,” it notes), Senator Marco Rubio (“flip-flop on
immigration”), and Mr. Cruz (“controversial Tea Party senator.”)

In conversations, the Republican leaders predict a long and messy struggle
for Mrs. Clinton to win over Democrats, casting aside the conventional
wisdom that the nomination is hers for the taking. During the meeting with
energy executives, held inside a wood-paneled clubhouse in Calgary,
Alberta, a few weeks ago, Mr. Christie recalled that 2008 was “supposed to
be a coronation” for Mrs. Clinton, too. Of course, it was not, he said.

A recurring message in their conversations with donors, despite polls that
show her defeating potential Republican rivals, is the myth of Mrs.
Clinton’s invincibility. After Democrats suffered widespread losses in
November’s midterm elections, including of a number of candidates endorsed
by Mrs. Clinton, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is exploring a White
House run, described it as a referendum on Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Paul took to
Facebook, posting images of defeated candidates emblazoned with the label
“Hillary’s Losers.”

Some of the critiques have taken on a strikingly personal dimension.

Mr. Rubio, among the youngest potential candidates in the Republican field,
takes a generational swipe, arguing that Mrs. Clinton is a relic from a
different era. In a meeting with donors recently, he wryly observed that
when the Clintons arrived in Washington two decades ago, “cellphones were
the size of bricks,” said a person told of the conversation. In his
forthcoming book, to be published in January, Mr. Rubio refers to Mrs.
Clinton as a “20th century politician.”

In dissecting Mrs. Clinton’s personal appeal, or lack thereof, Mr. Christie
has posited that the more likable candidate almost always prevails in a
general election. The implication: his swaggering New Jersey personality
would outshine hers.

Still, by laying out a plan of attack against Mrs. Clinton, the Republicans
have revealed just how eager they are to elevate themselves onto the same
stage as her: globe-trotting diplomat, sought-after speaker, nominee
all-but-in-waiting.

Mr. Wilson, the Republican consultant, recalled a candidate who warned
donors that Mrs. Clinton could raise $1 billion in a presidential campaign.
“It’s a viable case,” Mr. Wilson said. “There is only one or two people who
can pull off that kind of financial lift against Hillary.”

Two years before the election, some Republicans have already tired of the
topic. Fred V. Malek, a major Republican donor and fund-raiser, said that
after eight years of Democratic reign at the White House, his party should
be drawing up elaborate plans for taking the country in a new direction.

“They shouldn’t,” he said, “be thinking about running against Hillary.”

*New York Times: “Battle Over Spending Bill Exposes Democratic Rift”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/politics/battle-over-spending-bill-exposes-democratic-rift.html>*

By Ashley Parker and Jeremy W. Peters

December 13, 2014

WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren once famously said that she was
willing to see “plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor” in her fight
against Wall Street excess.

And the Massachusetts Democrat finally found the perfect moment to throw a
punch.

Ms. Warren, who entered Congress with a liberal halo of anti-Wall Street
credibility, took her most high-profile and tenacious Senate stand last
week over a single provision in a $1.1 trillion spending bill, one that
would roll back portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the financial industry
regulatory law.

Taking to the Senate floor, Ms. Warren implored her Democratic colleagues
not to support the deal — and in the process threatened the entire
bipartisan spending package that would avert a government shutdown. Though
the bill narrowly passed the House on Thursday evening and appeared headed
for passage in the Senate, Ms. Warren’s relentless fight to defeat it
elevated her status as the leader of her party’s liberal base.

Her effort to lead that revolt exposed emerging rifts between the
progressive wing and the centrist middle in a Democratic Party struggling
to find its footing after losing its majority in the Senate and falling
further into the minority in the House in the midterm elections.

It also put Ms. Warren at odds with President Obama, who supports the
compromise bill despite his criticism of the provision, and other
Democrats, including Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.

Many in the party believe that their losses in November can be attributed
to the lack of a muscular, coherent message about how Democrats would
address economic anxieties, particularly among working-class whites.

That void offers new opportunity for Ms. Warren, whose populist leanings
and fiery, us-versus-them speeches resonate well with organized labor and
other workers left struggling since the financial crisis.

