Subject: ​Correct The Record Tuesday December 23, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 10:13:34 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Tuesday December 23, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*BuzzFeed: Elizabeth Warren Consistently Not Running For President
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/the-draft-campaign-warren-didnt-ask-for-but-hasnt-killed#.ik9wEzXVQp>*

"She has said it in newspapers and magazines. She has said it on the radio
and on national television. She has said it at public events and book
signings; in prepared statements to reporters and in quick exchanges with
the press. She has said it four times in a single interview — twice. Since
last fall, Elizabeth Warren has said it a total of 49 times. 'I am not
running for president.'"

*MSNBC: “Hillary Clinton’s best and worst moments of 2014”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-best-and-worst-moments-2014>*

“Here’s a look back at Clinton’s ups and downs in 2014.”

*Washington Post: Dan Balz: “Democrats see rising populist sentiment. But
can it shake Hillary Clinton?”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-see-rising-populist-sentiment-but-can-it-shake-hillary-clinton/2014/12/22/a07434c4-8801-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html>*

“What rankles many progressives is the possible absence of a genuinely
contested battle for the Democratic nomination.”

*New York Times opinion: Jacob Heilbrunn, National Interest editor: “The
Real Threat to Hillary Clinton: Jim Webb”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/opinion/the-real-threat-to-hillary-clinton-jim-webb.html>*

“If Mrs. Clinton runs, she may face a serious and very different threat:
her own foreign policy record.”

*National Journal: “Nine Questions for Hillary Clinton In 2015”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/nine-questions-for-hillary-clinton-in-2015-20141223>*

[Subtitle:] “She'll need to formulate her campaign's message, tap a trusted
team of advisers, and take sides on polarizing issues.”

*BuzzFeed: “Obama’s Anti-Baby Boomer Foreign Policy”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/obamas-anti-boomer-foreign-policy#.mg8JZ6dEmo>*

“Indeed, the most surprising thing about the current field of candidates
may not be that the country would choose the heir to the Clinton or Bush
dynasty, but that voters would hand power back over to the baby boomers
whom Obama convinced them to throw out.”

*NBC New York: “Former President Clinton and Family Visit Sting’s ‘The Last
Ship’”
<http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Former-President-Clinton-and-Family-Visit-Stings-The-Last-Ship-286579711.html>*

“The standing ovations at the new Sting musical ‘The Last Ship’ started
minutes before the curtain even rose on Saturday night. That’s because
walking down the aisle of the Neil Simon Theatre was former President Bill
Clinton, who was out for a night at the theater with wife Hillary Rodham
Clinton, daughter Chelsea, and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky.”

*Articles:*

*BuzzFeed: Elizabeth Warren Consistently Not Running For President
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/the-draft-campaign-warren-didnt-ask-for-but-hasnt-killed#.ik9wEzXVQp>*

By Ruby Cramer

December 22, 2014, 11:51 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Elizabeth Warren isn’t running for president. But the senator’s
electromagnetic pull has produced a sprawling, complicated draft effort
that could define the progressive movement — and prove rewarding or risky
for Warren.

She has said it in newspapers and magazines. She has said it on the radio
and on national television. She has said it at public events and book
signings; in prepared statements to reporters and in quick exchanges with
the press. She has said it four times in a single interview — twice. Since
last fall, Elizabeth Warren has said it a total of 49 times.

“I am not running for president.”

She has also committed, on two occasions now, to complete her first term in
the U.S. Senate. The “pledge” would keep her on Capitol Hill until 2019.
Still, the question almost always gets asked. And it doesn’t matter how,
where, or by whom: Warren sticks to her answer with studied discipline,
only sometimes adding a special flourish.

“I am not running for president. Period.”

“No means no.”

“No, no, no, no.”

“No, no, no, no, no.”

But three weeks ago, when organizers from MoveOn.org, the largest
progressive group in the country, contacted Warren’s office to let her
staff know about their plan, the reply they received was neutral and
dispassionate, taking some activists by surprise.

“When we gave them a heads up, they said ‘thanks’ and ‘we’ve appreciated
the work we’ve done together in the Senate,’” said Ben Wikler, MoveOn’s
Washington director.

The organization was about to launch a campaign to convince Warren to run
for president. MoveOn officials expected support from the majority of their
members — there are 8 million spread across every state, county, and zip
code. And they intended to spend at least $1 million on the effort, opening
offices and hiring staff in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that begin
the presidential nominating process every four years.

After MoveOn announced the project, Warren reverted to her go-to line. A
spokesperson reiterated Warren’s pledge to serve a full Senate term. And
her staff circulated audio from an event in Boston, where Warren told
reporters again that, no, she isn’t running.

Still, organizers working on the campaign to draft Warren — who has become
an avatar of the party’s progressive flank — found it significant that she
didn’t go further.

“The response was just ‘OK,’ not a statement up or down,” said one
progressive operative involved in the campaign. “If Warren or her team had
been dead set against a draft from a big movement player like MoveOn, there
was an easy way to make that clear.”

“It would have stopped it dead,” this person said. “MoveOn would not have
done it.”

Progressives have spent months parsing these fine distinctions: weighing
what Warren has said against what she has stopped just short of saying to
close the door on 2016. Many activists see a difference big enough to
justify a draft campaign. They believe she hasn’t ruled out a presidential
run. They believe she can still be convinced.

It’s a void that, fair or not, Warren has helped create. And now the big
players are heading toward it with their own methods, motives, and
expectations.

Two other groups, Democracy for America and Ready for Warren, have glommed
on to MoveOn’s draft. The campaign, barreling into the New Year with no
certain end-date, has become a growing, shifting thing that inspires some
progressives but troubles others.

In interviews this month, more than a dozen liberal strategists and
activists said the movement will carry consequences good and bad for each
party in this dance: Warren, the paragon, and a wider progressive community
that, angling to push the party to the left and recoup influence, has
consigned its brand and future to a single figure.

Most of the people at RootsCamp, an annual gathering of progressive
campaign aides and organizers, had their own theory or hunch about why
Warren might run.

For some, it’s the fact that Warren won’t use the future tense, only the
present, when ruling out a 2016 bid. For others, it’s the one time she
didn’t stick to her script, vaguely telling People magazine about the
“amazing doors that could open.” And for one activist, Sean McKeown, the
first volunteer to sign up for the Ready for Warren group, it’s page 212,
chapter six, of her book, A Fighting Chance — the part where the Harvard
professor and bankruptcy expert decides to become a candidate for the U.S.
Senate.

