Subject: ​Correct The Record Sunday January 18, 2015 Roundup
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Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 14:56:01 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Sunday January 18, 2015 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Associated Press: “Clinton's Democratic allies offer her an economic road
map”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0f0c4f7a6dee47559a9344be107bf0c5/clintons-democratic-allies-offer-her-economic-road-map>*

“A group of Clinton advisers offered a detailed economic agenda last week
that aims to help raise wages for millions of workers and close the gap
between rich and poor. The policy road map was produced at the Center for
American Progress, a Washington-based think tank stocked with veterans of
the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations.”

*Washington Post: “Elizabeth Warren keeps pressure on Hillary Clinton and
Democrats ahead of 2016”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-keeps-pressure-on-hillary-clinton-and-democrats-ahead-of-2016/2015/01/17/cc844300-9b49-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?postshare=5561421530653740>*

“And though she is the darling of the liberals — with the organizations
MoveOn.org and Democracy for America counting 244,000 signatures in their
online petition drive to draft her to run for president — many of Warren’s
stances do not easily lend themselves to partisan and ideological labels.”

*New York Times: “Republicans Like Their 2016 Options, Assuming They Avoid
Chaos”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/us/politics/republicans-like-their-2016-options-assuming-they-avoid-chaos.html>*

“So the leaders happily extolled the Noah’s Ark quality of their
presidential options, comparing their sprawling field favorably with the
Democrats’ flavor of one, Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

*ABC News: Polls: “Huckabee vs. Clinton: Reconsider the Day Job?”
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2015/01/huckabee-vs-clinton-reconsider-the-day-job/>*

“Tested in a head-to-head matchup among registered voters, Huckabee gets 39
percent support in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, vs. 56 percent for
Clinton, a wide 17-point gap in presidential preference. It’s their first
test in an ABC/Post poll in this cycle, and much better for Clinton than a
hypothetical matchup in late 2007, when she and Huckabee ran essentially
evenly among registered voters, 48-45 percent.”

*Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Clinton honored by the King Center during
MLK celebration”
<http://www.ajc.com/news/news/clinton-to-be-honored-by-the-king-center-during-ml/njqnT/>*

"Accepting an award from The King Center on Saturday, former President Bill
Clinton spoke of a modern “beloved community” — King’s vision for a world
achieved through peaceful nonviolence — to inspire youth and curb global
acts of terror."

*Washington Free Beacon: “Mark Halperin: Clinton Insiders Worried About
Hillary ‘Laying Low’ Without a Message”
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/mark-halperin-clinton-insiders-worried-about-hillary-laying-low-without-a-message/>*

“Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin said people close to the Hillary Clinton have
told him of their concern that she still doesn’t have a message to run on.”

*Articles:*

*Associated Press: “Clinton's Democratic allies offer her an economic road
map”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0f0c4f7a6dee47559a9344be107bf0c5/clintons-democratic-allies-offer-her-economic-road-map>*

By Ken Thomas

January 18, 2015, 9:09 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inside the Democratic Party, economic policy is often
seen as a contest between President Barack Obama's track record and the
anti-Wall Street approach advocated by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

As Hillary Rodham Clinton heads for an expected 2016 run for president, her
allies are pointing her toward something in-between.

A group of Clinton advisers offered a detailed economic agenda last week
that aims to help raise wages for millions of workers and close the gap
between rich and poor. The policy road map was produced at the Center for
American Progress, a Washington-based think tank stocked with veterans of
the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations. It appeared to target those who
are disenchanted with Obama and skeptical that Clinton effectively would
police Wall Street and champion middle-class workers.

"While there are large forces, globalization, technology and more, that are
creating large challenges for many workers, there is no excuse or
intellectual basis for fatalism," said Larry Summers, one of its authors
and a former treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton who later
worked for Obama.

The subject is clearly on Hillary Clinton's mind. In her first tweet in
more than a month, she posted this Friday: "Attacking financial reform is
risky and wrong. Better for Congress to focus on jobs and wages for
middle-class families."

Campaigning for Democrats last fall, she often spoke of the need to return
to an economic system of broadly shared prosperity.

