Subject: Correct the Record Tuesday December 30, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:02:04 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct the Record Tuesday December 30, 2014 Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Correct the Record:* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> changed the way the U.S. approached
climate change #HRC365 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash>
http://correctrecord.org/stemming-the-tide-of-climate-change/ …[12/29/14,
8:01 pm EST]

*Headlines:*

*Time: Hillary Clinton Is Named America’s ‘Most Admired Woman’
<http://time.com/3649155/hillary-clinton-most-admired-woman/>*

"Americans named Hillary Clinton the woman they admire most of anywhere in
the world, a new poll found, for the 17th time in 18 years."

*Wall Street Journal: Polls Show Hillary Clinton’s Challenges With White
Voters*
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/29/hillary-clinton-faces-challenge-with-white-voters/?KEYWORDS=hillary+clinton>

"A Page One story in Monday’s Journal examines how Mrs. Clinton might fare
among white, working-class voters as a whole.  Allies of the former
secretary of state say she would be able to bring that group back under
Democrats’ wing, while her critics say she is too aligned with a Democratic
Party that was widely unpopular in the last election."

*Washington Post: Paul Waldman Opinion: Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t need to
win the white working class*
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/12/29/why-hillary-clinton-doesnt-need-to-win-the-white-working-class/>

"What Democrats need to do is offer an agenda, particularly on the economy,
that appeals to a broad spectrum of Americans."

*New York Times: Will Clinton Run? She Needs to Decide in 2015*
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/12/30/us/politics/ap-us-dem-2016-clinton-5-things.html?_r=0>

"Clinton's 2008 presidential bid stumbled, undermined by anti-war activists
who opposed her vote to authorize the Iraq war, infighting among her staff
and a large entourage that made it difficult for her to connect with voters
on a one-on-one basis.

How she attempts to address those deficiencies — assuming she runs for
president, as expected — will be a big part of Clinton's efforts next year.
Here's a look at five things to watch from Clinton in 2015."

*CNN: The Clinton echo*
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/30/politics/clintonecho/index.html>

"The echoes of the early 1990s in Clinton's speeches as she weighs a run
for the presidency are no accident. In what amounted to her first major
foray on the campaign trail in September at retiring Iowa Democratic Sen.
Tom Harkin's steak fry, she spoke of restoring 'the basic bargain of
America' -- one her husband had proposed in the 1992 campaign -- that 'no
matter who you are or where you come from, if you work hard and you play by
the rules, you deserve the opportunity, the same opportunity as anyone
else, to build a good life for yourself and your family.'"

*Politico: Hillary Clinton sends ‘announcement’ (no, not that one)*
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/hillary-clinton-annnouncement-donation-113871.html?hp=r2_3>

"Many Hillary Clinton supporters woke up Tuesday to an “announcement” from
Clinton in their inboxes.

Was this the moment they’d been waiting for?

Nope: Anyone expecting a possible early announcement on her 2016 bid was
sorely disappointed, as the email turned out to be another call for
donations from the Clinton Foundation."

*CNN: The Clinton 'announcement' you weren't waiting for*
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/30/politics/clinton-foundation-annoucement/index.html>

"Instead, the email urged supporters to donate to the foundation with the
promise that 'Bill, Chelsea, and I will triple every $1 donated to the
Clinton Foundation before the end of the year, up to an additional
$100,000.'"

*The Hill: Poll: Clinton is top New Year's Eve date choice among New
Yorkers*
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/228193-poll-clinton-is-top-nye-date-for-new-yorkers>

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the top choice in a new poll
among New York voters looking for a political date for New Year's Eve.

Clinton, who served for eight years as a U.S. senator from New York, nabs
37 percent support among voters in the state who are looking for a date for
Wednesday night, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday."

*US News: What's Driving Jim Webb?*
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/12/30/whats-driving-jim-webbs-potential-bid-for-president-in-2016>

"Webb had been contemplating a White House campaign for some time, floating
the idea to his small but close-knit circle of friends and confidantes more
than a year ago."

*The Hill: Warren will be more effective not running for president*
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/228232-warren-is-far-more-effective-not-running-for>

"So fighting from the sidelines requires the political savvy to know that
the left's polices are best served by threatening to run, pressing the lead
candidate to move away from the center and pushing to make the lead issues
in the race those of income inequality, undue financial influence in
Washington, campaign finance reform and stronger financial regulations. All
of this while wielding the winning one-third of the Democratic support base
hostage until concessions are made. The strategy ends up with Clinton as
the lead candidate, but sporting bluer stripes."

*The Hill: Jeb Bush exits another corporate board*
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/228202-jeb-exits-another-corporate-board>

"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will step down from the board of directors at
timber company Rayonier Inc., in yet another sign that he intends to run
for president in 2016."

*Politico: Ted Cruz is billed as a Passover vacation attraction*
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/ted-cruz-is-billed-as-a-passover-vacation-attraction-113870.html#ixzz3NOEmoWAb>

"Cruz, along with several rabbis, is listed as a speaker at four different
vacation spots, including Aspen, over Passover, the spring holiday that
honors the freeing of enslaved Jews in Egypt. The Prime Hospitality Group
is the company behind the offers, according to an email solicitation shared
with POLITICO."

*Articles:*

*Time: Hillary Clinton Is Named America’s ‘Most Admired Woman’
<http://time.com/3649155/hillary-clinton-most-admired-woman/>*

By Laura Stamper

Dec. 29, 2014

The presidential contender beat out Oprah

Americans named Hillary Clinton the woman they admire most of anywhere in
the world, a new poll found, for the 17th time in 18 years.

When Gallup asked a random sampling of Americans who is the living female
they admire most, 12% named Clinton. The former Secretary of State was
followed by Oprah Winfrey at 8% and Pakistani education activist Malala
Yousafazi at 5%.

Obama was named the most admired man, garnering 19% of votes.

The presidential contender held the top women’s spot every year between
1997 and 2014 except following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, when the title
was awarded to Laura Bush. Clinton also held the designation when she was
First Lady in 1993 and 1994.