The 34-year-old activist manned a table of “Run Liz Run” postcards last
weekend at RootsCamp, the so-called “unconference” in D.C.’s immense
convention center where MoveOn and the two other pro-Warren groups held
their first event together.

McKeown has committed to memory the memoir’s key page number and chapter.

“It’s like she gave us a manual,” he said. “It’s how to convince her to
run.”

But put aside the book and the People magazine interview. Put aside the
fact that, for all 49 times she has said she’s not running, she hasn’t
issued a “Shermanesque statement” vowing she won’t run in the future…
Warren’s actions are far less ambiguous.

Democrats close to Warren’s operation, including ones familiar with her
network of donors, said they see clear signals indicating one thing: It’s
not happening.

Since the midterm elections, the senator’s financial gatekeeper, Paul
Egerman, has told inquiring Democrats that she is still not considering a
run, according to several people who have spoken with him late this year.
(He has also reasoned that the sweeping Republican wins last month made
2016 even less appealing for Warren, one person said.)

Egerman served as Warren’s campaign finance chair, helping her raise $42
million. He is a board member of the Democracy Alliance, a network of top
liberal funders, and is seen by many of those donors as the go-to contact
for matters pertaining to the senator. Late last fall, after a New Republic
cover story floated the idea that Warren would challenge Hillary Clinton in
a primary, Egerman assured donors that she wasn’t running.

Warren’s lawyer, Marc Elias, also warned in a letter earlier this summer
that any draft efforts should “not confuse donors about a non-existent run
for president.”

Progressive financiers still aren’t picking up a different message.
“Nothing has changed that I can see,” said Steve Phillips, a
California-based donor and member of the Democracy Alliance. “No side
meetings, no whispers, no movement.”

Warren hasn’t made moves on the staff side, either.

Her political operation, for all the interest, remains lean. She has one
main strategist, Doug Rubin, based in Boston. There is no communications
director in her Senate office, just a press secretary and deputy. And Mandy
Grunwald, the ad-maker with decades-long ties to the Clintons, is still her
media consultant. (Grunwald worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 race and Hillary
Clinton’s campaigns in 2000, 2006, and 2008.)

“Warren has not made gestures toward running for president that a seasoned
political professional could see and embrace,” said one senior Democratic
strategist.

“It’s become too cute by half.”

Warren is building a widening platform in the Senate, instead. One week
after the midterms, she secured a minor but custom-made leadership post
following a series of private talks with Harry Reid, the top Senate
Democrat. Warren’s role has been described as unofficial “liaison” with the
liberal base of the party.

Few Democrats interpreted the move as a step toward a national campaign.

“Everyone knows she is beloved by the left and has a big voice,” said Mike
Lux, a veteran liberal strategist who has worked with Warren. “She hasn’t
changed what she has said about the race one iota. So nothing has changed.”

“Elizabeth Warren likes being a senator,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a longtime
progressive operative who hosts a show on Sirius XM. “She just joined
leadership in the Senate.”

“You just don’t do that if you’re going to run for president.”

The draft movement started more than a year ago, on a listserv.

In those early email exchanges, the project was just an ill-defined idea.
In turn, that morphed into Ready for Warren, a super PAC some progressives
have eyed as ineffective. MoveOn would come later, followed by Democracy
for America, forming a three-legged collaboration that still hasn’t figured
its own mechanics. But even last year, at the beginning, progressives
worried about how a draft would work — and the impact of an evolving
2016-focused movement over which Warren would have no control.

At the time, the “Warren for President” talk was shifting into a higher
gear. One group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, branded the
senator their “North Star” and unveiled the slogan, “I’m from the Elizabeth
Warren Wing.” The appeal was and remains clear, even if Warren still lacks
a major legislative victory. No other figure speaks as effectively, or
frequently, about the slate of economic causes she has made her signature:
easing student loan debt, expanding Social Security, reinstating stricter
regulations on banks. Warren assumed the progressive mantle easily and
early.

She had been in office just nine months when Billy Wimsatt, a liberal
organizer, started a Facebook page called Ready for Warren.

Wimsatt sent the link to “Game Changers Salon,” a private mailing list
where he moderated messages between the estimated 1,200 progressive
subscribers with access: activists, pundits, operatives, fundraisers,
donors, and a handful of journalists.

The group was “for fun,” Wimsatt wrote. “Holler if you want to play with
it.”

About two weeks later, Wimsatt sent another email to the thread: A
journalist had contacted him about Ready for Warren. Wimsatt hadn’t even
publicized the Facebook page. (It only had 12 likes.) “I’m debating what to
do,” Wimsatt wrote. He proposed he promote the group and find a team to
helm it. “Unless I hear any majorly compelling objections, I think we’re
going to go forward with this and give it a try.”

Immediately, replies filed in. Some liked the idea. But many worried about
the effect on Warren. It might look like she is playing along, even if she
isn’t, one strategist said. It might politicize her efforts in the Senate,
said another. It might be a burden for her staff, might overexpose her
national brand, might hurt in some unexpected way.

Wimsett eventually handed the page over to three volunteers. They
maintained Ready for Warren’s quiet, prenatal internet existence until the
summer, when the group went public with a website and campaign manager,
Erica Sagrans, a digital strategist who worked on President Obama’s
reelection.

What launched, several movement progressives said, was a high-visibility,
fledgling group that didn’t initially loop in Warren’s camp or other
liberal stakeholders. “It was a surprise to everyone when stories started
leaking about this,” said one progressive strategist. (In an interview,
Sagrans said she hadn’t reached out to Warren’s office, either.)

The week of the roll-out, Sagrans hadn’t registered Ready for Warren with
the Federal Election Commission, or decided how to structure the entity.
But the group debuted later that week at Netroots Nation, the biggest
progressive gathering of the year.

At the conference, volunteers passed out signs and plastic boater hats,
each one decorated with an “Elizabeth Warren for President” sticker. (In
the months that followed, more than one progressive operative joked with a
shrug, “Well, they had hats!”)

Ready for Warren has since faded into the mix, letting MoveOn take a
central role, along with Democracy for America, which joined the draft
movement last week. But at the RootsCamp conference, the trio of groups
still appeared disjointed and scattered.

It’s not clear how the three will work together.

“Talking to each other all the time is a good first step,” said Wikler, the
MoveOn official.

Inside the convention hall, MoveOn and Ready for Warren set up separate
tables and peddled stickers bearing opposing slogans: “Run Warren Run” vs.
“Run Liz Run.” At the panel the two groups co-hosted, along with Democracy
for America, officials from each organization pitched attendees to visit
their own respective websites, where the groups are collecting their own
respective lists of donors, volunteers, and email addresses.