That goal has eluded Obama, even though he is able to point to a rebounding
economy, falling unemployment rates and lower gas prices. Obama, in
Tuesday's State of the Union, plans to propose raising the capital gains
rate on the wealthy and eliminating a tax break on inheritances. The plan
is a nonstarter with Republicans, but Obama will make the case for using
the additional revenue for new tax credits and other benefits for the
middle class.

Warren, in a speech this month to the AFL-CIO, said that despite stronger
economic growth and a soaring stock market, "America's middle class is in
deep trouble." Liberals say the problem of stagnant wages require urgent
action.

"We need to be extremely aggressive to deal with income and wealth
inequality," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who may seek
the Democratic presidential nomination.

Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are beginning to articulate
their own agenda for addressing income inequality, reflecting an expected
argument that Obama's policies have not helped millions of workers.

"Their liberal policies are good every four years for a campaign, but they
don't get the job done," Romney said in a speech last week to the
Republican National Committee.

Clinton's template has been the 1990s, during her husband's two terms, and
Summers noted that many of the ideas in the report built upon the "Putting
People First" agenda from Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.

It also cited some of the chief parts of Obama's economic program, such as
efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, spend more on roads, bridges and
public works, offer paid leave for workers and help students pay for
college.

But the report also offered other ideas with broad appeal in the party: tax
credits for middle-class families, incentives for employees to partake in
profit-sharing, attention to collective bargaining rights and tying the
repayment of student loans to a graduate's income earned over two decades
or more.

Those responsible for the report have strong Clinton connections.

Along with Summers, the commission included the center's president and CEO,
Neera Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton policy adviser; former Michigan Gov.
Jennifer Granholm, a leader of a political action committee set to back a
Clinton candidacy; and Steven Rattner, who was chief adviser to Obama's
auto bailout task force and is a longtime Clinton donor.

Clinton, who returns to the speaking circuit in Canada this coming week,
has said she would offer a "very specific agenda" if she runs for president.

Some progressives said that while the new report offered good ideas, it had
deficiencies. Most notably, it does not advocate for the breakup of Wall
Street banks, which Warren has sought, and does not push for a higher
minimum wage beyond the $10.10 pushed by Obama.

Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org, noted the role of lobbyists
only had a passing reference in the findings.

"In some areas, the report represents a largely Washington establishment
perspective, and isn't as bold as folks outside the Beltway are probably
ready for," Galland said.

Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden,
said much of the report offered ideas that could unite broad parts of the
Democratic coalition. He said it built upon a growing understanding in the
party, in the aftermath of the November elections, that simple economic
growth is not enough to lift the fortunes of middle-class workers.

"I don't think the 2014 midterms were some sort of fluke. If you don't give
people a reason to get up and go vote for you, I'd expect them to sit down
and stay home or vote for somebody else," he said. "So you can't assume
based on demographics or race or income class that the electorate is going
to support you. ... You have to do precisely the kind of policy work that
this group is offering us."

*Washington Post: “Elizabeth Warren keeps pressure on Hillary Clinton and
Democrats ahead of 2016”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-keeps-pressure-on-hillary-clinton-and-democrats-ahead-of-2016/2015/01/17/cc844300-9b49-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?postshare=5561421530653740>*

By Karen Tumulty

January 17, 2015, 4:07 p.m. EST

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has an explanation for the singular nature of her
power.

“I’ll always be an outsider. That’s how I understand the world,” the
Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview. “There’s a real benefit to
being clear about this. I know why I’m here. I think about this every
morning before I open my eyes, and I’m still thinking about it every night
when I go to sleep.”

Being the target of that kind of focus can be an excruciating experience —
the freshest case in point being investment banker Antonio Weiss, whom
President Obama put forward last year as his nominee for Treasury
undersecretary for domestic finance.

Initially seen as a highly credentialed and noncontroversial pick for a
low-profile post, Weiss found himself up against a storm of opposition, led
by Warren, who said he was yet another example of Wall Street cronyism
within the Obama administration.

On Monday, Weiss wrote a letter to the president asking that his name be
taken out of consideration.

