podesta_email_01697.txt

podesta-emails 5,403 words email

P17 D6 P22 V11 V14

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*[image: Inline image 1]* *Correct The Record Friday July 25, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:* *Tweets:* *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: Michiko Kakutani @nytimesbooks: #HardChoices "provides a portrait of [@HillaryClinton] as a heavy-duty policy wonk." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/books/hillary-clintons-book-hard-choices-portrays-a-tested-policy-wonk.html … <http://t.co/nhRjl7LWfy> [7/25/14, 11:55 a.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/492699736416464898>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@USATODAY recommends you put @HillaryClinton’s #HardChoices on your summer reading list -- we agree: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/07/14/30-hot-summer-books-2014/11320149/ … <http://t.co/08Z67JXNPX> [7/25/14, 10:45 a.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/492682070427459584>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: HRC was key in bringing the fight to end modern-day slavery to the forefront of US policy, says @JacksonLeeTX18 http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bay_area/opinion/jackson-lee-we-can-save-lives-and-change-history/article_1de35a64-a196-5397-882f-d570742f0e87.html … <http://t.co/V9Mb8eGz4F> [7/24/14, 6:55 p.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/492442894952062976>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton launched the “Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing” campaign to educate low-income kids #HRC365 http://cbsloc.al/WJLH5t <http://t.co/tqAR92uOPD> [7/24/14, 6:01 p.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/492429303951265792>] *Headlines:* *Politico: “Hillary Clinton on Fareed Zakaria Sunday” <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/07/hillary-clinton-on-fareed-zakaria-sunday-192846.html#.U9Jvs1jKQAg.twitter>* “Hillary Clinton will sit down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for an interview set to air this Sunday, sources familiar with the interview told POLITICO.” *The American Prospect: “Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro” <http://prospect.org/article/hillary-liberals-conversation-walter-shapiro>* “As a reporter and columnist for Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, USA Today, Esquire, Salon, and other publications, Walter Shapiro has covered nine presidential elections and the nation’s politics for four decades. He is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and a lecturer in political science at Yale while he finishes a book about his great-uncle, a vaudevillian and con man who once swindled Hitler.” *Washington Post blog: The Switch: “Democrats’ latest tech mines your relationship data” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/25/democrats-latest-tech-mines-your-relationship-data/>* “While the electorate keeps playing the Hillary Clinton waiting game, Ready for Hillary is moving ahead with a plan to achieve the next big breakthrough in campaign technology.” *National Journal: “Obama Aide Tweaks GOP on Impeachment” <http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/obama-aide-tweaks-gop-on-impeachment-20140725>* “Pfeiffer also addressed the potential 2016 presidential field, downplaying any suggestion that Hillary Clinton was trying to separate himself from Obama's foreign policy. ‘She has been incredibly loyal to the president,’ he said. ‘I don't think she's trying to distance herself.’” *Arkansas Times blog: Arkansas Blog: “A serious talk with Hillary Clinton” <http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/07/25/a-serious-talk-with-hillary-clinton>* “The New York Times' John Harwood interviewed Hillary Clinton on NPR yesterday and condensed the interview into a 10-questions format for the Times' Caucus feature. It's a substantive discussion about weighty world problems. Not hairdos or house inventory.” *The Hill blog: In The Know: “Pelosi joins Hillary in the pantsuit set” <http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/213331-pelosi-joins-hillary-in-the-pantsuit-set>* “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, taking a page out of Hillary Clinton's style guide, as she donned a pantsuit to dine at downtown Washington hotspot Bibiana.” *Mediaite: “Ben Carson’s Book Outsold Hillary’s Hard Choices Last Week” <http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ben-carsons-book-outsold-hillarys-hard-choices-last-week/>* “Last week, according to the latest figures from the Nielsen BookScan, Ben Carson‘s memoir “One Nation” outsold Hillary Clinton‘s book Hard Choices by a whopping 60%.” *Articles:* *Politico: “Hillary Clinton on Fareed Zakaria Sunday” <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/07/hillary-clinton-on-fareed-zakaria-sunday-192846.html#.U9Jvs1jKQAg.twitter>* By