Subject: ​Correct The Record Tuesday December 16, 2014 Morning Roundup
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Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 08:57:38 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Tuesday December 16, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*New York Times: “Cordial Ties for Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/nyregion/cordial-ties-for-michael-bloomberg-and-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0>*

“The event offered a glimpse into the wonky, shared common ground of two of
New York’s biggest political personalities.”

*Bloomberg: “Clinton Says Data Collection Push Will Boost Women’s Welfare”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-16/clinton-says-data-collection-push-will-boost-women-s-welfare.html>*

“Hillary Clinton announced new initiatives to improve data collection and
bolster gender equality, expanding a United Nations Foundation program she
supported while she was U.S. secretary of state.”

*CBS News: “Will Hillary Clinton be a champion for women in the 2016
election?”
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-hillary-clinton-use-2016-to-be-a-champion-for-women/>*

“While she has yet to announce whether she'll launch another bid for the
White House, Clinton has this year taken steps to further solidify her
standing as a voice for women.”

*Fortune: “Hillary Clinton spurs 'gender data revolution'”
<http://fortune.com/2014/12/15/hillary-clinton-gender-data/>*

“After years of finding her efforts being met with mostly indifference,
Clinton is perfecting her approach.”

*The Hill: “Clinton quiet as Warren rises”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/227212-clinton-quiet-as-warren-rises>*

“The reason for Clinton’s silence, some of her staunchest supporters say,
is that she likely supported the spending bill — even if she didn’t want to
go on record with that support.”

*Politico: “Bill Clinton: Eric Garner ‘didn’t deserve to die’”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/bill-clinton-eric-garner-113595.html>*

“Bill Clinton urged people to move beyond hard-wire racial perceptions and
said that the unarmed black man killed after an apparent chokehold by
police in New York City ‘didn’t deserve to die.’”

*The Hill: “110,000 sign Warren petition”
<http://thehill.com/policy/finance/227222-110000-sign-warren-petition>*

“MoveOn.org officials announced Monday that they have garnered 110,000
signatures on a petition urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for
president in 2016.”

*The Atlantic: “Elizabeth Warren Is Not the Ted Cruz of the Left”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/elizabeth-warren-is-not-the-ted-cruz-of-the-left/383786/>*

“If Ted Cruz wins the Republican presidential nomination, party divisions
will calcify. If Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic nomination, they may
loosen. That’s one reason so many Democrats hope she’ll run.”

*Articles:*

*New York Times: “Cordial Ties for Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/nyregion/cordial-ties-for-michael-bloomberg-and-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0>*

By Amy Chozick

December 15, 2014

The most colorful moment in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s joint appearance with
Michael R. Bloomberg on Monday came when they posed in front of the former
mayor’s huge tank of exotic fish.

What had brought them together was a much drier topic: a philanthropic
effort to measure and track data about issues affecting women and girls
around the world.

The event offered a glimpse into the wonky, shared common ground of two of
New York’s biggest political personalities.

Mr. Bloomberg built his multibillion-dollar financial information company
on providing Wall Street traders with reliable data. Mrs. Clinton, who took
a data-based approach to policy, both foreign and domestic, was also
sometimes criticized as a presidential candidate for rattling off
statistics on the stump.

Since she stepped down as secretary of state in 2103, Mrs. Clinton has
worked with her daughter, Chelsea, who also attended the event, on a
separate partnership between the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation
and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that seeks to collect data on the
progress women and girls have made globally.

“There’s a saying that has served us well in government and in business and
in philanthropy,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he introduced Mrs. Clinton. “If you
can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Mrs. Clinton added later, “There is a shared commitment, some would say
passion, for good data — understanding it and then applying it.”

Before the event, which drew a crowd of around 200, including many
influential New York women, Mr. Bloomberg and Mrs. Clinton paused in front
of his oversize aquariums before meeting privately.