[Poll]

*Wall Street Journal: Polls Show Hillary Clinton’s Challenges With White
Voters
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/29/hillary-clinton-faces-challenge-with-white-voters/?KEYWORDS=hillary+clinton>*

By Rebecca Ballhaus

December 29, 2014

President Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 with a historically low
percentage of the white vote, backed by a strong coalition of minority
voters. Now, as Hillary Clinton mulls a bid for the presidency in 2016,
current polls indicate she may run into similar trouble with white voters —
particularly white voters without a college degree.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey last month found particularly low
support for Mr. Obama among white voters without college degrees. The
president was viewed positively by 32% of that group, while 55% viewed him
negatively. Mrs. Clinton’s numbers with that group were only marginally
better than the president’s: 32% held a positive view of Mrs. Clinton, and
48% had a negative view.

A Page One story in Monday’s Journal examines how Mrs. Clinton might fare
among white, working-class voters as a whole.  Allies of the former
secretary of state say she would be able to bring that group back under
Democrats’ wing, while her critics say she is too aligned with a Democratic
Party that was widely unpopular in the last election. Interviews with
voters in Devalls Bluff, Ark., suggest Mrs. Clinton would face a
significant challenge in appealing to those voters.

To be sure, Mrs. Clinton hasn’t always rated that poorly. Back in June
2008, she was viewed positively by 43% of white voters without a college
degree, and negatively by 44%.

And both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton fared moderately better among white
voters as a whole. The president was viewed positively by 38% of white
voters in last month’s WSJ/NBC survey, and 52% viewed him negatively. For
Mrs. Clinton, 36% of white voters viewed her positively, compared with 47%
who viewed her negatively.

Working-class voters have long been a part of the Democratic base, and
lower-income voters still tend to vote for Democrats, according to exit
polls. But white, rural voters in the South and elsewhere have been moving
away from the party in recent years, and the 2014 election left Arkansas
without a single Democrat in a federal or statewide office. (Former
President Bill Clinton, by contrast, carried that state twice by at least
17 percentage points.) And congressional Democrats are increasingly losing
their hold on largely white, rural districts with incomes lower than the
national average and few college graduates.

The 2012 results showed the extent of the shift. Mr. Obama won 39% of the
white vote in 2012, and just 36% of the vote from whites without college
degrees, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research. (By
contrast, 42% of whites with college degrees voted for Mr. Obama.)  It was
enough to win re-election, thanks to his strong showing among black and
Hispanic voters.

Polls do offer some favorable indicators for Mrs. Clinton. White women and
suburban women like her: A majority of both groups said in a separate
WSJ/NBC News survey this month that they would consider supporting Mrs.
Clinton for president over seven potential GOP candidates and Democratic
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

[Poll]

*Washington Post: Paul Waldman Opinion: Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t need to
win the white working class
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/12/29/why-hillary-clinton-doesnt-need-to-win-the-white-working-class/>*

By Paul Waldman

December 29, 2014

Few questions in American political debate recur with the regularity of
this one: Can Democrats win the white working class?

As soon as it’s time to start contemplating the next election, commentators
begin to ask this question, demanding of Democrats that they explain why
this time will be different and they’ll be able to win over those white
voters. I’m going to argue that Democrats don’t have to win the white
working class, so they shouldn’t worry themselves too much about it.

But first, here’s the latest example of the genre, in today’s Wall Street
Journal, which gets a little more specific, asking whether Hillary Clinton
can appeal to white voters, even in rural areas:

*Mrs. Clinton’s allies are confident she can attract white voters who have
turned away from her party, particularly women. Democratic pollster Geoff
Garin, who worked on her 2008 campaign, said she “demonstrated a
significant ability to not only win votes from working-class white women
but to connect with them on a personal level.”*

*After a rocky start in that campaign, Mrs. Clinton cast herself as a
scrappy underdog and union ally while topping Mr. Obama in more than 20
states in Democratic primaries in places such as Pennsylvania and Ohio that
have many white, working-class voters.*

*Recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling shows that Mrs. Clinton’s
appeal among those voters has withered.*

*In June 2008, Mrs. Clinton was viewed positively by 43% of whites without
college degrees and negatively by 44%. Last month, 32% of that group held a
positive view and 48% had a negative view. Her image among those voters is
only slightly better than that of Mr. Obama.*

A note about that significant ability to win votes from working-class
whites that Clinton demonstrated, which is reiterated later in the story by
a consultant to a pro-Clinton PAC: Those voters were actually working-class
white Democrats, in the 2008 primaries. Right away you’re talking about a
minority of the white working class. And she did indeed do far better than
Barack Obama among them. His race and hers had a whole lot to do with that,
and it also may help explain why her ratings among whites without college
degrees are worse now than they were in June 2008. Back then she had just
been defeated by Obama; he was the reference point against which she was
compared. Now she’s a soon-to-be Democratic presidential candidate, and the
implicit comparison is to a white Republican.

But here’s the good news for Clinton: It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need
to win the white vote, working-class or otherwise, in order to become
president. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority
of the white vote was 1964. Yet they’ve managed to win five elections since
then.

We spend so much time contemplating what different demographic groups find
appealing and repellent that it’s almost as though we forget that a vote is
a vote. For instance, Democrats are often scolded for their unpopularity
among voters in rural areas and small towns, because of a mythos that says
those are the most virtuous and true Americans and therefore their votes
are somehow more desirable than those of people who live in suburbs and
cities. But they aren’t. The vote of a tattooed 20-something hipster in Des
Moines is no less helpful than that of the 60-something farmer who lives a
hundred miles north.

Demographics, of course, are obviously important. For instance,
Republicans’ struggles with Hispanic voters are meaningful because they’ve
managed to alienate all of those voters at once, and that has ended up
costing them millions of votes. But is there something Hillary Clinton (or
some other Democrat) could do that would cause huge numbers of
working-class white voters to vote differently than they had before?
Probably not. The plain truth is that she’s likely to get more of their
votes than Barack Obama did just because she’s white (though not so many
more that it will make her unbeatable). But there isn’t some magical key to
unlocking the votes of that entire demographic category that can be found
and deployed.

