Subject: ​Correct The Record Monday February 23, 2015 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 08:29:34 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Monday February 23, 2015 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Concord Monitor opinion: Paul W. Hodes and Peter V. Emerson: “My Turn: Who
else but Hillary can manage world’s problems?”
<http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/15722816-95/my-turn-who-else-but-hillary-can-manage-worlds-problems>*

“Although we promised not to join the chorus of those asking Secretary
Clinton to run for president, we have taken a sober look at the world’s
condition, the prognosis for the future and America’s position in the
world, and Hillary Clinton is the only one who can manage the problems that
others see as unmanageable.”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Hillary Clinton and the #askhermore Oscar
campaign”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/22/hillary-clinton-and-the-askhermore-oscar-campaign/>*

“‘Ready for Hillary’, a super PAC urging the former Secretary of State to
run for president, tweeted the hashtag #askhermore Sunday night before the
Oscars. It's part of a campaign supported by actresses like Reese
Witherspoon and Lena Dunham for reporters to ask more than ‘who are you
wearing?’ on the red carpet.”

*The Daily Beast: “Sorry, But Clinton’s Inevitably Is Not a Problem”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/23/sorry-but-clinton-s-inevitably-is-not-a-problem.html>*

[Subtitle:] “And how exactly is it a bad thing for her or Democrats that
Hillary Clinton has the nomination all but sewn up? News flash: It’s not.”

*New York Times: “Economic Recovery Under Obama Creates Quandaries for 2016
Race”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/us/politics/economic-recovery-under-obama-creates-quandaries-for-2016-race.html?_r=0>*

“As both parties begin positioning themselves for the election to succeed
Mr. Obama, the politics of the economy are far more complicated than the
president would have them. Among Democrats, there are divisions over the
degree to which Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered their leading contender,
should praise the recovery and run on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the
economy.”

*Politico: “National security still a perception problem for Democrats”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/national-security-democrats-115374.html>*

“Now, more so than at any other time in the past 12 years, voters trust
Republicans more than Democrats to protect them from terrorism. A new
report by Ben Freeman and Michelle Diggles from Third Way, a center-left
think tank, claimed to have identified the Democrats’ antidote: Hillary
Clinton.”

*Wall Street Journal: “Biden’s Trips Fan 2016 Race Speculation”
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-stays-relevant-for-presidential-run-1424638769>*

“When Vice President Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina last week to
speak about investing in infrastructure, some longtime supporters had
another topic on their minds: 2016.”

*Articles:*

*Concord Monitor opinion: Paul W. Hodes and Peter V. Emerson: “My Turn: Who
else but Hillary can manage world’s problems?”
<http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/15722816-95/my-turn-who-else-but-hillary-can-manage-worlds-problems>*

By Paul W. Hodes and Peter V. Emerson

February 22, 2015

We see ads frequently reminding us that friends do not let friends drive
drunk. And we are also devoted to the idea that friends should not ask
friends to run for president.

We are referring to all the drums beating, tongues wagging and lips
pronouncing, “Run, Hillary, run.”

We are not friends with Secretary Clinton, but we have great admiration and
respect for her career of public service. She carries with her a list of
accomplishments to which few can lay claim. She is respected and lauded
around the world. Her ideas have tremendous power and influence because of
her unparalleled experience.

So why would anyone wish on her one of the dirtiest, most degrading and
exhausting processes ever conceived of? Already the lies, distortions and
vicious personal attacks have begun. In fact, they never stopped; they just
don’t make it to the front pages of the papers or newscasts or postings
every day. But they are out there, whispered and repeated myriad times
every day and echoed by Fox News and other proponents of anything but the
news or facts.

The world is becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and
therefore often far more threatening and dangerous to America and to
American citizens at home and abroad. Looking but a few years down the
road; there will be less food, less potable water and fewer basic human
necessities for most of the world’s exponentially expanding population.
Consequently, there will be more violence, civil strive and war.

Unfortunately, many Americans are geographically and geopolitically
challenged. Many still believe that America dominates the world and that we
are neither dependent upon the international community nor subject to
events occurring outside our borders. In short, many still hold opinions
based on a world order long ago dismantled.

We are now interconnected and interdependent upon every region of the
world. Thus international stability and our continued prosperity are under
attack in our shrinking world:

∎ The continued advance of the Islamic State has already further
destabilized an already precarious order in the unstable Middle East

∎ The escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate with almost daily
outbreaks of killings and retaliation.