Dylan Byers July 25, 2014, 10:53 a.m. EDT Hillary Clinton will sit down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for an interview set to air this Sunday, sources familiar with the interview told POLITICO. The former Secretary of State is set to tape an hour-long interview with Zakaria on Friday morning. It will air this Sunday on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" at 10 a.m. ET. The interview will almost certainly focus on international events, including the Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine, U.S relations with Russia, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. It is the latest in a string of interviews Clinton has conducted since early June. We've reached out to spokespeople for both Clinton and CNN for more details about the interview, and will update here if and when we hear back. *The American Prospect: “Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro” <http://prospect.org/article/hillary-liberals-conversation-walter-shapiro>* By Harold Meyerson July 23, 2014 [Subtitle:] "As a campaigner, Hillary can do a shot and a beer better than Barack Obama can," Shapiro says. So there's that. As a reporter and columnist for Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, USA Today, Esquire, Salon, and other publications, Walter Shapiro has covered nine presidential elections and the nation’s politics for four decades. He is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and a lecturer in political science at Yale while he finishes a book about his great-uncle, a vaudevillian and con man who once swindled Hitler. Shapiro is also an accomplished Hillary-ologist, having first interviewed Hillary Clinton in the Arkansas governor’s mansion for Time in September 1992. In early May, Shapiro sat down with Prospect editor-at-large Harold Meyerson to talk about a question he’s internally debated for years: On balance, would a Hillary Clinton candidacy and presidency be a good or bad thing for the liberal cause? The following discussion has been edited for concision and clarity. Harold Meyerson: Walter, when liberals look at Hillary Clinton, what should they see? The Democratic Party and the country have certainly changed since she was first lady, and even since she was a senator and secretary of state. Walter Shapiro: I’ve always thought that Bill Clinton was never really a person of the ’60s. Bill Clinton started in 1960 as a 14-year-old who wanted to be governor of Arkansas. He came out of the ’60s as a 24-year-old who wanted to be governor of Arkansas without going to Vietnam. But Hillary did the full, life-changing conversion from the obedient Goldwater Girl to delivering an ethereal but genuinely anti-war address at Wellesley in ’69. So in a sense, as far as the culture of the time washing over someone, it washed over her more than it ever washed over Bill. HM: Still, she spent so many years in Arkansas, and Arkansas’s political culture is not one with which most liberals are comfortable. Both Clintons were clearly supportive of the civil-rights revolution. But the other part of that culture is the Stephens investment firm and Wal-Mart, and to get somewhere in Arkansas politics, you eventually have relations with them. Hillary famously was on the Wal-Mart board for a while. WS: What stayed with me, and I still think it’s really important for understanding Hillary, happened in March of 1992, at a debate before the Illinois primary. Jerry Brown (Bill Clinton’s primary opponent) went after Bill Clinton in part for the legal work that Hillary did at Rose Law Firm on behalf of banks. And Hillary at some point said, in effect, “Of course I work for banks; who do you expect me to work for if I’m a lawyer?” Well, there were, believe it or not, other clients in the state of Arkansas in the 1980s while her husband was governor. HM: That’s no small part of what gives liberals pause about Hillary—who is, of course, still going around giving talks to the Goldman Sachses of the world. Is she too inextricably linked to that world? One of the major issues liberals had with Obama is that his economic team has been, like Bill Clinton’s, primarily Robert Rubin protégés. That’s two straight Democratic presidencies with a Wall Street pedigree. WS: As a campaigner, Hillary can do a shot and a beer better than Barack Obama can. She was an exceedingly good candidate when it was too late in the ’08 primaries with white working-class voters in Pennsylvania, in Indiana, in states like that. That said, everything in the ledger says she’s not a policy populist. Remember that the Bill Clinton administration at its most successful was the Democratic answer to Reaganism. It was what the French call “the spirit of the staircase”—coming up with everything you should have said at the party just after you’ve left it. The administration said, let’s get off the table everything Reagan criticized about