What Democrats need to do is offer an agenda, particularly on the economy,
that appeals to a broad spectrum of Americans. That’s both simple and
complicated. But if and when they put that agenda together, lots of white
working class voters still won’t respond, because they’re Republicans. And
that’s okay. Democrats don’t need them all. What they need is about the
same proportion of those votes that they got in the last couple of
presidential elections. More would be nice, but the same amount would work
fine. Because you may remember who won those elections.

*New York Times: Will Clinton Run? She Needs to Decide in 2015
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/12/30/us/politics/ap-us-dem-2016-clinton-5-things.html?_r=0>*

By The Associated Press

December 30, 2014

WASHINGTON — A still undeclared candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton sits atop
the prospective field of Democratic presidential candidates for 2016. But
as Clinton has said before, if she runs again, she'll work as hard as any
underdog.

Clinton's 2008 presidential bid stumbled, undermined by anti-war activists
who opposed her vote to authorize the Iraq war, infighting among her staff
and a large entourage that made it difficult for her to connect with voters
on a one-on-one basis.

How she attempts to address those deficiencies — assuming she runs for
president, as expected — will be a big part of Clinton's efforts next year.
Here's a look at five things to watch from Clinton in 2015.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Speculation about the timing of Clinton's announcement has
been rampant. Some Democrats wanted her to make it official after the
party's dreadful midterm elections. Clinton has scheduled some paid
speeches into March, raising the possibility that she will hold off until
spring. Democratic insiders expect a different approach this time — recall
her January 2007 video declaring, "I'm in to win" — that harnesses the
grassroots activists sowed by outside super PACs and allows her to make a
big splash in online fundraising. "All of these supporters are a ready-made
asset, eager to help promote her message and to stand by her in what we can
safely expect to be a relentless, even unprecedented, swamp of negativity
from her opponents," said Tracy Sefl, an adviser to Ready for Hillary.

RATIONALE: Clinton has said anyone who runs for president needs to have a
specific agenda and have a reason to run. She offered hints at what her
rationale might be during the fall campaign, advocating for middle-class
economic prosperity, paid leave for working mothers and a hike in the
minimum wage. The party's liberal wing will look for signs that she might
offer a brand of economic populism that has made them gravitate to
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who says she's not running in 2016.

OBAMA: Where Clinton embraces the president's agenda, and where she seeks
to separate herself from him, will be closely scrutinized. Obama was a
liability for many Democrats during the 2014 midterm elections and saw his
approval ratings sink during the year. Clinton will need to remain loyal
enough to the president to maintain his voting coalition while displaying
enough independence to appeal to those who have grown weary of Obama.
Succeeding a two-term president in your own party is never easy.

TEAM: How Clinton assembles a campaign team could be instructive of what
she's learned since 2008. Back then, her campaign was beset by internal
tensions and fights over strategy. This time, Clinton will have her pick of
the party's top talent and Democrats expect her to build upon the technical
know-how of the Obama campaigns. White House adviser John Podesta, a former
Bill Clinton chief of staff, could serve in a senior role. Her team could
include Clinton veterans like Robby Mook, who ran Virginia Gov. Terry
McAuliffe's 2013 race; Ace Smith, who advised California Gov. Jerry Brown's
re-election this year; and Stephanie Schriock, the president of Democratic
fundraising power EMILY's List. Guy Cecil, who led the Senate Democrats'
campaign arm, said in a statement first reported by Politico last week that
he was taking himself out of the running for a top campaign job.

GETTING OUT OF THE BUBBLE: Clinton often faced criticism in 2007 and 2008
that her large entourage and Secret Service protection made her
unapproachable. Some of her campaign trips this fall included off-schedule
stops at restaurants and coffee shops. But Clinton has yet to interact with
voters in a personal way that remains common in early states like Iowa and
New Hampshire. "That is now her greatest challenge: to get into the field
and be with the people who form the storyline of her narrative about women
and America's economy," wrote California Democratic strategist Karen
Skelton, a former political aide in Bill Clinton's White House. She
suggested the former first lady's team "figure out how to use this time to
allow her to go back to a stripped-down version of her life."

*CNN: The Clinton echo
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/30/politics/clintonecho/index.html>*

By Maeve Reston

December 30, 2014

Hillary Clinton's economic rhetoric is straight from her husband's 1992
playbook

She has spoken of restoring "the basic bargain of America"

Voter frustration is reminiscent of what the Clintons navigated in 1991 and
1992

(CNN) -- If there were an obvious takeaway for the 2016 hopefuls this year,
it might as well have been the motto for the 1992 presidential campaign of
Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid."

So it is no wonder that many of Hillary Clinton's touchstones on the
campaign trail this year have come straight from her husband's 1992
playbook — at times almost verbatim — a focus on rebuilding the middle
class, addressing income inequality, and reviving the American promise that
each generation should fare better than the last.

The echoes of the early 1990s in Clinton's speeches as she weighs a run for
the presidency are no accident. In what amounted to her first major foray
on the campaign trail in September at retiring Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom
Harkin's steak fry, she spoke of restoring "the basic bargain of America"
-- one her husband had proposed in the 1992 campaign -- that "no matter who
you are or where you come from, if you work hard and you play by the rules,
you deserve the opportunity, the same opportunity as anyone else, to build
a good life for yourself and your family."

Flash back to Bill Clinton's speech in struggling Johnstown, Pa., in April
of 1992. The American dream that he grew up with, Clinton said in a typical
line from his stump speech, had been shattered for millions of Americans.
"The idea," he said, "that if you worked hard and played by the rules you'd
be rewarded, you'd do a little better next year than you do last year, and
your kids will do better than you — that idea has been devastated."

If she runs for president, pundits will invariably argue for the next two
years over whether a Hillary Clinton White House would look more like a
third term of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton — and Democrats face a difficult
challenge holding on to the White House given that it often flips to the
opposing party after eight years of one-party control.