The tussle sent yet another signal, maybe the clearest yet, of how Warren
intends to wield her growing clout. It showed that she and her brand of
populism are forces to be reckoned with — not only by Obama and his team,
but also by the Democrats’ likely 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Rodham
Clinton.

“It’s not about Antonio Weiss personally,” said Simon Johnson, an outspoken
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and former International
Monetary Fund chief economist who admires Warren and shares her views.
“What it’s really about is the presidential election.”

No small amount of speculation has centered on whether Warren herself will
run for the White House in 2016. She insists that she will not. But her
advisers and longtime allies say that she intends to keep the pressure on
Clinton, to make sure the former secretary of state pays more than lip
service to the issues that matter to Warren.

She is training her heat vision not on the Oval Office, but two doors down
the hall on the Cabinet Room. Warren wants to make sure that Wall
Street-aligned figures who have shaped the Clinton and Obama brand of
economic policy for the past quarter-century, going back to former Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin, are not the only ones at the oval mahogany table.

“The worst case for us is that [Clinton] gives a feisty speech now and
then, but surrounds herself with the same old” economic gurus, said one
longtime Warren ally, insisting upon anonymity to speak frankly.

A powerhouse fundraiser who taps the passions of the liberal base, Warren
also believes she can loosen the political grip of the financial industry,
which pours more money into elections than any other industry, most of it
in recent years to Democrats.

“She’s a disruptive force, because she stands outside the basic
transactional proposition that has dominated Washington for a generation,”
said AFL-CIO policy chief Damon Silvers, who was Warren’s deputy on the
congressional oversight panel that monitored the government’s $700-billion
Wall Street bailout known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

In other words, there is an argument to be made that Warren could get more
of what she wants by holding herself outside the 2016 fray than by jumping
in.

In a speech this month before the union federation, Warren took several
not-so-subtle jabs at both Hillary Clinton and former president Bill
Clinton, whose economic record of growth and balanced budgets are expected
to be one of his wife’s major selling points. The Massachusetts senator
suggested that the policies, many of which began in the 1980s, are nothing
to brag or be nostalgic about.

“Pretty much the whole Republican Party — and, if we’re going to be honest,
too many Democrats — talked about the evils of ‘big government’ and called
for deregulation,” Warren said. “It sounded good, but what it was really
about was tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and
giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do.’’

Warren also singled out a company on whose board Hillary Clinton sat for
six years when she was first lady of Arkansas: “If you work at Wal-Mart,
and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries
on the table, what does more money in stockholders’ pockets and an uptick
in GDP do for you?”

A Clinton spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Warren’s appeal lies in her ability to frame complex financial issues,
strip them of their jargon and connect them to the workaday struggles of
average Americans who are not feeling the benefits of an improving economy.

“She represents a focus on economics that is not unique. She does have a
unique ability to explain things extraordinarily well,” said Democratic
pollster Mark Mellman.

Warren also brings an expertise honed over decades as a well-regarded
academic who did groundbreaking research into bankruptcy and other factors
that have made the middle class more fragile.

It is hard to think of a precedent for the role she has carved out in the
Senate. “I think she’s brought some extraordinary credentials to this job
in the public policy area. The only analogy I can think of is a former
first lady,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Senate’s
second-ranking Democrat.

Durbin paused a moment, and added: “That’s an interesting analogy, on a lot
of levels.”

Warren’s critics, however, say she often steps over the line between
simplifying things and being simplistic.

Former treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner tangled with Warren in her
pre-Senate days, when she was a Harvard Law School professor heading the
TARP oversight board.

The hearings that Warren conducted “often felt more like made-for-YouTube
inquisitions than serious inquiries,” Geithner wrote in “Stress Test,” his
2014 memoir. “She was worried about the right things, but she was better at
impugning our choices — as well as our integrity and our competence — than
identifying any feasible alternatives.”

Weiss’s defenders saw the same traits at work in her opposition to his
nomination. It was not a total victory for Warren, given that Weiss will
instead be given the title of “counselor” to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a
position that does not require Senate confirmation.

The Washington Post editorial page called Warren and her allies’ case
against Weiss “a grab-bag of symbolism and epithets, not a rationale.” New
York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin called her outrage “misdirected,”
“misinformed,” and “just another campaign talking point.”