the Democrats. It was welfare, so they ended it; it was crime, so they came up with funding for 100,000 more cops; it was economic deficits, so they came up with a balanced budget. To some extent, electing Hillary Clinton in 2016 could continue a debate with Ronald Reagan that no one else in American life is still having. The Democrats have mostly forgotten Reagan, and the Republicans have turned him into this sainted soul of political constancy. But a Hillary presidency would be still framed by the Democratic memory of those horrible years in the wilderness in the 1980s, when the Democrats got wiped out in three successive elections. HM: But the political landscape, the demographic profile of voters has changed so much since then. More political space has opened up on the left; the nation has plainly moved in a liberal direction on social issues; there are very few Blue Dogs remaining. Is this defensive crouch against the Republicans a politically viable stance? WS: I’m talking about what makes her tick. Of course, she won two elections in a very diverse state since Bill’s presidency, and she won an awful lot of presidential primaries in ’08. She understands the diversity of America in 2017—except in the economic sense. That said, I don’t think she’s the candidate of Archie Bunker’s America. But the worst thing that could have happened to her in terms of framing any economic populist message was to run for the Senate from New York rather than, say, Arkansas. Not only do the Clintons have a certain psychological need for money—that would probably be a separate course in the Department of Hillary Studies—but her constituents were Wall Street, and they were also the people who were funding all the Clinton initiatives and giving speaking fees to Bill. Ultimately she has an orthodox, mainstream, centrist, Eisenhower Republican view of the economy. It is much to the left of today’s Republican Party since there are no Eisenhower Republicans left, but it is also much less in keeping with large segments of the Democratic Party. I can see her being very involved in raising the minimum wage, because it’s not as if hedge-fund billionaires are on the barricades against it. But trying to do a better, tougher version of Dodd-Frank? Let’s merely say that the polls would have to get very dismal for Hillary leading up to the 2020 election for that to even be on her agenda. HM: Let’s go to foreign policy. WS: If you wanted me to state my own personal reservations about Hillary, I would have started with foreign policy. HM: What would those reservations be? WS: First of all, other than the anti-war feeling, which is more generational than an elaborate, nuanced foreign-policy view, I don’t think she had terribly developed foreign-policy views during Bill’s presidency. OK, there was the general, and to my mind, admirable tilt toward humanitarian intervention in both Haiti and, much more important, in Bosnia. I do not think she would have dithered the way Obama has on Syria. That said, I’ve seen no evidence that she had too much anguish over her vote to authorize Bush to go to war in Iraq. John Kerry turned himself into elaborate pretzel positions to try to justify that vote. Hillary may have anguished about many things, but that does not seem to be in the Top 10 Hillary Anguish moments. HM: What do you think her hawkishness on Iraq would portend for foreign policy if Hillary were president? WS: While she is not a Dick Cheney groupie, in a situation where there is a range of military actions on the table and there’s a responsible, mainstream opinion within the administration toward using the military—and the foreign-policy community says military action is called for—she would probably go with it and cheerlead it on. I don’t think she’s going to invent a war with Mongolia out of some crazed geopolitical effort to encircle China. But hers would probably be a more hawkish administration than we have now with Obama and John Kerry. I’m much less worried about her starting a war with Denmark, though, than I am by the fact that she is probably the Democratic presidential candidate who would do the least to rein in the National Security Agency and all the leftover aspects of the “war on terror.” Sadly, both Hillary and Bill know that civil liberties is that which closes on Saturday night. HM: Bill Clinton was not famed for his managerial prowess and neither is Barack Obama. That’s certainly part of the president’s job. Is Hillary a better manager than Bill? WS: I think she is much more than just that. If you have been through a disaster like the first two years of the Clinton administration, you know what to do now. Flash forward to a White House in 2017. First, Bill and Hillary will have worked out their marriage, with her 69 and him 70, as well as any couple is likely to. If ever there’s a marriage that by 2017 has few surprises, it’s probably that one. Second, Hillary has been