The groundswell that Ms. Warren helped stoke last week offered an early
glimpse of the complicated 2016 presidential dynamics that the Democratic
Party is now facing.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is considered such a prohibitive favorite in the
Democratic race — if she runs — that she has almost cleared the field of
strong challengers. And that has created a vacuum on the left that many
liberals, who believe the party is not being sufficiently bold or
aggressive in its efforts to connect with middle-class America, are
desperate to fill.

Ms. Warren has repeatedly said she is not planning to run for president.
Her goal, said an aide, is to influence policy debates and negotiations on
any Dodd-Frank rollbacks, and to show that the party’s base will fight to
protect Wall Street regulation.

But she is also proudly claiming what Howard Dean once called “the
Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” — a left-leaning constituency that
many politicians are nervous to cultivate. And the affection is mutual.

The liberal group MoveOn.org is preparing to spend $1 million to persuade
Ms. Warren to enter the presidential race. And more than 300 former Obama
campaign staff members Friday released a letter calling on Ms. Warren to
run.

“Rising income inequality is the challenge of our times, and we want
someone who will stand up for working families and take on the Wall Street
banks and special interests that took down our economy,” the letter reads.

However, some Democrats said that the party had always fought against the
scaling back of big bank regulation and that the recent fight was more
indicative of the current governing climate than any new progressive wave.

“I’m not sure this creates an enormous amount of precedent for next year,”
said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut.

The government spending bill, with its rollback of some provisions of the
Dodd-Frank law, would let big banks trade in certain risky financial
instruments while having access to federal assistance if something goes
wrong. Similar conditions several years ago helped create the recession,
when the government was forced to bail out Wall Street banks seen as “too
big to fail.”

As she denounced the bill last week, Ms. Warren warned that a vote for it
“is a vote for future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street.”

“This is about preventing another financial collapse that could again wipe
out millions of jobs and take down our whole economy,” Ms. Warren said.

One of the ways senior Democrats tried to placate some of their restless
colleagues after the elections was to install Ms. Warren to a newly created
position within Senate leadership, a perch from which she will be able to
help shape policy and messaging.

In an interview, Mr. Reid said that one of the lessons of the midterm
elections was that voters wanted to know that officials were listening to
them. And from his new but shrunken position as the minority leader in the
next Congress, he said he planned to take the fight to Republicans on
issues like Wall Street regulation and health care.

“It’s pretty obvious to me what the fights are going to be about,” Mr. Reid
said. “We feel it’s time that middle America gets a little help here.”

The simple math of where Democrats on Capitol Hill stand today versus six
years ago, when they had commanding majorities, is something many liberals
see as a startling reminder of the need to make more enduring connections
with voters. Democrats held 257 seats in the House after Mr. Obama’s 2008
election. When the new Congress convenes in January, they will have 187.
(One race in Arizona is still in a recount.)

The Senate picture is just as stark. In 2009, Democrats controlled 60 seats
— a filibuster-proof majority. In the next Congress they will have 46.

Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, said that in the wake
of the recent elections, some of his colleagues were especially skittish
and were “not going to let Elizabeth Warren get to the left of them
necessarily.”

And a senior Democratic aide, speaking anonymously in order to offer a more
candid assessment, warned, “If this party can’t accommodate both its
Clinton-era folks and its Warren-ites, we’re headed for trouble.”

*Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “MoveOn to Host ‘Draft Warren’
Rally in Iowa”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/13/moveon-to-host-draft-warren-rally-in-iowa/>*

By Peter Nicholas

December 13, 2014, 6:13 p.m. EST

Hoping to draw Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the 2016 presidential
race, MoveOn.org will host a rally in Iowa on Wednesday aimed at
demonstrating she enjoys grassroots support that would make her a viable
candidate.

The event is set for 5:30 p.m. CST at a coffee shop in Des Moines, capital
of the state that holds the nation’s first presidential nominating contest.

The overwhelming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is widely expected to announce her
candidacy next year.

But many Democrats want to see a contested primary, hoping to trigger a
debate over pressing issues such as wage stagnation, income inequality,
government surveillance and climate change.

The Democratic bench is thin, with few serious candidates showing a
willingness to challenge Mrs. Clinton. Ms. Warren is the darling of the
party’s liberal wing and while she has said she will serve out her term as
senator of Massachusetts, liberals hope she will change her mind if popular
support for a Draft Warren movement starts to mushroom.