Warren turned Obama’s pick into “a pawn in a struggle for the heart of the
Democratic Party,” former investment banker Steven Rattner, who was lead
adviser in the Obama administration’s automobile industry rescue, said in
an interview shortly before Weiss’s withdrawal.

But more than a few Democrats believe Warren is lighting the path forward
for their party. At Sen. Harry M. Reid’s (D-Nev.) first senior staff
meeting after the 2014 midterm elections that cost their party control of
the Senate, the soon-to-be-minority leader passed around copies of an op-ed
by Warren that had run a few days earlier in The Post.

“For all the talk of change in Washington and in states where one party is
taking over from another, one thing has not changed: The stock market and
gross domestic product keep going up, while families are getting squeezed
hard by an economy that isn’t working for them,” Warren wrote.

Two days after that meeting, Reid appointed Warren to a spot in the Senate
leadership he created just for her. But if that created any impression that
she had somehow been brought into the tent, Warren dispelled it during the
lame-duck congressional session. She waged a full-throated campaign that
nearly killed a spending bill, negotiated by Reid, that included a
provision that would weaken restrictions on risky trades by big banks.

Warren raises money on a level that few people who are not named Clinton or
Obama can match. More than 350,000 donors gave a stunning $42 million to
her 2012 Senate race, half of them in amounts of $25 or less.

She was one of the most sought-after Democrats in last year’s election
season, raising more than $6 million for the party and its candidates, and
campaigning in 16 states that included such bastions of conservatism as
West Virginia and Kentucky. And Warren has already weighed in for
California Attorney General Kamala Harris to replace retiring Sen. Barbara
Boxer in 2016.

Warren can maintain her intensity in part because her scope is relatively
narrow — focusing on financial regulation and issues such as Social
Security and student loans that have a direct effect on middle-class family
budgets. While she hews to her party’s line on most questions, she leaves
it to others to take the lead on fights over abortion or foreign policy or
climate change.

And though she is the darling of the liberals — with the organizations
MoveOn.org and Democracy for America counting 244,000 signatures in their
online petition drive to draft her to run for president — many of Warren’s
stances do not easily lend themselves to partisan and ideological labels.

In her December battle against the loosening of restrictions on derivatives
trading, for instance, she found herself on the same side as Sen. David
Vitter (R-La.) and David Stockman, who was Ronald Reagan’s budget director.

“I just hate this typecasting of her as this sort of far-left Massachusetts
liberal. She was basically making a conservative, market-oriented
argument,” former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairwoman Sheila
Bair said. Bair, a Republican, added that Warren is “the only Democrat I
ever supported or campaigned for in a general election.”

Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), widely regarded as the Senate’s most
conservative Democrat, sat next to Warren for two years on the Senate
Banking Committee and said: “There’s a lot of things we have in common
about the fairness and equity of the system.” He, too, opposed the rollback
of the derivatives trading restriction and Weiss’s nomination.

Warren’s main legislative cause these days is holding the line against
efforts to weaken the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act, which established a new federal agency, the Consumer
Protection Financial Bureau, that she proposed and championed.

With Democrats now in the minority in Congress, there is not much she can
do to stop what former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), an author of
the law, described as the “somewhat unexpected ferocity of the Republican
attack on the reform bill.” But Warren can make it far more difficult for
members of her own party to go along.

“You ask me what I learned since I’ve been here?” she said. “One of the
biggest things I’ve learned is that to be effective, you have to attack a
problem from every angle. That can be through introducing legislation,
bringing up an issue at a hearing, writing letters, every possible way to
push on the issues that you care about. To draw people’s attention to them.
To say, ‘This matters.’

“There are many different ways to get things done in Washington,” she added.

Warren sounded like someone who is not running for president — but who is
determined to leave her mark on anyone who is.

*New York Times: “Republicans Like Their 2016 Options, Assuming They Avoid
Chaos”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/us/politics/republicans-like-their-2016-options-assuming-they-avoid-chaos.html>*

By Jonathan Martin

January 17, 2015

CORONADO, Calif. — At the end of the last Democratic presidential
administration, Republicans hungry to recapture the White House rallied
behind an all-but-anointed candidate to take on Bill Clinton’s heir
apparent of that era.