through two disastrous, disorganized White Houses under Bill Clinton and Obama. The way Obamacare was handled, in that the entire story of health care got lost, also the failure to put enough emphasis on the economy after the stimulus passed—all these things Hillary saw. She would come into the White House with a greater understanding of White House dysfunction than anyone in Democratic Party history. To have been in the Obama cabinet would also steel you against creating a White House where people believe they’ve invented the wheel, that they’re geniuses—the problems that have afflicted this White House. HM: Bill is clearly going to be her chief adviser. How does this factor into everything? WS: It will cause certain lines-of-authority confusion in the White House. But ultimately, I think it’s more good than bad. Every president, from what I’ve read and seen, communes with the ghosts of presidents past. It’s sort of nice to have a ghost of presidents past available on call. There will come a point if Hillary is president in, say, 2019, that something happens that already happened somewhere, sometime during Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House. It would be really good to have the lessons from that analogue on tap. HM: Right now, there’s no one else in the Democratic Party who’s within 40 or 50 points of Hillary in presidential polling. How do you assess her strengths and weaknesses as a candidate? A lot of what you’re describing is not necessarily the stuff that resonates with younger voters, except possibly that her election would be historic. WS: There is an iron law of campaign journalism: Never assume anything with absolute certainty in presidential politics, because there are always surprises. President Muskie would be the first to remind us. That said, I had drinks last night with two prominent Republican consultants. What they told me is that they believe that Hillary—running as a centrist, not a populist, and moderately hawkish—would just sweep the field. There is no Republican who could possibly beat her except in exceptional circumstances. Part of it is the history-making nature of the race. But it is also this: All the things that make liberals a little uneasy about a Hillary presidency are the things that are perfect for a general election against a fill-in-the-blank Republican. Of course, in the remote chance that Rand Paul got the nomination, it would be interesting to see a Republican running against a Democrat with the Republican running to the left on national security. But the larger point—and it’s one of the reasons, after going back and forth within myself, I am more in favor of her running than not—is that American politics since the 2000 election has been balanced on a knife’s edge. While there are moments when one party surges ahead, pretty much the country has been in equal balance. Beyond 2000, had just 130,000 votes been different in Ohio in 2004, John Kerry would have been president even though he would have lost the popular vote. Mitt Romney, not exactly someone who is going down in the Candidate Hall of Fame, still got, what, 47 percent of the vote? HM: That was the appropriate percentage for him. WS: The point is that Hillary could win a resounding victory that could bring in a Democratic majority to govern. And I would much rather have a president with a majority to govern, even if the decisions she made were not always decisions I agreed with, than another eight years, or four years, of a Democrat hamstrung by a divided Congress. HM: Why don’t we hear more of an outcry from the left of the party for an alternative to Hillary? WS: Three reasons come to mind. For some, it’s that electing a woman president would be historic. For others, there is the depressed sense of dashed expectations after five years of Obama. But the biggest reason, I suspect, is the political truism: “You can’t beat somebody with nobody.” And despite Elizabeth Warren fantasies, the Democratic left doesn’t have anyone who looks like a plausible president now willing to run. That doesn’t mean that Hillary will run unopposed. Maybe it will be former Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana. Maybe it’ll be Howard Dean—or Senator Bernie Sanders, to keep coming up with Vermonters. I went back and checked since World War II. Aside from incumbent presidents, no one has ever been handed a presidential nomination unopposed other than Richard Nixon in 1960. And even Nixon had to kiss the hem of Nelson Rockefeller’s garment with something called the Compact of Fifth Avenue. HM: Can Hillary turn out young people like Obama did—a key to both his victories? Can she engender a remotely comparable excitement factor? WS: No. But probably neither can any other Democrat. Obama leached the sense of political excitement out of an entire generation with the gap between his campaign style and his governing style. Also, remember that young voters