∎ Iran’s continued nuclear program

∎ The slowing of the Chinese economy and the potential head-on conflict
over the Diaoyu Islands in China and the Senkaku islands in Japan.

∎ The postponement of the election in Africa’s largest democracy, Nigeria,
a success for Boko Haram

∎ Greece’s possible default on its debt and the impact on the European Union

∎ North Korea’s continued militaristic posture and nuclear capabilities

∎ Declining crop production in critical areas around the world

And the list goes on and on and on.

So what do these events mean to a waitress in New Hampshire, a farmer in
Iowa, a rancher in Montana, an avocado grower in California, a high-tech
entrepreneur in Massachusetts, a fisherman in Maine, a single mother in
Harlem, a pensioner in Phoenix, a widower in Washington, our neighbors,
family and friends?

It means that events in other countries, often far away, spill into and
through our borders. Americans are part of a new global order – or too
frequently global disorder – that challenges our traditional notions of
American exceptionalism and leadership.

International crises that emerge anew each day directly affect the prices
of our food, gas, health care, etc. – our domestic tranquility and our
national security. All these events affect the bottom-line of all American
households.

So when we cut through the clutter of lies and gross distortions of the
facts – all meant to create fear – to weigh and examine who’s capable of
making a dent in these seemingly intractable problems and challenges, there
is only one person who is capable of managing them. Please note that we did
not say solve these intractable problems because that would be impossible.
But managing problems and challenges, that’s possible.

Although we promised not to join the chorus of those asking Secretary
Clinton to run for president, we have taken a sober look at the world’s
condition, the prognosis for the future and America’s position in the
world, and Hillary Clinton is the only one who can manage the problems that
others see as unmanageable.

But given our pledge, we are reluctant to ask her to run for president, so
we urge her to look around the world and within this extraordinary country
of ours and ask herself, “Who else can accomplish what I can accomplish?”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Hillary Clinton and the #askhermore Oscar
campaign”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/22/hillary-clinton-and-the-askhermore-oscar-campaign/>*

By Hunter Schwarz

February 22, 2015, 8:56 p.m. EST

"Ready for Hillary", a super PAC urging the former Secretary of State to
run for president, tweeted the hashtag #askhermore Sunday night before the
Oscars. It's part of a campaign supported by actresses like Reese
Witherspoon and Lena Dunham for reporters to ask more than "who are you
wearing?" on the red carpet.

The campaign comes on the heels of a re-energized conversation about sexism
in Hollywood following revelations from last year's Sony Pictures hack that
female actresses were in many instances paid less than their male
counterparts.

On E!, Ryan Seacrest seemed to have gotten the message, asking the
"who-are-you-wearing" question throughout the night without actually using
those exact words in that exact order, and promptly following it up with a
similar question for the man. ("Who designed your dress?" he asked Chrissy
Teigen before asking her husband, John Legend, what he was wearing). E!
also got rid of the mani-cam.

While asking actresses questions about things other than fashion is
something we should do a lot more of (why wouldn't you ask everyone on the
Golden Globes red carpet last month what they thought about the Sony hack
that happened just weeks before?!?), it's not just a question that's
completely based in sexism; it's a big part of the fashion industry.

"You might say that awards season is as important, if not even more
important, to fashion brands as it is to the entertainment companies that
are honored in these ceremonies like the Oscars," Howard Hogan, an attorney
and partner in the Washington, D.C.,-based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "A favorable review for an Oscar gown can
be make or break for the designers who outfit them."

Red carpet fashion can involve contracts and money changing hands. Los
Angeles Times reporter Booth Moore tweeted that if we really want to get
rid of "who are you wearing," we need to get rid of fashion brands paying
actresses to wear their clothes. Without that, the question might not go
away. During the 2010 Oscars, Ryan Seacrest abstained from asking about
fashion and was criticized by some in the fashion press, and now five years
later, and he's back to asking those question again.

But in politics, where politicians don't have to sign contracts about what
wear, this campaign is still good news for female candidates. It shows
there's a growing interest in ensuring reporters, whether on the red carpet
or in Iowa, treat men and women equally.

