podesta_email_12421.txt

podesta-emails 7,615 words email

P17 P22 D6 V11 P24

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*[image: Inline image 1]* *Correct The Record Sunday August 3, 2014 Roundup:* *Headlines:* *SFGate: “House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack” <http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/House-panel-No-administration-wrongdoing-in-5663509.php>* “The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.” *Pittsburgh Tribune: “Clinton praises Trib publisher's fight 'for what he believed'” [w/ VIDEO] <http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6550109-74/clinton-scaife-trib#axzz39KoxnQys>* “An unlikely friendship drew former President Bill Clinton to a sunny hilltop in the Laurel Highlands on Saturday, where he paid tribute to the late Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.” *Politico: “Bill Clinton eulogizes Richard Mellon Scaife: Nemesis, then friend” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-richard-mellon-scaife-eulogy-109670.html>* “Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’” *Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “Rubio Clarifies Hillary Clinton Comments: Not About Her Age” <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/08/03/rubio-clarifies-hillary-clinton-comments-not-about-her-age/>* “‘You can be 40 years old and be a 20th-century candidate,’ said the 43-year-old Florida Republican, a possible member of the 2016 GOP presidential field, on Fox News on Sunday.” *CBS News: “Sen. Rand Paul: Hillary Clinton not ‘fit to lead the country’” <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-hillary-clinton-not-fit-to-lead-the-country/>* “Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Hillary Clinton is not ‘fit to lead the country’ Friday, mocking the former secretary of state's comments about her wealth and condemning her response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi.” *Salon: “Is Hillary Clinton the true heir of Ronald Reagan?” <http://www.salon.com/2014/08/02/is_hillary_clinton_the_true_heir_of_ronald_reagan/>* [Subtitle:] “Not since 1980 has a candidate seemed so unstoppable -- and Hillary resembles the Gipper in other ways too” *The Daily Beast: “For 2016, Take Martin O’Malley Seriously” <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/for-2016-take-martin-o-malley-seriously.html>* “But the most interesting thing about O’Malley is his exploration of an intriguing, heart-centered strategy that could potentially shake up our national political paradigm: using the language of faith and universal moral values to ground public policy.” *Washington Examiner: “Why some donors are giving to dark horse Martin O'Malley” <http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-some-donors-are-giving-to-dark-horse-martin-omalley/article/2551602>* “Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic frontrunner, leads by as much as 50 percent in some polls, there is some evidence that some former supporters are looking with interest at Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.” *Articles:* *SFGate: “House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack” <http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/House-panel-No-administration-wrongdoing-in-5663509.php>* By Carolyn Lochhead August 1, 2014, 3:53 p.m. PDT The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public. Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given." That conflicts with accusations of administration wrongdoing voiced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), whose House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has held hearings on the Benghazi attack. Stevens, who grew up in Piedmont, and the other Americans died when Libyans attacked the consulate on Sept. 11, 2012. Among the Intelligence Committee's findings, according to Thompson: -- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened." -- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack." -- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind." -- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis." Those talking points included assertions that those who attacked the compound were angered by an obscure anti-Muhammad video posted to YouTube in the U.S. There is disagreement to this day about whether that was the case. *Pittsburgh Tribune: “Clinton praises Trib publisher's fight 'for what he believed'” <http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6550109-74/clinton-scaife-trib#axzz39KoxnQys>* By Salena Zito and Mike Wereschagin August 2, 2014, 6:57 p.m. EDT An unlikely friendship drew former President Bill Clinton to a sunny hilltop in the Laurel Highlands on Saturday, where he paid tribute to the late Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife. “If someone had asked me the day I left the White House what's the single most unlikely thing I would ever do, this would rank high on the list,” Clinton told about 150 Trib Total Media employees, who gathered around the pool at Scaife's boyhood home in Penguin Court for the memorial. Scaife died July 4, a day after his 82nd birthday. A founder and funder of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, Scaife's