But when it comes to voter frustration and unease, Hillary Clinton may be
on strikingly similar terrain to what she and her husband navigated in 1991
and 1992.

"You just look at the statistics now and they really do match up with
1992," said Chris Lehane, a White House adviser to Bill Clinton in the
1990s. Given that the Clintons left the White House in the midst of an
economic boom with unemployment at about 4%, Lehane argues that there are
only upsides for the former Secretary of State in associating herself with
her husband's tenure.

"She benefits enormously from connecting herself to that time period, but
it also requires putting out a vision that matches with today's
challenges," Lehane said. "It really gets down to the basic idea of what
needs to be in place in this day and age so that if you're a middle class
family, your kids are actually going to have the opportunity to do better
than you."

Heading into 2016, the economy has been steadily recovering with
unemployment dropping below 6%; as Bill Clinton campaigned in 1991, the
economy was in a backward slide (unemployment rose from 6.8% in 1991 to
7.5%). But the pessimism many Americans feel is eerily comparable to when
Hillary Clinton first stepped out on the national stage.

Only about 23% of Americans said they were satisfied with the direction of
the country in the 2014 Gallup survey, just a shade higher than what the
polling firm measured in 1991 and 1992. In an August NBC News/WSJ poll, 60%
of voters said they believed America was in a state of decline, compared
with 63% who said that in December of 1991.

There has been even greater erosion in the sense of hopefulness about the
prospects of the younger generation. In December of 1991 and 1992, the
number of Americans who said they were confident that life for the next
generation would be better than their own was between 41% and 44%. This
August that number sank to 21%.

Aligning with Bill Clinton's early '90s riff on the fading American dream,
the December 2014 New York Times/CBS poll found that only 64% of Americans
believe it is possible to start poor in this country, work hard and become
rich -- an even lower percentage than in the mid-1990s (70%).

Republican Pollster Whit Ayres noted that Bill Clinton won in 1992 by
wrapping his middle-class focused message around a policy agenda with
conservative elements that appealed to a broader audience.

"Bill Clinton in 1992 was running as a center-left Democrat who wanted to
end welfare as we know it, he was for the death penalty, he ripped into
Sister Souljah for saying we ought to have a week where we kill white
people," Ayres said. By contrast, Hillary Clinton "is for all the
touchstones of the left today," he said, and has yet to show how she would
win over more moderate voters.

While Clinton ran as the candidate of strength and experience in 2008,
Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised former President George
W. Bush and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said Clinton
has yet to clearly outline a justification for her candidacy in 2016.

"I don't think it's readily apparent to anybody, including most every
Democrat, what Hillary Clinton is running for president to do or to be,
which was not ever the issue with Bill Clinton," Schmidt said. "There are
change elections and there are 'more of the same' elections, and there was
a lot of economic anxiety in the 1992 election and (Bill Clinton) was able
to drive a change narrative."

"After eight years of Barack Obama, it's very difficult to understand what
kind of change it is that Hillary Clinton's candidacy could represent," he
said.

To the extent that Hillary Clinton has hinted at her policy agenda, she has
not been shy about suggesting that she would build on her husband's legacy,
which she took part in shaping as his informal strategist, sounding board
and speech editor.

The central thread through many of Clinton's political speeches in recent
months has once again been the idea of championing the middle class — the
"invisible Americans" as she called them in 2008 — or "fighting for the
forgotten middle class" as her husband's 1992 campaign brochure framed his
version of that message.

When talking about expanding paid family leave, for example, she often
notes that the Family and Medical Leave Act was the first bill her husband
signed in the White House. She has also reminded audiences that he signed
legislation that raised the minimum wage in 1996, as she makes the case for
another increase.

When addressing economic angst while campaigning for Democratic hopeful
Bruce Braley in Iowa in late October, she alluded to the Clinton White
House years as a kind of golden era: "Millions of new jobs were created,
more families made it into the middle class, and more families got lifted
out of poverty," she said.

Moving beyond nostalgia, she has also tried out variations of the 1992
campaign lines. In seeking to connect, she has echoed the motto that her
husband used in his 1992 convention speech: "I am a product of the middle
class and when I am president, you will be forgotten no more."

"I am a product of the American middle class," she said at the Women in the
World Conference in April, adding that she wanted other American children
to have the opportunities she had.

At the Harkin Steak Fry, she lamented that American families "are working
harder than ever" but finding that maintaining a middle class lifestyle is
like "rolling a boulder uphill."

Cue the tape again to Bill Clinton's 1992 convention speech: "People are
working harder than ever," he said, "and their incomes are still going
down."

When she was by his side during a 1992 bus tour from New York to St. Louis,
Bill Clinton sought to strengthen his connection with working class voters
by saying he was "tired of the dignity being stripped from blue collar work
in America."

When Hillary Clinton went to Pennsylvania in October, she carried that
theme forward while campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom
Wolf. "There is nothing but dignity in hard work," she said in that speech,
calling for greater respect for the jobs held by her own generation and
that of her parents.

If the winning strategy for any candidate in 2016 is to show an
understanding of the economic angst that voters are feeling — and policies
to address it — Republican strategists point out that Clinton's other
hurdle will be that her husband was far more natural in showing his empathy
for others as he delivered that message.

READ: Clinton backpedals on claim that businesses don't create jobs

In anticipation of her run, Republicans have pounced on every opportunity
to argue that it has been a long time since the Clintons were a struggling
young couple in Arkansas — focusing on their wealth and her hefty speech
fees.

"She has lived a pretty gilded life for the last couple of decades," said
Republican strategist Katie Packer Gage, referring to the trappings of
Clinton's various roles as First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State like
her security detail. "When's the last time that she got into a cold car?"

Clinton's most notable stumble in that arena was when she told ABC's Diane
Sawyer during her book tour that she and her husband were "not only dead
broke, but in debt" when they left the White House, as they struggled to
pay mortgages on several homes and their daughter's private school
education. She quickly sought to clarify her remarks on "Good Morning
America."

