​Correct The Record Monday December 1, 2014 Morning Roundup

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*​**Correct The Record Monday December 1, 2014 Morning Roundup:* *Headlines:* *The Daily Beast: “Remember When Republicans Loved Hillary Clinton?” <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/remember-when-republicans-loved-hillary-clinton.html>* [Subtitle:] “Today they may be sketching out their best attacks on the Democrats’ leading potential candidate for 2016, but once Dick Cheney, Paul Ryan, et al. had plenty of nice things to say.” *Winnipeg Free Press: “Clinton coming to Winnipeg” <http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Clinton-coming-to-Winnipeg--284282491.html>* “Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is widely expected to run for the Democratic party presidential nomination in the 2016 election, will deliver the keynote address at an event at the RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre on Jan. 21.” *National Journal: “Can Clinton Win Back the White Working Class?” <http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/can-clinton-win-back-the-white-working-class-20141130>* “One of the central challenges facing a Clinton campaign will be managing to win back enough of those voters, especially in a working-class-heavy battleground like Iowa.” *Bloomberg: “Analyst: Hillary Clinton 'Lost Her Fastball,' and Jeb Bush Won't Likely Win” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-30/not-everyone-believes-hillary-will-run-in-2016>* “In an e-mail on Sunday evening, Rose clarified that he misheard Cook, who instead said that Clinton had a 25- to 30-percent chance of passing on a White House bid.” *MSNBC: “Charlie Cook: Hillary’s still (probably) running” <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/charlie-cook-hillary-clinton-unlikely-run-2016>* “Veteran political analyst Charlie Cook says he never predicted that Hillary Clinton is unlikely to run for president.” *Bloomberg: “The Torch Is Being Passed to A New Generation of Right-Wing Media” <https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2014-12-01/the-torch-is-being-passed-to-a-new-generation-of-rightwing-media>* [Subtitle:] “At the Washington Free Beacon The Federalist, and the Independent Journal Review, They're Ready to Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden to Defeat Jon Stewart and his ilk.” *USA Today column: University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds: “Not working for the working class” <http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/30/white-working-class-obama-obamacare-government-benefits-column/19700747/>* “And Democrats might choose a working-class-friendly nominee, too, if they can find one. Of course, the current favorite is Hillary Clinton, who went to Wellesley and makes $300,000 for giving a speech, and the No. 2 prospect for 2016 is probably Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who made $212,000 for representing an asbestos company. Portraying either of them as working class heroes will be an uphill battle.” *Townhall.com: “Jim Webb Thinks He Can Beat Hillary Clinton” <http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2014/11/30/jim-webb-thinks-he-can-beat-hillary-clinton-n1924720>* “Clinton’s ‘dead broke’ gaffe was seen as nothing short of disastrous; everyone knows the earning potential for ex-presidents and their families are phenomenal. This, coupled with Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street and the financial sector, could be a wedge that Webb could exploit.” *Articles:* *The Daily Beast: “Remember When Republicans Loved Hillary Clinton?” <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/remember-when-republicans-loved-hillary-clinton.html>* By Ben Jacobs December 1, 2014 [Subtitle:] Today they may be sketching out their best attacks on the Democrats’ leading potential candidate for 2016, but once Dick Cheney, Paul Ryan, et al. had plenty of nice things to say. For the better part of a quarter-century, Hillary Clinton has loomed over American politics as a hate figure for many on the right—and she seems poised to re-assert her dominant position in right-wing demonology in 2016. But there was a time, stretching roughly from her concession of the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama in 2008 to the Benghazi attack in 2012, when conservatives changed their tune on Clinton. In fact, plenty of Republicans even said nice things about her. Here are seven she can look back on as she weathers the attacks of the next presidential cycle. Dick Cheney The former vice president is not known as a soft touch, but for a brief moment in 2011, he seemed to hold Clinton in high regard. During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Cheney told host Chris Wallace of Clinton: “I have a sense that she is one of the more competent members of the current administration, and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.” Cheney also suggested that, if elected, Clinton might be easier for Republicans to work with than Obama. Paul Ryan Republican superstar Paul Ryan is still mooted as potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate. But even if he doesn’t run, the Wisconsin congressman will be a major force in the GOP as the next chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Back in January 2013, though, he was fresh off a losing presidential ticket when he suggested that Hillary Clinton in the White House would have ensured a return to a balanced budget. “Look, if we had a Clinton presidency, if we had Erskine Bowles as chief of staff of the White House or president of the United States, I think we would have fixed this fiscal mess by now,” he said. “That’s not the kind of