There is no central hub online for the larger Warren draft movement.

Instead, organizers have encouraged supporters to start their own projects,
create new social media pages, and host events independent of the existing
campaign structure.

At the RootsCamp panel, Sagrans described the Warren effort as a “duocracy”
made up of many entities. Join Ready for Warren, she said, but also “start
your own Facebook page, record a video, do an event, do a meet-up… whatever
you want to do.”

Wikler chimed in. “We’re all the protagonists in these stories,” he said.
“You’re gonna see an explosion of Facebook groups, of different
organizations, of endorsement votes, of announcements and press releases,
of visibility actions, of photo petitions, of tumblrs.”

The political director of Democracy for America, Eden James, said the three
organizations should embrace the disorder. “[We’re] building a foundation
for the grassroots to empower themselves as much as we empower them,” James
said.

“So as soon as we lose control of this movement, we will have won.”

Near the crêpe stand at RootsCamp, a fight broke out.

It didn’t get physical — but two operatives exchanged harsh words about a
short video, produced by MoveOn, to promote the launch of the draft effort
this month.

The film, about four minutes in length, closes with a clip from David
Muir’s interview with Warren from the spring. When the video reaches its
final frames, a title screen asks in all caps, “Are You Ready?” Then a
voice-over. “This may be Elizabeth Warren’s moment.” Then Muir’s face. “Are
you gonna run for president?” he asks. Then there’s Warren, staring
blankly, silent, seeming to hesitate. Finally, she blinks. Then a “Run
Warren Run” logo flashes across the screen. And that’s it — the video is
over.

The actual interview went like this —

DAVID MUIR: Are you gonna run for president?

ELIZABETH WARREN: I’m not running for president.

DAVID MUIR: There’s nothing that could change your mind?

ELIZABETH WARREN: I’m not running for president.

— and that’s why the one activist was so upset. The ad, he argued, his
voice loud in the convention hallway, willfully misleads people about
Warren’s intentions.

There have been other disputes over the methods and messaging driving the
movement. Some progressives bristle, for instance, when officials aligned
with the campaign make public reference to Warren’s verb tense, or talk
about her unwillingness to issue a “Shermanesque” denial. “The parsing,”
said one, “is blurring on offensive.”

The arguments evince a wider and deeper rift in the progressive wing about
the consequences of a presidential draft movement, particularly for MoveOn.

Now, Warren is seen as an ideal presidential candidate and a potent
megaphone in the race. But people inside the progressive community have
expressed concern that a movement focused on a figure who is so singularly
fixed on one issue — income inequality — could narrow the policy lens of
MoveOn and its partners.

“It’s surprising how organizations with such a breadth of concerns have
focused this campaign so narrowly,” said the senior Democratic strategist,
citing other significant progressive priorities like abortion rights,
immigration, and civil rights.

More than a decade ago, MoveOn’s singular, clear, cutting voice made it the
most influential liberal outfit in the country. The group, founded in 1998,
rode a rising progressive sentiment against President George W. Bush. By
the spring of 2003, MoveOn was enough of a force in Democratic circles that
the group’s officials decided they would hold their own presidential
primary, online, and endorse the candidate who cleared 50%. (John Kerry
actually purchased ads on Yahoo! urging people to participate.)

Since then, MoveOn’s membership has grown by millions, but its power has
dwindled.

In 2014, the group has something to gain from Warren’s voice and platform.
She is a viral commodity. When she confronts a banking executive in a
Senate hearing, the YouTube clip of the exchange will draw hundreds of
thousands, sometimes millions, of views.

This fall, on Facebook, there were three times as many people talking about
Clinton than Warren. But this month, during the three-day period around her
heated speech against a provision pushed by Citigroup lobbyists, Warren’s
total interactions exceeded Clinton’s twofold, according to data provided
by a Facebook partnership with BuzzFeed News.

Given Warren’s following, a movement to draft her into the race, regardless
of the outcome, happens to carry obvious advantages: list-building and
fundraising.

Wikler, the MoveOn official, dismissed the idea that those realities
motivated the campaign. “Ridiculous,” he said. Progressives who have worked
with MoveOn agreed.

“They’re not that cynical,” said Rabin-Havt, the longtime progressive
operative. “That’s a benefit. But there’s a legitimate belief on their part
that they are doing this because they believe it’s a good idea. They can
build lists and raise money without this.”

Elizabeth Warren knows how to use the media, so long as she can control it.

Even before her run for Senate, when she was still teaching bankruptcy law
in Cambridge, Warren made a study of the press — the way a perfectly
crafted line or a national television interview could affect lives across
the country if executed just right.

She wondered in her memoir whether her 2003 taping on Dr. Phil McGraw’s
syndicated talk show, viewed by millions, “might have done more good” than
an entire year as a professor. “Maybe that was a better way to make a
difference,” Warren writes.

But as she moved into the political arena, she grew cautious. In 2012,
Warren gave an embarrassing interview about the Occupy Wall Street
movement, and vowed thereafter to speak to reporters with discipline. “The
old way of talking with the press — long conversations and lively
discussions — was gone,” she writes in her book.

“Now I needed to change: I needed to measure every sentence.”

In the Senate, that’s what Warren does. She avoids unforced errors, evading
reporters in hallways on the Hill. But when it works to her benefit, Warren
seizes the spotlight.

Citing Warren’s media savvy, several progressives reasoned that she is
unlikely to rule out a campaign completely — until it stops helping and
starts hurting. (Warren has played along before: During her book tour this
spring, inquiries about 2016 were included among pre-screened audience
questions at several events.)

But Warren is now dealing with something she can’t control: a swirling,
swelling coalition of progressives who could either raise her profile and
buoy her legislative fights — or co-opt her platform and sidetrack her
efforts in Washington.

Wikler, the MoveOn official, said the group would continue to support her
Senate work as before. Warren’s spokesperson did not return a request for
comment about whether the draft campaign would deter the senator from
working with MoveOn.

Last weekend, after Warren delivered her Citigroup speech, MoveOn members
made “thousands of calls to Congress” ahead of the House vote, according to
Wikler.

Meanwhile, that same day in Washington, RootsCamp began, marking the
unofficial start of the “Run Warren Run” campaign. It was proof, Wikler
said, that a draft movement would only “amplify,” not divert from, the main
attraction.

“The existence of a draft campaign strengthens her hand. Her candidacy
would give her an even stronger hand. The presidency would give her the
strongest-possible hand.”