"I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today," she
said. "It's an issue that I've worked on and cared about my entire life."

In 2016, Republicans will be looking for every opportunity to make her
prove it.

*Politico: Hillary Clinton sends ‘announcement’ (no, not that one)
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/hillary-clinton-annnouncement-donation-113871.html?hp=r2_3>*

By Lucy McCalmont

December 30, 2014

Many Hillary Clinton supporters woke up Tuesday to an “announcement” from
Clinton in their inboxes.

Was this the moment they’d been waiting for?

Nope: Anyone expecting a possible early announcement on her 2016 bid was
sorely disappointed, as the email turned out to be another call for
donations from the Clinton Foundation.

The organization sent an email out to supporters early Tuesday morning,
addressed from Clinton and with the subject line “Announcement.”

“This is a season to give thanks for our many blessings and to remember our
responsibilities to each other – that we’re all in this together,” the
message read. “In my family, we’re celebrating our first holidays with a
beautiful new granddaughter. We’re also celebrating the generosity and
commitment of our incredible Clinton Foundation family – and that means
you.”

Clinton is widely expected to launch another bid for the White House, and
Clinton has said her decision on 2016 will come early next year. But it’s
clear her staff, at least, is not above a little bit of teasing.

*CNN: The Clinton 'announcement' you weren't waiting for
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/30/politics/clinton-foundation-annoucement/index.html>*

By Dan Merica, CNN

December 30, 2014

Washington (CNN) -- The collective freak out you heard at 6:58 a.m. ET
Tuesday morning was the cadre of Clinton followers reacting to an email
from "Hillary Rodham Clinton" with the subject line "Announcement."

After a few short heart palpitations (and reading the email), it became
clear that the announcement was not the one many political watchers have
been expecting for months: That the former secretary of state was running
for president in 2016.

Instead, the email urged supporters to donate to the foundation with the
promise that "Bill, Chelsea, and I will triple every $1 donated to the
Clinton Foundation before the end of the year, up to an additional
$100,000."

"In my family, we're celebrating our first holidays with a beautiful new
granddaughter," Clinton wrote in the email. "We're also celebrating the
generosity and commitment of our incredible Clinton Foundation family --
and that means you."

Clinton highlighted a number of her foundation's initiatives, including Too
Small To Fail, a project dedicated to childhood education; No Ceilings,
aimed at women and girls achieving full participation around the world; and
Job One, an initiative aimed at connecting the unemployed with prospective
employers.

Hillary Clinton joined her husband's foundation a few months after leaving
the state department in early 2013. With the addition of Clinton -- as well
as her daughter Chelsea -- the foundation changed its named from the
William J. Clinton Foundation to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
Foundation.

The addition proved positive. According to foundation tax documents
released earlier this year, the foundation brought in $144.4 million in
2013, a three-fold growth from the $51.5 million the foundation received in
2012. The jump was seen as the foundation moving to up its endowment and
put itself on better footing in case Hillary Clinton runs for president in
2016.

Since joining the effort, Hillary Clinton has also used the foundation as a
vehicle to travel the country and deliver high profile speeches.

*The Hill: Poll: Clinton is top New Year's Eve date choice among New
Yorkers
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/228193-poll-clinton-is-top-nye-date-for-new-yorkers>*

By Jesse Byrnes

December 29, 2014

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the top choice in a new poll
among New York voters looking for a political date for New Year's Eve.

Clinton, who served for eight years as a U.S. senator from New York, nabs
37 percent support among voters in the state who are looking for a date for
Wednesday night, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.

The presumed Democratic front-runner for president in 2016 is the top
choice among 52 percent of Democrats as well as 15 percent of Republicans
in the poll. Forty-three percent of women and 30 percent of men would
celebrate the holiday with her.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) tie for a
distant second, with 8 percent of voters in the state wanting to watch the
ball drop with either politician.

Still, 45 percent of New Yorkers were unimpressed with all three options
and would opt to sing along to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" with
someone else. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 71 percent of Republicans went for
that option.

The poll of 1,293 New York voters was conducted Dec. 17-21 via landlines
and cellphones with a margin of error of 2.7 points.

*US News: What's Driving Jim Webb?
<http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2014/12/30/whats-driving-jim-webbs-potential-bid-for-president-in-2016>*

Some say a 2016 presidential bid is the obvious next step in Webb's
lifelong call to public service.

By David Catanese

December 30, 2014

In July, Jim Webb invited some 50 former staffers and their spouses to his
northern Virginia home for a reunion that served to toast the release of
his most recent book.

Over beers and between reacquainting conversations, Webb took a moment to
address the gathering of campaign workers and Capitol Hill aides.

“We’re back,” uttered the former one-term Democratic senator, according to
several people in the room.

At the time, most in attendance interpreted the remark as an informal
recognition of Webb’s return to the public limelight after disappearing for
more than a year to write “I Heard My Country Calling,” a memoir that
tracks his hard-knock but admirable life growing up as a military brat. The
book had just been published in May.

But the offhand quip resonates quite differently in hindsight, after Webb,
68, unexpectedly launched an exploratory campaign for president in
November. With the simple release of an unremarkable video in the middle of
the night two weeks after the midterm elections, Webb became the first
well-known candidate to formally dip toes into the 2016 race. The move
rattled the Washington political class, but the news was less shocking to
those who know the quixotic combat Marine best.

Webb had been contemplating a White House campaign for some time, floating
the idea to his small but close-knit circle of friends and confidantes more
than a year ago.

“He’s been thinking about it since 2013,” says Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a
Democratic political hand in Virginia who says he chats or emails with Webb
several times each week. “He thinks – deep, deep, deep, deep thinker. The
guy’s regal, man. He’s a damn hero. I’m doing whatever I can to help him.”

“Life’s Clearest Calling”

To the Beltway class, Webb is primarily identified with his 2006 upset
defeat of Republican Sen. George Allen, who had plans for a presidential
run until that embarrassing loss at the hands of a political newcomer. But
to understand Webb’s motivation in seriously contemplating the herculean
task of running for president – likely against Hillary Clinton – one must
recognize his immense, intrinsic sense of duty to his country.