*The Daily Beast: “Sorry, But Clinton’s Inevitably Is Not a Problem”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/23/sorry-but-clinton-s-inevitably-is-not-a-problem.html>*

By Ana Marie Cox

February 23, 2015

[Subtitle:] And how exactly is it a bad thing for her or Democrats that
Hillary Clinton has the nomination all but sewn up? News flash: It’s not.

Pundits can't stop snatching Hillary's defeat from the jaws of victory,
insisting that her commanding lead in the polls is itself a problem. A Vox
piece this week is typical: “Hillary Clinton's uncontested nomination is
dangerous for her and her party,” but I’d like to give points to Politico
for finding a slightly different angle, “All-too-ready for Hillary,” which
argues that Clinton’s real problem is all the really talented people who
want to work for her. Clinton may not win, but blaming a loss on her
popularity (or overly talented staff!) exposes the weak, desperate illogic
of a pundit class that is mostly just filling time and news cycle holes
until anything real happens.

An “air of inevitability” should be a good thing, right? It’s in the
superhero toolbox, right next to the cloak of invisibility and hammer of
invincibility. So why do journalists treat it like kryptonite?

On some level, it may be due to amorphous ill will towards Clinton herself,
whether motivated by generic sexism or a more specific dislike of her
notoriously prickly staff. (The "which came first" between a prickly staff
and the negative coverage is a chicken-and-egg-meets-Heisenberg Principle
problem whose solution deserves a Nobel in both science and peace for the
person who solves it.)

"Of course she's going to win the primary, and that’s great for her!" is
also the coldest take one could imagine, the kind of "another plane landed
today" non-news that political reporters believe in their bones to be
inherently uninteresting—as if the point of news was to be interesting,
rather than factually correct.

The only kind of accuracy political pundits care about has to do with
predictions. The continuing spate of concern-trolling on Hillary’s behalf
might just be padding out a soft landing should anything not work out
exactly like most polls and political scientists predict.

Airy counter-intuitive clickbait is also a lot easier than reporting
anything, and almost impossible to call out as untrue, especially when it
comes embedded with iceberg-sized caveats such as this (from the Vox piece):

At the end of the day, presidential  campaign gaffes rarely seem to matter
much. But they surely don't help. And one reason they don't matter is that
nobody makes it through the nominating process without showing they can
take the heat. In 2016, Clinton isn't going to have to show that. And it
might cost her—and her party—dearly down the road.

There is something to be said for working the kinks out of a campaign, as
differentiated from a punishing series of preliminary contests. Still,
politics can't be rigged like a non-conference schedule, a perfect balance
of real competition and record-padding that gets you both ready and
well-seeded for the big dance. Indeed, sports may be the one place that
Americans truly prefer underdogs, but even then, NJIT jerseys do not sell
as well as University of Kentucky ones.

Clinton’s connection to purportedly unpopular Obama policies is also a real
concern, though one that requires those making the argument to straight-up
ignore data that say people will vote for Clinton in favor of squishier
"how do you feel" answers—as though that means more than the question that
is, you know, the one on the ballot. The story “Why Hillary Clinton isn’t
even close to a shoo-in, explained in one poll question,” is, for some
reason, not about the one poll question that shows her to be a shoo-in.

A variant of the “too popular to win” theory is the hypothesis that Clinton
is only popular because of her familiar name, but having a familiar name is
actually a bad thing. The argument that HRC (and/or Jeb Bush) represents a
dynastic tendency that voters may rebel against is at least real argument,
as opposed to the logical contortion of "inevitable=not inevitable.” The
proof that “Americans hate dynasties” is a real argument is that is a
testable hypothesis! Testable and proven wrong, by the polls that show
Hillary to be so popular. In general, if there's a political dynasty that
America doesn't love, well, we haven't heard of it, and there are plenty of
political dynasties in America.

Though some may point toward anti-Hillary coverage as proof that the media
are not biased to the left, I consider this tendency toward deliberate,
counter-factual undermining as pretty good evidence of that very bias,
mostly because you just don't see this pathology on the right. Base voters
on either side rattle their cages when the presumptive nominee doesn't fit
their specific ideological prescription, but the Karl Roves of the world
don't lay into a GOP hopeful just because he’s (or she, but come on…)
clearly going to win.