But while Warren waged one of her biggest, most public fights in the
Senate, headlines kept rolling about the 2016 movement developing downtown
— where, inside the convention center, next to a table full of bumper
stickers, one MoveOn member turned to another and whispered, “She’s acting
so presidential this week!”

*MSNBC: “Hillary Clinton’s best and worst moments of 2014”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-best-and-worst-moments-2014>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

December 23, 2014, 5:33 p.m. EST

When you’re Hillary Clinton, even a quiet year is busy. The former
secretary of state spent her first full year in decades as a private
citizen crisscrossing the country giving speeches, writing a book, helping
to grow the charitable foundation started by her husband, campaigning for
Democrats, and laying the groundwork for a likely presidential run.

She hardly went more than a few days without some kind of public
appearance, and rarely stayed in one city for very long. Even her vacations
were interrupted by book promotions or speaking gigs. That’s Hillary
Clinton’s idea of relaxing.

But not all of it was good for her. In fact, some moments were downright
bad. Here’s a look back at Clinton’s ups and downs in 2014:

THE LOW TIMES:

*Wealth gaffes*

Clinton made a series of comments about her wealth that became quick fodder
for Republican critics while promoting her book. First, she told ABC she
was “dead broke” when she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton,
left the White House in 2001. Then she told The Guardian she was not “truly
well off.” She later said she regretted the comments, but they’ve continued
to haunt her.

*A clumsy break from Obama*

In an interview with The Atlantic, Clinton broke the typical party omerta
to criticize President Obama’s foreign policy. That led to a week of press
coverage about tensions between the camps, and snarky counter-shots from
Obama allies. Clinton appeared to have gone farther than she intended, and
her spokesperson later said she and the president would “hug it out” and
smooth things over when they next saw each other.

*Book sales*

Clinton has a more ambitious job in mind than being an author, but she has
to be disappointed by sales of her memoir “Hard Choices,” which covered her
tenure as secretary of state. The book did well at first, but sales fell
off quickly following some negative reviews and recognition that the volume
offered few new salacious details. A book attacking Clinton by a
conservative author eventually overtook Clinton’s book, as did the memoir
of likely GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson.

*Speaking fees*

Clinton was dogged by her astronomical speaking fees, especially for public
universities, throughout the year. For instance, she charged the University
of California at Los Angeles $300,000 to appear at the school – and that
was a discount, according to The Washington Post. Even though the money
went to the Clinton foundation, it still raised question accusations that
she was fleecing the schools. Others called her out of touch for thinking
$300,000 is as discount.

THE HIGH TIMES:

*Charlotte*

With little doubt, the highlight of Clinton’s 2014 was the birth of her
granddaughter, Charlotte, in September. Clinton has been bugging daughter
Chelsea to have a kid for years, and raved about the infant and her new
“grandmother glow” in numerous public appearances afterwards. Clinton has
even worked Charlotte into political messaging, saying every child should
have the opportunities to the grandchildren of presidents.

*Iowa Steak Fry*

Clinton returned to Iowa, the state that derailed her 2008 presidential
campaign, for the first time in September. The pro-Clinton super PAC Ready
for Hillary worked hard to stock the crowd with Clinton supporters, and
plastered the event with their signage, and she was welcomed warmly. But
Clinton also gave a strong speech, which coyly hinted at a presidential
run. “It’s great to be back – let’s not let another seven years go by,” she
said.

*An emerging stump speech*

Since stepping down as secretary of state, most of Clinton’s public
speeches had been fairly dry and policy focused. But as she campaigned for
Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, she found a loftier message about
restoring fairness for working families and making government work for
them. The biggest shift came in Philadelphia, when Clinton campaigned for
now Gov.-elect Tom Wolf. She weaved together policies that form the
“building block of the Democratic Party” into her personal life and those
of average Americans, themes she would later repeat.

*Criminal justice*

Clinton has made a surprising focus of criminal justice reform of late.
After Ferguson, she called for removing “weapons of war” from police
officers, and for reducing mass incarceration, especially of blacks.

Kennedy embrace

In December, Clinton was embraced by the entire Kennedy clan, another
political dynasty which bestowed a human rights award at star-studded
dinner named in honor of Robert F. Kennedy. “I go to a lot of events,
supporting  a lot worthy causes, and there is nothing like this,” she said,
looking out at the star-studded crowd. While many progressives distrust
Clinton, they would find a lot to like in her remarks, which tied together
the struggle of African-Americans protesting police brutality – “yes, black
lives matter” she said – with her support for a law to ban torture. She
added that the family was an “inspiration.”

*Washington Post: Dan Balz: “Democrats see rising populist sentiment. But
can it shake Hillary Clinton?”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-see-rising-populist-sentiment-but-can-it-shake-hillary-clinton/2014/12/22/a07434c4-8801-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html>*

By Dan Balz

December 23, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EST

Last Wednesday, in a coffeehouse in downtown Des Moines, a group of
progressive activists launched an effort they hope will change the 2016
presidential campaign and in the process upend the Democratic Party.

The gathering in Iowa, organized by MoveOn.org and backed by Democracy for
America, was the opening of a grass-roots push to draft Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president. Its broader effect was to escalate
the ongoing debate among Democrats about the party’s values, its message,
its real constituencies and, most of all, how to win elections in the
post-Obama era.

That there is such a debate over the direction of the Democratic Party is
without question, and the differences have become louder in the wake of the
drubbing the Democrats suffered in the midterm elections.

What is in question is the degree to which the rising populist movement on
the left can materially shape the party’s future. More specifically, absent
some sign from Warren that she is going to run, can these Democrats
successfully pressure Hillary Rodham Clinton, the party’s dominant,
prospective presidential candidate, to adopt much of their agenda?

To those who argue that the ideological splits within the party are
overstated or mostly stylistic, the effort to draft Warren is a misguided
enterprise. “There really isn’t a huge division in the party,” said former
Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (D). “. . . I don’t think it’s anything
like the tea party and the Republicans.”

Rendell, who two years ago criticized President Obama’s campaign for
attacking Mitt Romney over his business record at Bain Capital, said he
believed most Democrats shared Warren’s opposition to a provision favorable
to Wall Street in the recently passed spending bill that she attacked on
the Senate floor.

Those trying to encourage Warren to run in 2016 argue a different case.
Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.Org Civic Action, said there are
important policy differences that need to be aired before Democrats pick
their 2016 nominee.

She cited issues such as how the party should address income inequality,
who populates positions of power in the executive branch — a cause taken up
by Warren when she opposed Obama’s nomination of investment banker Antonio
Weiss as treasury undersecretary — and whether it is even possible for
Democrats to have a discussion about expanding, rather than constraining,
Social Security benefits. “We are not debating style here,” she said. “We
are debating substance.”