opposition to Clinton marked much of the latter's two terms as president. But the acrimony softened after Clinton left office in 2001, and the two became friends, with Scaife supporting Clinton's foundation and his wife's 2008 presidential campaign. Clinton said he's “grateful” to former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a mutual friend, for convincing Clinton that he and Scaife had more in common than he thought. The two met on July 31, 2007, in the Harlem offices of the Clinton Foundation. Scaife later donated more than $100,000 to the foundation. “Our differences are important. Our political differences, our philosophical differences, our religious differences, our racial and ethnic differences, they're important. They help us to define who we are,” Clinton said. “But they don't have to keep us at arm's length from others.” Clinton used his reconciliation with Scaife and the friendship the two forged as an example of what's missing in conflicts from Capitol Hill to Gaza. “I think the counterintuitive friendship we formed is a good symbol of Richard Mellon Scaife's legacy. He fought as hard as he could for what he believed, but he never thought he had to be blind or deaf” to re-evaluating his positions, no matter how closely held, Clinton said. The description “counterintuitive” was borrowed from his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used the word to describe her meeting with Tribune-Review reporters and editors in 2008, during the hotly contested Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania. The paper's editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in the April primary election, and Scaife penned an opinion piece praising the New York Democrat. “You need to know that she treasures that column and that experience,” Clinton said. The sprawling hilltop estate in Ligonier, with sweeping views of the Laurel Highlands, was named for the 10 penguins that once roamed the grounds after Scaife's mother, Sarah, bought them following a famed Antarctic expedition by Richard Byrd. H. Yale Gutnick, Scaife's longtime friend and attorney, introduced the 42nd president, saying Scaife asked him before his death to invite Clinton to the memorial to make it a special day. Gutnick is chairman of the Trib Total Media board of directors. A 50-room mansion built by Scaife's parents once stood on the estate. After they died, Scaife built his own estate, Vallamont, on a nearby mountain in 1961. He tore down the stone mansion at Penguin Court, but preserved a portion of the broad stone foundation that extends from the hillside and supports a wide, flat lawn, as well as the property's cobblestone driveway, ornate stone benches and 120-foot-long greenhouse. A passionate horticulturalist who kept fresh flowers throughout his homes, he built a conservatory near where the house once stood. Scaife willed the property and $15 million for its maintenance to the Philadelphia-area Brandywine Conservancy, on whose board of trustees he served. Clinton said he was “moved” by a series of columns Scaife wrote in the Trib, first announcing his terminal cancer and then explaining the passions of his life, newspapers chief among them. “I wish he'd have been able to write more,” Clinton said. “I was really moved by what he said about all of you and journalism as a profession and making sure that his papers were in a position to be there for our children and our grandchildren.” *Politico: “Bill Clinton eulogizes Richard Mellon Scaife: Nemesis, then friend” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-richard-mellon-scaife-eulogy-109670.html>* By Kenneth P. Vogel August 2, 2014, 10:09 p.m. EDT Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Speaking at a private memorial service in southwestern Pennsylvania for Richard Mellon Scaife, who died last month, Clinton recalled how, after his presidency, he built a “counterintuitive friendship” with the conservative billionaire, according to an account of the speech in one of the newspapers Scaife owned. “He fought as hard as he could for what he believed, but he never thought he had to be blind or deaf” to other views, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review quotes Clinton saying of its former publisher. A spokesman for Clinton declined to comment. Scaife, who inherited a fortune from the Mellon banking and oil empire, steered millions of dollars to groups that savagely attacked the Clintons throughout the 1990s. Scaife backed media outlets and nonprofits that pushed scandal after scandal that buffeted the Clinton administration — from the Whitewater real estate controversy to the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky sex scandals to raising doubts about the deaths of Clinton aides Vince Foster and Ron Brown. Scaife confidant Christopher Ruddy, who rose to prominence on the Clinton scandal beat at the Tribune-Review, arranged Clinton’s appearance at Saturday’s memorial. Afterward, he acknowledged his former boss “was the bete noire of the Clinton administration during those years, sort of like what the Kochs are to the Obama administration today.” But Scaife became enamored with Clinton’s post-presidential