Poll numbers are not subject to the insecurity and attention-seeking that
reporters are, and they tell a much less sexy, “Hillary leads the polls and
you won’t believe what happens next”-type story. What reporters insist on
calling "inevitability" is a quantifiably unprecedented amount of support.
According to the pollsters at The New York Times, “No candidate, excluding
incumbent presidents, has ever fared so well in the early primary polls as
Mrs. Clinton. She holds about 60 percent of the vote of Democratic voters,
a tally dwarfing the 40 percent she held this time in the last election
cycle.”

I’ll say it: Barring her own Titanic/iceberg moment, Hillary will win the
nomination, and she will be in excellent position to win the general.
Perhaps the only thing that can keep her from being in such an enviable
position is the steady drip of negative coverage that proclaims otherwise.

*New York Times: “Economic Recovery Under Obama Creates Quandaries for 2016
Race”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/us/politics/economic-recovery-under-obama-creates-quandaries-for-2016-race.html?_r=0>*

By Jonathan Martin

February 22, 2015

WASHINGTON — When President Obama addressed members of the Democratic
National Committee here over the weekend, he offered a glowing account of
the economic recovery under his administration.

“America is coming back,” he said after rattling off an array of upbeat
economic indicators. “We’ve risen from recession.”

But as both parties begin positioning themselves for the election to
succeed Mr. Obama, the politics of the economy are far more complicated
than the president would have them. Among Democrats, there are divisions
over the degree to which Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered their leading
contender, should praise the recovery and run on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of
the economy. And Republicans — assessing falling unemployment and soaring
job creation under a president with still-mediocre approval ratings — are
grasping for the right way to frame their 2016 campaign message.

The coming debate over the economy, and by extension Mr. Obama’s legacy, is
a particularly acute topic for governors, who are often judged by voters on
their states’ economic performance and who spend much of their time on job
creation. As the governors gathered here for their annual winter meeting,
there was bipartisan optimism about the economy, but it was guarded.

“In many parts of the country, we are seeing increasing momentum in terms
of recovery, but in almost every state, and certainly in parts of Colorado,
we are still struggling to get the unemployment down,” Gov. John W.
Hickenlooper of Colorado said, “and most importantly the wages still
haven’t started rising.”

Colorado’s unemployment rate was down to 4 percent in December, below the
national average, which was 5.7 percent in January, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. But Mr. Hickenlooper’s sober analysis suggests an
awareness that voters are not yet enjoying a boon and certainly are not yet
fully crediting Mr. Obama for the recovery.

Indeed, a Quinnipiac University poll in Colorado, a crucial swing state,
released last week indicated that 58 percent of voters said they wanted the
next president to “change direction from Barack Obama’s policies,” and the
president’s job approval rating was only 43 percent. Perhaps mindful of
such data, Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, indicated that Mrs. Clinton could
not run simply on the recent good economic news.

“I am not saying who the candidate is going to be, but I don’t think she
will come with, ‘Everything is fine, everything is going well,’ ” he said.
“I suspect that she will come forward with some new ideas and some
innovative ideas on how we can begin to move wages up and how we can help
businesses expand more rapidly and create more jobs.”

Yet in another important state on the presidential map, the Democratic
governor said Mrs. Clinton should not be shy about linking herself to Mr.
Obama’s record.

“She should embrace the Obama economic policies that have moved the country
forward, absolutely,” said the governor, Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a
close friend of both Mrs. Clinton’s and former President Bill Clinton’s.
“Go through the numbers, look where we are today. Things are booming.”

But Mr. McAuliffe was quick to add that Mr. Obama could make it easier for
Mrs. Clinton to offer that embrace if his administration was more effective
in trumpeting the recovery.

“I think they need to do a much better job of explaining their successes,”
said Mr. McAuliffe, who was the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s 2008
presidential campaign. “I don’t get it.”

What most of the governors, in both parties, agreed on was that
longstanding wage stagnation was diminishing the political impact of the
recovery.

“We still have a wage problem. We are still creating too many low-wage, not
family-supporting, jobs,” said Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a
Democrat who was elected last year in a state that was among the hardest
hit by the recession.

Ms. Raimondo, whose state has a 6.8 percent unemployment rate, added: “So
there is a lot of work to do. She has a wage problem that she has to fix.”

The country’s structural economic challenges — whether wages, diminished
manufacturing or other challenges associated with globalization — are such
that Mrs. Clinton must come up with her own agenda, Gov. Jack Markell of
Delaware, another Democrat, said.