“Service to country has always been my life’s clearest calling,” Webb wrote
in his memoir.

That calling began during his time at the Naval Academy and was firmly
cemented through a brutal but decorated combat tour in Vietnam, where he
described being overwhelmed by “the mix of high explosives and quarts of
blood.”

In July of his harrowing 1969 tour there, Webb was shelled by two grenades
that left shrapnel in his skull, kidney and left knee – injuries that
offered him a way out of the war.

He refused to leave the theater, instead
choosing to wade back into the blurry, blood-soaked battlefield, leading
his battalion. He earned two Purple Hearts for his service in Vietnam.

Webb wrote:

“In a word, I felt obligated. Like my father, service to country defined my
self-respect. More to the point, I loved leading infantry Marines. With a​
gritty elan, they faced the gravest dangers. They took the greatest risks.
They absorbed the highest casualties. They had the fewest creature
comforts. But they also stood face-to-face and toe-to-toe with the enemy,
every day. And they answered in their honor to no one.”

Given the life-or-death decisions Webb has faced, ​​a 60-percentage point
polling deficit to Clinton in a hypothetical Democratic primary contest
doesn’t seem particularly threatening, especially to a restless,
battle-tested figure so inherently inclined to climb the leadership ladder.

Webb’s entire life has been dotted with a series of gambles against the
odds, driven by a stubborn unwillingness to stay in one place too long.
He’s served as secretary of the Navy, assistant secretary of defense and as
a U.S. senator, also winning an Emmy Award as a journalist and even working
in Hollywood. All the while, his most constant and favorite passion
remained being an author, having written 10 books.

“The Webbs, it seemed, were born on the run,” he recalled of his early
childhood in his memoir. ​“And there was nothing more natural than to be
heading off into yet another unknown.”

 Former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., gestures during a talk at the AP Day at
the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. Webb has formed an
exploratory committee to look into his running for the Democratic
nomination for president in 2016.

Former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., seen here at the Capitol in Richmond on Dec.
3, has formed an exploratory committee for running for the Democratic
nomination for president in 2016.

"The Smartest Bastard There"

If Webb possesses the optimal skills of a soldier, it may explain why he is
far from the prototypical politician.

When he decided in 2011 against running for a second term in the U.S.
Senate, it wasn’t due to a loss of passion about the issues he championed,
like criminal justice reform and repositioning America’s foreign policy.
It’s that he didn’t like what he dubbed “the ornamentations of politics”
that run the Senate – the perpetual backslapping, fundraising and
party-saluting.

“I faced the Hobson’s choice of either turning into a perennial scold or
surrendering a part of my individuality to the uncontrollable, collective
nature of group politics. I was not ready to do either,” he explained of
his decision in his most recent book.

“It was a real struggle of the conscience for him,” says a former policy
aide to Webb who now works for another senator. “The demands of the party
and being part of a larger organization, it’s just not his natural
personality. He thinks of himself foremost as a writer. Writing is a
solitary effort. It’s not something you do with other people.”

The relevant question now is whether Webb’s insular, surly personality is
suited for the frenetic, media-driven circus of a national campaign or the
office of the presidency itself, especially following the tenure of
President Barack Obama, whose legislative initiatives have been hamstrung
by his own reclusive
nature. 

Since his exploratory launch Nov. 19, Webb has appeared only once before
the media in Richmond, Virginia, and hasn’t traveled to an early primary
state.​ His private outreach to potential supporters is mostly being
steered by himself and a couple of trusted aides from his Senate tenure. He
has not been in personal touch with the state party head in any of the
three early nominating states. A spokeswoman told U.S. News he was not
available for an interview for this story.

There’s no draft movement, no formal structure, no kitchen-cabinet plotting
strategy and parsing of daily decisions. It’s the Jim Webb show – which is
something it can’t remain if it’s going to morph into something bigger.

“Webb is not the type to rely on anyone except himself for counsel,” says
someone who worked with him before his Senate run. “He’s never been in a
room in which he wasn’t sure he was the smartest bastard there.”

 Sen. George Allen, R-Va., rides a horse during the Labor Day parade in
Buena Vista, Va., on Sept. 4, 2006, while campaigning for re-election.

Webb unseated incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia, seen here
during a Labor Day parade in Buena Vista, Va., in the 2006 elections.

Appeal in Appalachia?

“And all I have asked, as the ancient philosopher intoned, is not to be
understood too quickly,” Webb writes in his latest book, and his
application of that dictum to himself seems apt, given the varied
interpretations of his political ideology.

Some point to his vehement opposition to the Iraq War and see him as a
liberal.

Others note his service in President Ronald Reagan’s administration and his
support of gun rights, and view him as a moderate.

His push for criminal justice reform in the Senate aligns him with
libertarians like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Yet his rhetoric on the economic stratification that’s roiling the country
makes him sound like a populist in the vein of Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
D-Mass.

The fact that it’s so difficult to pigeonhole Webb’s political package
could turn out to be a great strength or a severe liability, depending on
his ability to manage his image.

He describes himself as a Jacksonian Democrat who connects with a middle
class increasingly confronted by an economic system they see as imbalanced
toward the wealthy.

“His constituency is people who feel like they’re getting screwed,”
Saunders says.

In his 2007 Democratic response to President George W. Bush’s State of the
Union address, he spoke extensively about how soaring stock market prices
and corporate profits weren’t being fairly shared with the masses.

“When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times
what the average worker did. Today, it’s nearly 400 times,” he said at the
time, a refrain he reprised in September at the National Press Club.

In the Senate, Webb fought to pass a windfall profits tax on the banks that
benefited from the financial sector bailouts of 2008 and 2009, but lamented
at that same September event that his party had a hand in blocking its
passage.

“When we got it to the Senate floor, it really was the Democrats who didn’t
want to vote on it, not the Republicans,” he said.

