Subject: Correct The Record Sunday December 21, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 14:21:48 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

Correct The Record Sunday December 21, 2014 Roundup:

 

Headlines:

 

New York Times: “Role for Warren: To Push, if Not Supplant, Clinton”

“Liberals may be unhappy with the prospect of an inexorable march by Mrs. Clinton to the nomination a year and half from now, but at the moment they have no Obama-style candidate to challenge her and no clear-cut issue like the Iraq war to attack her over. They also face a front-runner who is far better positioned now with her own party than she was at the outset of the presidential campaign she saw slip away in 2008.”

 

ABC News: “Clinton: Off Her Peak, but Still Towering”

“Clinton’s backed by 61 percent of Democratic and Democratic leaning independents who are registered to vote, giving her a vast advantage over potential rivals Joe Biden, at 14 percent, and Warren, the freshman U.S. senator from Massachusetts, at 13 percent.”

 

Bloomberg: “Poll: Hillary Clinton Crushing Democratic Rivals Just a Little Bit Less”

[Subtitle:] “A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Elizabeth Warren gaining ever so slightly on Clinton.”

 

Washington Post blog: The Fix: Scott Clement: “Hillary Clinton *drops* to a 49-point lead for the Democrats’ 2016 nomination”

“Clinton's 49-point lead is actually her worst performance of the year in Post-ABC polls, with her support slipping 10 points over the course of four surveys this year (the first of which only listed three candidates).”

 

 

Articles:

 

New York Times: “Role for Warren: To Push, if Not Supplant, Clinton”

By Jonathan Martin

December 20, 2014

DES MOINES — Eight years ago this month, then-Senator Barack Obama began his evolution from political phenom to presidential contender with his first-ever trip to New Hampshire, a visit that attracted 2,500 voters, 150 journalists and a comparison by the state’s governor of Mr. Obama to the Rolling Stones.

Last week, in the side room of Java Joe’s coffee shop here, the liberal group MoveOn.org took the first step to propel Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, on a similar path, holding a rally to encourage her to get into the 2016 race.

Yet there were only about 75 people present, some of them local political professionals engaging in a bit of reconnaissance and recreation, and just a handful of reporters. The highest-ranking official there was the Iowa Senate president, who carefully avoided stating her support for a Warren candidacy.

Not that there is such a thing: Ms. Warren herself was not here, and she has repeatedly stated in public that she is not running for president. In private, according to several Democrats who have talked with her, Ms. Warren, 65, has also indicated that she would not challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Liberals may be unhappy with the prospect of an inexorable march by Mrs. Clinton to the nomination a year and half from now, but at the moment they have no Obama-style candidate to challenge her and no clear-cut issue like the Iraq war to attack her over. They also face a front-runner who is far better positioned now with her own party than she was at the outset of the presidential campaign she saw slip away in 2008.

While Ms. Warren’s style of populism is certainly ascendant among Democrats, in the absence of a viable messenger to carry the progressive banner, it is a political current that Mrs. Clinton can move to co-opt.

“She has an unrivaled status in the party that was much less clear in 2006, when, after all, not only was Obama thinking of running, but there were a lot of credible candidates already running for president,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s former strategist, who has been somewhat critical of Mrs. Clinton recently.

Mrs. Clinton’s marathon campaign with Mr. Obama, willingness to serve as his secretary of state and potential for sweeping away yet another historical barrier from the White House have made her the best-positioned nonincumbent for a party nomination in recent history.

When the 2008 Iowa campaign began, for example, Mrs. Clinton trailed in many polls to a former North Carolina senator, John Edwards. Now, she enjoys canyon-size leads.

A Des Moines Register-Bloomberg poll in October showed Mrs. Clinton leading Ms. Warren by 43 percentage points. In New Hampshire, where Mrs. Clinton led Mr. Obama in a Granite State Poll at the outset of the 2008 race by 14 points, she was beating Ms. Warren by 49 points last month in a Bloomberg-Saint Anselm College survey.