“We settled on George Bush way before the campaign,” said Rob Gleason, the
longtime Pennsylvania Republican chairman. With a word more pungent than
“slop,” Mr. Gleason recalled, “Everybody was happy: He flew us all down to
Austin, and we were like pigs in slop.”

The bulwark provided by such establishment backing enabled Mr. Bush to
withstand the insurgent campaign of Senator John McCain, and win the
nomination.

That era of Republican coronations appears to be over.

If it was not apparent by the sheer number of prospective Republican
candidates — currently enough to field a football team, on both sides of
the ball — it was underlined by Mitt Romney’s sudden declaration of
interest in another campaign and the subsequent reaction: Get in line.

As the Republican National Committee gathered in this seaside enclave for
its winter meeting, party officials attempted to strike a balance between
accommodating their vocal conservative wing, which is in no mood for a
coronation, and pragmatic Republicans consumed chiefly with finding the
most viable candidate for a general election.

So the leaders happily extolled the Noah’s Ark quality of their
presidential options, comparing their sprawling field favorably with the
Democrats’ flavor of one, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At the same time, they agreed to limit the number of primary debates to
nine sanctioned forums and moved forward with calendar rules aimed at
terminating the contest by the end of March — steps designed to ensure a
short, orderly process.

“On one hand it’s exciting, and on the other hand it brings great risk,”
Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, said of the
approaching campaign’s uncertain nature. “It means that there’s even a
greater responsibility on the national party to contain a process that
could get out of control.”

The meeting featured four potential candidates as well as aides to twice as
many prospects visiting with the state committee heads and members. But
many of the activists were in no rush to make commitments, and even some of
the operatives who, by their nature, want to find a winning pick seemed
inclined to stay on the sidelines.

Mr. Romney’s signal that he may run has roiled the race, but the waters
were hardly placid before he stepped forward.

Unlike many Republican nominating contests, this campaign is beginning with
no dominant front-runner. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida appeals to some
establishment-aligned Republicans, particularly donors, but party
hard-liners are resistant. Center-right Republicans are skeptical that
another Bush can be elected president, and want to see how rank-and-file
primary voters receive him. And with Mr. Romney now considering a third
bid, some of the movement toward Mr. Bush will taper off, at least
momentarily.

“Romney putting his foot in the door slows down that process,” said Ryan
Call, the Colorado Republican chairman. “It creates an opening and
opportunity for other candidates to get some oxygen.”

One of those hopefuls is Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who used a speech
here to call for Republicans to embrace “a new, fresh approach.” The
remarks were explicitly aimed at Mrs. Clinton, but there was little doubt
that Mr. Walker also was trying to set himself apart from Mr. Bush and Mr.
Romney.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has also begun making the case privately
to Republican leaders that nominating Mr. Bush or Mr. Romney would rob the
party of a chance to portray Mrs. Clinton as a relic, according to one
party official who recently met with Mr. Christie.

In addition to the establishment-oriented Republicans, even more hopefuls
are vying for the support of ideologically driven activists. As with the
center-right group, there are both familiar and fresher faces. Gov. Rick
Perry of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former
Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas all have experience running for president
and are lining up again. Then there are such newer prospects as Senator
Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana and the neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

“There is an ongoing discussion about whether we look forward or whether we
look back as a party,” Mr. Call said. “Do you look to the past, candidates
who have run before that are battle tested, that have a strong
infrastructure? Or do we as a party try to find a new standard-bearer that
can embody the future?”

Whichever direction the party takes, choosing a nominee may be messier than
the Republican National Committee would like.

The committee has encouraged a front-loading of the primary calendar by
allowing states beyond the traditional four that kick off the contest —
Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — to begin holding
winner-take-all primaries on March 15. With the early states staggered
throughout February, The idea is to “have about a 60-day primary,” as Mr.
Priebus put it.

But conversations here raised the possibility that the new calendar could
actually prolong the contest. That is because some Southern states,
including delegate-rich Texas, are weighing holding their primaries on
March 1. If there is no clear establishment leader after the initial four
contests in February, then a Super Tuesday at the beginning of March in
Southern states could scatter delegates among a number of conservative
candidates.