Theirs is a cordial, if not particularly close, relationship, based on
proximity in New York, if not political party. Mr. Bloomberg, an
independent who won his first campaign for mayor in 2001 as a Republican,
worked closely with Mrs. Clinton when she was a Democratic senator from New
York and regularly speaks at the annual Clinton Global Initiative
gatherings in New York.

The two are said to respect each other’s abilities, and they share a
similar hyperkinetic energy and an approach to global problem solving.

Their relationship became somewhat icy in 2007, friends of both say, when
Mr. Bloomberg contemplated running for president as an independent at a
time when Mrs. Clinton appeared poised to capture the Democratic
nomination. But after she lost to Senator Barack Obama, and Senator John
McCain of Arizona captured the Republican nomination, Mr. Bloomberg saw
less of an opening for a third-party, centrist candidate.

Mr. Bloomberg delivered a powerful but late endorsement of Mr. Obama in his
2012 re-election campaign. He has not jumped on the early bandwagon to
support Mrs. Clinton’s likely 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Bloomberg is
close to other potential 2016 hopefuls, including Vice President Joseph R.
Biden Jr. and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who sits on the board of
Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The event on Monday highlighted a joint effort called Data2X, involving
Mrs. Clinton and the United Nations Foundation, that seeks to measure and
track gender equality. Mr. Bloomberg praised Mrs. Clinton, at times
expressing a giddy, self-effacing enthusiasm about their relationship.

“If my mother and father knew I was on a first-name basis with Hillary
Clinton, it would be a very big deal,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg said he had an excellent relationship with Mrs. Clinton when
he was in City Hall and she was a senator. At one point, he recalled, Mrs.
Clinton was adamant that the State Department “defray the cost of providing
security to the U.N.” in New York.

But he joked that she had flip-flopped: “Do I have to explain to you what
happened when she became secretary of state?”

Another measure of his esteem for Mrs. Clinton: As his third term came to
an end, Mr. Bloomberg reached out to her to enter the 2013 mayoral race.
(She did not seriously consider it.)

Mr. Bloomberg also has much in common with her husband. The former mayor
and former President Bill Clinton jointly developed a climate-change effort
focused on improving conditions in cities. Bloomberg L.P. has been a
sponsor of the Clinton Global Initiative, and Mr. Bloomberg gave the
Clinton Foundation $150,000 in 2012 for environmental projects in Haiti,
among other collaborations.

As New Yorkers, the Clintons and Mr. Bloomberg also cross paths socially.
Last month, Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Clinton attended a party the former mayor
hosted for the release of the designer Diane von Furstenberg’s memoir, “The
Woman I Wanted To Be.”

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bloomberg wasted no time in moving on to
their next commitments. Both left the event shortly after Ms. Clinton sat
down to moderate a panel on Data2X.

As it began, a photographer who had snapped photos of her mother raced down
a tight aisle to shoot pictures of Ms. Clinton.

“This is great — paparazzi for data,” she said, smiling. “We hope that you
come to all our meetings.”

*Bloomberg: “Clinton Says Data Collection Push Will Boost Women’s Welfare”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-16/clinton-says-data-collection-push-will-boost-women-s-welfare.html>*

By Sonali Basak

December 15, 2014, 9:08 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton announced new initiatives to improve data collection and
bolster gender equality, expanding a United Nations Foundation program she
supported while she was U.S. secretary of state.

“When it comes to the lives of women and girls around the world, too much
is not being measured,” Clinton, a possible 2016 candidate for president,
said at the Partnering for a Gender Data Revolution event in New York. More
reliable statistics could help “build a case strong enough to convince the
skeptics” that women’s welfare “directly supports everyone’s security and
prosperity.”

Clinton said a series of partnerships would boost data gathering about
women and girls in six areas, including poverty levels, access to financial
services and opportunities for employment. The partnerships are part of the
Data2X initiative sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and others,
including the Clinton Foundation. Started in 2012, its goal is improve the
availability of statistics about women around the world to guide policy and
spur economic and social progress.