“I think it would be a mistake for somebody to be running on ‘It’s great
guns; we just have to keep doing what we’re doing,’ ” Mr. Markell said. “It
ought to be, ‘In a changing world, here are the things we need to do
differently.’ ”

Early signs suggest that Mrs. Clinton intends to offer proposals that would
move beyond Mr. Obama’s ideas — notably a plan to offer incentives to
corporations that increase profit-sharing with employees.

If Democrats are grappling with how best to hail the resurgent economy
while acknowledging its underlying difficulties, Republicans are engaged in
a conversation over whether they should remain critical of the recovery,
claim a share of credit for it or move on to different issues.

Many of the Republican governors from states where economic improvement has
been significant on their watch are uneasy about their nominee’s continuing
to bad-mouth the economy. Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa, where
unemployment is down to 4.1 percent, said Republican presidential
candidates should point to job growth in Republican-led states.

“Take some credit for what Republican governors have done, because the
recipe to revitalize the national economy is to do the same thing,” Mr.
Branstad said

He also suggested that Republicans ought to focus on national security, an
issue on which Mr. Obama may prove to be more vulnerable than the economy.

*Politico: “National security still a perception problem for Democrats”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/national-security-democrats-115374.html>*

By Adam B. Lerner

February 23, 2015, 5:35 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Report: Voters trust Republicans more to protect them from
terrorism.

Now, more so than at any other time in the past 12 years, voters trust
Republicans more than Democrats to protect them from terrorism. A new
report by Ben Freeman and Michelle Diggles from Third Way, a center-left
think tank, claimed to have identified the Democrats’ antidote: Hillary
Clinton.

Focus groups conducted in October and November 2014 with white
college-educated swing voters in Colorado and Iowa indicated that Clinton
was an exception to the Democrats’ otherwise lackluster performance, the
researchers found. Respondents said she “exhibits strength without being
pushy” and is “quicker to make decisions” than President Barack Obama
without being too proactive like former President George W. Bush.

In Gallup polls dating back to 2003, Republicans have consistently led
Democrats on national security — except for an approximately 18-month
period from 2007 to mid-2008. Republicans now have a 23-percentage-point
lead, after hovering in the teens and single digits through the rest of the
period.

It remains unclear whether Clinton’s personal favorability on national
security will last into a national campaign, the researchers found;
respondents praised the current Democratic front-runner in vague terms but
their skepticism of her party and the president for whom she worked as
secretary of state could sully her brand as she takes more public stances.

Third Way Senior Vice President Matt Bennett said he believes Clinton’s
appeal could work in the other direction. “An ancillary benefit [of a
Clinton candidacy] will be that it will help close the security gap for the
party” at large, he said.

The report stated that voters often intertwine immigration with foreign
policy, meaning the issue could have particular resonance in 2016 if
Obama’s executive action to grant undocumented immigrants legal status and
the rise of extremist groups in the Middle East are still key topics of
debate.

Bennett believes that a Clinton campaign will need to “lean in” on national
security to maximize her advantage.

The report’s analysis also made an argument that national security is a
more important electoral issue than originally believed.

During the 2014 midterms, even though only 13 percent of voters said
foreign policy was the most important issue facing the country, the large
gap between the parties on the issue made it far more decisive than an
issue like the economy. Third Way’s analysis found that Democrats’
advantage with regards to the economy earned them only 2.6 percent in the
polls, while national security and immigration both lost the party 5
percent.

Further, the authors found a strong correlation between voters’ opinion of
parties’ handling of national security and their overall opinions of the
parties, though shifts in the former weren’t typically followed in the
latter for about a year.

That analysis implies that the fact that Republicans currently lead
Democrats on national security by the largest margin in more than a decade
means the Democratic Party’s overall favorability relative to the
Republican Party is set to tank.

As for Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievements, Third Way
found that voters couldn’t care less.

“The benefit of the bin Laden raid is gone entirely,” said Bennett.

In one focus group the researchers convened, a Colorado woman tried to
identify his killing as a major Obama foreign policy success. “That guy,
they made a movie about him. You know the skinny guy with the beard.” None
of the other eight or so respondents knew his name either, the report noted.

*Wall Street Journal: “Biden’s Trips Fan 2016 Race Speculation”
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-stays-relevant-for-presidential-run-1424638769>*

By Colleen McCain Nelson

February 22, 2015, 3:59 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Vice President keeps supporters guessing on whether he will
challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016

When Vice President Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina last week to speak
about investing in infrastructure, some longtime supporters had another
topic on their minds: 2016.