The power of populism

Populist energy pulsates within the party to the point that Democrats
cannot agree on whether it has become its dominant ideological strain. Sen.
Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has championed a populist message as much as
Warren, said: “It’s a good strong message, and it’s a message that she’s
carried very well, and it’s a message that a number of us have put out
there for a number of years, and it’s catching on. . . . I don’t think it’s
there yet.”

But Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, who comes out of the centrist Democratic
tradition, said he believes the party has now tipped in favor of Warren’s
anti-Wall Street populist message. “I don’t think there’s any question,” he
said of a shift that he finds worrisome for the party’s future hopes of
winning over independents and swing voters.

Jim Dean, who heads up Democracy for America, said that until recently, the
party had “regressed” on the relationship between business and government.
“With the ascendance of Elizabeth Warren and the way she has built power
for herself, we are seeing a lot of movement for the party to get back to
its core values,” he said.

Warren has given no indication that she will become a candidate in 2016.
Her advocates on the left take hope from the present-tense language she has
used to disavow her interest — “I am not running for president,” she
repeatedly told NPR’s Steve Inskeep last week — as a sign that her posture
is not irreversible.

Officials at MoveOn.Org, which counts 8 million members, have said they
will commit $1 million to the effort to draft Warren and will set up
operations in states with early caucuses or primaries to stoke interest.
Democracy for America will chip in $250,000 to the effort. The groups will
focus on organizing in other early states and plan a national day of action
in early February, one year before the 2016 Iowa caucuses.

“The only way it will really happen is if there’s a massive grass-roots
campaign that shows tremendous support for Elizabeth Warren across the
country,” said Neil Sroka, the spokesman for DFA.

A Democratic leader from a battleground state, speaking on the condition of
anonymity in order to offer a candid assessment, said he had strong doubts
that the movement can reshape the 2016 campaign message. He sees no one
with the political heft or following, short of a Warren candidacy, to pose
enough of a threat to Clinton to change what she otherwise would do and say.

Rendell was more dismissive of the movement’s potential strength, largely
because of what he sees as the lack of differences within the party. “First
of all, there has to be a leader of a movement and there isn’t a good
leader,” he said, adding, “If Hillary Clinton ran against Jim Webb or
Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, they’d get 5 to 6 percent of the vote”
in Pennsylvania.

However, Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who played key roles in
several past Democratic presidential campaigns, sees far greater potential
for a populist uprising to galvanize the political dialogue. Arguing that
the sense of economic discontent is widespread and that the hunger for a
sharper populist agenda is genuine, he said, “If somebody gets up and
delivers it with credibility, it’s going to resonate very powerfully in a
way that’s not indicative of the party divisions today.”

Other Democrats agree that both Democratic and Republican candidates will
be looking to seize the issue of middle-class economic insecurity and that
a presidential nominee dare not lose that debate. “The party that figures
out the economic message around making prosperity more inclusive for all
Americans is going to win this election,” said Bill Burton, a former Obama
White House official and current Democratic strategist. “I really do think
Republicans will be as attentive to that as Democrats are.”

Clinton competition?

What rankles many progressives is the possible absence of a genuinely
contested battle for the Democratic nomination. If Warren stays out, it is
not clear who would have the combination of message and political strength
to do that.

At this point, the field is far from fixed. Sanders, the independent
senator from Vermont, has a worldview that excites some progressives, and
he has visited states with early contests as he deliberates whether to run.
Webb, the former senator from Virginia, has formed an exploratory committee
and has put economic fairness on the table as an issue, but he acknowledges
the long-shot nature of his possible candidacy. Maryland’s outgoing
governor, Martin O’Malley, has ties to both the centrist and progressive
wings of the party and traveled the country this past year in preparation
for a possible campaign.

Devine, who is an adviser to Sanders, said bluntly that anyone hoping to
advance the populist agenda in a possible campaign against Clinton has to
be prepared to run a serious campaign with all that entails. Half-hearted
bus trips through Iowa and New Hampshire are not enough, he said.

“If you want this message to take hold with people, you have to challenge
the front-runner in the nominating process in a real way, not a symbolic
way, the way Gary Hart did with Walter Mondale” in

the 1984 Democratic race, he said.

At this point, no potential candidate appears ready to challenge Clinton in
quite that way. Even many of those urging Warren to run tip-toe around
sharp criticism of Clinton or what she stands for.

“Our members have deep respect for Hillary Clinton,” Galland said. “The
point here is to elevate the exciting message, the powerful track record,
the inspiring vision of Elizabeth Warren. That’s our focus, not on
anti-Hillary or anti-Bernie.”

DFA’s Dean said the same thing about his organization’s involvement in the
draft-Warren movement. Notably, Howard Dean — whose 2004 campaign became
the rallying point for the progressive grass roots and lives on today as
DFA — recently announced his support for Clinton.

Bill Carrick, a California-based Democratic strategist, explained one of
the reasons. Pent-up desire for a populist economic message is strong, he
said, but many older progressives are conflicted because of their
affections for Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

“Generationally there’s a bunch of people who are very progressive, who
essentially are in the baby-boomer world, who are very, very comfortable
with Hillary,” he said. “Some of it is they consider the Clinton years
successful, politically and economically. Some of it is she’s going to make
history and be the first woman president.”

Asked about concerns among some progressives that Clinton will not have the
kind of strong message they want, Ohio’s Brown said: “I don’t particularly
share those concerns. I think Hillary’s got a good sensibility for
working-class voters.” Later in the interview, however, he said of Clinton,
“She’s going to have to show more independence from Wall Street.”

Populist sentiment causes Delaware’s Markell to worry that the party will
appeal too narrowly in 2016. He argues that what the party needs is a
growth-oriented message and policies to go with it. “Economic fairness and
inequity are important,” he said. “And increasing the minimum wage is
important. We’ve done it in Delaware.” But he warned against getting
“caught up in the rhetoric of fairness for the sake of fairness.”

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper survived a serious challenge in his
reelection bid last month in a crucial swing state. The business-friendly
Democrat sees Warren’s populism as “only part of the message” the party
needs to adopt. Job creation, curtailing excessive regulation of small
business and other strategies need to be part of it as well, he said.

“It’s not populist in the sense that we’ve got a slogan and we go out there
and shout it to the beat of a drum,” he said. “But I think it’s part of the
equation of this frustration of working people that the system is skewed
against them.”