“There is only a very small segment of the party this time around that’s looking for an alternative,” said Jim Demers, a New Hampshire Democrat who backed Mr. Obama in 2008 and is now supporting Mrs. Clinton.

As Mr. Demers noted, Mr. Obama represented not only a fresh face at the time the party was hungry for change at the end of the Bush years, but he was lifted by his opposition to the American invasion of Iraq, which Mrs. Clinton voted in the Senate to authorize — a decision she refused to recant.

Progressives are hoping that a candidate can tap into anger over income inequality the same way Mr. Obama did outrage over the war, but the difference as it relates to Mrs. Clinton is that she is not as starkly on the opposite side of the party base now as she was the last time she ran.

“After six years of having to pursue economic policies primarily geared toward addressing crises, the party is restless and impatient and wants to start addressing broader issues of inequality and stagnant wages,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and former top aide to Mr. Obama. “And they’re looking for a leader who can really articulate this anxiety. But that’s not inconsistent with saying they also want Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination.”

Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are more associated with the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party — and she has raised tens of millions from bankers in her campaigns. But it is clear that she recognizes where the party is moving on economic issues. She has, at times awkwardly, sought to align herself with the new populism and Ms. Warren.

It is also apparent that Ms. Warren intends to use her rising prominence to keep Mrs. Clinton on this path.

Ms. Warren, a first-term senator, has been musing with associates in recent weeks about how to keep the party focused on questions of economic fairness, as she did with her unsuccessful attempt to stop a spending bill this month that included language that would benefit banks.

One of the issues on Ms. Warren’s mind: how to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she helped create, with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress. She intends to give a series of speeches about these issues in the coming months, according to an associate.

While just over two years removed from the faculty of Harvard Law School, Ms. Warren is also politically savvy enough to recognize that the way to keep drawing attention to such policy matters is by sticking with the formulation she uses when asked about a White House race: insisting, while using the present tense, that she is not running.

Asking MoveOn.org to halt its draft efforts and issuing a full-throated endorsement for Mrs. Clinton would end the speculation, of course, but it also would mean less leverage — and less ability to draw attention to questions of what her party will stand for.

“She wants to ensure that the Democratic nominee makes the plight of the middle class and lack of economic mobility today a fundamental motivating plank of their candidacy,” Mr. Axelrod said of Ms. Warren, calling the possibility of her running “a bit of fantasy.” (“But it is good for left-wing P.A.C.s and T-shirt makers,” he joked.)

A longtime friend of Ms. Warren’s and well-connected figure in liberal circles was even blunter.

“She’s challenging Hillary in a different way,” said this Democrat, who requested anonymity to protect his relationship with Ms. Warren. “She’s not attacking Hillary so much as she is attacking a model of the Democratic Party. And Hillary needs to figure out her relationship to that model. Hillary is not so much a protagonist in this as she is the battlefield on which this war is being fought.”

This sentiment — a desire to push if not necessarily defeat Mrs. Clinton — could be found even at the rally for Ms. Warren here last week.

Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.org, never mentioned Mrs. Clinton in his remarks, but the moment that got the most heads nodding and a chorus of yeses from the audience was when he spoke about process, not policy.

“What we’ve heard loud and clear is that Iowans want a contested caucus, Iowans want candidates and issues to be debated and tested and discussed and Iowans want the strongest possible candidate,” Mr. Sheyman said.

 

 

ABC News: “Clinton: Off Her Peak, but Still Towering”

By Gary Langer

December 21, 2014, 7:01 a.m. EST

Hillary Clinton is off her peak but still overwhelmingly strong in support for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, while Elizabeth Warren has inched up in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Clinton’s backed by 61 percent of Democratic and Democratic leaning independents who are registered to vote, giving her a vast advantage over potential rivals Joe Biden, at 14 percent, and Warren, the freshman U.S. senator from Massachusetts, at 13 percent.

Still, Clinton’s support has slipped from 69 percent in June, down by 8 points, while support for Warren is up by 6 points – not remotely enough to make it look competitive at this stage, but movement nonetheless. Biden has held essentially steady.