“You need to run,” Dick Harpootlian, former Democratic Party chairman in
South Carolina, told the vice president during a stop in Columbia.

Mr. Biden gave his friend a smile and a coy answer. “We’ll talk,” Mr.
Harpootlian recounted the vice president saying.

Mr. Biden has taken no overt steps toward building a national campaign
machinery, and few people expect him to run. Nonetheless, Mr. Biden in
recent weeks has fanned the will-he-or-won’t-he conversation by suggesting
that he’s still considering a bid and by scheduling trips to three states
that hold the earliest presidential nominating contests.

His recent travels to Iowa and South Carolina—as well as a planned
Wednesday excursion
to New Hampshire—have been official White House business to promote the
administration’s agenda. But inevitably, talk turns to the presidential
campaign in private conversations. Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to mind, fellow
Democrats say, but he remains consistently noncommittal.

In January, Mr. Biden described the presidential race as “wide open” and
said he may wait until summer to make a final decision on his own plans.

Assessing Mr. Biden’s intent, Democratic strategists say the not-in,
not-out strategy suggests that the vice president is keeping his options
open on the off-chance that Hillary Clinton doesn’t run. Polls show that
Mrs. Clinton, who has yet to officially announce her candidacy, holds a
commanding lead over all other potential contenders in her party, and
strategists say it is unlikely that Mr. Biden would challenger her.

Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic consultant, said Mr. Biden would be
embarking on a much more aggressive effort if he were planning to square
off against Mrs. Clinton. “He’s doing things that help him in the event
that everyone is wrong but not expending so much energy on what could be a
futile mission,” he said. “He’s being realistic.”

Mr. Biden’s approach is also aimed at solidifying the Obama administration
legacy, and his role in it, by urging members of his party to “acknowledge
what we have done” rather than distance themselves from it, as many
Democrats did during the 2014 midterm campaigns. His argument may carry
more sway if Mr. Biden is seen as a figure with political relevance and a
future.

The vice president had all but fallen out of the 2016 conversation, but he
inserted himself into the political fray in January by saying he might seek
the Democratic nomination.

During his recent trip to Iowa, Mr. Biden repeated that timeline and stoked
speculation by calling for a continuation of President Barack Obama’s
policies while urging Democrats to run on this White House’s record in 2016.

“Some say that would amount to a third term of the president,” Mr. Biden
said during a speech at Drake University. “I call it sticking with what
works.”

Beyond that public declaration, the vice president said little privately
during his trips to Iowa and South Carolina that suggested he was ready to
run. Democrats in those states, as well as in New Hampshire, say they’ve
seen no evidence of organizing efforts by Biden emissaries, and many
supporters say no one from the vice president’s circle has even hinted that
local officials might want to hold off on committing to other candidates.

In Iowa, Mr. Biden reunited with some local Democrats when he stopped by
Smokey Row Coffee in Des Moines. Abby Finkenauer, a state representative
from Dubuque who volunteered for Mr. Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign,
managed to snag a few minutes with the vice president at the coffee shop to
catch up. But there was no mention of future plans, she said.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton’s emerging campaign is already lining up staff, and
other groups have long been at work gathering donors and building a
supporter network on her behalf. A New Hampshire Democratic strategist said
there are no indications that Mr. Biden is organizing in that state, but
the Ready for Hillary organization has been moving quickly to lock up
commitments from Democrats.

Still, Biden supporters in early primary states say they’re holding out
hope. “He is the perfect successor to this president because he is part of
the team that developed the policies that brought us this far,” Mr.
Harpootlian said. “Joe Biden ought to be the next president of the United
States.”

*Calendar:*

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

·  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 3 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton honored by EMILY’s List (AP
<http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268798/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=SUjRlg8K>)

·  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 10 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton addresses United Nations Women’s
Conference (Bloomberg
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-19/hillary-clinton-to-headline-united-nations-women-s-conference>)

·  March 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to keynote Irish American Hall of
Fame (NYT <https://twitter.com/amychozick/status/562349766731108352>)

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

·  March 23 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton to keynote award ceremony for
the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting (Syracuse
<http://newhouse.syr.edu/news-events/news/former-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-newhouse-school-s>
)