One of the collaborations is with the World Bank and International Labor
Organization, to measure women’s work and employment. Another is with the
Global Banking Alliance for Women, to examine how banks underserve women as
customers. There is an estimated $300 billion credit shortfall for
women-owned businesses in emerging economies, a Data2X report shows.

One way Data2X numbers are already being used is to identify why women
aren’t entering secondary schools at the same rate as men, said Jennifer
Klein, a senior adviser to the Clinton Foundation. It and about 30 other
groups, including the Brookings Institution, are backing a $600 million
effort to help disadvantaged girls attend secondary school.

‘Broad Range’

Next year, Data2X numbers will be used to track change in child marriage
rates over the past 20 years and show how country-specific policies have
reduced forced marriages among boys and girls under 18 years old, said
Rachel Vogelstein, director of women and girls programs at the Clinton
Foundation. She said her team is working with groups including the
University of California, Los Angeles, and the Economist Intelligence Unit
to make statistics gathered in individual nations accessible and inclusive.

“That’s one of the important principles, making sure that this is country
driven,” Vogelstein said. “It’s one of the reasons that we have such a
broad range of partners.”

Heather Higginbottom, deputy U.S. Secretary of State for management and
resources, said better data collection could help aid groups understand why
HIV is more prevalent among women between the ages of 15 and 19 at rates
three times higher than men of the same age.

Unpaid Labor

Unpaid labor women perform is widely underreported, according to Data2X
findings. Clinton cited India, where women are doing an average of six
hours of unpaid work outside the conventional economy every day. If they
were introduced to the formal work force, the country’s gross domestic
product could be $1.7 trillion higher, Clinton said.

“The economic facts are absolutely clear,” Clinton said. “Investing in
women is not only the right thing to do, but also the smart thing,” and
finding the right data can help target investments.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation also support the Data2X initiative. A sponsor of today’s
conference was Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by Michael Bloomberg, who
is the majority shareholder of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of
Bloomberg News.

*CBS News: “Will Hillary Clinton be a champion for women in the 2016
election?”
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-hillary-clinton-use-2016-to-be-a-champion-for-women/>*

By Stephanie Condon

December 16, 2014, 5:19 a.m. EST

Two years after launching a project called Data2X, which aims to advance
gender equality around the world, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
on Monday kicked off the next phase of the project, announcing new
partnerships to collect data on gender gaps. At Monday's event, Clinton
explained why she's spearheading projects like this one.

"I have been championing the rights of women and girls around the world, as
well as here at home, for many years," Clinton said, repeating a narrative
she's used multiple times this year. "I got tired of seeing otherwise
thoughtful people smile and nod when I raise these issues."

Clinton has indeed worked on issues relating to women and families for
decades. Yet as a presidential candidate in the 2008 election cycle, the
focus of her campaign fell more on her managerial credentials, with a
promise that she was "ready to lead."

Eight years later, the circumstances are different. Clinton has more
experience as a stateswoman under her belt, American women have embraced
the concept of "leaning in," and women's issues -- such as ensuring equal
pay for equal work, or requiring paid sick leave -- have come to the
forefront of national conversations. Moreover, the very idea of what
constitutes "women's issues" has broadened dramatically since Hillary
Clinton first entered public life.

"We've witnessed a rise in the awareness of these issues," Neera Tanden,
president of the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), told CBS News.
CAP launched its own campaign focused on elevating policies to help women
and families just last year.

"There's a lot more [discussion] about the treatment of working women,
whether it's positive or negative," Tanden said, referencing a range of
issues, from the discussion in Congress over sexual assault in the military
to news reports on pay disparities in Hollywood.

These new discussions give Clinton a better chance than ever to cast
herself as a champion for women and families. While she has yet to announce
whether she'll launch another bid for the White House, Clinton has this
year taken steps to further solidify her standing as a voice for women.

Two years after launching a project called Data2X, which aims to advance
gender equality around the world, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
on Monday kicked off the next phase of the project, announcing new
partnerships to collect data on gender gaps. At Monday's event, Clinton
explained why she's spearheading projects like this one.