philanthropic work on AIDS in Africa and other issues, and a thaw began, said Ruddy, now CEO of the conservative Scaife-backed media outlet Newsmax. Ruddy and the late former New York City Mayor Ed Koch helped broker a July 2007 meeting with Scaife and the former president in the Clinton Foundation’s Harlem office, and Scaife donated more than $100,000 to the foundation. Still, Scaife raised eyebrows by praising Hillary Clinton during her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his Tribune-Review later endorsed her over Barack Obama ahead of the Pennsylvania primary. In introducing Clinton on Saturday, the chairman of Scaife’s media company, H. Yale Gutnick, a longtime Scaife friend, said the former president and Scaife “shared a mutual love of America,” according to Ruddy, who said Clinton talked about how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams initially clashed before finding common cause and becoming allies and friends. And the Tribune-Review quoted Clinton saying, “Our differences are important. Our political differences, our philosophical differences, our religious differences, our racial and ethnic differences, they’re important. They help us to define who we are. … But they don’t have to keep us at arm’s length from others.” The ex-president’s ability to find common cause with former adversaries is a model that other political figures in an increasingly polarized Washington would be wise to emulate, Ruddy said. “Think about the outrageous things that were said about him, including by me, and he was able to overcome that and reach out to his critics and his adversaries and make them his friends and work together on the things we agree with,” Ruddy said. “It’s on the level of Nelson Mandela — that type of higher thinking and ability to forgive and forget, and it’s an example of how people who have partisan and ideological differences can work together for the common good.” At Saturday’s memorial, which was held at the Ligonier, Pennsylvania, estate where Scaife grew up and which was attended by more than 100 employees of his media outlets, Clinton was presented with a photo of Hillary Clinton meeting with Scaife before the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. And Ruddy predicted that her husband’s willingness to reach across the aisle will cause some major Republican donors who fought the Clinton administration alongside Scaife to be less hostile if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016. “There is a realization among high-level donors and sophisticated politicos on the Republican side that Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is pro-American business and is very strong on national security,” he said. “There is a sense that she and her husband share a similar worldview.” *Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “Rubio Clarifies Hillary Clinton Comments: Not About Her Age” <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/08/03/rubio-clarifies-hillary-clinton-comments-not-about-her-age/>* By Brent Kendall August 3, 2014, 1:20 p.m. EDT Sen. Marco Rubio said on Sunday that his recent criticisms of Hillary Clinton as a “20th-century candidate” weren’t a veiled reference to the 23 year age difference between the two potential White House contenders. “You can be 40 years old and be a 20th-century candidate,” said the 43-year-old Florida Republican, a possible member of the 2016 GOP presidential field, on Fox News on Sunday. Sen. Rubio said Ms. Clinton, 66, was incapable of addressing the modern and rapidly changing challenges facing America. “We are going through the equivalent of an industrial revolution every five years and I don’t think she or her party, and quite frankly, even some people in my party, have answers to that,” he said. Sen. Rubio made the 20th-century remarks in a recent interview with National Public Radio. *CBS News: “Sen. Rand Paul: Hillary Clinton not ‘fit to lead the country’” <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-hillary-clinton-not-fit-to-lead-the-country/>* By Jake Miller August 2, 2014, 2:25 p.m. EDT Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Hillary Clinton is not "fit to lead the country" Friday, mocking the former secretary of state's comments about her wealth and condemning her response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi. Paul's scathing words could provide an early look at the arguments he will deploy against Clinton if they both decide to run for president. They came during a speech in Kentucky before a crowd of several hundred GOP activists. Paul opened his speech by joking that he was losing sleep over Clinton's money problems, according to National Journal. During her recent book tour, Clinton drew flack for claiming at one point that she and former President Bill Clinton were "dead broke" when they left the White House in 2001. Although they were deeply in debt when Mr. Clinton's presidency ended, they would go on to earn millions on the speaking circuit. Paul asked his audience to observe a "moment of silence" for Clinton's finances. "Somebody must have been praying for her," he said, "because she's now worth 100, 200 million. I tell you, it was really