Correct The Record Tuesday November 18, 2014 Afternoon Roundup

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*​**Correct The Record Tuesday November 18, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:* *Tweets:* *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> launched a partnership to improve teacher quality in S. Africa #HRC365 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash> http://map.correctrecord.org/ <http://t.co/enGHrjXSoH>[11/18/14, 11:16 a.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/534741857272487936>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: Use our map to navigate @HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton>’s legacy as Secretary of State: http://map.correctrecord.org <http://t.co/KRlJaepyfh>[11/17/14, 5:55 p.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/534480027245903872>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> traveled to 112 countries & nearly 1M miles in 4 years...and that’s just the start #HRC365 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash>http://map.correctrecord.org/ <http://t.co/baHkJcw9Rt> [11/17/14, 2:11 p.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/534423644081250304>] *Headlines:* *MSNBC: Rachel Maddow Show blog: “Walker latest to talk up Hillary Clinton’s age” <http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-latest-talk-hillary-clintons-age>* “Incidentally, the former Secretary of State is a half-year younger than Mitt Romney. That doesn’t seem to affect occasional chatter about his possible ambitions.” *The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Backers set deadline to convince Warren to run” <http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/224519-backers-set-deadline-to-convince-warren-to-run>* “A group urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president [Ready for Warren] on Tuesday announced a Feb. 16 deadline to get her to jump in.” *Washington Post blog: She The People: “How Elizabeth Warren is already influencing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/18/how-elizabeth-warren-is-already-influencing-the-2016-race/>* “The group is set to launch today ‘Time for Warren,’ an effort that will culminate on President’s Day, with 100,000 letters being delivered to Warren, urging her to run for president in 2016.” *Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “One Democrat with no position on the Keystone XL pipeline: Hillary Clinton” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/18/one-democrat-with-no-position-on-the-keystone-pipeline-hillary-clinton/>* “A former secretary of state and U.S. senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate, Clinton has refused over the past several years to weigh in on the contentious debate.” *The Week: “Why Hillary Clinton will struggle to rebuild the Obama coalition” <http://theweek.com/article/index/272156/why-hillary-clinton-will-struggle-to-rebuild-the-obama-coalition>* “Without Obama at the top of the ticket, even in the reduced-inspiration mode of 2012, that coalition is unlikely to emerge a third time. Whatever other qualities she will bring to a presidential campaign, neither novelty nor outsider populism will be among them.” *ABC News: “Clinton Tourism: Go Along on a 'Billgrimage'” <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-tourism-arkansas-ride-billgrimage/story?id=26996388>* “A classic Billgrimage includes a visit to four cities in Arkansas: Hope, to see Clinton’s birthplace; Hot Springs, were he graduated high school; Fayetteville, where he and Hillary Clinton taught law; and Little Rock, the state’s capital where he was governor and that served as the launch pad for his political career.” *Articles:* *MSNBC: Rachel Maddow Show blog: <http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-latest-talk-hillary-clintons-age>**“Walker latest to talk up Hillary Clinton’s age” <http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-latest-talk-hillary-clintons-age>* By Steve Benen November 18, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EST Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who’s made no secret of his national ambitions, sat down over the weekend with the Fox affiliate in Milwaukee, which asked him about his possible presidential campaign. The Republican governor’s response seemed noteworthy. “To me, I’m not going to run just because of the pundits or anything else like that. The closer you get to something like that the more you realize – and I say this only half-jokingly – that you have to be crazy to want to be president. And anyone who has seen pictures of this president or any of the former presidents can see the before and after. No matter how fit, no matter how young they are, they age pretty rapidly when you look at their hair any everything else involved with it. “Whether it’s two years, six years or 20 years from now – because I think of Hillary Clinton. I could run 20 years from now and still be about the same age as the former Secretary of State is right now.” In context, the question the reporter asked was, “Do you have a