Clinton became a more populist candidate in 2008 after losing a string of
contests to Obama and demonstrated her appeal to white, working-class
voters. In preparation for a possible 2016 campaign, she has already
invoked the problem of income inequality as one that must be addressed. But
her rhetoric, except for what she later said was a mangled comment
attacking businesses, does not have the edginess of Warren.

How strong that message will be if she faces only limited competition for
the nomination is what worries liberal activists — which is why they are
hoping to entice Warren to run or help elevate Warren’s standing even
higher. How much strength there is in the progressive movement, and how
Clinton weighs its significance, will not be known until she makes an
expected announcement of candidacy.

*New York Times opinion: Jacob Heilbrunn, National Interest editor: “The
Real Threat to Hillary Clinton: Jim Webb”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/opinion/the-real-threat-to-hillary-clinton-jim-webb.html>*

By Jacob Heilbrunn

December 22, 2014

WASHINGTON — THE conventional wisdom is that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be
almost impossible to dislodge from the Democratic presidential nomination
and that even if she does encounter some hiccups, they will come from her
left flank on economic policy. But if Mrs. Clinton runs, she may face a
serious and very different threat: her own foreign policy record. While she
can pretty much split the difference with any primary opponents on economic
policy, the divisions over foreign affairs could be a lot harder to paper
over for Mrs. Clinton, who has been tacking to the right on Iran, Syria and
Russia in anticipation of Republican assaults during the general election.

This is why it isn’t really the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren who
should worry the Clinton camp. It’s the former Virginia senator Jim Webb, a
Vietnam War hero, former secretary of the Navy in the Reagan
administration, novelist and opponent of endless wars in the Middle East.
Late last month, Mr. Webb formed an exploratory committee. “He’s a very
long shot,” Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign
Relations, told me. “He has to become a serious candidate. At that point
she would find him much more complex than dealing with liberals. He’s not a
liberal, but a lot of what he says might appeal to liberals. He does not
get carried away by humanitarian intervention.”

Mr. Webb’s attacks on free trade and economic elites, coupled with a call
for America to come home again, might well prove a potent combination in
the early primaries, attracting antiwar progressives as well as
conservative-minded Southern white men whom he believes the party can win
back. His credo is as simple as it is persuasive: Rather than squander its
power and resources abroad, America should rebuild.

Mr. Webb, whose national poll ratings are negligible, may look like an
unlikely candidate, but that is also what most observers thought when he
wore his son’s Iraq combat boots on the campaign trail and ousted George
Allen from his Senate seat in 2006. Today he represents for the Democrats
what the Republicans tried to stamp out in their ranks during the midterm
elections: a Tea-Party-like insurgency against its establishment candidate.

Mr. Webb, who prides himself on his Scotch-Irish ancestry, has long been
something of a renegade, a persona that vividly manifested itself after
Sept. 11, 2001, when he began denouncing what he saw as the transformation
of the American presidency into a European-style monarchy that could
capriciously pursue wars whenever and wherever it chose. Unlike Mrs.
Clinton, who continues to struggle to explain her vote for the Iraq war,
Mr. Webb publicly attacked the George W. Bush administration in 2002,
presciently asking, “Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30
years?” As a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees
he also castigated the Obama administration for its intervention in Libya
in 2011. He was right. It’s a move that has boomeranged, creating further
instability and emboldening jihadists across the region.

During and after the Libya intervention, Mr. Webb made it clear that he
believed American democracy was imperiled by the failure of Congress to
question the judgment of military leaders and the president. He has put his
finger on a problem that academics like Tufts University’s Michael J.
Glennon, the author of “National Security and Double Government,” see as a
product of an entrenched national security bureaucracy that essentially
performs an end-run around Congress and even reform-minded presidents.

In contrast to Mrs. Clinton, who has gotten into hot water for trying to
retroactively amend her views and record, Mr. Webb did not arrive at these
beliefs casually or opportunistically. As his recent memoir, “I Heard My
Country Calling,” makes clear, his opposition to ventures abroad is as much
viscerally emotional as intellectual. Growing up as a self-described
military brat, he spent his formative years in Britain, where he saw
firsthand the effects of loss of empire and the devastation wrought by
World War II. “Britain was bled out and spent out,” he writes. “They
understood the great price of the recent wars in a much more sobering way
than did most Americans.”

After he returned from war-torn Beirut just before a truck suicide bomber
destroyed the Marine Corps headquarters in October 1983, he felt a nagging
irritation as he rode home in a taxi early in the morning along George
Washington Memorial Parkway. Then he realized that the calm silence was
bothering him; it was both the emblem of America and the “protective vacuum
that surrounds our understanding when it comes to the viciousness that war
brings to so many innocent noncombatants in other lands.” Mr. Webb’s
exposure to foreign societies gave him the ability, much like President
Obama, to view America as both an insider and an outsider.

Whether Mr. Webb will attempt to begin a successful maverick campaign is an
open question. But he is an eloquent and forthright speaker whose foreign
policy experience would make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to paint him as
an isolationist or a novice who will leave America open to attack, as she
attempted to do to Mr. Obama during the 2008 primaries. On the contrary,
it’s Mrs. Clinton whose interventionist foreign policy record leaves her
politically vulnerable.

*National Journal: “Nine Questions for Hillary Clinton In 2015”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/nine-questions-for-hillary-clinton-in-2015-20141223>*

By Emily Schultheis

December 23, 2014

[Subtitle:] She'll need to formulate her campaign's message, tap a trusted
team of advisers, and take sides on polarizing issues.

There's been buzz for months over Hillary Clinton's expected presidential
campaign, but she's not expected to make a formal announcement until the
first few months of 2015. That leaves a vacuum for political reporters,
opposition researchers, and Clinton-watchers alike to discuss her strategy,
message, and timing for announcing.

How and when Clinton launches her campaign—and who's involved when she
does—will set the tone for not only the Democratic primary in 2016, but
also the general election. Will she run a campaign centered around the
historic idea of being the first female president? Will she cater to the
party's centrists or the progressive base? Will she bring in longtime
loyalists, or tap unfamiliar advisers into her orbit? These are all pivotal
questions as we head into 2015.

While it's by no means certain that Clinton will definitely announce she's
running for president, most Democrats expect her to launch a campaign
within the first few months of the year.

With that in mind, here's National Journal's list of nine top questions for
Clinton in 2015.

1. When will she announce?

While several leading Democratic strategists advised that Clinton waste no
time before launching her campaign, she's content to take her time to
formally announce. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe suggested
that she announce early to get ahead of her critics on the Republican side,
many of whom are already sniping at her. But the holidays have come and
gone with no announcement from Clinton, and her speaking schedule—which
includes an event as late as March 19—suggests she's looking at a later
spring announcement.