tough giving those speeches." But at least she didn't suffer alone, Paul joked: "She had her limo driver with her for the last 17 years to commiserate." "I certainly wish she becomes preoccupied with something else," he added, "because I don't think she's fit to lead the country." Paul also ripped Clinton's response to the attack in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Paul faulted Clinton for neglecting to read the memos requesting additional security for the Benghazi facility during her time as secretary of state. She treated Benghazi "as if it were Paris," Paul said. "Benghazi's not Paris. Benghazi is a lot like Baghdad ... if you don't read the cables from one of the most dangerous spots on earth, frankly, you preclude yourself from ever being our commander in chief." The speech fired up GOP troops in Kentucky, but it was only a prelude to Paul's swing through Iowa next week. Starting Monday, Paul will visit at least eight different communities representing each of the state's major media markets, according to the Des Moines Register. Iowa, which holds the leadoff caucuses in the presidential nominating process, is a must-visit state for anyone mulling a presidential bid. The state has already seen a flurry of visits from potential 2016 contenders this year. In addition to Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is in Iowa this weekend, and he's scheduled to attend an event sponsored by notable Iowa Republican Bruce Rastetter, the Register reports. Cruz, whose high-profile fights with Democrats and his own GOP leaders have endeared him to grassroots conservatives, has emerged as a favorite among the activists who traditionally power Iowa's Republican caucuses. "Whenever we need a voice in Washington, he seems to be the most eager to stand up for we out here in the grassroots," Steve Deace, a conservative radio host based out of Iowa, told The Hill newspaper. "The more people disdain him in D.C., the more they're going to improve his chances in 2016." Paul and Cruz are also scheduled to attend the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, later this month, where they'll be joined by several other potential presidential contenders, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Govs. Rick Perry, R-Texas, and Bobby Jindal, R-La. *Salon: “Is Hillary Clinton the true heir of Ronald Reagan?” <http://www.salon.com/2014/08/02/is_hillary_clinton_the_true_heir_of_ronald_reagan/>* By Andrew O’Hehir August 2, 2014, 1:00 p.m. EDT [Subtitle:] Not since 1980 has a candidate seemed so unstoppable -- and Hillary resembles the Gipper in other ways too No doubt it’s the height of folly to forecast the results of a presidential election that’s still more than two years away. But most observers of any political orientation, regarding the landscape right now, would conclude that it’s more likely than not that America’s first black president will be directly followed by our first female president. Are you celebrating yet? Of course we don’t know for sure whether Hillary Clinton is running in 2016, but at this point she’s just toying with us, like a cat with a badly injured mouse. She stands in a virtually unprecedented position of dominance, relative to her own party and the electorate as a whole. While the Democratic left harbors impotent fantasies of defeating her (Bernie Sanders LOL!) and the Republican right prepares for a predictable series of apoplectic seizures about how she’s a lesbian murderess who personally shot up the Benghazi consulate, the public seems generally OK with Clinton’s impending coronation. As numerous commentators have observed, her principal opponent is probably not Jeb Bush or Rand Paul but herself, or at least the possibility that we’ll all feel sick of her before she gets elected. It’s a strange situation, and not a healthy one. Let’s take a second to recognize that I’m a white dude delivering a dismissive take on events of undoubted historical and symbolic significance that were, or will be, immensely meaningful for many people. But after the disheartening first three-quarters of the Obama era, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that symbolic meaning is the last layer of meaning left in our quadrennial electoral circus. Maybe it’s not Hillary Clinton’s fault that her likely ascension feels like the event that will mark the final Dracula-suckage of lifeblood from American electoral politics, just as it’s not entirely Barack Obama’s fault that his “transformational presidency” blundered into a stagnant swamp infested with whining Republican mosquitoes and never got out again. They are just two people, after all! Two imperfect people with the best intentions, supposedly trying to do their best in a screwed-up situation. Except that I don’t really buy that argument. Obama and Clinton and everybody else in the partisan duopoly are simultaneously the casualties, beneficiaries and perpetrators of a broken system, in which Democrats and Republicans draw their voters from opposing social castes (not classes) but actually represent the interests of rival cliques within a tiny moneyed elite. The onetime Seven Sisters student radical “had to” evolve into a mouthpiece for