sense that this is your moment?” There were no previous references to Clinton or ages; it was just what Walker had on his mind at the time, and he felt inclined to share the thought, no matter how gratuitous it was. The Wisconsin governor’s comments come just a week after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was “none too subtly raising the issue of her age,” too. To be sure, we’re still very much in the oblique phase of the debate, though Walker was more direct than Paul, so I’m not suggesting the left crank the Outrage-O-Meter to 11. Clinton has no doubt heard much more offensive criticism from Republican rivals before. That said, this is an awkward game Republicans are playing. As we discussed last week, there is an inevitability to all of this. Reagan, at age 69, faced questions about his age in 1980, as did John McCain in 2008 at age 72 and Bob Dole in 1996 at age 73. Clinton is 67 now, she’ll be 69 in 2016, and if she runs she’ll have to talk about this. I rather doubt this will be a problem for a possible Clinton campaign, but we’ll find out soon enough. But GOP candidates and their allies have to realize that a preoccupation with this issue won’t do them any favors. Republicans are already struggling with a gender gap; the more they run around needlessly referencing Clinton’s age, the more they risk making matters worse. Incidentally, the former Secretary of State is a half-year younger than Mitt Romney. That doesn’t seem to affect occasional chatter about his possible ambitions. *The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Backers set deadline to convince Warren to run” <http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/224519-backers-set-deadline-to-convince-warren-to-run>* By Peter Sullivan November 18, 2014, 11:36 a.m. EST A group urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president on Tuesday announced a Feb. 16 deadline to get her to jump in. The group, Ready for Warren, has started an online petition, where they are trying to gather 100,000 signatures by the President's Day deadline. According to MSNBC, which first reported the new effort, the group will also seek to flood Warren with hand-written letters calling on her to run. “Warren is well-known enough already that she could jump into the race far later and still win," founder Erica Sagrans will write in an email to supporters, according to MSNBC. "But the fact is that we’ll soon be one year out from the Iowa caucuses, so we can’t afford to wait." Warren has passionate backing on the left, and liberals have encouraged her to run amid concerns that Hillary Clinton is too close to Wall Street. But Warren has repeatedly insisted that she is not running. Warren was invited to address a gathering of the liberal donors of the Democracy Alliance last week, while Clinton was not. The Democracty Alliance said that was not an indication of a preference for president. There were rumblings last week that the Clinton camp is in the early stages of setting up meetings with liberal groups such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America. *Washington Post blog: She The People: “How Elizabeth Warren is already influencing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/18/how-elizabeth-warren-is-already-influencing-the-2016-race/>* By Nia-Malika Henderson November 18, 2014, 11:04 a.m. EST Nobody parses Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren's words about her political future closely than Erica Sagrans, the campaign manager for the "Ready for Warren" draft movement. And Sagrans was paying particularly close attention recently, as Warren assumed a new leadership post in the Senate Democratic caucus -- a move that Sagrans says underscores her emergence as the future of her party. Now Sagrans is planning a stepped up effort, capitalizing on a midterm election that saw Warren in a number of states campaigning for Democrats and expanding her brand to unlikely places like West Virginia. The group is set to launch today "Time for Warren," an effort that will culminate on President's Day, with 100,000 letters being delivered to Warren, urging her to run for president in 2016. They have also hired Kate Albright-Hanna, who ran then Senator Obama’s video team in 2008, We caught up with Sagrans, who is also an Obama alum, about continuing to build momentum around Warren, who has so far said she has no plans to run. Our conversation is below, edited only for grammar. FIX: What was the takeaway from the midterms? Sagrans: The midterms were a clear moment that shows we need leaders that are courageous and inspiring to people and ones that have clear plans and ideas that speak to people's lives and struggles. We need someone to run like that in 2016 to give people a reason to get involved. We need candidates who aren’t trying to play it safe, which is what we see in Warren. There is a question now about where the Democratic party is headed and we want to see it going in Warren’s direction. We should have that debate in the Democratic primary. Her new role shows she is a leader in the Democratic party and whatever her