“This may be the first time there really is a chance since ’76 where you
don’t know the outcome before you go into the convention,” said Steve
Munisteri, the Texas party chairman, referring to the clash between Gerald
Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Priebus dismisses that possibility. For now, he and his fellow
Republicans are trying to put the best face on what he called “drama,
intrigue and excitement,” but what could look more like chaos.

“We’re not going to shut down people,” said Mr. Gleason, the Pennsylvania
chairman, adding, “We might have 20 people at the first debate.”

Envisioning such a prospect, Mr. Gleason recalibrated. “We don’t want 20,”
he said. “We’d have to stretch it out to four hours or something.”

*ABC News: Polls: “Huckabee vs. Clinton: Reconsider the Day Job?”
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2015/01/huckabee-vs-clinton-reconsider-the-day-job/>*

By Gary Langer

January 18, 2015, 8:58 a.m. EST

It’s almost enough to reconsider quitting the day job: Mike Huckabee’s got
a steep hill to climb should he face off against Hillary Clinton for the
presidency in 2016.

Tested in a head-to-head matchup among registered voters, Huckabee gets 39
percent support in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, vs. 56 percent for
Clinton, a wide 17-point gap in presidential preference. It’s their first
test in an ABC/Post poll in this cycle, and much better for Clinton than a
hypothetical matchup in late 2007, when she and Huckabee ran essentially
evenly among registered voters, 48-45 percent.

Huckabee, a guest today on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos,
resigned his Fox News job earlier this month and said he’s exploring
another run for the Republican presidential nomination. He’s on a book tour
the next few weeks, including three stops in Iowa, where the voting starts
in a year.

Additional candidate matchups and attitudes about the 2016 contest will be
covered later this week in a subsequent analysis of the latest ABC/Post
poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.

In one striking difference in their support profiles, Clinton’s backed by
92 percent of Democrats who are registered to vote (6 percent cross over to
Huckabee), while Huckabee’s backed by fewer Republicans (79 percent, with
14 percent going to Clinton and 7 percent simply taking a pass.) Further,
Clinton leads Huckabee among independents, potentially a swing voting
group, by 52-41 percent.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, holds a broad 68-27
percent lead over Clinton among evangelical white Protestants, a core
Republican group and one in which he did especially well in his 2008
campaign for the GOP nomination. However, that flips to a 55-39 percent
race, Clinton-Huckabee, among non-evangelical white Protestants. And,
typical for a Democrat, Clinton has a vast lead among nonwhites, 81-15
percent – an ongoing challenge for the GOP as nonwhites grow as a
proportion of the electorate.

Clinton leads Huckabee among women by 24 points, and does particularly well
among younger adults, with a 65-32 percent advantage among registered
voters who are under 40. Unusually for a Democrat, Clinton is competitive
with Huckabee even in rural areas, customarily a GOP stronghold, as well as
the suburbs, while she’s trouncing him in urban areas, 66-29 percent.

Ideology is another strong differentiator. Huckabee leads Clinton by 73-22
percent among Americans who identify themselves as “very” conservative, and
by a much closer 16 points among somewhat conservatives. Clinton, though,
comes back with a 62-33 percent result among moderates and 81-15 percent
among liberals, who together account for 60 percent of all registered
voters.

Clinton’s lead today, of course, is no assurance of what may happen in
2016. There are hats to drop, campaigns to pursue, nominations to win – and
many months ahead for voters to come to their final judgments.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone
Jan. 12-15, 2015, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of
1,003 adults, including 843 registered voters, including landline and
cell-phone-only respondents. Results have margins of sampling error of 3.5
and 4 points for the general population and registered voters,
respectively, including design effect. Partisan divisions are 30-24-37
percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents, among the general population,
and 33-26-33 percent among registered voters.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New
York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of
New York, N.Y.

*Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Clinton honored by the King Center during
MLK celebration”
<http://www.ajc.com/news/news/clinton-to-be-honored-by-the-king-center-during-ml/njqnT/>*

By Katie Leslie

January 17, 2015, 9:38 p.m. EST

Accepting an award from The King Center on Saturday, former President Bill
Clinton spoke of a modern “beloved community” — King’s vision for a world
achieved through peaceful nonviolence — to inspire youth and curb global
acts of terror.