Wall Street and the entrenched foreign-policy establishment, just as the onetime Chicago community activist “had to” leave the financial sector in the hands of exactly the same criminals who wrecked it and renege on a whole range of hopey-changey campaign promises. I’m well aware of the spin their defenders will put on that stuff – politics is a dirty business and we all need to grow up and anyway SCOTUS! – and we’re not going to settle that debate today, or at any other time. As you will no doubt recall, people got immensely excited on both sides of the heated Obama-Clinton primary battle in 2008, hurling all kinds of invective about racism and sexism at each other, predicting catastrophic defeat for the other candidate and promising to rip the fragile Democratic coalition apart. (Remember the PUMA demographic, angry Clinton supporters who threatened to bolt for the McCain-Palin ticket out of spite? Ah, memory!) Whatever that was really about – and my former Salon colleague Rebecca Traister has explored it in depth – it had very little to do with those two candidates, except in their roles as symbols or signifiers. All that fevered discussion about who rigged the Nevada caucus and who made the most obnoxious comments on TV feels like a lifetime ago, the product of an innocent age when politics seemed charged with possibility and hope. But the thing is, it wasn’t all that long ago and we weren’t innocent. We should have known better and basically did. It’s just that presidential elections exert a seductive allure that keeps suckering us back into the tent, like a bunch of Ohio farm boys at a 19th-century carnival, hoping against hope that this time the magic will turn out to be real. It’s a lot easier to write snarky, dispassionate analysis now than it will be in a year or so, when progressives are trying to gin up excitement for a nonexistent Elizabeth Warren campaign or we all have to have a hysterical meltdown about Ted Cruz’s “surprising” poll numbers from a fondue dinner held in an Iowa cornfield. There’s no precise historical parallel, at least in the contemporary party-politics era, for the commanding position Hillary Clinton appears to hold roughly 16 months out from the first caucuses and primaries. It’s not that there haven’t been heavy favorites or heirs apparent in previous elections – that’s a feature of the system. But it seems not just possible but probable that Clinton will face no serious or significant opposition within her own party, which as far as I can tell is a brand new situation for a non-incumbent candidate. Warren is nowhere near foolish enough to torch her political future on a futile campaign of resistance. While Joe Biden will almost certainly run if Clinton doesn’t, he’s not enough of a masochist to take her on directly and endure yet another public humiliation. If Sanders runs (and he’d have to change his political registration, for one thing) he’ll make the Dennis Kucinich campaigns of 2004 and 2008 look like devastating political whirlwinds. If there’s a historical precedent to Hillary-zilla it is to be found in the Republican Party, where big-money donors and a Washington-based establishment have long done their best to control the presidential nomination process and quell populist uprisings. Specifically, it’s Ronald Reagan in 1980. Most Republicans assumed going into that campaign that Reagan – who had been waiting around as the conservative savior since nearly wresting the nomination from Gerald Ford in 1976 – would sweep to victory in the primaries and then drive cardigan-clad malaise-monger Jimmy Carter from the White House and restore America to its true greatness. They were ultimately correct about all that (except for the “true greatness”), but Reagan actually faced brief but spirited opposition from George H.W. Bush, who played the role of responsible centrist in that campaign and memorably denounced Reagan’s “voodoo economics.” Bush emulated the Carter-McGovern strategy of slogging through all the meaningless straw polls and small-town dinners in the fall of 1979 while Reagan stayed home in California, and after winning the Iowa caucus Bush momentarily looked like the front-runner. Reagan ultimately swamped him in the South, of course, but Bush won six primaries and more than 3 million votes, essentially forcing himself onto the ticket as the vice-presidential nominee. Who’s going to put up that level of resistance to Hillary Clinton? I guess the 1988 Republican campaign also looks similar, but only at first glance and only in the rear-view mirror: After two terms as Reagan’s vice president, Bush coasted to the nomination just as everybody expected. (And then to victory over Michael Dukakis, one of the more bathetic also-rans of recent political history.) But those who remember that era in Republican politics can testify that the intra-party divisions were highly acrimonious. Sen. Bob Dole won the Iowa caucus and several Midwestern primaries, and deserves a special footnote in American history for decrying the lies and dirty tricks of Lee Atwater, Bush’s infamous campaign strategist. Televangelist Pat Robertson terrified the world that year by packing a few caucuses with his followers (he