Warren’s been described as the darling of liberals, and indeed her support among liberals has gained 11 points since June, while Clinton’s has slipped in this group by 14 points. Nonetheless, Clinton still holds a wide 59-19 percent lead over Warren among liberals, with 12 percent for Biden. (Narrow it down to “very” liberals, combining the last two ABC/Post polls for an adequate sample size, and it’s similar – Clinton 63 percent, Warren 21, Biden 6.)

There are few if any substantive differences across groups in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates – and very little support for three others tested, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and Martin O’Malley. That makes it a far different-looking race from the GOP contest, in which, as reported last week, allegiances are widely scattered, with no clear leader.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone interviews Dec. 11-14, 2014, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults, including 346 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who reported being registered to vote. Results have a 3.5-point error margin overall, and 6.0 points for registered leaned Democrats. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York.

 

 

Bloomberg: “Poll: Hillary Clinton Crushing Democratic Rivals Just a Little Bit Less”

By David Knowles

December 21, 2014, 11:36 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Elizabeth Warren gaining ever so slightly on Clinton.

The Hillary Clinton express train to inevitability land is not gaining steam. It is, however, chugging along at a decent clip.

Clinton is the favored presidential candidate of 61 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents in a new ABC News/Washington Post Poll, still far ahead of Vice President Joe Biden (14 percent)  and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (13 percent).

When the same poll was conducted in June, Clinton came in at an impressive 69 percent of those surveyed. Warren showed just seven percent support.

Clinton's slight erosion of support roughly correlates with Warren's gains thanks to the party's liberal faction, as the poll notes:

“Warren’s been described as the darling of liberals, and indeed her support among liberals has gained 11 points since June, while Clinton’s has slipped in this group by 14 points. Nonetheless, Clinton still holds a wide 59-19 percent lead over Warren among liberals, with 12 percent for Biden.”

Neither Clinton, Warren, nor Biden have, as yet, officially declared themselves as candidates.

 

 

Washington Post blog: The Fix: Scott Clement: “Hillary Clinton *drops* to a 49-point lead for the Democrats’ 2016 nomination”

By Scott Clement

December 21, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EST

The year 2014 brought a mixed bag for Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes. Her popularity continued to decline, her book tour drew mixed reviews (along with her book), and some in the liberal wing of the part are urging Elizabeth Warren to challenge her for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But her status as most prohibitive Democratic front-runner in history has not changed. She remains the overwhelming favorite against both Warren and Vice President Joe Biden.

Sixty-three percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they'd vote for her if their state's primary (or caucus) were held today, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Biden garners 14 percent, Warren wins 11 and three other candidates get less than 5 percent each, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Virginia senator Jim Webb and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

Clinton's 49-point lead is actually her worst performance of the year in Post-ABC polls, with her support slipping 10 points over the course of four surveys this year (the first of which only listed three candidates).

That lead has led to plenty of talk about whether Clinton is inevitable. As we've noted, Clinton's lead is far larger than her advantage heading into her ultimately losing 2008 candidacy and is bigger than any non-incumbent since at least the 1980s. Her edge also contrasts sharply with the Republican field, where the same poll found Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush leading but neither cresting 20 percent.

Clinton's lead is not likely to be this big one year from now. Once candidates (including Clinton) actually announce their candidacies and debates are held, Democrats will become more familiar with their options and some will certainly pick other candidates.

But just as the election is many months away, so does Clinton have a very long way to fall before an opponent can make any serious challenge. There remains a huge reservoir of goodwill toward Clinton in the Democratic Party, and that's what has kept her edge in far-away pre-election surveys so gigantic throughout 2014.

 

 

Calendar:

 

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

·  January 21 – Saskatchewan, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s “Global Perspectives” series (MarketWired)

·  January 21 – Winnipeg, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Global Perspectives series (Winnipeg Free Press)

·  February 24 – Santa Clara, CA: Sec. Clinton to Keynote Address at Inaugural Watermark Conference for Women (PR Newswire)

·  March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes  American Camp Association conference (PR Newswire)

 

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