presidency we’re dealing with right now.” Carly Fiorina While Ryan is still on the fence about running for president, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive and 2010 U.S. Senate candidate in California, seems to be going full steam ahead toward a bid for the White House in 2016. Yet Fiorina, who seems to be positioning herself as a GOP alternative to Hillary Clinton who could appeal to female voters if nominated, has her own history of complimenting the former secretary of state. In 2008, while campaigning for John McCain, Fiorina said: “Having started as a secretary and eventually become a chief executive officer, I not only have great admiration and respect for Hillary Clinton and her candidacy and her leadership, but I also have great empathy, I must tell you, for what she went through.” Orrin Hatch The most senior Republican in the U.S. Senate, Orrin Hatch will not only lead the Senate Finance Committee in 2015 but will become president pro tempore of the Senate, making him third in line for the presidency. In 2010, when Clinton was being floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee and Hatch was the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Utah senator said of his former colleague: “I happen to like Hillary Clinton; I think she’s done a good job for the…secretary of state’s position, and I have high respect for her and think a great deal of her.” John McCain The 2008 Republican presidential nominee and longtime Arizona senator has long had a cordial relationship with Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Clinton once described McCain as “her favorite Republican.” The affinity goes both ways. In 2011, at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, McCain praised Clinton as “an international star” who has done “a tremendous job” as secretary of state. He also later told to CBS News, “I respect Secretary/Senator Clinton; I respect her views.” Condoleezza Rice Rice has praised Clinton, who succeeded her as secretary of state in 2009 on several occasions and said repeatedly that Clinton was “doing a fine job.” In 2010, she told Bill O’Reilly of Fox News: “Hillary Clinton is someone I’ve known for a long, long time. She’s a patriot. I think she’s doing a lot of the right things.” Rice then added, “She’s very tough...and she’s got the right instincts.” George W. Bush’s top foreign policy aide stood by those words two years later, when she described Clinton as “great” to Ohio Republicans. Lindsey Graham Perhaps no Republican has spoken more highly of Hillary Clinton than the South Carolina senator and prominent foreign policy hawk, who went so far as to describe the then-secretary of state as “a good role model, one of the most effective secretary of states, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime” in May 2012. The Republican also went out of his way to praise Clinton to The New York Times three months later, saying, “She is extremely well respected throughout the world, handles herself in a very classy way and has a work ethic second to none.” *Winnipeg Free Press: “Clinton coming to Winnipeg” <http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Clinton-coming-to-Winnipeg--284282491.html>* By Geoff Kirbyson December 1, 2014, 6:00 a.m. She could make history in 2016 as the first woman to be elected U.S. president. And she’s coming to Winnipeg. Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is widely expected to run for the Democratic party presidential nomination in the 2016 election, will deliver the keynote address at an event at the RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre on Jan. 21. Her speech will be part of the Global Perspectives series, which is sponsored by CIBC. In addition to already being on the campaign trail, Clinton is touring in support of a new book, Hard Choices, which chronicles her work to "restore America’s leadership" after eight years under the George W. Bush administration. Clinton has spoken several times in Canada since stepping down as secretary of state in early 2013. In October, she told an Ottawa crowd military action against Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria is essential to stop the growth of IS outside the region. She also spoke in Toronto in June as part of the promotional tour for her memoir, Hard Choices. And in March in Montreal, she criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine and said Canada has a key role to play in deterring further aggression. Clinton tends to generate headlines whenever she speaks. For example, explaining to the New York Times on how she does business: "I choose my cards. I play them to the best of my ability. Move on to the next hand." To the Atlantic, she explained how she lives her life: "My doctrine is the Goldilocks doctrine — not too hot, not too cold, just right." And on being a woman: "I am a woman and, like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious, and I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us." And showing a lighter side: "If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle." Getting Clinton to speak here is not going to be cheap for organizers. According to a story in the Washington Post, officials at the University of California at Los Angeles recently finalized a deal with her to speak on campus for the "special university rate" of $300,000. Since stepping down as secretary of state nearly two years ago, Clinton has made dozens of paid appearances across the U.S. at industry conventions, universities and Wall Street banks. Her fees are often funnelled through to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s non-profit group. (Her focus at the foundation includes working on behalf of women and girls, supporting early-childhood