MoveOn, a liberal advocacy group, plans to sink $1 million into Iowa and
New Hampshire, hiring campaign organizers to begin rallying support for a
Warren candidacy.

Earlier this week, MoveOn polled its eight million members and found that
81% wanted the group to launch a Draft Warren movement, now dubbed “Run
Warren Run,” group officials said.

“The kickoff on Wednesday is the beginning of the effort to organize Iowans
in a way that shows Sen. Warren that if she jumps into this race she’ll be
a serious candidate in that state from Day One,” said Ben Wikler,
Washington director of MoveOn.

MoveOn adds organizational muscle to a fledgling Draft Warren movement. Of
late, the pro-Warren forces seem to have picked up steam. Earlier this
week, a group of 300 former Obama campaign staffers signed a letter urging
Ms. Warren to jump in the race.

A few ex-Obama campaign staffers attended a pro-Warren panel discussion
Saturday at a liberal campaign organizing event called RootsCamp. At the
front of the room was a cardboard cutout – Ms. Warren’s head superimposed
atop the body of the actress Jennifer Lawrence in the movie, “The Hunger
Games.”

“Run, Liz, Run!” the crowd chanted at the start of the meeting.

If she complies, Ms. Warren would have a tough time toppling Mrs. Clinton.
Under the direction of an outside super PAC called “Ready for Hillary,”
Clinton supporters have been organizing volunteers in Iowa over the past
year. The Ready for Hillary group has raised more than $11 million.

Another pro-Clinton group, a super PAC called Priorities USA Action, hasn’t
ruled out running negative ads against Democrats who might challenge Mrs.
Clinton. That would pose another obstacle for Ms. Warren, whose name
recognition and national support lags far behind that of Mrs. Clinton.

*MSNBC: “Warren and Clinton allies debate”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/elizabeth-warren-and-hillary-clinton-allies-debate>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

December 14, 2014, 1:11 p.m. EST

Democrats in either of the emerging camps aligned with Hillary Clinton and
Sen. Elizabeth Warren are not quite ready to fight, as a mini-debate
moderated by msnbc’s Steve Kornacki Sunday demonstrated.

Kornacki hosted former Gov. Howard Dean, who this week wrote an op-ed in
Politico explaining why he’s supporting Clinton in 2016, and Ben Wikler,
director of MoveOn.org, which recently launched a campaign to draft Warren
into the 2016 president race.

Despite Kornacki’s nudge to engage in battle, Dean, who pioneered online
progressive organizing when he ran for president in 2004, went out of his
way to praise Warren – and Wikler – even while reiterating his support for
Clinton.

“What Elizabeth Warren just did is great for the country,” Dean said of
Warren’s high-profile fight this week against a government funding bill
that included a provision to roll back the Dodd-Fank Wall Street reform
law. “I wouldn’t agree with her rhetoric, but I absolutely agree with her
position.”

“I’m just delighted to have Elizabeth Warren take this role,” he continued.
“This is not a choice between the lesser of two evils – I’ve made my choice
because I’ve known Hillary for 25 years, she’s incredibly experienced, we
need strong leadership at the top … I think Elizabeth Warren in the race or
not in the race is good for the country, but I am steadfast in supporting
Hillary because I think she would make a great president.”

For his part, Wikler too praised Dean and Clinton, the former secretary of
state and presumed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. “MoveOn
members have enormous respect for Hillary Clinton,” he said. “The thing
about Elizabeth Warren is that she embodies the fighting spirit of the
Democratic base that resonates with the entire country.”

In case it wasn’t clear, Dean went out of his way to praise Wikler as well.
“I appreciate you trying to pick a fight between Ben and I. I happen to
know Ben, and he’s one of the smartest people under 35 in the entire
country,” the former Democratic National Committee chairman said to
Kornacki with a laugh. “You’re not going to get us in a big ugly fight
here,” Dead said.

Supporters of the effort to draft Warren gathered in Washington this
weekend at RootsCamp, a conference of progressive organizers and techies,
where they saw momentum on their side but also declined to say anything
negative about Clinton.