got 82 percent of the vote in Hawaii!), thereby compelling all future Republican candidates to pay ritual obeisance to the Christian right. There is certainly a cadre of disgruntled liberal Democrats who aren’t thrilled about the incoming tsunami of the Clinton campaign, and in the age of social media they’ll get to vent their spleen repeatedly in the months ahead by promising to draft Warren or vote Green or get so stoned that Rand Paul appears palatable. But it’s not at all clear that they represent a significant voting bloc, or that any plausible candidate wants to be their standard-bearer. This tells us a number of things about the contemporary Democratic Party and about politics in general, none of them terribly encouraging. Among the obvious notes here is the fact that electoral politics has increasingly become an oligarchic or dynastic enterprise, open only to the immensely wealthy and/or the immensely well connected. If we get a Clinton facing a Bush in the 2016 general election – which is not just plausible but reasonably likely – that would mean that 50 percent of the major-party presidential nominees over the last 28 years and eight electoral cycles have had one or the other of those surnames. If politics is a blood sport for the new aristocracy — an American cognate to fox hunting, with you and me as the fox – that does more than symbolize our widening social inequality. It embodies it, and enacts it. You can’t separate the fact that only rich people can run for president from the fact that both parties are fueled by rich people’s money, or from the fact that beneath all their partisan bickering Democrats and Republicans have vigorously collaborated for more than 20 years on a set of deregulatory, low-tax and cheap-credit economic policies that have made rich people a whole lot richer. It’s not like those are unrelated coincidences. I’m not saying there are no differences between the two parties, or that given the binary choice with a gun to my head, I might not prefer Hillary Clinton as president to whomever the Republicans nominate. (This is a topic for another time, but Democrats clearly have the most to fear from Rand Paul, who represents a potentially significant reboot of the Republican brand.) Generally speaking, the Democratic Party stands for what might be termed the metropolitan caste in American life, a diverse group of people who live in or near major cities and tend to support a range of rights-based issues around race, gender, sexuality and related factors. You can’t say the party represents that caste with much force or courage, and it does so more by following than by leading. Democrats took years to commit fully to a pro-choice position, were late to the party on marriage equality, and are still way behind their metropolitan base on marijuana. Nonetheless that’s a big contrast to the Republicans, who at least for marketing purposes view the metropolitan caste as a bunch of socialistic tree-huggers who will take away your guns and your F-150 and compel you to drive a Prius to your gay marriage. But what Hillary Clinton and Obama and most other prominent Democrats of the 21st century definitely don’t represent is any form of progressive or class-based economic philosophy. Elizabeth Warren’s election to the Senate caused such a stir because she appears to be a mild exception to this rule. As former Bill Clinton aide Bill Curry wrote recently in Salon, the deregulation of the telecommunications and financial services industries under his onetime boss in the ’90s was a more far-reaching and corporate-friendly policy shift than anything in Ronald Reagan’s wildest trickle-down dreams. That marked the moment, Curry says, when “issues of economic and political power [grew] invisible to Democrats.” When Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000 on precisely those issues, he was viewed as a traitor who cost Al Gore the White House. But if the Democrats had nominated a pro-lifer and Gloria Steinem had run as an independent, it might well have split the party in half. All of which brings me back to the final point of similarity between Hillary Clinton and Reagan, the man who dominated one election cycle from end to end and the woman who hopes to repeat that feat. They could hardly be more different as political personalities and (one imagines) as human beings, and their electoral appeal is directed at totally divergent audiences. But both function in the political marketplace first and foremost as powerful symbols: Reagan was a symbol of American manhood and the mythical American past, while Clinton stands (I guess) for the upward progress of American women and a more egalitarian future. (It’s not entirely accidental that both have provoked exaggerated hatred among their opponents.) I write about the movies, and would be the last person on Earth to tell you that symbols don’t matter. But they often do not mean what they seem to mean, and neither Clinton nor Reagan actually represents what they seem to represent. Reagan did little or nothing for the working-class white Americans who elected him, and if Clinton reaches the White House she will not be there to serve metropolitan women. Beneath the scrim of