in 2016 will have different life experiences than young voters in 2008. A 21-year-old in 2016 will have been in first grade on 9/11 and was too young at the time to understand the lies that sent us to war with Iraq. That means that these 2016 voters—no matter the candidates—will react to different stimuli than young voters in 2008. So how can Hillary win in 2016? Maybe by sparking greater enthusiasm from women—especially single women. Maybe a 54-year-old waitress in Waterloo, Iowa, will vote for the first time. Hillary might also change the political map by running competitively in states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Arkansas. HM: How would a primary challenge from someone like Warren affect Hillary’s campaign? In terms of constituencies, I can see the party establishment—unions, electeds, blacks, traditional donors—sticking with her. But could that “Mondale-ize” her? And could Warren muster the kind of support that Gary Hart did in his 1984 challenge to Mondale? WS: My heart goes pitter-patter whenever I get a Walter Mondale question. Which, oddly enough, happens less and less these days. But Mondale-Hart in ’84 is one of those races that explains the Democratic Party, along with Carter-Kennedy in 1980 and Bobby Kennedy versus Gene McCarthy in 1968. I’d be stunned beyond belief if Elizabeth Warren ran against Hillary. Of course, I never expected Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus to be vice presidents of the United States. The Hart challenge to Mondale, which was based on amorphous “new ideas,” was in hindsight a generational battle. Elizabeth Warren is only two years younger than Hillary. There has to be an issue with a passionate following to sustain a major primary challenge to Hillary. Right now, the Democrats don’t have one. For a project at Brookings, I’ve been watching what’s being stressed in Democratic House primaries around the country. At this point, NSA spying and drone attacks are just not voting issues for liberals. Getting tough with Wall Street—like single-payer health insurance—was something much more likely to trigger an adrenaline rush for the left in 2009 than in 2016. HM: But Walter, a lot of recent polling done for Democrats shows that there is a sizable constituency that believes the economy is rigged; that the rich get away with low taxes while the middle class can’t; that free trade with other nations has damaged our economy; that when a candidate says he or she sides against Wall Street and with workers, they have more of a claim on this constituency’s support. Don’t you think there’s real political space for a candidate who positions herself or himself to Hillary’s left on these issues? WS: Polls, schmolls. Which should be a Yiddish word meaning “enough with the cross-tabs.” I agree that there’s space on the left. But that’s a lot different than having a charismatic candidate capable of exploiting it. What’s needed to run against Hillary is more than just the ability to play to the choir by mouthing off on MSNBC. That’s the campaign of Dennis Kucinich redux. The more that we talk about this, the more I wish that Paul Wellstone were still alive. I don’t see anyone of his liberal stature—anyone with his sense of fun—willing to take on Hillary. It would take an exceptional candidate to harvest that underlying unease with a Clinton restoration. But it’s 18 months until Iowa and, boy, have I been wrong before. For Hillary, a challenge from the left—as long as it didn’t catch fire—would actually help set her up for the general election since it would send the message that she was more of a centrist than a Karl Rove caricature. I also suspect it would be easier for Hillary to co-opt a primary challenge by making the right dovish noises on foreign policy or NSA eavesdropping than by attacking Wall Street, which would be for her an Olympic-level gymnastic trick. But, then, we’ve already seen Bill Clinton’s Dick Morris–inspired triangulation for the 1996 campaign. So maybe I shouldn’t dismiss Hillary’s malleability on economic issues if that was what was needed to win the nomination. But I wouldn’t count on follow-through if she got to the White House. *Washington Post blog: The Switch: “Democrats’ latest tech mines your relationship data” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/25/democrats-latest-tech-mines-your-relationship-data/>* By Brian Fung July 25, 2014, 11:24 a.m. EDT While the electorate keeps playing the Hillary Clinton waiting game, Ready for Hillary is moving ahead with a plan to achieve the next big breakthrough in campaign technology. The super PAC that's laying the groundwork for a potential Clinton run in 2016 is testing software to determine whether data about social ties can help identify likely grassroots leaders and new supporters. While the technique was pioneered in the closing weeks of the 2012 election by Obama campaign strategists, the latest effort promises