future role is, she will guide the Democratic party. It’s an exciting development that she is getting recognized, but her platform would be bigger if she were to run for president. FIX: Democrats lost big among Southern whites. People in Clinton's circle are arguing that they can expand the map by appealing to Southern whites. What do you make of that argument? Sagrans: We saw in the exit polling that people in general are frustrated and two thirds of people say the system is rigged in favor of the rich. Overall there is frustration that crosses racial lines. Warren's appeal to white voters is that she is speaking to that frustration with the failure to help working families. Her populist streak could bring in voters who may have not been as interested in Democrats more recently. FIX: In Massachusetts, where Warren was at a campaign event for Martha Coakley, Hillary Clinton tried to do her populism thing by saying corporations don't create jobs. Sagrans: That moment showed Warren’s effect already on the Democratic primary. Clinton is embracing her language around corporations and Wall Street. She has pushed the language that Clinton is using. It’s a start. But we want to see more than that. We want to see Clinton and future candidates really embrace Warren’s words and views and passion when it comes to working people taking on Wall Street and helping students with debt, for instance. There are places where they agree, but places where Warren goes further in how she wants to do things. Part of it is also the people we want to see in charge and who they are accountable to. FIX: There's been some speculation that now, just maybe Warren, who has said she won't run, might be using different language signaling that she might just do it. Sagrans: We saw her open the door to running with the People magazine article she did. She said you never know what could happen in response to a question about 2016. She is considering it. She hasn’t made a decision yet. We have this opportunity to convince her to run. We've got retired women in Iowa working on this, a pretty active group in New York, a leader in Connecticut, somebody on the ground in Florida. People who have popped up and asked how they can help all over the map. We are also going to ramp up our focus on the early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada and raise money to hire state coordinators and build stronger local teams in those places. And we are going to focus on an aggressive media[strategy] and doing a lot of video and we will get them to Warren and to the public about why people are calling on her to run. *Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “One Democrat with no position on the Keystone XL pipeline: Hillary Clinton” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/18/one-democrat-with-no-position-on-the-keystone-pipeline-hillary-clinton/>* By Philip Rucker November 18, 2014, 11:31 a.m. EST With Senate Democrats divided over whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a vote Tuesday night, they won't be getting any guidance from the person poised to become their standard-bearer. Hillary Rodham Clinton has no stated opinion on the matter. A former secretary of state and U.S. senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate, Clinton has refused over the past several years to weigh in on the contentious debate. She has said that her connection to the State Department, which has been central to the Obama administration's review of the pipeline, prevents her from taking sides. For Clinton, there is no upside to taking a stance. If she came out in favor of the pipeline, she would anger environmental and climate activists, including super PAC founder Tom Steyer and many other major Democratic donors. If she opposed it, she would be at odds with the business community. Yet as she moves toward a presidential candidacy, Republicans have been trying to draw her into messy congressional debates. With embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) scrambling to round up votes from her Democratic colleagues ahead of Tuesday night's scheduled Senate vote, Republicans are criticizing Clinton for remaining neutral on such a high-profile and contentious issue. “She wrote a book called 'Hard Choices,' but she wouldn't take an opinion on the Keystone Pipeline,” said Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising, a GOP group leading the attack on Clinton. “She may be the only person in America without a position on the Keystone Pipeline at this point.” A Clinton spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During multiple speaking appearances and interviews in Canada earlier this year, Clinton has been asked about the Keystone Pipeline. In June, she told The Globe and Mail: “We have no better relationship. [But] this particular decision is a very difficult one because there are so many factors at play. I can’t really comment at great length because I had responsibility for it and it’s been passed on and it wouldn’t be appropriate, but I hope that Canadians appreciate that the United States government – the Obama