Referencing recent attacks, Clinton spoke of the dangers in a “shame-based”
cultures, saying “they are a curse on the young.”

“The young need to believe, and they need to believe somebody’s got their
back and wants them to live up to their God-given capacity,” he said. “We
must stop raising them in shame and raise them in pride.”

The King Center is honoring Clinton during its Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
observance this weekend.

On Saturday he received the center’s highest honor, the Salute to Greatness
Award, for his work with The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global
Initiative. Hillary Clinton, widely seen as the likely Democratic nominee
for the 2016 presidential election, did not attend the awards dinner at the
Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta.

The Salute to Greatness Awards dinner is one of several key events during a
10-day celebration of King’s life. On Monday, the King Center will host its
commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church to celebrate his legacy,
and that of his late wife, Coretta Scott King.

Speaking to a sold-out crowd, Clinton referenced sequencing the human
genome as a key achievement of his second term at the White House, noting
to the diverse audience that barring age-related differences, humans are
genetically “99.5 percent the same.”

“It’s a fool’s error not to spend more of our lives times focusing on those
things we have in common,” he said. “That is the only way to create a
beloved community and turn our differences into advantage, and that is what
this is about.”

Kaiser Permanente, led by CEO Bernard Tyson, was also recognized by The
King Center for its work promoting diversity in the workplace and
philanthropic efforts. King’s sister, Dr. Christine King Farris, received a
“legacy of service” award for her work in helping establish The King
Center. The awards program also honored hotelier Harris Rosen for his
educational community service initiative, Tangelo Park Program, in Orlando;
and local teen Aidan Hornaday, who raises money for charity through music.

Introducing Reed to the packed house, Moore joked: “Don’t mess with him on
Twitter.”

Blitzer later added: “Those of us who follow you…are fully aware of your
excellent capabilities on social media.”

Reed, who took the jokes in stride, told the crowd that King’s legacy has
been vital in building Atlanta as the “economic and cultural hub of the
Southeast.”

The mayor said King’s legacy is felt worldwide, adding that during his
November trip to Rome to celebrate the Summit of Nobel Peace Prize
Laureates, he was “struck by how many Nobel laureates cited Martin Luther
King Jr. as the reason for their work.”

*Washington Free Beacon: “Mark Halperin: Clinton Insiders Worried About
Hillary ‘Laying Low’ Without a Message”
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/mark-halperin-clinton-insiders-worried-about-hillary-laying-low-without-a-message/>*

[No Writer Mentioned]

January 18, 2015, 12:05 p.m. EST

Clinton insiders are concerned about Hillary Clinton “laying low” with a
lack of message as prospective Republican candidates make aggressive moves.

Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin said people close to the Hillary Clinton have
told him of their concern that she still doesn’t have a message to run on.

There is also a growing concern among those within the party that the
Republican field is generating more intrigue than their own field or lack
thereof. While numerous major contenders signal they are going to enter the
race on the right, almost no serious candidate has stepped up to challenge
Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination.

Elizabeth Warren’s name has been tossed around as a champion of the far
left who could generate more energy and enthusiasm out of the liberal base.
Warren, however, has said repeatedly that she is not running. Her ruling
out of a run has Democrats searching fervently for an alternative to the 67
year old former Secretary of State.

“The Democrats have to hope serious people jump in the race and run against
Hillary Clinton because right now there is so much energy on the Republican
side, people feel great about the field and it was told to me there is
drama and intrigue that is good that gets people to pay attention to us,”
CBS’s Nancy Cordes added. “When John McCain sealed up the nomination, early
in 2008, that was bad for him and he kind of sat around and wasn’t the
story for months while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama duked it out and
that really hurt him.”

With their likely nominee still struggling to find a reason to run for
office, Democrats find themselves without a message heading into the 2016
cycle.

*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 4 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to fundraise for the Clinton
Foundation (WSJ
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/15/carole-king-hillary-clinton-live-top-tickets-100000/>
)

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