to be far more systematic. If the insights into online relationships prove useful in this year's midterm elections, further experiments could even lead to campaigns picking out the most active organizers before those people even know it. "Coming out of Obama for America in 2012, we started to really see some things that I refer to as 'social pressure' — seeing what your friends are doing and having that influence you to have a certain behavior," said Nickie Titus, Ready for Hillary's director of digital. "We're really trying to capitalize on those lessons." Obama's tinkering with social data began with Facebook. Obama strategists encouraged users of the social network to connect their accounts with Obama for America's Web site. Eventually, OFA figured out using an algorithm how to target political content to each individual user in ways that would get them to act. OFA officials claimed that by the end of the campaign, the targeted content was more effective at driving clicks than a comparable banner ad. The new approach expands on that concept. What if you could find out that a Clinton supporter named Joe was able to convince his friend Sara to become a volunteer? And what if you also knew that Joe was more effective at engaging Sara than his other friend, Pete? You'd know to concentrate your efforts on a) training Sara to become the next Joe and b) to encourage Joe to keep up the good work. Spread out across millions of voters, this knowledge could become a force multiplier for campaign strategists. From looking at interactions between individuals, they could determine the most engaged supporters and reach out to them, tapping them to train or recruit other volunteers. This "snowflake" approach to grassroots campaigning was what gave OFA much of its reach in the physical world in 2012. Now that strategy is being replicated on the Internet. The tool for this is called Recruiter. Developed by the Democratic firm NGP VAN, Recruiter isn't connected or reliant on Facebook for data at all. In the coming weeks, it'll get its first shakedown by Ready for Hillary and other political groups. Over time, Recruiter could be combined with predictive computer modeling — another emerging political technology that's helping strategists target likely supporters based on their demographic characteristics or civic history. Data about high-impact volunteers, said NGP VAN chief executive Stu Trevelyan, could someday be combined with predictive models to identify potential new leaders. "It's not just 'Sally is 5 for 10 in voter contact,'" said Trevelyan, "but it's that 'People who look like Sally could be 5 for 10' and that 'People that look like Sally should be asking people that look like Jim for money' and you can predict things that way." While campaigns have largely reached the limits of improving the voter file — those massive databases of names, e-mail addresses and commercial information that became so important in the 2012 cycle — the next step is to figure out how to identify and leverage the connections between entries in those files. *National Journal: “Obama Aide Tweaks GOP on Impeachment” <http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/obama-aide-tweaks-gop-on-impeachment-20140725>* By James Oliphant July 25, 2014 [Subtitle:] Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the president, says Boehner "opened to door" to impeachment proceedings by suing the president. In a bit of election-year gamesmanship, a top aide to President Obama warned Friday to not rule out an attempt by House Republicans to impeach the president at some point during the remainder of his second term. "I think a lot if people in this town laugh that off," said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Obama, while speaking at a breakfast with reporters in Washington sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "I would not discount that possibility." Noting rising calls for impeachment among some in the GOP, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Pfeiffer said House Speaker John Boehner "opened the door" to considering such a step after he moved to sue Obama over executive actions. Part of the White House's messaging strategy has long been to paint House Republicans as extreme as possible, so in that vein, any loose talk of impeachment sits right in its wheelhouse. But Pfeiffer was quick to add that he did not think impeachment proceedings "would be good for the president" saying that it was "very serious thing." He dismissed out of hand the notion Obama has abused his executive authority to a point where there would be grounds for such a move. At the same time, there was little doubt that he views the consternation that Obama's actions provoke as good for the president and Democrats overall. GOP criticism of the White House "is not going to cause us to trim our sails," he said. The administration is studying ways to ease the child-migrant crisis