podesta_email_19460.txt

podesta-emails 7,922 words email

P17 D6 P22 V11 V9

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Clips February 23, 2015 HRC Could Arkansas’ Anti-LGBT Bill Become a Test for Hillary Clinton? (Frontiers Media).................. 2 Economic Recovery Under Obama Creates Quandaries for 2016 Race (The New York Times)...... 4 National security still a perception problem for Democrats (Politico).............................................. 7 Tom Nides won’t join Hillary campaign (Politico)........................................................................... 9 Defining Bush Brand In Building Candidacy (The Wall Street Journal).......................................... 10 Hillary Clinton and the #askhermore Oscar campaign (The Washington Post).............................. 12 Sorry, But Clinton’s Inevitably Is Not a Problem (Daily Beast)...................................................... 13 Biden’s Trips Fan 2016 Race Speculation (The Wall Street Journal).............................................. 15 Bernie Sanders not eager to ‘tilt at windmills’ in 2016 (Politico)................................................... 17 John Kasich Swats at Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton as He Considers 2016 (Bloomberg).................... 18 McAuliffe: ‘No need’ for Clinton to start 2016 bid right away (The Washington Post)................. 19 McAuliffe defends Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign funds (The Hill)........................... 21 Could Arkansas’ Anti-LGBT Bill Become a Test for Hillary Clinton? (Frontiers Media) By Karen Ocamb February 18, 2015 Frontiers Media Gov. Asa Hutchinson is set to let Senate Bill 202 (SB 202) become law any day now without his signature. The bill, known as the Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, claims to standardize civil rights laws throughout the state by banning cities and counties from adopting anti-discrimination ordinances for classifications of people not already listed for protection under state law. And that would be LGBT people, who would be prohibited from advancing LGBT equality legislatively and would have existing civil rights stripped in the two municipalities (Little Rock and Eureka Springs) with pro-LGBT protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations. “The Governor has the power to tell the nation that Arkansas welcomes all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, “said Human Rights Campaign Arkansas State Director Kendra R. Johnson. “Senate Bill 202 destroys local control and denies municipal governments the ability to pass civil rights protections for people in their cities.” HRC President Chad Griffin, an Arkansas native who often talks about being a lonely gay boy in his hometown of Hope, has not yet commented. Arkansas knows something about the struggle over civil rights. It was the first state to test desegregation after the 1957 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education that “separate but equal was unconstitutional.” Then-Gov. Orval E. Faubus didn’t stand in the doorway of the Little Rock Central High School to prevent nine African American teenagers from entering like Gov. George Wallace did in Alabama—but he mobilized the National Guard and allowed white mobs to keep the kids out until President Eisenhower intervened. Oddly, neither former President Bill Clinton— also the former governor of Arkansas who famously called himself “the man from Hope” during his presidential campaign in 1991—nor former First Lady Hillary Clinton have made statements about the bill, though they were asked by the Washington Blade via the Clinton Foundation . Perhaps the Clintons have forgotten how the Los Angeles-based LGBT political group ANGLE (Access Now for Gay & Lesbian Equality), lead by “friend-of-Bill” David Mixner, raise $3.2 million in early money for the then-long winded dark horse candidate. Who needs to remember how they got to where they are now—it was so long ago. But surely Hillary Clinton will understand how the LGBT community might scratch its collective head in wonder that in 2011 as Sec. of State she could deliver such an extraordinary message of support for LGBT people internationally—”gay rights are human rights”—but fail to stand up for LGBT people in her former home state. What does that portend for LGBT support for her presumed 2016 run for president—surely she remembers the false hope of “inevitability.” But as frightening as is the prospect of having LGBT civil rights prohibited or stripped away in Arkansas, even more worrisome is the right-wing-fingers-crossed hope that the bill and Hutchinson’s tactic of inaction will become a model for other conservative Republican-run states that don’t recognize LGBT equality. Unlike Arizona’s SB 1062—the bill vetoed by conservative Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer after an avalanche of business, political and religious leaders opposed it—and unlike the very similar 1992 anti-gay voter-passed Colorado initiative Amendment 2, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in Romer v Evans—SB 202 does not explicitly name LGBT people for exclusion. And therein lies a major problem in challenging the law in court, if it becomes law. “It would depend in large part on whether a court would see beyond the wording of the law to the discriminatory reason why it was adopted and the intentional harms it would inflict upon LGBT people and other minority group members,” Jon Davidson, legal director at Lambda Legal, told The Blade’s Chris Johnson. “When it can be shown that a law was passed in order to facilitate discrimination, that should create a presumption that it’s unconstitutional.” The Blade notes that the National Center for Lesbian Rights already lost in court when challenging a 2011 similar law in Tennessee that also “prohibits municipalities from enacting non-discrimination ordinances of classes of people not recognized in state code.” The political tug-of-war over SB 202—as well as other bills focused on personal “religious liberties” versus secular state and local civil rights laws—could also become a model in the resurgence of the historic fight between states rights and federalism, exemplified by the civil war between the confederacy and the union. Sometimes it feels that a new war of the confederacy is underway, just marketed differently. LGBT activists are hoping businesses such as the Arkansas mega-giant Walmart, which has a company non-discrimination policy, will step up and pressure Hutchinson to veto the bill. But so far, crickets. Activist Scott Wooledge has created a website to keep track of what’s happening in Arkansas: VetoSB202. Economic Recovery Under Obama Creates Quandaries for 2016 Race (The New York Times) By Jonathan Martin February 23, 2015 The New York Times WASHINGTON -- When President Obama addressed members of the Democratic National Committee here over the weekend, he offered a glowing account of the economic recovery under his administration. ‘‘America is coming back,’’ he said after rattling off an array of upbeat economic indicators. ‘‘We’ve risen from recession.’’ But as both parties begin positioning themselves for the election to succeed Mr. Obama, the politics of the economy are far more complicated than the president would have them. Among Democrats, there are divisions over the degree to which Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered their leading contender, should praise the recovery and run on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy. And Republicans -- assessing falling unemployment and soaring job creation under a president with still-mediocre approval ratings -- are grasping for the right way to frame their 2016 campaign message. The coming debate over the economy, and by extension Mr. Obama’s legacy, is a particularly acute topic for governors, who are often judged by voters on their states’ economic performance and who spend much of their time on job creation. As the governors gathered here for their annual winter meeting, there was bipartisan optimism about the economy, but it was guarded. ‘‘In many parts of the country, we are seeing increasing momentum in terms of recovery, but in almost every state, and certainly in parts of Colorado, we are still struggling to get the unemployment down,’’ Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado said, ‘‘and most importantly the wages still haven’t started rising.’’ Colorado’s unemployment rate was down to 4 percent in December, below the national average, which was 5.7 percent in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Mr. Hickenlooper’s sober analysis suggests an awareness that voters are not yet enjoying a boon and certainly are not yet fully crediting Mr. Obama for the recovery. Indeed, a Quinnipiac University poll in Colorado, a crucial swing state, released last week indicated that 58 percent of voters said they wanted the next president to ‘‘change direction from Barack Obama’s policies,’’ and the president’s job approval rating was only 43 percent. Perhaps mindful of such data, Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, indicated that Mrs. Clinton could not run simply on the recent good economic news. ‘‘I am not saying who the candidate is going to be, but I don’t think she will come with, ‘Everything is fine, everything is going well,’ ‘‘ he said. ‘‘I suspect that she will come forward with some new ideas and some innovative ideas on how we can begin to move wages up and how we can help businesses expand more rapidly and create more jobs.’’ Yet in another important state on the presidential map, the Democratic governor said Mrs. Clinton should not be shy about linking herself to Mr. Obama’s record. ‘‘She should embrace the Obama economic policies that have moved the country forward, absolutely,’’ said the governor, Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a close friend of both Mrs. Clinton’s and former President Bill Clinton’s. ‘‘Go through the numbers, look where we are today. Things are booming.’’ But Mr. McAuliffe was quick to add that Mr. Obama could make it easier for Mrs. Clinton to offer that embrace if his administration was more effective in trumpeting the recovery. ‘‘I think they need to do a much better job of explaining their successes,’’ said Mr. McAuliffe, who was the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. ‘‘I don’t get it.’’ What most of the governors, in both parties, agreed on was that longstanding wage stagnation was diminishing the political impact of the recovery. ‘‘We still have a wage problem. We are still creating too many low-wage, not family-supporting, jobs,’’ said Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a Democrat who was elected last year in a state that was among the hardest hit by the recession. Ms. Raimondo, whose state has a 6.8 percent unemployment rate, added: ‘‘So there is a lot of work to do. She has a wage problem that she has to fix.’’ The country’s structural economic challenges -- whether wages, diminished manufacturing or other challenges associated with globalization -- are such that Mrs. Clinton must come up with her own agenda, Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, another Democrat, said. ‘‘I think it would be a mistake for somebody to be running on ‘It’s great guns; we just have to keep doing what we’re doing,’ ‘‘ Mr. Markell said. ‘‘It ought to be, ‘In a changing world, here are the things we need to do differently.’ ‘‘ Early signs suggest that Mrs. Clinton intends to offer proposals that would move beyond Mr. Obama’s ideas -- notably a plan to offer incentives to corporations that increase profit-sharing with employees. If Democrats are grappling with how best to hail the resurgent economy while acknowledging its underlying difficulties, Republicans are engaged in a conversation over whether they should remain critical of the recovery, claim a share of credit for it or move on to different issues. Many of the Republican governors from states where economic improvement has been significant on their watch are uneasy about their nominee’s continuing to bad-mouth the economy. Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa, where unemployment is down to 4.1 percent, said Republican presidential candidates should point to job growth in Republican-led states. ‘‘Take some credit for what Republican governors have done, because the recipe to revitalize the national economy is to do the same thing,’’ Mr. Branstad said He also suggested that Republicans ought to focus on national security, an issue on which Mr. Obama may prove to be more vulnerable than the economy. National security still a perception problem for Democrats (Politico) By Adam B. Lerner February 23, 2015 Politico Now, more so than at any other time in the past 12 years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats to protect them from terrorism. A new report by Ben Freeman and Michelle Diggles from Third Way, a center-left think tank, claimed to have identified the Democrats’ antidote: Hillary Clinton. Focus groups conducted in October and November 2014 with white college-educated swing voters in Colorado and Iowa indicated that Clinton was an exception to the Democrats’ otherwise lackluster performance, the researchers found. Respondents said she “exhibits strength without being pushy” and is “quicker to make decisions” than President Barack Obama without being too proactive like former President George W. Bush. In Gallup polls dating back to 2003, Republicans have consistently led Democrats on national security — except for an approximately 18-month period from 2007 to mid-2008. Republicans now have a 23-percentage-point lead, after hovering in the teens and single digits through the rest of the period. It remains unclear whether Clinton’s personal favorability on national security will last into a national campaign, the researchers found; respondents praised the current Democratic front-runner in vague terms but their skepticism of her party and the president for whom she worked as secretary of state could sully her brand as she takes more public stances. Third Way Senior Vice President Matt Bennett said he believes Clinton’s appeal could work in the other direction. “An ancillary benefit [of a Clinton candidacy] will be that it will help close the security gap for the party” at large, he said. The report stated that voters often intertwine immigration with foreign policy, meaning the issue could have particular resonance in 2016 if Obama’s executive action to grant undocumented immigrants legal status and the rise of extremist groups in the Middle East are still key topics of debate. Bennett believes that a Clinton campaign will need to “lean in” on national security to maximize her advantage. The report’s analysis also made an argument that national security is a more important electoral issue than originally believed. During the 2014 midterms, even though only 13 percent of voters said foreign policy was the most important issue facing the country, the large gap between the parties on the issue made it far more decisive than an issue like the economy. Third Way’s analysis found that Democrats’ advantage with regards to the economy earned them only 2.6 percent in the polls, while national security and immigration both lost the party 5 percent. Further, the authors found a strong correlation between voters’ opinion of parties’ handling of national security and their overall opinions of the parties, though shifts in the former weren’t typically followed in the latter for about a year. That analysis implies that the fact that Republicans currently lead Democrats on national security by the largest margin in more than a decade means the Democratic Party’s overall favorability relative to the Republican Party is set to tank. As for Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievements, Third Way found that voters couldn’t care less. “The benefit of the bin Laden raid is gone entirely,” said Bennett. In one focus group the researchers convened, a Colorado woman tried to identify his killing as a major Obama foreign policy success. “That guy, they made a movie about him. You know the skinny guy with the beard.” None of the other eight or so respondents knew his name either, the report noted. Tom Nides won’t join Hillary campaign (Politico) By Mike Allen February 23, 2015 Politico Tom Nides, the Morgan Stanley executive who was expected to land a top job in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, will stay on the outside, Democratic sources tell POLITICO. Friends say Nides, who was Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, is enjoying his lucrative life as Morgan Stanley’s vice chairman, and will work in informal ways to be helpful to his former boss, including a major role in raising money. The friends note that Nides has only been back at Morgan Stanley for a year and a half since leaving Foggy Bottom, and it’s a long campaign that hasn’t even started. He could take some future role. Some key Democrats were concerned that Nides’s Wall Street connection made him too radioactive, but friends said that was not a factor. Nides is married to Virginia Moseley, CNN vice president and deputy Washington bureau chief. Nides had been mentioned as a possible finance chairman or campaign chairman, a job that went to John Podesta, a White House chief of staff under President Clinton. Dennis Cheng, who this month left his post as the Clinton Foundation’s chief development officer, is expected to become the campaign’s finance director. Clinton is contemplating a very flat fundraising structure that doesn’t include the customary post of finance chair – in part because the Clintons have so many friends. If a finance chair is named, it can’t be “a plutocrat,” a Nides friend said. Those thought to want the post include J.B. Pritzker of Chicago, an investor and philanthropist who’s a brother of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis of San Francisco, a former ambassador to Hungary who was sworn in by Clinton when she was secretary of state. Defining Bush Brand In Building Candidacy (The Wall Street Journal) By Patrick O’Connor and Janet Hook February 23, 2015 The Wall Street Journal With his declaration last week that “I am my own man,” Jeb Bush started navigating one of the trickiest challenges to his presidential ambitions: his family name. Mr. Bush has capitalized on his family’s brand, and a network he built as Florida governor, to jump-start an extensive fundraising operation in recent weeks and take a leading position in the GOP nomination contest, despite years avoiding the national spotlight. Those early advantages are offset, in part, by voters’ still-frosty view of Mr. Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, and their general unease about nominating the son and sibling of the last two Republican presidents. “I would not support any Bush -- we’ve had two,” said Bart Fromuth, a Republican state representative in New Hampshire, who recently attended an event for one of Mr. Bush’s likely rivals, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. “We’ve played the Bush card, and that contributed to the problems we have today.” “Right or wrong, people do not want another Bush,” said Konni Burton, a Republican state senator in Texas who is supporting a home-state favorite, Sen. Ted Cruz. “Particularly in the conservative grass roots, we are tired of the establishment-type Republicans. We are looking for new, exciting people who will fight for our conservative principles.” Many of the GOP’s biggest donors have rallied behind Mr. Bush since he announced his interest in the race late last year. He is also one of the few Republicans to consistently poll above 10% in national opinion surveys. The same is true in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And some Republican voters feel warmly toward the Bushes and say Mr. Bush, whose father is former President George H.W. Bush, gained valuable experience through his family. “Jeb Bush is all right in my book,” said Viles King, 71, of Orleans, Ind. “I loved his brother. I felt very safe with him.” However, opinion surveys also illustrate the challenge Mr. Bush faces in casting himself as a politician for the future. Some 64% of Americans said he represents the past, according to a CNN/ORC poll conducted earlier this month, significantly more than the 48% who said the same of Hillary Clinton. A December Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey found some 57% of adults said they wouldn’t consider supporting Mr. Bush, including 34% of Republicans, 41% of self-described conservatives and 52% of independents. The good news for Mr. Bush is that if he wins the nomination, he would likely face Mrs. Clinton in the general election, neutralizing the legacy issue somewhat for both candidates, because each is exposed. But that prospect doesn’t sit well with many voters. Mr. Bush has started to address the skepticism of political dynasties. His family, Mr. Bush told an audience in Detroit earlier this month, has given him “a front-row seat to watch history unfold.. . .On another level, I know it’s an interesting challenge for me.” The former Florida governor went a step further last week when he told a Chicago crowd, “I love my brother, I love my Dad. . . .But I’m my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences.” Amid those attempts to distinguish himself from his brother and father, Mr. Bush appears hesitant to turn his back entirely on their legacies. In Chicago, for example, Mr. Bush admitted “there were mistakes made in Iraq,” citing the flawed intelligence used to justify his brother’s 2003 invasion and struggles to secure the country after ousting Saddam Hussein. But he also hailed his brother’s decision to send additional troops there in 2007 to stabilize parts of the country,” calling it “one of the most heroic acts of courage politically” of any president. With Mrs. Clinton likely to run for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Bush wouldn’t be the only White House contender shouldering the burdens of a famous name. But unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Bush is relatively new to the national stage and is therefore being defined, in some measure, by the image of his dad and brother. George W. Bush left the White House in January 2009 with the economy in decline and some 58% of the country viewing him negatively. His image has improved in the years since, but memories of his tenure in the White House continue to weigh heavily on fellow Republicans, including those who voted for him. “I don’t really have that much against Jeb Bush, but I don’t think he could possibly win because of the stigma attached to his brother,” said Charlie Loan, 52, a Republican from the Denver suburbs who voted for both Bushes for president but would rather Jeb Bush not run. In charting a new course, Mr. Bush has made economic concerns an early hallmark of his likely White House bid, promising to offer conservative prescriptions to address wage stagnation and economic mobility. As a Spanish speaker whose wife was born in Mexico, he has also stressed inclusivity. “You’ve got to care for people before you can get their vote,” he said in Detroit. By the end of his gubernatorial campaigns, he said, “People knew I wasn’t just the brother of George W. and the son of my beloved Dad. I was my own person. I earned it by working hard to connect to people on a level that truly mattered.” “It feels like a monarchy,” said Donna Cunningham, 58, an independent and paralegal from Bradenton, Fla. “We’ve got to have some people in there with a different last name.” Hillary Clinton and the #askhermore Oscar campaign (The Washington Post) By Hunter Schwarz February 22, 2015 The Washington Post “Ready for Hillary”, a super PAC urging the former Secretary of State to run for president, tweeted the hashtag #askhermore Sunday night before the Oscars. It’s part of a campaign supported by actresses like Reese Witherspoon and Lena Dunham for reporters to ask more than “who are you wearing?” on the red carpet. The campaign comes on the heels of a re-energized conversation about sexism in Hollywood following revelations