Of course, neither Clinton nor Warren are candidates for any office at the
moment. Warren has repeatedly said she is not running for president, and
she disavowed another draft group through her lawyer. Clinton, meanwhile,
has said she will make a decision next year, but has scheduled speeches
later in the spring, which raise questions about her timing.

*MSNBC: “It’s good to be Ready for Warren – just don’t mention Clinton”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/its-good-be-ready-warren-just-dont-mention-clinton>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

December 14, 2014, 12:39 p.m. EST

It’s a good time to be Ready for Warren – just don’t mention Hillary
Clinton.

When the extended network of activists hoping to draft Sen. Elizabeth
Warren into the 2016 presidential race gathered in Washington, D.C. on
Saturday for a lefty organizing conference, they felt confident –
“electric,” as one put it.

Just a week ago, even some involved in Ready for Warren saw it as a fun, if
modest, project. But on Tuesday, two of the biggest liberal grassroots
groups in the country, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, joined the
effort to draft the Massachusetts senator. On Friday, more than 300 Obama
campaign alumni signed a letter urging Warren to get in the race. And over
the course of the week, Warren’s star power reached new highs as she led
the (ultimately doomed) progressive revolt against a government funding
bill that included pro-Wall Street provisions.

At a panel Saturday organized by the groups involved in the draft Warren
effort at the Roots Camp conference, a summit of 2,000 liberal political
organizers and techies, anything seemed possible. “If you would like to go
to Iowa and change the world, we will find you a futon and feed you pizza
three meals a day!” said Ben Wikler,the MoveOn organizer who is leading the
group’s new $1 million campaign to draft the senator. They’re hiring people
in key presidential states and plan a big kickoff event in Des Moines on
Wednesday.

Ready for Warren brought a life-sized cutout of the populist senator as
Katniss Everdeen, the symbolic leader of the rebels in the “Hunger Games”
film series. Warren is “catching fire,” they joked.

But as they build enthusiasm for Warren, her supporters still seem unsure
how to talk about the proverbial donkey in the room (these are Democrats,
after all): Hillary Clinton. The presence of the presumed front-runner for
the Democratic nomination could be felt, even if her name was hardly
mentioned.

No one on the panel dared speak the words “Hillary Clinton,” and she came
up only in a question from a member of the audience. Erica Sagrans, the
campaign manager of Ready for Warren, referred to Clinton as “that other
candidate.”

The same was true at a panel earlier in the day organized by climate
activists. Despite being titled “#HillaryProblems,” problems with Hillary
Clinton were mentioned only in two, fleeting moments.

Asked about the lack of mention of Clinton after the Warren panel, Wikler
declined to utter the name of the former secretary of state. “We’re running
a pro-Warren campaign. This is a campaign to get her in the race. It’s not
an anti-anyone campaign,” he said.

Pressed again, he repeated: “It’s a pro-Warren campaign.”

“We’re thinking in a Warren-centric way,” added Robel Tekleab, a Iowa-based
veteran of Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign who is now Ready for Warren’s
point person in the state.

During the panel, Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who worked on John
Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign, said most Democratic politicians have
failed to connect emotionally with people like him – he’s a Southern Latino
with working class roots who talks “like a redneck.” But not Warren.
“There’s a populist message out there that was not being spoken about until
Elizabeth Warren got on the Senate floor and talked about it,” he said.

Even though she’s talking about obscure financial regulations, she’s makes
people feel like she can “speak to them,” said Rocha, something he said
he’s rarely seen since Clinton’s husband was president.

Sagrans said the pro-Warren movement was inspired in part by Occupy Wall
Street and the protests movement against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s cuts
to public sector worker pensions in 2011.

But even if the panelists avoided Clinton, attendees did not. One, a local
organizer, said, “I think we need to be not just ready for Warren, but also
need to be ready for unity.”

*New York Times column: Frank Bruni: “The Many Faces of Jeb”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-jeb-bush-chris-christie-and-the-2016-presidential-campaign.html>*

By Frank Bruni

December 13, 2014

As brothers who governed large states at the same time, each Bush was bound
to be defined in terms of the other. George was the impulsive one who’d
stumbled and then swaggered toward success. Jeb was the cogitator, the
toiler. George was the extrovert: He worked the room. Jeb was the
introvert: He read the books.