"I have been championing the rights of women and girls around the world, as
well as here at home, for many years," Clinton said, repeating a narrative
she's used multiple times this year. "I got tired of seeing otherwise
thoughtful people smile and nod when I raise these issues."

Clinton has indeed worked on issues relating to women and families for
decades. Yet as a presidential candidate in the 2008 election cycle, the
focus of her campaign fell more on her managerial credentials, with a
promise that she was "ready to lead."

Eight years later, the circumstances are different. Clinton has more
experience as a stateswoman under her belt, American women have embraced
the concept of "leaning in," and women's issues -- such as ensuring equal
pay for equal work, or requiring paid sick leave -- have come to the
forefront of national conversations. Moreover, the very idea of what
constitutes "women's issues" has broadened dramatically since Hillary
Clinton first entered public life.

"We've witnessed a rise in the awareness of these issues," Neera Tanden,
president of the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), told CBS News.
CAP launched its own campaign focused on elevating policies to help women
and families just last year.

"There's a lot more [discussion] about the treatment of working women,
whether it's positive or negative," Tanden said, referencing a range of
issues, from the discussion in Congress over sexual assault in the military
to news reports on pay disparities in Hollywood.

These new discussions give Clinton a better chance than ever to cast
herself as a champion for women and families. While she has yet to announce
whether she'll launch another bid for the White House, Clinton has this
year taken steps to further solidify her standing as a voice for women.

*Fortune: “Hillary Clinton spurs 'gender data revolution'”
<http://fortune.com/2014/12/15/hillary-clinton-gender-data/>*

By Caroline Fairchild

December 15, 2014, 3:03 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Through Data2x, Clinton unveiled new partnerships to improve
data collection and help address gender issues around the world.

There’s not much news in Hillary Clinton getting on a stage to champion
women and girls. The former First Lady turned former Secretary of State
turned rumored presidential candidate has made the economic progress of
women a priority throughout her career. Yet after years of finding her
efforts being met with mostly indifference, Clinton is perfecting her
approach.

On Monday, Clinton announced six new partnerships with global organizations
to power a “gender data revolution.” Data2X, an initiative announced by
Clinton in 2012, is working to use data to advance gender equality and
women’s empowerment. An initiative led by the United Nations Foundation
with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation, Data2x provides a
platform for global leaders to foster greater collaboration on the topic of
gender data in global development. Gender data around the world on key
topics remains limited, and Data2x is focused on creating partnership that
will create a full picture of the lives of women and girls. Moreover,
without the right data, Clinton feels that you can’t make the case for why
public policies around the world need to change.

“I got tired of seeing otherwise thoughtful people smile and nod when I
raised these issues [women and girls],” said Clinton at an event at
Bloomberg Philanthropies in New York. “Foreign leaders, business
executives, even senior officials in our own government. You can just see
the wheels turning, like, ‘Oh right, I knew she was going to raise women
and girls. I will just smile, it will pass and then we’ll talk about really
important things.’ Over and over again this was an experience I had.”

Data2x has identified 28 gaps in data on women across health, education,
economic opportunities, political participation and human security. Several
years ago in India, for example, only 6% of women were officially counted
as employed. After further research, it was discovered that women do six
hours of unpaid work on average outside of the traditional economy every
day. If leaders in India brought these women into the paid economy at the
same level as men, the country’s GDP would increase by $1.7 trillion.

This, says Clinton, is just one of countless ways that the numbers can
support a case for a shift in how leaders are addressing the issues. The
International Labour Organization, the World Bank and the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations are working specifically to
help implement news definitions of work and employment with problems like
the one in India in mind.

“If you don’t measure, you can’t manage. You can’t understand what the
problem is,” said Clinton. “It’s not enough any longer to make the case on
moral rights grounds…We are not making the progress we should be if that is
the principle, and in sometimes exclusive, argument that we are making.”