from last year’s Sony Pictures hack that female actresses were in many instances paid less than their male counterparts. On E!, Ryan Seacrest seemed to have gotten the message, asking the “who-are-you-wearing” question throughout the night without actually using those exact words in that exact order, and promptly following it up with a similar question for the man. (“Who designed your dress?” he asked Chrissy Teigen before asking her husband, John Legend, what he was wearing). E! also got rid of the mani-cam. While asking actresses questions about things other than fashion is something we should do a lot more of (why wouldn’t you ask everyone on the Golden Globes red carpet last month what they thought about the Sony hack that happened just weeks before?!?), it’s not just a question that’s completely based in sexism; it’s a big part of the fashion industry. “You might say that awards season is as important, if not even more important, to fashion brands as it is to the entertainment companies that are honored in these ceremonies like the Oscars,” Howard Hogan, an attorney and partner in the Washington, D.C.,-based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “A favorable review for an Oscar gown can be make or break for the designers who outfit them.” Red carpet fashion can involve contracts and money changing hands. Los Angeles Times reporter Booth Moore tweeted that if we really want to get rid of “who are you wearing,” we need to get rid of fashion brands paying actresses to wear their clothes. Without that, the question might not go away. During the 2010 Oscars, Ryan Seacrest abstained from asking about fashion and was criticized by some in the fashion press, and now five years later, and he’s back to asking those question again. But in politics, where politicians don’t have to sign contracts about what wear, this campaign is still good news for female candidates. It shows there’s a growing interest in ensuring reporters, whether on the red carpet or in Iowa, treat men and women equally. Sorry, But Clinton’s Inevitably Is Not a Problem (Daily Beast) By Ana Marie Cox February 23, 2015 Daily Beast Pundits can’t stop snatching Hillary’s defeat from the jaws of victory, insisting that her commanding lead in the polls is itself a problem. A Vox piece this week is typical: “Hillary Clinton’s uncontested nomination is dangerous for her and her party,” but I’d like to give points to Politico for finding a slightly different angle, “All-too-ready for Hillary,” which argues that Clinton’s real problem is all the really talented people who want to work for her. Clinton may not win, but blaming a loss on her popularity (or overly talented staff!) exposes the weak, desperate illogic of a pundit class that is mostly just filling time and news cycle holes until anything real happens. An “air of inevitability” should be a good thing, right? It’s in the superhero toolbox, right next to the cloak of invisibility and hammer of invincibility. So why do journalists treat it like kryptonite? On some level, it may be due to amorphous ill will towards Clinton herself, whether motivated by generic sexism or a more specific dislike of her notoriously prickly staff. (The “which came first” between a prickly staff and the negative coverage is a chicken-and-egg-meets-Heisenberg Principle problem whose solution deserves a Nobel in both science and peace for the person who solves it.) “Of course she’s going to win the primary, and that’s great for her!” is also the coldest take one could imagine, the kind of “another plane landed today” non-news that political reporters believe in their bones to be inherently uninteresting—as if the point of news was to be interesting, rather than factually correct. The only kind of accuracy political pundits care about has to do with predictions. The continuing spate of concern-trolling on Hillary’s behalf might just be padding out a soft landing should anything not work out exactly like most polls and political scientists predict. Airy counter-intuitive clickbait is also a lot easier than reporting anything, and almost impossible to call out as untrue, especially when it comes embedded with iceberg-sized caveats such as this (from the Vox piece): At the end of the day, presidential campaign gaffes rarely seem to matter much. But they surely don’t help. And one reason they don’t matter is that nobody makes it through the nominating process without showing they can take the heat. In 2016, Clinton isn’t going to have to show that. And it might cost her—and her party—dearly down the road. There is something to be said for working the kinks out of a campaign, as differentiated from a punishing series of preliminary contests. Still, politics can’t be rigged like a non-conference schedule, a perfect balance of real competition and record-padding that gets you both ready and well-seeded for the big dance. Indeed, sports may be the one place that Americans truly prefer underdogs, but even then, NJIT jerseys do not sell as well as University of Kentucky ones. Clinton’s connection to purportedly unpopular Obama policies is also a real concern, though one that requires those making the argument to straight-up ignore data that say people will vote for Clinton in favor of squishier “how do you feel” answers—as though that means more than the question that is, you know, the one on the ballot. The story “Why Hillary Clinton isn’t even close to a shoo-in, explained in one poll question,” is, for some reason, not about the one poll question that shows her to be a shoo-in. A variant of the “too popular to win” theory is the hypothesis that Clinton is only popular because of her familiar name, but having a familiar name is actually a bad thing. The argument that HRC (and/or Jeb Bush) represents a dynastic tendency that voters may rebel against is at least real argument, as opposed to the logical contortion of “inevitable=not inevitable.” The proof that “Americans hate dynasties” is a real argument is that is a testable hypothesis! Testable and proven wrong, by the polls that show