That was how they were discussed back in 1999 and 2000, and the word on
their ideological differences was that George was perhaps a bit more
moderate, while Jeb was the truer conservative.

What a difference a decade and a half make. How the sands of politics shift.

As Jeb Bush seemingly leans toward a presidential run, many observers are
casting him as a centrist. And there are indeed elements of his current
message that suggest that if he won “the nomination as well as the
presidency, it could reshape Republican politics for a generation,” as
Jonathan Martin wrote in The Times late last week. But Martin noted other
elements of Bush’s message and record as well, the ones that explain why a
separate camp of observers look at him and see someone else. For instance,
in Politico Magazine, the journalist S. V. Dáte observed that for him and
others “who covered Jeb’s two terms in Tallahassee,” characterizations of
Bush as a moderate are “mind-boggling.”

Just what kind of Republican is Jeb Bush? That question is being asked with
increasing frequency. And the absence of a clear answer, coupled with the
insistence on one, is instructive.

It speaks to the fact that most successful politicians aren’t fixed in one
place forevermore. They’re the products of certain unwavering convictions
and certain adaptations to circumstance, and the measures of each are
different at different moments in their careers.

The futile tussle to define Bush also reflects the way ideological
yardsticks change over time. Above all else, it exposes the poverty of our
political vocabulary.

Left, center, right. Liberal, moderate, conservative. We reach fast for
these labels and itch to put pols in these boxes, no matter how untidy or
impermanent the fit. Some of the expected candidates for 2016 are great
examples.

Hillary Clinton: liberal or moderate? Depends on which point in her past
you choose. Toward the beginning of Bill’s successful 1992 quest for the
presidency, she was part of his decision to steer away from the left, as
The Times’s Peter Baker and Amy Chozick recently reported. They noted that
in the recollection of Al From, the founder of the Democratic Leadership
Council, Hillary pledged, “We’re going to be a different kind of Democrat
by the convention.”

But there were chapters after Bill’s election when she came across as a
familiar kind of Democrat, and then there’s the present, when she’s seen as
someone so estranged from some traditional Democratic principles that
there’s a movement to draft Elizabeth Warren to challenge her. It
apparently gathered steam last week, just as Clinton topped a CNBC poll of
500 millionaires who were asked about their preference for president in
2016. She got 31 percent of the vote, while Bush was second with 18. I
await a new “super PAC,” Mills for Hills.

The Republican field is almost always broken down into candidates of the
right and those of the center: a schematic to which we journalists cling.
It’s hugely flawed this time around. Rand Paul evades it so completely that
he gets his own adjective — libertarian — even though some of his positions
on social issues contradict it.

Chris Christie gets the moderate box, because he was twice elected governor
of a blue state; signed legislation granting in-state tuition to
undocumented immigrants in New Jersey; pushed criminal-justice reforms that
stress rehabilitation; outlawed therapy that aims to turn gay teenagers
straight; and accepted the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. And right
after Hurricane Sandy, he and President Obama had their soggy, windswept
bromance.

But Christie also opposes same-sex marriage and abortion rights. He has
vetoed some sensible gun-control legislation. And he sidesteps questions
about immigration reform. He’s not exactly a paragon of moderation.

Marco Rubio, another possible presidential contender, isn’t easily labeled
either. Back in 2010, when he won election to the Senate, he was presented
as a mascot of the right, a Tea Party darling. But he has endorsed a path
to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. And his proposals for making
college more affordable and student loans less onerous aren’t just bold.
They’re progressive.

BUSH’S categorization as a moderate owes much to the passion he brings to
the issues of immigration and education and his dissent from hard-line
conservatives on both. These rebellions are meaningful.

So was his commentary from the sidelines of the 2012 presidential race.
After a Republican primary debate in which all eight candidates said that
they would refuse a budget deal that included $10 of reduced spending for
every $1 in tax increases, he made clear that he didn’t agree with the
pack. And he said that his party had drifted rightward enough that someone
like Ronald Reagan would have difficulty finding a receptive home in it.

That assessment suggested one reason Bush is now deemed a centrist: The
poles have moved.