That said, speeches can be canceled, and if the timeline for other
candidates begins to shift—on the Republican side, former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush's December announcement that he's "actively" moving toward a campaign
surprised observers, and could affect Clinton's timing as well.

2. Will there be an exploratory committee first, or will Clinton just
announce a campaign?

Lately, presidential candidates have preceded their official launch by
announcing an exploratory committee—a vehicle that allows candidates to
begin raising money ahead of a formal campaign announcement. But will
Clinton launch one or just go straight to the official campaign? As one
strategist put it to The Washington Post earlier this month, "At this
point, what would she be exploring?" Several of her allies told The Post
that she might opt to skip the exploratory committee this time around for
fear it would look too coy for someone who's run before and clearly has
been weighing this decision for a long time.

In 2007, Clinton announced her exploratory committee in January; this time,
however, with a later announcement date likely—and the super PAC Ready for
Hillary doing early organizing work on her behalf—she could feasibly go
straight into full-on campaign mode.

3. Who will be her campaign manager?

If she runs, deciding on a campaign manager will be one of the first major
strategic decisions Clinton will make. That person will set the tone for
the campaign, from the overall message and themes to staffing and hiring
decisions.  One of the leading contenders, former Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee executive director Guy Cecil, announced that he wasn't
going to be managing Clinton's campaign in a statement released Sunday.

As of now, the name that comes up most frequently in Democratic circles is
Robby Mook, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee staffer
who ran Terry McAuliffe's 2013 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia. He has
been helping Clinton out with "special projects," according to Bloomberg,
and advised her during the midterms. Stephanie Schriock, the president of
EMILY's List who managed and won tough campaigns for Democratic Sens. Jon
Tester and Al Franken, is also mentioned as a contender for the top
position.

4. When does she stop giving paid speeches?

Clinton has filled much of her time since leaving the State Department by
giving a steady stream of paid speeches, many of which bring her six-figure
speaker's fees. While it's certainly good for the Clintons' bank accounts,
her time on the speaking circuit has already become the subject of numerous
GOP attacks.

Presumably, Clinton will cease to give paid speeches as soon as she becomes
a candidate—but how long will the gap be between her last paid speech and
her first speech as a candidate? As of now, Clinton has two speeches
scheduled in Canada on Jan. 21, one in the San Francisco Bay Area on Feb.
24, and another in Atlantic City, N.J., on March 19.

5. How is Ready for Hillary integrated into the eventual campaign apparatus?

The super PAC that launched with just a handful of staffers in 2013 has
become a formidable organization in its own right; it boasts Obama alums
Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird as top advisers, and has collected more than
3 million names that will be the linchpin of Clinton's grassroots
organization.

The expectation for Ready for Hillary is that it will wind down as soon as
Clinton announces her decision, with a Clinton campaign buying, leasing, or
doing a data swap with Ready for Hillary for its list of supporters and
voters. There's also the possibility that some of the group's advisers will
be absorbed into a Clinton campaign. That's sure to be an issue Republicans
jump on quickly, with a possible Federal Election Commission complaint
whenever the sale or lease goes through.

6. What's the campaign message?

In the wake of Democrats' massive midterm losses in November, there's been
much discussion about what the party's overall message should be heading
into 2016. Will Clinton focus, as she didn't in 2008, on the historic
nature of becoming the first female president? Will she incorporate the
progressive focus on income inequality and criticism of Wall Street into
her overall message? And what part of her own biography does she focus
on—her time at the State Department, her tenure in the Senate, or her
experience in her husband's administration during the 1990s? All of these
are open questions, and will provide a great deal of insight into the type
of campaign Clinton intends to run.

7. Does she do anything to reach out to progressives?

As the past few weeks have shown, progressive activists are pining for Sen.
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to run for president. Warren is able to
channel the excitement and issues of the Democratic Left far better than
any other political figure—and her focus on economic populism, fighting
back against Wall Street, and tackling income equality have resonated
strongly with voters. Even if Warren doesn't run, progressive groups expect
her to have significant sway over the Democratic Party's message for 2016.

So how does Clinton handle the progressive wing of her party? Whether she
does acknowledges the role Warren's policies could play in her overall
campaign message, or reaches out to progressive leaders, will say a lot
about the overall direction of Clinton's campaign and the kind of coalition
she's hoping to build.

8. How will she address politically sensitive policy questions?

Since she left the State Department, Clinton has spoken out on several key
issues, most notably her support for same-sex marriage in early 2013 and
her backing of normalizing relations with Cuba. But on other politically
sensitive subjects, she's been more comfortable hedging. What does Clinton
think about the Keystone XL pipeline, for example? Does she support
re-implementing tougher sanctions on Iran if a nuclear deal isn't reached?
Where does she stand on net neutrality?

As a candidate, Clinton will be relentlessly bombarded for her precise
views on a whole host of issues. Whether she ties her fortunes to President
Obama, or opts for a more independent path will be a telling sign of her
2016 campaign message.

9. How does she deal with other Democrats in the race?

While it's still unclear who could make up the rest of the Democratic
field—former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia has announced an exploratory
committee, while Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Maryland Gov. Martin
O'Malley have expressed serious interest in running—it's pretty likely that
Clinton will have at least one primary opponent. How will she relate to
them? As the clear front-runner, she could ignore the other candidates in
the race, to project power and inevitability.

Because she would start the race in stronger position than in 2008, will
she decide to spend significant time campaigning in small-state caucuses,
to ensure she's not surprised by one of the long-shot insurgents? Should
she be worried (again) about Iowa, a state where she finished a
disappointing third in 2008, and one her husband hardly competed for as a
presidential candidate?

*BuzzFeed: “Obama’s Anti-Baby Boomer Foreign Policy”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/obamas-anti-boomer-foreign-policy#.mg8JZ6dEmo>*

By Ben Smith

December 22, 2014, 2:04 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Love it or hate it, last week’s Cuba opening is the purest
expression of his foreign policy yet. What Axelrod got wrong.

On the evening of July 23, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama’s top adviser was doing
his best to spin his way out of a way of the thinking that led, last week,
to perhaps the purest of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy victories:
the opening of Cuba.

Candidate Obama, blindsided during a South Carolina presidential debate by
a YouTube question from a bearded California photographer, had rashly said
he would meet anti-American leaders including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez,
and Kim Jong-il. And so David Axelrod made his way into the dank “spin
room,” projecting the sort of mellow confidence that good spinners do when
they’re really worried. He insisted to the skeptical press pack that we’d
missed a really important distinction. Obama hadn’t promised to meet them,
Axelrod kept insisting; he simply said he was willing to.