Other new partnerships through Data2x include an effort to get more women
access to financial services. There is an estimated $300 billion credit
shortage for women-owned companies in emerging economies, and the Global
Banking Alliance for Women along with the International American
Development Bank are collaborating to provide sex-disaggregated data by
banks around the world.

Clinton announced the news partnerships along with former New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, United Nations Foundation President and CEO Kathy
Calvin, and her daughter Chelsea Clinton. Prior to addressing the crowd,
Bloomberg shared that a few years ago Bloomberg Philanthropies started
working to address maternal deaths in Tanzania. Suffering from one of the
highest maternal death rates in the world, Bloomberg dove into the numbers
and discovered that there is one doctor for every 50,000 people. Upgrading
health facilities and training non-physicians to provide emergency care
create more opportunities for Tanzanian women to get the care they need.

“There are so many other opportunities to improve lives that the world is
not effectively tracking because we don’t have that data,” he said. “If you
get the data, you can really target your resources and make a big
difference.”

*The Hill: “Clinton quiet as Warren rises”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/227212-clinton-quiet-as-warren-rises>*

By Amie Parnes

December 16, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EST

Hillary Clinton and her allies were quiet while Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) led a Democratic uprising in the Senate over changes to the Wall
Street reform bill that were included by Republicans in a $1.1 trillion
government-funding bill.

Clinton didn’t make a peep as Warren, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) and other congressional liberals tore into the White House for
acquiescing to the changes.

The reason for Clinton’s silence, some of her staunchest supporters say, is
that she likely supported the spending bill — even if she didn’t want to go
on record with that support.

“I don’t think she would have considered the legislation deeply flawed,”
said one Hillary ally. “She would have some issues with it, of course, and
she’d think that it’s not a perfect bill but I don’t think she would have
taken Warren’s stance.”

Clinton allies also echo the White House in arguing that it was better to
make a concession with Republicans and move a spending bill negotiated by
Senate Democratic appropriators than to reject it, which might have led to
a short-term continuing resolution funding the government and more leverage
for Republicans next year when that party controls both chambers of
Congress.

“Other bills have been far, far more detrimental,” another Clinton ally
said. “The pros here outweighed the cons.”

That might be the case, but there’s no doubt Warren’s opposition to the
bill raised her profile and pepped the spirits of grassroots liberals
hoping she’ll enter the 2016 fight for the White House as a rival to
Clinton.

Many on the left have groused about Clinton, who is seen as the runaway
favorite for the Democratic nomination if she chooses to make a second
White House bid.

Clinton is seen as close to Wall Street because of her years as a New York
senator and her husband’s administration, where years of economic growth
were managed at the Treasury Department by Secretary Robert Rubin, a
veteran of Citibank.

That’s the same entity that pushed for the change to the Wall Street reform
bill that was included in the $1.1 trillion spending bill. It allows banks
covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to engage in
derivatives trading.

Clinton supporters say it’s not fair and too simplistic to paint Warren as
the anti-Wall Street crusader AND Clinton as a friend of big banks.

“There’s a perception out there that she’s Wall Street’s biggest champion,”
said one former Clinton aide who worked on her 2008 presidential campaign.
“That’s not true. She’s just more moderate. And she thinks that we’ve got
to support Wall Street within reason.”

And while Clinton allies acknowledge the last week has given more oxygen to
the idea of a Warren candidacy, they aren’t signaling it will move up an
announcement by Clinton.

The former secretary of State, in fact, seemed to signal last week that an
announcement on her White House prospects could wait until late spring.

Clinton allies also think that a bigger movement that the anti-Wall Street
camp favors her candidacy: The anti-gridlock movement.

Voters are tired of a dysfunctional Washington and want leaders who can
make the government work.

Clinton, like her husband, knows that Democrats have to work with
Republicans to move on legislation, her allies say.

“When she was in the Senate, she worked across the aisle,” one Clinton ally
said. “And she knows she’s going to have to do the same thing should she
become president.”