development and helping young people develop the skills they need to find good jobs.) It’s not uncommon for celebrity speakers to make special requests for food and drink, and Clinton is apparently no exception. Her list reportedly includes a case of still water (room temperature) to be deposited stage right; a carafe of warm/hot water, coffee cup and saucer, pitcher of room-temperature water, water glass, and lemon wedges to be situated both on a table on stage as well as in another room where she would stand for photos with VIPs. Other requests reportedly include: ❚ Long, flat pillows for back support. ❚ A lavalier mike so she can give TED-like lectures. ❚ Coffee, tea, room-temperature sparkling and still water, diet ginger ale, crudité, hummus and sliced fruit in the green room. ❚ A computer, mouse, printer and a scanner. This won’t be the first time the U.S. Secret Service has worked a Winnipeg event involving a high-powered politician. Clinton’s husband, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, spoke at a $1,100-per-plate dinner here in 2003 as well as another event at the Winnipeg Concert Hall. Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the convention centre in early 2011. Clinton finished second to U.S. President Barack Obama in 2008 in the Democratic nomination race. *National Journal: “Can Clinton Win Back the White Working Class?” <http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/can-clinton-win-back-the-white-working-class-20141130>* By Alex Roarty November 30, 2014 [Subtitle:] A measly 34 percent of this group backed House Democratic candidates in 2014, creating a gap that could sunder the party's 2016 hopes. Hillary Clinton's support of deferred deportation of millions of undocumented workers might help the Democratic Party's putative presidential nominee win over Latinos in 2016. But among the voters most responsible for the Democrats' midterm wipeout this year, it could very well make things worse—and therein lies Clinton's dilemma. Support for Democrats among white, working-class voters was especially sparse this year: A measly 34 percent of them backed Democratic House candidates, exit polls found, while they fled in almost equal measure from Senate candidates like Rep. Bruce Braley in Iowa and incumbent Mark Udall in Colorado. Democrats still performed relatively well among black and Hispanic voters, but the deficit among whites without a college degree—who constituted more than one-third of the nationwide electorate—was too much to overcome. One of the central challenges facing a Clinton campaign will be managing to win back enough of those voters, especially in a working-class-heavy battleground like Iowa. But as her quick support of deferred deportations shows, she'll have to do so while also motivating black, young, and Latino voters who formed the core of President Obama's coalition in 2008 and 2012. At times, the two imperatives will work against each other. "Democrats, to win regularly, not just the presidency but other levels of government, they need to do better among ... noncollege whites than they've been doing," said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer who has written extensively about the electoral advantages inherent in the nation's changing demographics. "You can't ... just rely on the coalition of the ascendant." Once the backbone of the Democratic Party, working-class white voters have gradually shifted into the GOP's camp since the 1970s in part because of the alienation they felt toward an increasingly urban, culturally cosmopolitan party. Democrats, meanwhile, have made up for the loss by winning over minorities and a greater share of the upscale white vote. Clinton doesn't have to win a majority of white voters without a college education—Obama never did, after all. Even during the height of his 2008 campaign, he won just 40 percent of them. Four years later, his share slipped to 36 percent. But in 2014, the bottom fell out, and it fell out in places where Democrats have performed relatively well with working-class white voters, even recently. The party didn't just lose the white, working-class vote in places like Arkansas and West Virginia, where it has long since stopped being competitive at a presidential level. It also lost the vote in Iowa. Braley, the Democratic Senate nominee in Iowa, won just 41 percent of the white, working-class vote in an overwhelmingly white state, exit polls showed, on his way to a stunning 9-point defeat in an open-seat race. Precise data was unavailable for Obama's performance among the same group in Iowa in 2012, when he won the state comfortably, but he won 52 percent of voters without a college degree that year. Other states showed a particularly weak performance among blue-collar whites: In Colorado, Udall got just 34 percent of their vote, to his opponent's 61 percent. For Democratic presidential candidates, most plausible paths to the White House run through winning both of those states. Democrats do have some reason for optimism. For one, the share of white, working-class voters continues to shrink every presidential election by an average of about 3 percentage points, according to Teixeira, while the share of groups Democrats do better with—racial minorities and well-educated white voters—continues to grow. And Democrats hope that Clinton, as the nation's first major-party female presidential nominee, would be able win over so-called waitress moms at a greater rate than most Democratic candidates. The most pressing need for Clinton, however, might be devising an economic agenda and message able to convince some of those voters to back Democratic candidates. "Are they going to convince the majority of these voters that they have a plan and it'll definitely