But much of his record in Florida is that of the “headbanging conservative”
he claimed to be during a first, unsuccessful campaign for governor in
1994. (He won the next time, in 1998.) He slashed taxes. He was a friend to
gun owners: Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was enacted on his watch.

In the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman deemed by many physicians to
be in a persistent vegetative state, he intervened on the side of her
parents — but against the wishes of her husband, who was her legal guardian
— to prevent the removal of a feeding tube. And he was an assertive
opponent of abortion rights. He still opposes them, and same-sex marriage.

But he learned between his 1994 defeat and 1998 victory to reach out to
minorities and speak inclusively and hopefully. When he recently told an
audience in Washington that a person had to be willing to lose the
Republican primary to win the general election, he was in part alluding to
that lesson, and he was telegraphing the tone that a Bush campaign would
take. He was also signaling a suspicion of labels and boxes.

We should be similarly wary of them, because we’ve routinely seen leaders
defy our assumptions. Jeb’s brother George, for example, campaigned for the
presidency as someone cautious about overextending the American military
and adamant about fiscal restraint. And while we took him for an inveterate
backslapper, he now spends much of his time alone at an easel.

That’s how it goes with so many politicians. We think we’ve figured them
out, but we’re hasty and they’re slippery.

*NBC News: “Meet the Press Transcript - December 14, 2014” [PARTIAL]
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-december-14-2014-n268181>*

[Transcript]

December 14, 2014

CHUCK TODD:

Last question, Rand Paul or Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy are you
more comfortable with?

DICK CHENEY:

Well, I don't think either one of them's going to be president.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, but you didn't answer the question. Who's foreign policy would you be
more comfortable?

DICK CHENEY:

I'm comfortable with my own views. And I've been very forthright about
them. And frankly I don't support either Hillary Clinton or Rand Paul.

*Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Jeb Bush to write e-book and release
250,000 e-mails”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/13/jeb-bush-to-write-e-book-and-release-250000-e-mails/>*

By Philip Rucker

December 13, 2014, 11:32 p.m. EST

As he prepares for a possible 2016 presidential campaign, Jeb Bush said
Saturday that he is writing an e-book and plans to release roughly 250,000
e-mails from his tenure as governor of Florida.

Bush, who has been taking steps to prepare for what some of his associates
see as a likely presidential campaign, told a Florida television station
that he would publish the book and release the e-mails "early next year."

"It's been kind of fun to go back and to think about this and remind myself
that if you run with big ideas and then you're true to those ideas and get
a chance to serve and implement them and do it with passion and conviction,
you can move the needle, and that's what we need right now in America,"
Bush said in a Saturday interview with WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate in Miami.

"BHAGs," Bush added (using an acronym for  "Big Hairy Audacious Goals.")
"We need a few."

Bush said he was releasing the e-mails from his two terms in office,
between 1999 and 2007, because he wanted to be transparent.

"Part of serving or running, both of them, is transparency, to be totally
transparent," he said. "So I'll let people make up their mind. There's some
funny ones, there's some sad ones, there's some serious ones."

Joking about his use of e-mail, Bush said: "I was digital before digital
was cool, I guess. Now it's like, commonplace."

As governor, Bush was known to be a prolific e-mailer. In his official
portrait, he posed with his Blackberry smartphone displayed prominently
atop his bookshelf, next to a photo of his family.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  December 15 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton discusses closing gender data
gaps with Michael Bloomberg (AP
<https://twitter.com/KThomasDC/status/542345675493892096>)

·  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>
)

·  January 21 – Saskatchewan, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce’s “Global Perspectives” series (MarketWired
<http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/former-us-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-address-saskatoon-1972651.htm>
)

·  January 21 – Winnipeg, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Global
Perspectives series (Winnipeg Free Press
<http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Clinton-coming-to-Winnipeg--284282491.html>
)

·  February 24 – Santa Clara, CA: Sec. Clinton to Keynote Address at
Inaugural Watermark Conference for Women (PR Newswire
<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hillary-rodham-clinton-to-deliver-keynote-address-at-inaugural-watermark-conference-for-women-283200361.html>
)

·  March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes  American Camp
Association conference (PR Newswire <http://www.sys-con.com/node/3254649>)