at the border through executive action, as well as provide some relief to some undocumented immigrants facing deportation—something Pfeiffer expects to provoke an "aggressive" response from Republicans. Pfeiffer also addressed the potential 2016 presidential field, downplaying any suggestion that Hillary Clinton was trying to separate himself from Obama's foreign policy. "She has been incredibly loyal to the president," he said. "I don't think she's trying to distance herself." Asked about possible GOP candidates for president, Pfeiffer criticized Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as being "deeply out of step" with the country. Pfeiffer was asked whether he would rather run against Cruz or Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Grinning, he responded by saying that was like "would you rather have ice cream or cake?" He also said he finds the idea of a run by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky "intriguing," saying that Paul is "the only Republican who has articulated a message that is potentially appealing to younger Americans." *Arkansas Times blog: Arkansas Blog: “A serious talk with Hillary Clinton” <http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/07/25/a-serious-talk-with-hillary-clinton>* By Max Brantley July 25, 2014, 7:11 a.m. The New York Times' John Harwood interviewed Hillary Clinton on NPR yesterday and condensed the interview into a 10-questions format for the Times' Caucus feature. It's a substantive discussion about weighty world problems. Not hairdos or house inventory. An Arkansas Delta politician once told me there's a word you always want to put on your campaign push cards (whether you deserve the label or not). That word? "Qualified." It comes to mind after reading this interview. Doesn't mean you have to agree with what she says or want her to be president. But she's done the homework. The foreign policy commentary dominates, but there was this on Paul Ryan's supposed game-changing outlook on poverty programs: Q. A couple of things before we run out of time. Paul Ryan’s out with a plan today proposing that states be allowed to take all of the programs for those in need in one revenue stream as a way of finding better ways to make them work. Is that a good idea? A. No, not in the current atmosphere. It is not a good idea. All one has to look at is that nearly half the states refuse to expand Medicaid to realize why it’s a bad idea. If states won’t even take what are very generous terms from the federal government to give working people and poor people access to health care, how can we turn over all of the resources that are meant to assist those in need? *The Hill blog: In The Know: “Pelosi joins Hillary in the pantsuit set” <http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/213331-pelosi-joins-hillary-in-the-pantsuit-set>* By Judy Kurtz July 25, 2014, 10:51 a.m. EDT SPOTTED: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, taking a page out of Hillary Clinton's style guide, as she donned a pantsuit to dine at downtown Washington hotspot Bibiana. The California Democrat paired a scarf with her outfit and stayed at the Italian eatery for about two hours on Thursday night, according to our spy. Clinton is of course known for her preference for variations on the ensemble. The former secretary of State describes herself on her Twitter profile as a "pantsuit aficionado." *Mediaite: “Ben Carson’s Book Outsold Hillary’s Hard Choices Last Week” <http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ben-carsons-book-outsold-hillarys-hard-choices-last-week/>* By Tina Nguyen July 25, 2014, 8:04 a.m. EDT Last week, according to the latest figures from the Nielsen BookScan, Ben Carson‘s memoir “One Nation” outsold Hillary Clinton‘s book Hard Choices by a whopping 60%. Figures provided to The Daily Caller indicated that Carson’s book, which was released a week before Hard Choices, sold roughly 16,000 copies to Clinton’s 10,000. At this point, total sales of Carson’s book trail Hillary’s by only 9,000 copies — which is not that much, considering Hard Choices shipped a million books to stores in the first place. Both authors are widely viewed to be possible presidential contenders in 2016, which will undoubtedly lead to pundit-class questions about Hillary. On MSNBC this morning, the panelists debated whether people were “fatigued” by Hillary, and whether this book battle could be seen as a proxy war between two potential presidential candidates. “A book tour is like a presidential campaign,” said Donny Deutsch. “You package the product and try to get people excited about it. [And] the book tour and the book’s failure to sell as many copies as a publisher, suggests she needs a different repackaging. Still the front-runner for the White House, but you’ve got to be about the future and about being forward-looking and she is not right now.” Watch that below, via MSNBC: [MSNBC CLIP]