work?" Teixeira asked. "Well, that's probably not going to happen. You don't have to convince most of these voters. You just have to convince a persuadable part of them." *Bloomberg: “Analyst: Hillary Clinton 'Lost Her Fastball,' and Jeb Bush Won't Likely Win” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-30/not-everyone-believes-hillary-will-run-in-2016>* By Steven Yaccino November 30, 2014, 2:20 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] Just when it seemed there was unanimous consent about a Clinton White House bid, even doubts are getting debunked. These days, when Hillary Clinton says she’s still deciding whether to run for president in 2016, she does so with a smile that seems almost like a silent apology for the absurdity of her non-answer. For months, all signs have pointed to an inevitable White House bid for the former secretary of state, senator and first lady. On Sunday, it looked like there might be at least one person of note who is having serious doubts about whether it is a lock that Clinton will run for president. Now even that has been called into question. An account of remarks attributed to Charlie Cook, whose Cook Political Report newsletter is among the country’s most trusted for campaign analysis, was published in the Kansas City Star, describing him as telling a local audience recently that he believes Clinton has a 25- to 30-percent chance of jumping into the race. Columnist Steve Rose did not specify exactly when or where the private event took place, but said Cook knew he was in attendance and that the statements were on the record. But Cook, who could not be reached by phone or e-mail for comment, took to Twitter and denied making the claim. In an e-mail on Sunday evening, Rose clarified that he misheard Cook, who instead said that Clinton had a 25- to 30-percent chance of passing on a White House bid. Cook, whose correction focused on the likelihood that Clinton would not run, apparently cited her recent book tour performance as reason to believe that she is either “rusty” or “she lost her fastball," according to the Kansas City Star. A presidential race without Clinton, who has held huge leads in primary-voter polling, could be devastating to the Democratic Party, which does not have the same deep bench of potential candidates as Republicans. Cook also apparently predicted that the next GOP nominee will likely be a governor from the Midwest or a Tea Party senator, two categories, of course, that leave out Jeb Bush. Should the former Republican governor of Florida and potential 2016 contender decided to run, Cook said a GOP primary electorate will balk at two issues that Bush has supported. “One is immigration reform, which he favors,” Cook reportedly said, “and two, is his advocacy of education reform.” *MSNBC: “Charlie Cook: Hillary’s still (probably) running” <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/charlie-cook-hillary-clinton-unlikely-run-2016>* By Alex Seitz-Wald November 30, 2014, 12:12 p.m. EST Veteran political analyst Charlie Cook says he never predicted that Hillary Clinton is unlikely to run for president. Cook, the publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, caused a stir this weekend among 2016 watchers when the Kansas City Star reported that he told a private gathering in the city that the former secretary of state is unlikely to throw her hat in the ring. Cook “believes Hillary Clinton has only a 25-30% chance of running for president, and in any case he thinks she is either ‘rusty’ or ‘she has lost her fastball,’” the paper reported. Since most observers think a Clinton candidacy is a nearly foregone conclusion, the remark attracted plenty of attention among journalists on Twitter was aggregated by several major national publications, including msnbc. But Cook says the report is wrong. “I have never said that the odds of her running were less than 60%. Clearly this person misheard me. From other conversations with people over dinner, after my speech, no one else heard 25-30 chance of running,” Cook told msnbc. He pointed to two columns he has written in the past pegging Clinton’s chances of running at 70%. At a event hosted in July by the National Journal, where Cook writes a weekly column, he said there was as low as a 60% chance she does not run. But a 25-30% chance of running would be dramatically different from what he’s said previously. Kansas City Star columnist Steve Rose, who reported Cook’s remarks at the private dinner in Kansas City, told msnbc he apologized to Cook for getting the quote wrong. “All I can say is I must have misheard Charlie, and I did not have a chance for followup after the event,” he said in an email. Editor’s Note: This piece originally included the Kansas City Star’s reporting. We have since corrected the piece. *Bloomberg: “The Torch Is Being Passed to A New Generation of Right-Wing Media” <https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2014-12-01/the-torch-is-being-passed-to-a-new-generation-of-rightwing-media>* By David Weigel December 1, 2014, 5:45 a.m. EST [Subtitle:] At the Washington Free Beacon The Federalist, and the Independent Journal Review, They're Ready to Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden to Defeat Jon Stewart and his ilk. “If you’re looking for something, you might not find it,” says Lachlan Markay. “If you’re looking for anything, then, who knows?” It’s the middle of November, early morning, and Markay is perched in a chair right outside the biennial meeting of the Democracy Alliance. He is not allowed inside. He is never allowed inside. As a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website founded in 2012, Markey’s assignment is to sit in a lobby café of the Mandarin Oriental hotel for three