But while Warren’s economic message strikes a chord with liberal elites on
the coasts and in urban enclaves, Webb’s potential support lies in largely
rural and industrial white America – ironically the same constituency that
revived Clinton’s flagging 2008 presidential primary bid against Barack
Obama.

 “He’s an enigma to a lot of people,” says one of Webb’s former Senate
aides. “A lot of people write him off as a centrist or a moderate, and I
actually don’t think that’s a fair way to describe him at all. He’s an
economic populist. I think his roots and family roots are very much in the
Democratic Party. But it’s not inner-city, racial Democratic politics. It’s
very rural, poor Democratic politics.”

The left is pining for Warren to make a populist economic argument against
a Clinton candidacy, but it’s Webb who may be the more likely vehicle for
that message.

“Economic inequality – I don’t believe that issue will be thoroughly vetted
with Hillary leading the ticket,” says Nelson Jones, a law school classmate
of Webb's who has remained a friend for 40 years.

The Contrast With Hillary

Since Webb made rumblings about his intentions in the fall, the media has
been waiting for him to take a shot at Clinton. He has repeatedly and
carefully refused to take the bait.

But during an under-the-radar August interview on Iowa public television
that was hardly noticed in the heat of the midterm campaigns, Webb did
offer some hints of how exactly he would position himself against the
presumed Democratic front-runner.

“Jim’s to the left of her on foreign policy. He’s adamant about when
there’s a use of force. We shouldn’t be occupying foreign territory,” Jones
says.

While Clinton supported intervening in Libya’s civil war and backed a plan
to arm moderate rebels in Syria’s strife, Webb found both of those
positions to be ill-advised, counterproductive and against historical U.S.
precedent.

“If you look at the Middle East, I don’t think that this policy has been
very good and Secretary Clinton, quite frankly, was a part of annunciating
this strategy,” Webb said in that August interview.

While they aren’t acknowledging Webb publicly, Clinton loyalists are
keeping an eye on him privately. The week before Thanksgiving, staffers of
Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime communications guru, pitched talk radio
producers on the racy, sexually charged writings in Webb’s novels,
according to a source. Webb was forced to fend off a similar attack in
2006, when Allen accused him of “demeaning women.”

Webb also has previously apologized for writing that a Naval Academy dorm
was a “horny woman’s dream" in a 1979 Washingtonian magazine piece titled
"Jim Webb: Women Can't Fight."

The piece's central argument was against allowing women to take combat
positions in the military. If Webb were to ever attain traction, Clinton's
allies would certainly lob the rhetoric back at him.

But he isn’t obsessing over Clinton, Saunders says.

“Jim Webb and I haven’t talked about Hillary five minutes, and I’ve talked
to him a lot,” he says. “I’m not sure she’s going to run. She ain’t signed
up yet. Some people in the party are not ready for Hillary.”

Not even Webb’s friends know if he’ll ultimately turn the ignition switch
on a campaign. Raising money and even hiring top staff will be tremendously
challenging in an environment in which Democrats are waiting for Clinton to
decide. Fusing a coalition with the anti-war left and blue-collar white
voters who are inherently more culturally conservative could prove too
tricky a feat. And there’s ample reason to doubt Webb will be willing to
stomach the political trade-offs so often required of modern candidates if
they want to win.

When Webb was thinking about running against Allen in 2006, Jones advised
him against it, telling him a joke about how waging an uphill political
campaign is like dancing with a bear.

“You start dancing with the bear, you can’t sit down until you get tired.
You gotta keep dancing with the bear until it gets tired,” Jones recalls.
“Even if you get tired, you’ve got to keep at it, dancing.”

In that instance, of course, Webb ignored his friend’s advice.

But this time, Jones says, “I told him, ‘This is a much bigger bear.’”

*The Hill: Warren will be more effective not running for president
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/228232-warren-is-far-more-effective-not-running-for>*

By David Russell, contributor

December 30, 2014

The reigning speculation at the end of the year focuses in part on whether
or not the Democrats will tear themselves apart with the internal struggle
between moderates and its left/liberal contingent. At the forefront of this
concern is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), her prominence in speaking out
against the finance industry's undue influence over Washington
decision-making, her defiance of the White House in its willingness to ease
bank regulations to secure a spending bill and her opposition to the White
House nomination of a Wall Street type for a prominent position in the
Treasury Department.

Organizations like MoveOn.Org and Bold Progressives among others have
started the drive to push her nomination for the 2016 presidential race.
While Warren has not encouraged her supporters in their efforts and has
continuously denied her interest in running, the national media are signing
on to the nomination drumbeat because it sells.

Warren at age 64 is one of the brightest, hardworking politicians in the
country. What is particularly commendable about her presence is the
intelligence she brings to the issues of the day and her uncanny way of
simplifying the message and garnering media coverage.

But here is the dirty little secret: She is not going to bow to the
pressure on the left and promote her candidacy. In so doing, she is going
to be far more dangerous to the Republicans because the nomination process
for the Democratic slot will not be overtly contentious. Warren's plan is
far more invidious than that.

There are several tendrils. The first is the understanding of basic polling
information. While polls indicate that a majority of voters are either
Democratic-leaning independents or Democrats, less than one-third are of
these folks are of the left/liberal persuasion. In the latest
McClatchy/Marist poll, 62 percent of Democrats supported Hillary Clinton's
candidacy, while Warren got 9 percent. Warren is, among other things, a
realist. In the United States, the liberal policies that have been adopted
or sustained have taken a crisis or required a very long process of
consensus building. Policy in the time of prosperity does not allow for
radical politics. The 2016 election will take place in a strong economic
environment and few voters will be interested in rocking the boat.

2016 also seems to be built for more moderate politics, as it would appear
the Republicans coming into power are on a collision course with President
Obama over issues of immigration, environmental issues, foreign policy,
wages and race. Voters will undoubtedly seek to lower the decibel levels
and restore a better centrist balance.