We didn’t really buy the spin, and Hillary Clinton’s aides were gleeful,
and even thought they saw a campaign turning point, clear evidence that
Obama was “naive” and unready for the White House.

Seven years later, Axelrod doesn’t exactly recall that as his finest moment
— but not because the spin was so weak.

“I reacted too conventionally,” he recalled in a telephone interview from
Chicago a few days ago. “I really wasn’t grasping his larger point. I
reacted conventionally and he was thinking unconventionally.”

Obama, in fact, rather liked his answer, and the campaign’s research
quickly showed it played well with Democrats. So Axelrod and his colleagues
quickly reversed course and Barack Obama’s view of the world — previously
defined solely by his opposition to the Iraq war — really started to take
shape. This was a foreign policy fully in sync with the campaign’s deep
generational promise: to “turn the page” on baby boomers like the Clintons
and what the Obama campaign saw as their inane and toxic politics.

The notion that we really needed to abandon lines drawn around the time of
Vietnam was an appealing point. But it was also American domestic politics,
a piece of the American conversation. And when it came to actual foreign
policy — as opposed to “foreign policy” as an element of American domestic
politics — that was sometimes a fatal flaw.

Obama’s framework didn’t make particular sense to people in other
countries, or to their leaders, or to their American friends. This was
particularly clear during the rawer, earlier campaign moments. At the 2007
gathering of the pro-Israel group AIPAC, for instance, Obama drew eye rolls
by suggesting Israel’s enemy was “cynicism” — not just, say, its actual
enemies. And by the end of his first year in office, he was admitting to
Joe Klein his mistake, fundamentally, of assuming that the American
zeitgeist was a global phenomenon.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians — have found that the political
environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their
societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a
meaningful conversation,” Obama told Klein. “And I think that we
overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran
contrary to that.”

Obama’s approach to Russia, too, imagined that country in American terms —
alienated by George W. Bush, ready for a “reset.” In fact, Vladimir Putin
has his own politics and Russian history has its own arc. Putin’s domestic
politics required an enemy in Washington. He was intent on turning the page
too — only on turning it in the opposite direction, back toward Soviet-era
power and confrontation. Obama’s most ambitious opening of all, toward
Iran, remains unresolved, and will be determined in part by the tension
between an improved bilateral relationship and that country’s domestic
politics.

But in Cuba, Obama has found a pure expression of the vision he promised.
This is a relationship frozen in time, governed by a logic imposed when
Cuba mattered to American strategy, when the stakes were high, and when the
Soviets were trying to turn the island into a nuclear missile base.

The strongest argument against the opening is that it violated the laws of
power. The United States gave a lot and got very little:

“Obama says yes, yes to everything: an embassy, an ambassador, diplomatic
relations, travel and exchange, status among nations, removal from the list
of state sponsors of terror, and a serious opportunity to lessen the
embargo that has kept the dictators caged for decades,” complained the Free
Beacon’s Matt Continetti. “In return, the Castro brothers give up … well,
what?”

“This isn’t giving away the store. This is giving away the shopping mall,
town center, enterprise zone. And it is entirely in character with
President Obama’s foreign policy,” he wrote.

But the logic on which Obama was elected is: Who cares? The stakes in a
tiny, poor, and autocratic island in a region of dysfunctional states are
extremely low for the United States, if high for Cubans and for the people
whose property Castro confiscated. The logic of the conflict is rooted
entirely in the past. And so Obama didn’t play hardball; he simply turned
the page, and delivered on the generational promise that got him elected in
the first place.

Obama is “very, very satisfied” with his recent policy moves, Axelrod said,
pointing in particular to the regularization of millions of undocumented
immigrants, the climate deal with China, and the Cuba opening. Obama, he
said, “can sense the clock ticking.”

The president, Axelrod said, is focused on spending his last two years
resolving “the big generational issues” that have been, like Cuba and like
immigration, simply stuck for decades.

And then Obama will, likely as not, turn power back over to the generation
before his. Indeed, the most surprising thing about the current field of
candidates may not be that the country would choose the heir to the Clinton
or Bush dynasty, but that voters would hand power back over to the baby
boomers whom Obama convinced them to throw out.

*NBC New York: “Former President Clinton and Family Visit Sting’s ‘The Last
Ship’”
<http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Former-President-Clinton-and-Family-Visit-Stings-The-Last-Ship-286579711.html>*

By Dave Quinn

December 22, 2014, 2:33 p.m. EST

The standing ovations at the new Sting musical “The Last Ship” started
minutes before the curtain even rose on Saturday night.

That’s because walking down the aisle of the Neil Simon Theatre was former
President Bill Clinton, who was out for a night at the theater with wife
Hillary Rodham Clinton, daughter Chelsea, and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky.

As the former first family took their seats in the orchestra, they were met
with thunderous applause from the rest of the audience — many of whom
approached to shake their hands and pose for photos.

“You’re a grandmother now,” one audience member enthusiastically pointed
out, before the show began. “I know can you believe it?” Hillary responded,
accepting her congratulations.

The Clintons were undoubtedly there to see Sting, who boarded the cast of
the musical he wrote on Dec. 9, for a limited run that will remain through
Jan. 24.

Sting’s wife of 22 years, Trudie Styler, was also sitting the same row.

So was Australian film director Baz Luhrmann (“The Great Gatsby,” “Moulin
Rouge!”), with wife Catherine Martin. The two are in town celebrating the
unveiling of the “Baz Dazzled” holiday windows they designed for Barneys.

Also in attendence? “Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats” composer Andrew Lloyd
Webber, who was sitting alongside “Downton Abbey” scribe Julian Fellowes.
The two are collaborating on “School of Rock — The Musical,” a stage
version of the hit 2003 comedy set to hit Broadway next season.

Webber may have also swung by to support actress Rachel Tucker, who plays
the lead Meg in “The Last Ship.” Tucker was a contestant on the
Webber-judged BBC reality singing competition “I’d Do Anything” back in
2008.

At the extra-long intermission, the Clintons headed backstage to greet
Sting and the cast — photos of which can be seen exclusively at
Broadway.com.

“Hillary 2016” shouted one audience member when they returned to their
sets. The former Secretary of State then turned in her seat and laughed,
waving at fans.

Former President Clinton seemed to enjoy himself throughout, clapping along
to Sting’s rousing score. He and his family even gave the actors their own
standing ovation at the end of the evening.

*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
<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>)