administration – is trying to get it right. And getting it right doesn’t mean you will agree or disagree with the decision, but that it will be one based on the best available evidence and all of the complex local, state, federal, interlocking laws and concerns.” As she told an audience in March in Vancouver, “No comment.” *The Week: “Why Hillary Clinton will struggle to rebuild the Obama coalition” <http://theweek.com/article/index/272156/why-hillary-clinton-will-struggle-to-rebuild-the-obama-coalition>* By Edward Morrissey November 18, 2014, 9:52 a.m. EST [Subtitle:] The stars aligned for the Democrats in 2008 and 2012. It may not happen a third time. In the wake of the disastrous midterms for Democrats, analysis of their prospects for the 2016 elections — and especially the outlook for Hillary Clinton — ranged from shrugs to panic. Some argued that the unique turnout models of midterms do not allow for any projections in a presidential cycle, while others talked about an electoral realignment. Neither extreme applies, but the elections show that the Democrats do have a big problem: it will not be easy for Hillary Clinton, should she choose to run, to rebuild the coalition that won two elections for President Obama. First of all, one must take care not to over-apply the midterm results to non-midterm elections. Republicans learned that lesson in 2012, especially when it came to analyzing poll results. Analysts on the right, including myself, made the mistake of thinking that the electorate had changed permanently in 2012, going so far as to "unskew the polls" to apply a turnout model closer to the 2010 results. While the 2012 election turned out millions fewer voters for Barack Obama, the model of those who did vote trended much closer to 2008 than 2010, and the president won re-election over Mitt Romney. Similarly, Democrats and analysts on the left hoped that the 2014 midterm turnout would prove 2010 a fluke. That assumption turned out to be wrong, and the failure produced similar results. Pollsters assumed that Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts would recreate their success from two years earlier. Even Republican pollsters bet incorrectly in that regard, which created poor decisions on resource outlays. The points is that voter predictions have always relied on assumptions about the demographics. The gathering of data was not the issue, but how it got applied. That has been a problem ever since Barack Obama first ran for president. After two terms of George W. Bush, nearly everyone predicted that the nation would turn to the Democrats, especially after the GOP got creamed in the 2006 midterms. The Clintons had kept their political machine in place, waiting for the opportunity to make a return to the White House. With national discontent directed at Republicans and Hillary Clinton winning a second term in the U.S. Senate, the conventional wisdom considered the Democratic primary a coronation rather than a fight. Enter Obama. Largely on the basis of his memoirs and a blockbuster speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama offered a change from the normal political cycles. He got people who normally sat on the sidelines interested in the electoral process. His team proved superior at identifying Democratic primary voters and getting them to the polls. The freshman senator found new donors and new activists to outperform even the Clinton machine, overturning all assumptions about the composition of the electorate as Obama inspired a youth movement. He outfought the Clintons to the end, and wound up trouncing John McCain in the general election. Four years later, Obama hung onto enough of those voters to see "the Obama coalition" triumph one more time. The problem for Hillary Clinton is just that point. Without Obama at the top of the ticket, even in the reduced-inspiration mode of 2012, that coalition is unlikely to emerge a third time. Whatever other qualities she will bring to a presidential campaign, neither novelty nor outsider populism will be among them. The Clintons are a known commodity; by the time the 2016 elections arrive, they will have been part of the Washington, D.C., scene for almost a quarter-century. Furthermore, the national mood has shifted away from Democrats, thanks to Barack Obama. His approval ratings have plummeted, and a new scandal this week with ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber won't restore much luster to the Democratic brand. The shoe is squarely on the other foot for Democrats in 2016. The Clinton team still hasn't recognized the reality of the predicament faced by Hillary and her party. Talking Points Memo interviewed Ready For Hillary activist Mitch Stewart, who claimed that the Clintons could compete for voters who rejected Democrats two weeks ago, especially in states like Arkansas, Indiana, and Missouri. "Where I think Secretary Clinton has more appeal than any other Democrat looking at running," Stewart argued, "is that with white working-class voters, she does have a connection." There are a number of holes in that argument, but let's look at Arkansas first. Both Clintons campaigned hard in Arkansas for incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor, who lost his Senate seat to Tom Cotton by a whopping 17 points. He won only 29 percent of white working-class voters, despite having a well-known family name, the advantages of incumbency, and full-throated support from the former first couple of Arkansas. Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post explains that Stewart's assumptions are based on a voter model that's outdated, plus it ignores the fact that any improvement would be incremental at best. Both Indiana and Missouri have become much more Republican, even in elections with Obama on the top of the ticket; he lost both states in 2012 after winning them in 2008. "Clinton would almost certainly do better with white working-class voters than Obama did," Cillizza writes. "But, in some of the states that Stewart puts in that first bucket, that's a pretty low bar." Obama transformed the electorate by being a transformational candidate, at least in promise and theory. He also had the wind at his back with the economic collapse in late 2008 and general fatigue with Bush and Republicans. The latter has reversed, which means that any Democrat would have a difficult time inspiring the Obama coalition back into force, let alone an establishment figure (and an Obama administration official) like Hillary Clinton. She looks less like Barack Obama in this scenario than she resembles John McCain. She would be running on a damaged party brand, representing continuity rather than change — a symptom of the problems of Washington rather than their cure. *ABC News: “Clinton Tourism: Go Along on a 'Billgrimage'” <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-tourism-arkansas-ride-billgrimage/story?id=26996388>* By Liz Kreutz November 18, 2014, 12:01 p.m. EST The first Billgrims came 10 years ago. Following the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library Nov. 18, 2004, travelers descended on Arkansas like never before. Suddenly, the state was welcoming people from all around the world who came to tour Bill Clinton’s library and, along the way, visit other historic landmarks related to the former president. The trip became known as a “Billgrimage.” A classic Billgrimage includes a visit to four cities in Arkansas: Hope, to see Clinton’s birthplace; Hot Springs, were he graduated high school; Fayetteville, where he and Hillary Clinton taught law; and Little Rock, the state’s capital where he was governor and that served as the launch pad for his political career. Originally, visitors were given a small “passport” by Arkansas’ tourism bureau and could get stamps at each destination they visited in the state. The passport has since been discontinued and, these days, fewer people make the entire four-stop trail. But Little Rock continues to see a huge tourism boost, largely to the presidential library, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. In the past decade, its economic impact on the local community has totaled an estimated $3.3 billion, according to a new study released Monday, and longtime residents talk incredulously about the transformation they’ve seen. “Oh gosh, it’s huge,” Paul Leopoulos, a friend of Bill Clinton’s since elementary school, who had just reunited with the former president to celebrate the library’s anniversary, recalled Saturday morning at the sunlit office of his arts education foundation in North Little Rock. “When they finally announced they were going to build it everything started to change. Businesses and hotels opened up immediately, and this was two years before the thing was even built.” And for Richard Davies, the executive director of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, the library was the “shot in the arm” the city needed. For those on the Billgrimage in Little Rock, there are five must-see historic sites. These are the Governor’s Mansion, a former house of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Capitol Building, the Old State House Museum where Clinton gave his election night speeches and, lastly, the library, which looks like a big box (or as one Billgrimage blogger described it, a trailer house), that sits prominently along the Arkansas River and houses nearly 100,000 archival documents from Clinton’s eight years in the White House. For Joe Purvis, another childhood FOB (“Friend of Bill’s”), a Billgrimage is not complete without indulging in the local cuisine. “I love to eat,” Purvis said, looking down upon his belly from the high-rise of his law practice in downtown Little Rock, “And I can ensure that before his heart attack, the president liked to eat as well.” The spot to go is Doe’s Eat Place, a local favorite known for its tamales and 3-pound steaks. “Bill Clinton, in his prime, would certainly go to Doe’s,” Purvis quipped, but questioned whether his new diet would allow him to make the visit. A waitress there, however, said Clinton still comes in to the restaurant roughly once a year, but did concede that now as a vegan, there’s little on the menu that he can eat.