days, acquiring news about the meeting the way a shipwrecked sailor might acquire driftwood. Five months earlier, when the Democracy Alliance met in Chicago, it distributed the photos of 20 reporters to prevent attendees from leaking anything by accident. Eleven of the profiled reporters worked for the Washington Free Beacon. “If this is anything like Chicago,” says Markay, knocking back a cup of coffee, “they have my picture. I went downstairs to use one of the computers, in the business center, and somebody followed me until I left.” The tender attention did not stop Markey from reporting. As the conference got underway, he published a story based on the memos he’d obtained. It had everything from a paranoid guidance to hotel staff to a PowerPoint presentation about how the progressive Committee on States moved $45 million to Democratic causes in 2014, illustrated by arrows traversing the supposed firewall between PACS and campaigns. In a follow-up story, Markey contrasted some hit-and-run coverage of the conference with more facts, pulled from the documents. It had been a good year for the WFB. In February, reporter Alana Goodman (also on the illustrated DA watchlist) published the first in a series of scoops about Hillary Clinton drawn from the archives a friend had given to the University of Arkansas. “By being the first to report on the papers,” wrote founder and editor-in-chief Matt Continetti, “the Free Beacon exposed the inanity and irrelevance of the mainstream media.” Throughout the midterms, the WFB published stories about incumbent Democrats that ended up being cited in attack ads, like the tale of how North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan skipped a meeting about ISIS to hit a fundraiser. These stories unquestionably helped elect Republicans. In August, the Free Beacon went private, leaving the non-profit Center for American Freedom—an explicit parody of the liberal Center for American Progress—that it was founded under. This news was announced, as is WFB custom, with a picture of supermodel Kate Upton. That combination of irreverence, scoops and spite is creating something new on the right. Conservative media, never somnolent, is in a new and different boom period, led by millennial writers who are striking out against fresh targets. The Independent Journal Review, an aggregation-heavy site launched by a veteran of Republican campaigns, has made a steady profit and generated eight-figure numbers of Facebook shares for its content. The Federalist, launched last year as the latest of 32-year old Ben Domenech’s publications, got Cosmos host Neil DeGrasse Tyson to reluctantly admit he’d fabricated a George W. Bush quote that had been delighting his like-minded audiences. And that was after a National Review cover story by Charles Cooke, a 2007 graduate of Oxford University, labeling DeGrasse Tyson as the icon of a cult of nerds whose faux expertise was wrecking America. “A century ago, Woodrow Wilson complained that the checks and balances instituted by the Founders were outdated because they had been contrived before the telephone was invented,” wrote Cooke. “Now, we are to be liberated by the microchip and the Large Hadron Collider, and we are to have our progress assured by ostensibly disinterested analysts.” What’s the connection between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the wealthy liberals at a Democracy Alliance conference? Culture—which is to say, everything. A previous generation of conservatives trained their guns on Dan Rather and the network news that Americans used to watch. The newer generation does not fear the mainstream media. It pities the media, and understands, after a generation of Matt Drudge and Fox News, that manipulating it is child’s play. On the new sites, a little reporting and a little snark can expose that the government, and its defenders in the press, are puffing up their expertise to hide their incompetence. The more proximate enemy of this new generation of conservatives is the left’s nerd cult. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and “explanatory” journalism of the Vox.com variety—it all has wild fun with the “derp” of cable news and fringe conservatism. The most influential writers in this sphere, like Ezra Klein and Matt Taibbi, eventually carved out roles at the mainstream media, changing its hoarier institutions from the inside. The reader and consumer of explainer media, or the donor to the Democracy Alliance, believes that expertise can correct misinformation and fix policy. This is the context for wildly popular news, wildly share-able on social media. The Awl, no conservative news site, even mocked “the Content industry” by tracking how many Facebook interactions liberal sites got from embedding John Oliver’s monologues into blog posts. Jon Stewart’s show embodies plenty of the problems the newer right has with the press. “Dutiful reporters for websites like Salon, Huffington Post and the like simply write down whatever Stewart said,” wrote the WFB’s David Rutz by way of introducing a compilation of Stewart’s mugging, “and declare his target utterly annihilated.” The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, whose media criticism career dates back most of a decade to the blog Get Religion (motto: “The press just doesn’t get religion”), has held up Stewart as an example of a smug left that pretends the real news is just one explainer or eye-roll away. “Adults should not watch the Daily Show,” wrote Hemingway in 2012. Two years later, she added that she had “such a hard time taking adult Jon Stewart fans seriously.” The Federalist “did not have a game plan to criticize explainer journalism,” says David Harsanyi, a longtime Denver Post columnist who came to the