So fighting from the sidelines requires the political savvy to know that
the left's polices are best served by threatening to run, pressing the lead
candidate to move away from the center and pushing to make the lead issues
in the race those of income inequality, undue financial influence in
Washington, campaign finance reform and stronger financial regulations. All
of this while wielding the winning one-third of the Democratic support base
hostage until concessions are made. The strategy ends up with Clinton as
the lead candidate, but sporting bluer stripes.

Next, Warren knows that the power most accessible in the near term is her
influence inside the Senate. There is a strong likelihood that current
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will lose his seat in his 2016
reelection bid so Warren, already sanctified with a leadership position,
will simply move up. More importantly, she spent an inordinate amount of
time campaigning for others and that brings with it loyalty and sympathy.
What is more, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), finds
her positions refreshing and more and more to his liking. There is an
alliance made in heaven in the offing. Warren knows this and knows that to
effect change, building her position in the Senate is by far the best
avenue for her efforts.

Next, political literacy. Presidential politics are radically different
from statewide elections in Massachusetts. There are so many issues that
burden the office of the president that a Senate candidate can simply
ignore or brush off. It is not that Warren is not a quick study, or that
she is not smart enough; it is simply that the public does not associate
her positions with much more than consumer finance and financial industry
regulation. While her wings have spread far enough to embrace income
inequality, it will take time to master foreign policy, budget and
taxation, education and human services, veterans affairs and military
budgets, campaign finance and lobbying efforts, transportation and domestic
security, health and drug policy, and the list goes on.

Because she is so smart and her temperament requires expertise as a basis
of pushing policy, she is far better suited to spend more time in self
education on the broader range of issues and allow for the careful
preparation required to seriously enter the preidential fray. Likewise, she
undoubtedly knows that as her own political literacy grows, she will need
to bring the public along with her. It is no secret that American political
literacy is appallingly low.

A candidate like Elizabeth Warren brings a strong sense of commitment to
service. Her supporters can be sure that she is not going away. It has
become clear that she relishes the arena, finds comfort in the spotlight
and is happy to engage in the battle. We can envy her in some ways because
the opposition, while supported by unprecedented funding, has been getting
along for more than a generation with sound bites and pork barrel for
contributors. That is not a bad foil for her style of politics, and she
knows it.

*The Hill: Jeb Bush exits another corporate board
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/228202-jeb-exits-another-corporate-board>*

By Jonathan Easley

December 29, 2014

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will step down from the board of directors at
timber company Rayonier Inc., in yet another sign that he intends to run
for president in 2016.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission report filed on Monday and first
spotted by Bloomberg, the company said Bush will resign from the board at
the end of the year.

It’s the third company Bush has said he’ll leave as he seeks to untangle
his business interests ahead of a potential bid for the White House.

Last week, Tenet Healthcare, a company that has reportedly profited from
the Affordable Care Act, announced that Bush would resign from its board of
directors on Dec. 31.

Bush has also said he will leave his advisory role at banking giant
Barclays at the end of the year.

He announced earlier this month that he would “actively explore” running
for president. He’s currently the top choice for Republican voters in a
crowded field of potential candidates.

Bush’s business dealings since his time as governor have already come under
scrutiny, and that will only increase if he officially takes the plunge.

Bush is one of the co-founders of Britton Hill Holdings, which through a
handful of investment funds has tens of millions of dollars invested in
companies around the world.

A Bloomberg BusinessWeek report released earlier this month suggested that
Bush would run into the same problems as the 2012 GOP nominee, Mitt Romney,
who was a partner at Bain Capital. Romney’s time at Bain was often used
against him on the campaign trail, with former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R)
famously calling him a “vulture capitalist.”

Bush has defended his private equity dealings, arguing that the business
experience he’s gained would be useful if he ends up in Washington.

“I’m not ashamed,” he said in one interview. “I think taking risks and
creating jobs is what we ought to have more of.”

*Politico: Ted Cruz is billed as a Passover vacation attraction
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/ted-cruz-is-billed-as-a-passover-vacation-attraction-113870.html#ixzz3NOEmoWAb>*

By Maggie Haberman

December 29, 2014

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a likely Republican presidential candidate and a vocal
pro-Israel hawk, is being advertised as a featured attraction at a string
of ritzy resort vacation getaways catering to religious Jews.

Cruz, along with several rabbis, is listed as a speaker at four different
vacation spots, including Aspen, over Passover, the spring holiday that
honors the freeing of enslaved Jews in Egypt. The Prime Hospitality Group
is the company behind the offers, according to an email solicitation shared
with POLITICO.

“4 Questions. 4 Cups of Wine. 4 Sons. And 4 Luxurious Prime Passover
Programs,” the invitation reads. “All featuring unparalleled service and
The Prime Group’s legendary cuisine.”

A Cruz adviser insisted he’s speaking at only one event, although Prime
Hospitality’s ads suggest he’ll be at getaways in Westlake Village and
Monarch Beach in California; Aspen, Colorado; and in Vieques Island, Puerto
Rico.

The first, in Westlake, promises to be “intimate and personal and will
feature the inspiring Rabbi Eli Mansour, Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, Rabbi
Shlomo Einhorn, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, Malcolm Hoenlein and Senator Ted
Cruz, surpassing all expectations.”

The one at the St. Regis Monarch Beach offers “some of the greatest rabbis
and scholars of our time including Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Eli
Mansour, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Senator Ted Cruz.”

Cruz is listed on the programs for the two others, alongside a number of
rabbis.

Prime Hospitality runs a string of high-end kosher restaurants, including
The Prime Grill in New York, and is offering the vacations under the banner
“The Prime Experience” on its website.

An adviser to the conservative senator insisted he’s appearing only at one
of the vacation spots: in Monarch Beach on April 8. The adviser added that
Cruz also has fundraiser scheduled there and that “well-meaning program
organizers overstated his participation” at the events.

Cruz is expected to talk about foreign policy and Israel when he appears at
the resort. The Republican has been aggressively trying to court
prospective donors for a likely presidential run, traveling to several
states, including repeatedly to New York and California.

*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>)