Warren, for her part, earned some comparisons to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as
she energized House Democrats to challenge their leadership and president
over the spending bill.

Warren is “an anti-Wall Street crusader,” the first Clinton ally said.
“That’s what she does. I don’t think Secretary Clinton views things the
same way. She’s not currying favors to Wall Street by doing this but she
just sees it differently.”

Warren has insisted she’s not running for the White House, even as
MoveOn.Org tried to lure her into the race by launching ‘Ready for Warren,’
website for supporters. As of Monday, more than 23,500 people have liked
‘Ready for Warren’ on Facebook.

At the same time, more than 300 former Obama campaign staffers from the
2008 and 2012 cycles wrote an open letter to Warren urging her to run for
president.

“I think Sen. Warren is tapping into strongly held concerns by many
Americans that they don’t have a shot at a fair deal,” said Democratic
strategist Jim Manley.

Warren on Monday repeated the notion that she is “not running for
president.”

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Warren told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “We had a
really important fight in the United States Congress just this past week.
And I’m putting all my energy into that fight and to what happens after
this.”

When Inskeep pressed her about using the present tense to describe whether
or not she’d run, Warren repeated once again, “I am not running for
president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?”

*Politico: “Bill Clinton: Eric Garner ‘didn’t deserve to die’”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/bill-clinton-eric-garner-113595.html>*

By Maggie Haberman

December 15, 2014, 11:14 p.m. EST

Bill Clinton urged people to move beyond hard-wire racial perceptions and
said that the unarmed black man killed after an apparent chokehold by
police in New York City “didn’t deserve to die.”

Clinton made the comments in an interview with Fusion, taped during the
Clinton Foundation’s “Future of the Americas” event earlier this month. The
full interview will air Tuesday night, and the portion involving police
relations was released Monday.

Clinton said there are “preconceptions wired into us and we have got to get
beyond them,” and added that there is a “divide that exists between the
community and the police.”

He spoke specifically about Eric Garner, the unarmed black man killed in a
confrontation with police. Authorities later said Garner was selling loose
cigarettes on a street corner in Staten Island. The medical examiner ruled
his death a homicide with underlying causes related to his obesity and
general health.

The officer involved in the apparent chokehold was not indicted, sparking
days of protests around New York City.

“[Garner] was obviously not well, he was overweight and vulnerable
therefore had lung problems, heart and lung problems,” Clinton said. “He
was doing something he should not have been doing. That was illegal. He was
selling untaxed cigarettes on the street in small volumes, trying to make a
little extra money. But he didn’t deserve to die because of that.”

Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, a likely 2016 presidential candidate,
spoke out after the Garner indictment decision and a decision in the case
of Michael Brown, the unarmed young black man shot to death by police
officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer said he was acting
in self-defense and was not indicted.

Hillary Clinton said the nation needs to face some “hard truths” about race.

*The Hill: “110,000 sign Warren petition”
<http://thehill.com/policy/finance/227222-110000-sign-warren-petition>*

By Kevin Cirilli

December 15, 2014, 7:03 p.m. EST

MoveOn.org officials announced Monday that they have garnered 110,000
signatures on a petition urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for
president in 2016.

The announcement comes just one week after the progressive grassroots group
launched a "Run Warren Run" campaign that included a $1 million investment.

Warren has insisted that she will not run for president. And early polling
has former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a huge lead against any
Democratic challenger.

But the progressive group's calls for a Warren candidacy illustrate
liberals' discomfort with a Clinton coronation, as well as their skepticism
that Clinton is too close to Wall Street.

Warren is largely seen as a populist progressive who frequently supports
more stringent banking regulations.

*The Atlantic: “Elizabeth Warren Is Not the Ted Cruz of the Left”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/elizabeth-warren-is-not-the-ted-cruz-of-the-left/383786/>*

By Peter Beinart

December 16, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] She's more like the Rand Paul of the left.