Hillary to be so popular. In general, if there’s a political dynasty that America doesn’t love, well, we haven’t heard of it, and there are plenty of political dynasties in America. Though some may point toward anti-Hillary coverage as proof that the media are not biased to the left, I consider this tendency toward deliberate, counter-factual undermining as pretty good evidence of that very bias, mostly because you just don’t see this pathology on the right. Base voters on either side rattle their cages when the presumptive nominee doesn’t fit their specific ideological prescription, but the Karl Roves of the world don’t lay into a GOP hopeful just because he’s (or she, but come on…) clearly going to win. Poll numbers are not subject to the insecurity and attention-seeking that reporters are, and they tell a much less sexy, “Hillary leads the polls and you won’t believe what happens next”-type story. What reporters insist on calling “inevitability” is a quantifiably unprecedented amount of support. According to the pollsters at The New York Times, “No candidate, excluding incumbent presidents, has ever fared so well in the early primary polls as Mrs. Clinton. She holds about 60 percent of the vote of Democratic voters, a tally dwarfing the 40 percent she held this time in the last election cycle.” I’ll say it: Barring her own Titanic/iceberg moment, Hillary will win the nomination, and she will be in excellent position to win the general. Perhaps the only thing that can keep her from being in such an enviable position is the steady drip of negative coverage that proclaims otherwise. Biden’s Trips Fan 2016 Race Speculation (The Wall Street Journal) By Colleen McCain Nelson February 22, 2015 The Wall Street Journal When Vice President Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina last week to speak about investing in infrastructure, some longtime supporters had another topic on their minds: 2016. “You need to run,” Dick Harpootlian, former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, told the vice president during a stop in Columbia. Mr. Biden gave his friend a smile and a coy answer. “We’ll talk,” Mr. Harpootlian recounted the vice president saying. Mr. Biden has taken no overt steps toward building a national campaign machinery, and few people expect him to run. Nonetheless, Mr. Biden in recent weeks has fanned the will-he-or-won’t-he conversation by suggesting that he’s still considering a bid and by scheduling trips to three states that hold the earliest presidential nominating contests. His recent travels to Iowa and South Carolina—as well as a planned Wednesday excursion to New Hampshire—have been official White House business to promote the administration’s agenda. But inevitably, talk turns to the presidential campaign in private conversations. Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to mind, fellow Democrats say, but he remains consistently noncommittal. In January, Mr. Biden described the presidential race<file://localhost/javascript/void(0)> as “wide open” and said he may wait until summer to make a final decision on his own plans. Assessing Mr. Biden’s intent, Democratic strategists say the not-in, not-out strategy suggests that the vice president is keeping his options open on the off-chance that Hillary Clinton doesn’t run. Polls show that Mrs. Clinton, who has yet to officially announce her candidacy, holds a commanding lead over all other potential contenders in her party, and strategists say it is unlikely that Mr. Biden would challenger her. Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic consultant, said Mr. Biden would be embarking on a much more aggressive effort if he were planning to square off against Mrs. Clinton. “He’s doing things that help him in the event that everyone is wrong but not expending so much energy on what could be a futile mission,” he said. “He’s being realistic.” Mr. Biden’s approach is also aimed at solidifying the Obama administration legacy, and his role in it, by urging members of his party to “acknowledge what we have done” rather than distance themselves from it, as many Democrats did during the 2014 midterm campaigns. His argument may carry more sway if Mr. Biden is seen as a figure with political relevance and a future. The vice president had all but fallen out of the 2016 conversation, but he inserted himself into the political fray in January by saying he might seek the Democratic nomination. During his recent trip to Iowa, Mr. Biden repeated that timeline and stoked speculation by calling for a continuation of President Barack Obama’s policies while urging Democrats to run on this White House’s record in 2016. “Some say that would amount to a third term of the president,” Mr. Biden said during a speech at Drake University. “I call it sticking with what works.” Beyond that public declaration, the vice president said little privately during his trips to Iowa and South Carolina that suggested he was ready to run. Democrats in those states, as well as in New Hampshire, say they’ve seen no evidence of organizing efforts by Biden emissaries, and many supporters say no one from the vice president’s circle has even hinted that local officials might want to hold off on committing to other candidates. In Iowa, Mr. Biden reunited with some local Democrats when he stopped by Smokey Row Coffee in Des Moines. Abby Finkenauer, a state representative from Dubuque who volunteered for Mr. Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign, managed to snag a few minutes with the vice president at the coffee shop to catch up. But there was no mention of future plans, she said. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton’s emerging campaign is already lining up staff, and other groups have long been at work gathering donors and building a supporter network on her behalf. A New Hampshire Democratic strategist said there are no indications that Mr. Biden is organizing in that state, but the Ready for Hillary organization has been moving quickly to lock up commitments from Democrats. Still, Biden supporters in early primary states say they’re holding out hope. “He is the perfect successor to this president because he is part of the team that developed the policies that brought us this far,” Mr. Harpootlian said. “Joe Biden ought to be the next president of the United States.” Bernie Sanders not eager to ‘tilt at windmills’ in 2016 (Politico) By Caitlin Emma February 22, 2015 Politico Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has been in Iowa again, railing against the Koch brothers, calling for economic justice and trying to gauge whether there’s enough grassroots support for a presidential run. Sanders didn’t mention the presumed Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, by name in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” but said, if he decides to seek the White House, he isn’t sure he would run as a Democrat. “The fact that I’m in Iowa, which is a caucus state, maybe speaks for itself,” he said. “But I haven’t made that final decision. And I got to tell you that a lot of my strong supporters say Bernie, ‘Stay out of the damn Democratic Party. Run as an Independent.’” Sanders is the longest serving Independent member of Congress at 24 years. In Iowa, he told supporters that he was ready to take on the “billionaire class,” railing against the corrupting influence of money in politics. “The United States government has got to start working for the middle class and families of this country and not just millionaires and billionaires,” he said. “It is likely that within a very short period of time, the Koch brothers themselves will have a stronger political presence than either the Democratic or Republican Party.” Asked whether he could win a presidential race, Sanders said it was a “fair question.” He doesn’t want to “tilt at windmills,” he said, or attack imaginary enemies like the famous literary character Don Quixote. “I’ve got so much to do,” the senator said. “But I just think that out there, there are so many people who are hurting, so many people who are disillusioned, so many people who are viscerally upset that they work long hours for low wages and the billionaires are getting richer. They need a voice.” John Kasich Swats at Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton as He Considers 2016 (Bloomberg) By Ali Elkin February 23, 2015 Bloomberg Ohio Governor John Kasich is offering a preview of how he would tangle with potential rivals Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton if he runs for president. In an interview airing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Kasich defended his decision take Medicaid expansion money under Obamacare, which fellow Republican Paul has called a move by governors who think money grows on trees. “You know, Matthew 25 says that it’s about how you treat the widowed, how you treat the poor, how you treat the hungry,” Kasich said. “How do you clothe those who have no clothes? That is a conservative position to help them get on their feet so they then can assume their rightful place in our society.” In Kentucky, he added, “maybe everybody’s fine, maybe there aren’t people who are suffering these problems.” The state had the seventh-highest poverty rate in the U.S. (including the District of Columbia) in a 2011-2013 average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Asked about Clinton, Kasich said, “You know, I like Hillary, but I’m not ever going to be for her for president.” He suggested that he’d continue to speak out on foreign policy, in which Clinton was involved as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. “Hopefully whether I do this or not, I can have somewhat of a voice when it comes to the fact that America, you know, it just seems to be in retreat,” he said. Whether Kasich will meet Paul in the presidential primary is unclear. “All my options are on the table, and it’s a process that I, you know, have really not spent an enormous amount of time studying internally,” said Kasich, who has been traveling to campaign for a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. constitution. “But look, I’m not saying I won’t, I’m not saying I will, I’m leaving my options out there and we’ll just see how things develop.” McAuliffe: ‘No need’ for Clinton to start 2016 bid right away (The Washington Post) By Philip Rucker February 22, 2015 The Washington Post Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton family friend and political supporter, said that he sees “no need” for Hillary Rodham Clinton to begin her 2016 presidential campaign right away and that she benefits by avoiding a bruising Democratic primary challenge. “Listen, I’m very happy with the situation,” McAuliffe said Saturday in an interview with The Washington Post. “She doesn’t have to get in right away. It’s saving a lot of time, effort and money. Let the Republicans all get in.” McAuliffe, who served as national chairman of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and as the Democratic National Committee chairman during the 2004 presidential primaries, said he knows from experience that launching a campaign early can be draining. He pointed out that in the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton did not announce his candidacy until October 1991. “Having done this for many years, the second you get in and open up a campaign account, let me tell you, that money just goes out the door,” McAuliffe said. “There’s no need at this point. We’re in a very good position, so she can take her time on her timetable, which is spectacular.” McAuliffe, who once sat on the board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, defended the charitable foundation’s decision to accept donations from foreign governments. “If the biggest attack on Hillary’s going to be that she raised too much money for her charity, okay, I’ll take that,” he said. “No one’s alleging anything beyond that she raised money and people gave her money and foreign governments gave her money. At the end of the day, that’s fine. It went to a charity. It helped a lot of people.” McAuliffe’s comments come amid much discussion in Democratic circles about Clinton’s timetable for what her allies think is a certain 2016 White House run. Clinton’s team has signaled that she is likely to begin raising money as early as April but may delay aggressive campaigning until the summer. Some Democrats believe she is wise to hang back and wait, while others want to see her fighting now to erase any impressions that she may be taking the Democratic nomination for granted. At this stage in the 2008 campaign, the Democratic field already had taken shape, with announced candidacies of Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, among others. But this time, Clinton does not face a serious primary threat. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) has insisted that she is not running, despite an effort by some liberal activists to draft her into the race, while Vice President Biden is not actively preparing for a candidacy, although he has not shut the door on a run. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former senator Jim Webb (Va.) have been making waves and visiting early primary states, but none has launched a campaign. “People are going to make their decision,” McAuliffe said. “If they run, they run. If they don’t, they don’t.” McAuliffe said he disagreed with the view of some Democrats that a competitive primary campaign would be good for Clinton and would help prepare her for the rigors of the general election. “What’s going to go on on the Republican side is going to be intense and tough,” McAuliffe said. “I wouldn’t want to see that on the Democratic side — of course not, if we can avoid it. It’s going to be a long, tough slog for them.” McAuliffe was asked to assess the early moves of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has locked up many of the Republican Party’s prominent donors and policy thinkers in the two months since he formed a leadership PAC to explore a bid. “None of that surprised me,” McAuliffe said. “At the end of the day, it’s still hard because of, obviously, the negative issues around his brother, the issues of the war in Iraq and all that. That’s still going to linger out there. You’ve got to remember, when President Obama took office, you think of the job losses that occurred under President [George W.] Bush’s term and contrast that to the millions of jobs created under President Obama. I’ll take that contrast.” McAuliffe continued, “Jeb Bush, who wants to pretend he can distance himself, cannot distance himself from that failed economic record and failed foreign policy record. All of the issues that we had before will come back to [the] fore.” As for what role McAuliffe may play in a Clinton 2016 campaign, he said he would be her loudest cheerleader in Richmond. “I have the job I’ve always dreamed of,” McAuliffe said. “I love being governor, as you probably can tell.” In 2007 and 2008, he said, “I spent 500 days on the road. I can’t do that again. I’ve got a job here.” “You know what?” he continued, “to be honest with you, I’m personal friends with them. They want me to be successful. Honestly, [the] president calls all the time. I talk to Hillary all the time. They want me to be successful as a governor. I think that’s the best thing I can do.” He said that Virginia is poised once more to be a top general election battleground and that he would focus on helping Clinton win his home state. McAuliffe is preparing for state legislative races this year and is trying to help Democrats regain control of the state Senate. “I’m laying the groundwork and putting all the pieces in place for ‘15 to get my Senate back,” McAuliffe said. “But that same team I’m putting in place and operations will be a set-up to make sure that [in 2016] Virginia’s blue.” McAuliffe defends Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign funds (The Hill) By Peter Sullivan February 22, 2015 The Hill Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a close ally of Hillary Clinton, is defending her from criticism that the Clinton Foundation took donations from foreign governments. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Clinton Foundation had dropped its self-imposed ban on accepting funds from foreign countries, and that it had collected money from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman. “If the biggest attack on Hillary’s going to be that she raised too much money for her charity, okay, I’ll take that,” McAuliffe, who chaired Clinton’s 2008 campaign, told The Washington Post. “No one’s alleging anything beyond that she raised money and people gave her money and foreign governments gave her money. At the end of the day, that’s fine. It went to a charity. It helped a lot of people.” Republicans have raised the prospect that the donations could give foreign governments undue influence if Clinton becomes president. “Unless Hillary Clinton immediately reinstates the ban on foreign countries giving to her foundation and returns the millions of dollars these governments have already donated, she’s setting an incredibly dangerous precedent,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told the Associated Press. “The American people are not about to elect a president in Hillary Clinton who could expose them to the demands of foreign governments because they dumped massive sums of cash into her foundation.” After the Journal report came out, the Clinton Foundation released a statement saying it could reimpose the ban, which had been in effect while Clinton was secretary of State, if Clinton runs. “Should Secretary Clinton decide to run for office, we will continue to ensure the Foundation’s policies and practices regarding support from international partners are appropriate, just as we did when she served as Secretary of State,” the foundation said. McAuliffe also said that it makes sense for Clinton to wait to get into the race. “Listen, I’m very happy with the situation,” McAuliffe said. “She doesn’t have to get in right away. It’s saving a lot of time, effort and money. Let the Republicans all get in.”