new site after a stint at Human Events. It was, and is, a source of original interviews and real-time arguments between conservatives and libertarians. Rand Paul and Mike Lee gave the site news-making looks at their agendas for foreign policy and Congress, respectively. But some of The Federalist’s most popular content is directed at the rest of the media. Politifact is a source of “ridiculous and non-fact-based” cover-ups for the Democrats. A Vox.com story that errantly referred to a bridge between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—which does not exist—might have been “a Mossad operation to forever discredit everything Vox ever writes on Israel for all time.” (This was a joke.) “I really do want to know if he tires of being embarrassingly wrong about everything, but I think I already know the answer,” wrote Hemingway, in a piece about Vox co-founder (and my former Slate.com colleague) Matthew Yglesias. “Being a wrong liberal means never having to say you’re sorry, and having no shame means you never have to feel embarrassed.” That tone is common in the new right media. The left, sure, can get away with murder with its own readership. What’s that worth in the long run? “Liberal discourse is insular, sophomoric, divorced from everyday life,” wrote the Free Beacon’s Continetti in an October column. “What liberals say about race and gender and climate change is designed not to persuade the unconvinced but to rally the base. MSNBC is imploding. Vox.com is a laughingstock.” Domenech doesn’t think that the young right’s targets need to be driven out of the industry. “We’re trying to give voice to some critiques that some people have long had of journalism, whether it’s of news or of culture,” says Domenech. “We’re not trying to drive anyone out of business. To a certain degree, when we critique a journalist or a public figure like Tyson, we’re not doing so out of animosity toward that person. We’re doing so because we want them to stop saying that thing that isn’t true.” The Free Beacon has an explicitly generational message when it comes to Democrats, and their presumed 2016 presidential candidate. It applies the clickable tag “trolling” to a burgeoning number of pieces, many of them by Andrew Stiles, who left National Review for the WFB after “burning out on politics.” Recent Stiles stories have worn headlines like “SHOCKING: Hillary Clinton Could Be the Youngest Democrat Running in 2016,” and “You Won’t Believe How Old the Democratic Party’s Leaders Really Are,” and “Hillary Clinton Has Mastered The Art of Turning Her New Grandchild Into a Stump Speech.” “I think it's perfectly reasonable to look at the Democratic Party, which is supposed to represent younger generations, being run by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, both in their 70s, and thinking about nominating Hillary, who will be pushing 70, and think: Wait a minute? Is the best we can do?” says Stiles. He felt the same way in 2008, when he voted for Barack Obama. His turn to the right came, he says, when he started paying closer attention to politics. “It was easy to be a liberal in college and watch The Daily Show and feel good about myself but not really know anything.” On Nov. 13, after Lachlan Markey was done staking out the Democracy Alliance, Continetti headed to the Republican Party’s Capitol Hill Club to accept a prize. The Young Conservatives Coalition was giving him the “Buckley Award,” named for National Review founder William F. Buckley, for his “significant contribution” to the movement. As fellow award-winners James O’Keefe and Dan Backer watched, Continetti asked his audience to reject the popular history of Buckley as a bloodless intellectual. “The Buckley of the 1950s and 1960s was even more frightening to liberals than even Ted Cruz,” said Continetti. “He defended Joe McCarthy. If you want a controversial issue, defend Joe McCarthy!” Buckley, he said, launched “the conservative march through the institutions that continues to this day.” *USA Today column: University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds: “Not working for the working class” <http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/30/white-working-class-obama-obamacare-government-benefits-column/19700747/>* By Glenn Harlan Reynolds November 30, 2014, 6:06 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] The key to Obama's struggle with white working class voters is not 'white,' but 'working.' Working class white people don't like President Obama much. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 27% approve of him. That's 21 percentage points down since he took office in 2009. A standard talking-point is that these voters don't like Obama because they're racist. But that assumes that the key word in "white working class" is "white." In fact, the key word is "working." After all, Obama isn't any blacker than he was in 2009. A few Democratic pundits seem to get this. Writing in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum observes: "So who does the WWC take out its anger on? Largely, the answer is the poor. In particular, the undeserving poor. Liberals may hate this distinction, but it doesn't matter if we hate it. Lots of ordinary people make this distinction as a matter of simple common sense, and the WWC makes it more than any. That's because they're closer to it. For them, the poor aren't merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They're the folks next door who don't do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars. " Given the availability of government benefits, most working-class people of any race could be on welfare if they chose. That they're not drawing government checks means that they value work. As Slate's Jamelle Bouie