The symmetry was irresistible. Last weekend, as Ted Cruz almost blew up the
budget deal over immigration and Elizabeth Warren almost blew it up over
banking regulations, pundits seized upon an analogy. Both senators are
articulate, ideological, media-savvy, beloved by party activists, and
problematic for party leaders. Thus, Warren is the Cruz of the left.

Bad analogy, argues Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, noting that it’s Cruz and the
GOP that want “to use government funding as leverage to undo policy
measures Democrats enacted in the 111th Congress.” Warren just doesn’t
“want to pay the ransom.” The Washington Post’s Sean Sullivan is dubious
too, noting that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner dislike Cruz a lot more
than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi dislike Warren.

But there’s another, more fundamental, difference. Cruz deepens America’s
red-blue divide. Warren could scramble it.

Think about Cruz’s highest-profile crusades: against Obamacare, against
Obama’s executive action on immigration, against raising the debt ceiling,
against gun control. They all exhilarated conservative activists and
repelled their liberal counterparts.

With Warren it’s different. Her signature crusade is against the economic
and political power of Wall Street. And it’s a crusade that appeals to
elements of the American right. Most conservatives don’t like big banks
either. In 2012, Pew found that while 78 percent of Democrats said Wall
Street “only cares about making money for itself,” 66 percent of
Republicans did too. Sixty percent of Mitt Romney voters said there was
“too much power in hands of a few big companies.” And according to a 2013
Huffington Post poll, Republicans agreed that “banks and financial
institutions have grown too big and powerful” by a margin of almost two to
one.

Warren’s answer to this is threefold. First, she wants tougher banking
regulation, and since this means empowering federal bureaucrats,
conservatives are overwhelmingly opposed. But Warren’s other solutions hold
more bipartisan appeal. She wants to break up the big banks. Perhaps
because this does not imply a permanent expansion of government oversight,
conservatives are more sympathetic. According to The Huffington Post, a
plurality of Republicans favor “a law that would cap the size of banks in
the US and force the largest banks to break into smaller units.” Finally,
Warren opposes bank bailouts. And because this means less government
intervention, not more, conservatives find it wildly appealing. It was
opposition to George W. Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program that helped
create the Tea Party. According to a 2012 Harris poll, Republicans still
overwhelmingly consider bank bailouts a bad idea.

I don’t want to exaggerate Warren’s crossover appeal. Today’s parties have
such strong ideological brands that it’s difficult for any Democrat to
attract much Republican support (or vice versa). What’s more, Warren is a
social liberal. And if she ran, the GOP’s Club for Growth wing, which hates
her with a passion, would spent vast sums demonizing her among its party
base.

Still, the influx of working-class whites into the GOP in recent decades
has created a wing of the Republican Party that is almost as hostile to
financial elites as are many Democrats. For decades, the GOP has diverted
these class resentments into cultural ones, but that’s become somewhat
harder as generational change has made even culturally conservative younger
whites less hostile to blacks and gays than their parents. It’s among these
younger, blue collar, Republican-leaning whites where Warren could find her
opening.

What makes Warren so politically potent is that she is heir to both the
progressive and populist traditions. Like the early 20th-century
progressive reformers, she’s wonky, high-minded, and wants to create new
mechanisms of federal oversight. But like the populists who sometimes
allied with those reformers and sometimes disdained them, Warren is openly
contemptuous of insiders and elites—far more so than either Barack Obama or
Hillary Clinton. And that’s the potential source of her-red state appeal.

The better analogy is not between Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz. It’s been
Warren and Rand Paul. Warren’s crusade against Wall Street may appeal to
young blue collar Republicans in the same way Paul’s crusade against the
national-security state appeals to young liberal Democrats. Both Warren and
Paul are exploiting a divide in the other party. Democratic elites are more
hawkish on foreign policy than their party’s rank and file; Republicans
elites are more pro-Wall Street than theirs.

If Ted Cruz wins the Republican presidential nomination, party divisions
will calcify. If Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic nomination, they may
loosen. That’s one reason so many Democrats hope she’ll run.

*Calendar:*

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

·  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>)