notes, government programs like Social Security and Medicare are differently received, because they aren't seen as rewarding people for not working. When your neighbor gets welfare, it makes you feel like a sucker for going to work. Medicare, not so much. So if Democrats want to win back the white working class — and they kind of need to, if they want to win elections, because it's an enormous demographic — maybe they need to start thinking about honoring and encouraging work, rather than talking about race or class. One person who has some ideas in this direction is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who suggests that the government invest heavily in infrastructure, which would create a lot of blue-collar jobs. That was actually an original part of Barack Obama's stimulus plan, but it was derailed by feminists within the Obama coalition who thought it would produce too many jobs for men. Christina Romer, then-chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, reported: "The very first email I got ... was from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.' " Well, if you're offended by jobs for burly men, you probably won't do well with working-class men, or with the working-class women who are often married to burly men. And, as Joel Kotkin notes, many other Obama policies — promoting urban density, which creates fewer construction jobs; fighting oil and coal extraction, thus targeting industries that create high-paying blue collar jobs; and even opening up immigration, which drives down wages for the working class — all seem designed to punish people who work for a living, even as expanded benefits for the poor seem designed to reward people who draw government checks for a living. According to Gallup, thanks to Obamacare, Americans earning $30,000 to $75,000 a year are more likely to skip medical care because of cost than Americans earning under $30,000 a year. Can the Democrats solve this problem? Sure. These are all policies that could be changed, though a lot of party constituencies would oppose it. And Democrats might choose a working-class-friendly nominee, too, if they can find one. Of course, the current favorite is Hillary Clinton, who went to Wellesley and makes $300,000 for giving a speech, and the No. 2 prospect for 2016 is probably Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who made $212,000 for representing an asbestos company. Portraying either of them as working class heroes will be an uphill battle. And there's another problem: The white working class may have abandoned Obama, but the black and Hispanicworking classes have mostly stayed loyal to him. But what do Clinton or Warren have that might inspire similar loyalty? Come 2016, it may not just be the white part of the working class that the Democrats have trouble with. *Townhall.com: “Jim Webb Thinks He Can Beat Hillary Clinton” <http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2014/11/30/jim-webb-thinks-he-can-beat-hillary-clinton-n1924720>* By Matt Vespa November 30, 2014 In a previous post, Jim Webb announced he is establishing an exploratory committee for a possible 2016 run. Given Clinton’s vast ties within her political machine, it seems hard to envision a 2016 primary season where she loses, but she did lose to an insurgent candidate named Barack Obama in 2008; Obama trailed her in the polls by 30 points at the time. Her unofficial political team is already posturing, saying Clinton could net 386 electoral votes in 2016. One could posit that this is a tacit acknowledgement of Clinton's vulnerability. After all, she’s a bad campaigner, her books sales were lackluster to say the least, and she’s nothing like Obama in the sense of being something completely different from the underbelly of the Democratic Party–nor does she bring an aura of change that captivates a nation. She will also be nearly 70 when–or if–she subjects herself to the burdensome and tortuous life of a national campaign. Jim Webb, former Democratic Senator, thinks he has what it takes to beat Clinton. Hillary is vying for the white, working class voters that have flocked to the GOP in past elections; Webb thinks he can compete, or even win, with this demographic as well. Yet, besides the southern Democrat, supposedly moderate appeal Webb has; he’s also angling for a populist narrative–something the Clinton camp could have trouble disseminating to voters. Clinton’s “dead broke” gaffe was seen as nothing short of disastrous; everyone knows the earning potential for ex-presidents and their families are phenomenal. This, coupled with Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street and the financial sector, could be a wedge that Webb could exploit (via the New Yorker): “He laid out a view of Wall Street that differs sharply from Clinton’s. “‘Because of the way that the financial sector dominates both parties, the distinctions that can be made on truly troubling issues are very minor,’ he said. He told a story of an effort he led in the Senate in 2010 to try to pass a windfall-profits tax that would have targeted executives at banks and firms which were rescued by the government after the 2008 financial crisis. He said that when he was debating whether to vote for the original bailout package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, he relied on the advice of an analyst on Wall Street, who told him, ‘No. 1, you have to do this, because otherwise the world economy will go into cataclysmic free fall. But, No. 2, you have to punish these guys. It is outrageous what they did.’ “After the rescue, when Webb pushed for what he saw as a reasonable punishment, his own party blocked the legislation. ‘The Democrats wouldn’t let me vote on it,’ he said. ‘Because either way you voted on that, you’re making somebody mad. And the financial sector was furious.’ He added that one Northeastern senator—Webb wouldn’t say who—’was literally screaming at me on the Senate floor.’ “When Clinton was a New York senator, from 2001 to 2009, she fiercely defended the financial industry, which was a crucial source of campaign contributions and of jobs in her state. ‘If you don’t have stock, and a lot of people in this country don’t have stock, you’re not doing very well,’ Webb said. Webb is a populist, but a cautious one, especially on taxes, the issue that seems to have backfired against O’Malley’s administration. As a senator, Webb frustrated some Democrats because he refused to raise individual income-tax rates. But as President, he says, he would be aggressive about taxing income from investments: ‘Fairness says if you’re a hedge-fund manager or making deals where you’re making hundreds of millions of dollars and you’re paying capital-gains tax on that, rather than ordinary income tax, something’s wrong, and people know something’s wrong. ‘ … “Webb said. ‘A lot of the Democratic leaders who don’t want to scare away their financial supporters will say we’re going to raise the minimum wage, we’re going do these little things, when in reality we need to say we’re going to fundamentally change the tax code so that you will believe our system is fair.’” On prison reform, Webb studied Japan’s low recidivism rate to bring about changes within our own system that he says prevents ex-convicts from rebuilding their lives. The article noted that the prison population exploded when President Clinton signed new tough sentencing laws. If there’s one thing that will split progressives on Hillary, it’s the Iraq War. She voted for it–and the left has never fully forgiven her for that. Webb is a Vietnam veteran, was Secretary of the Navy, and thinks the Obama-Clinton ways of doing business abroad isn't much of a blueprint : “He [Webb] thinks Obama, Clinton, and Power made things worse by intervening in Libya. ‘There’s three factions,’ he said. ‘The John McCains of the world, who want to intervene everywhere. Then the people who cooked up this doctrine of humanitarian intervention, including Samantha Power, who don’t think they need to come to Congress if there’s a problem that they define as a humanitarian intervention, which could be anything. That doctrine is so vague.’ Webb also disdains liberals who advocate military intervention without understanding the American military. Referring to Syria and Libya, Webb said, ‘I was saying in hearings at the time, What is going to replace it? What is going to replace the Assad regime? These are tribal countries. Where are all these weapons systems that Qaddafi had? Probably in Syria. Can you get to the airport at Tripoli today? Probably not. It was an enormous destabilizing impact with the Arab Spring.’ “Early on as a senator, Webb championed the idea of the so-called ‘pivot to Asia,’ a rebalancing of America’s strategic and diplomatic posture from the Middle East to the Far East—an idea that Obama and Clinton subsequently adopted. Webb pushed Secretary of State Clinton to open up relations with Burma, a policy that Clinton includes in her recent book, ‘Hard Choices,’ as a major achievement. (Obama is travelling to Burma this week.) When I raised the subject with Webb, he seemed annoyed that he hadn’t received adequate credit for the Burma policy. People who know him well suggest that part of what’s motivating him to consider a primary challenge to Clinton is his sense that she hasn’t expressed the proper gratitude.” So, here's the narrative that’s forming here: Hillary is wrong on war, wrong on Wall Street; I, Jim Webb, gave her the idea to rebalance our position in Asia, and tried to punish the folks who hurt “Main Street.” Hillary sounds like she's an Obama-lite candidate; something that voters will not be enthused to hear about. With Obama’s dismal approval numbers and voters yearning for something new after eight years, Webb could fill that void and become a formidable anti-Clinton candidate. On the other hand, As Josh Kraushaar at National Journal wrote, the Democratic Party has become a smaller, more ideologically homogeneous party on social issues, not economic ones; and they’re the issues that gain traction with the liberal base. While he admits that Webb is a good candidate on paper, he will never survive the culture shock that has occurred within the ranks of liberal Democrats after eight years of Obama. Regardless, it should be interesting what happens in the next two years. It’s about time Democrats duke it out leave each other beaten, bruised, and bloodied in a primary process. Oh, and one last note on Hillary’s vulnerability; she’s virtually tied with Romney in a head-to-head presidential match up–and that’s with a 13-point gender gap with women voters. Mittmentum Part II? What is going on? *Calendar:* *Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.* · December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton keynotes a League of Conservation Voters dinner (Politico <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-green-groups-las-vegas-111430.html?hp=l11> ) · December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton hosts fundraiser for Sen. Mary Landrieu (Times-Picayune <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/hillary_clinton_hosting_new_yo.html> ) · December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>) · December 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton honored by Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (Politico <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-ripple-of-hope-award-112478.html> ) · 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> )