symbolic meanings, which are meant to reassure and distract and most importantly to win elections, the same force works through both of them: the force of money and those who wield it. *The Daily Beast: “For 2016, Take Martin O’Malley Seriously” <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/for-2016-take-martin-o-malley-seriously.html>* By Jonathan Miller August 3, 2014 [Subtitle:] The Maryland governor is a problem-solver and a social-justice Catholic who can transcend the left-right divide. Keep an eye on him. As Martin O’Malley dips his ankles into the deep end of national politics – most recently with his full-throated plea earlier this month against the deportation of immigrant children — I recalled the first time I saw him on a national stage. I had a pretty good view: I was standing right next to him. The two of us were being paraded as rising stars by the Democratic Leadership Council at the 2000 Democratic National Convention -- and even featured together on the cover of The New Democrat magazine. Alas … may the DLC rest in peace. (So too with my own political career.) But give the late Third Way vanguard some crystal ball credit: O’Malley could be the next President of the United States. In his potential White House run, however, O’Malley won’t be pursuing the DLC’s lurch-to-the-center path. Nor will he be following the liberal orthodoxy. Indeed, it’s the Maryland Governor’s uniquely post-Clinton, post-Obama positioning that makes him this handicapper’s pick to emerge as the dark horse with the most potent stretch kick in the 2016 presidential derby. The most compelling reason? As O’Malley demonstrated in the immigration debate, he’s the rare progressive to frame his strongly felt policy positions in the language of faith. It’s the passionate application of universal moral values by this devout Catholic that has the potential to upend the usual partisan and ideological categories that are choking today’s body politic. I sat down with O’Malley on July 11, a few hours after he stole the platform at the National Governors’ Association annual conference in Nashville and broke with the President by forcefully and emotionally calling for a more compassionate policy on the treatment of Central American children who’ve recently come to the United States illegally: “It is contrary to everything we stand for to try to summarily send children back to death.” With the potential primary still flooded with fluid contingencies, O’Malley demurs about the prospects of challenging Hillary Clinton. "I haven't even decided if I'm running yet, so I'm not thinking about other potential candidates,” he told me. “I'm focused on governing Maryland, helping Democrats win in 2014, and preparing responsibly so that I can make a decision when the time is right." O’Malley’s record as governor of Maryland, and before that mayor of Baltimore, provides plenty of manna to nourish starving progressives. Long before his immigration comments, the Governor punched through a succession of liberal hot-buttons: Marriage equality? Check. Gun control? Check. Death penalty repeal? Check. Decriminalizing pot and legalizing medical marijuana? Check and check. Some might argue that he’s even been too liberal for solid blue Maryland. In fact, some do, and vociferously: Discontented residents of four western counties have been pushing an initiative for months to secede from the rest of the state. O’Malley has ticked off plenty of liberals as well. Inheriting a $1.7 billion structural deficit and then plunging into the headwinds of the Great Recession, the Governor pushed through more than $9.5 billion in budget cuts, requiring sizable state employee layoffs, and the downsizing of critical health and transportation programs. And the state’s largest public employee unions expressed considerable displeasure with O’Malley’s signature pension reform efforts Overall, however, O’Malley can point to a fiscal track record that most progressives would embrace: investing record sums in education to produce the nation’s top ranked public schools five years in a row and lowest college tuition hikes since 2007; expanding the earned income tax credit and increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour; and recovering all of the jobs lost in the national recession. Of course, you can’t win enough electoral votes in our purple nation by tacking completely left — especially in 2016, when Obama fatigue likely will be weighing on the nation. But O’Malley understands that the left/right/center paradigm isn’t important to the Americans who actually determine our national elections in today’s deeply polarized polity. Swing voters and independents aren’t clamoring for moderation or centrism: They are looking for leaders who will put aside party and ideology on occasion and actually get stuff done. Over the past few years, the national bi-partisan grassroots organization No Labels (I’m a co-founder) has been polling and focus-grouping these voters. Our surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Americans are looking not at party or ideology; but rather for problem-solving. And O’Malley can make a plausible case that he’s been a problem-solver above all. Time’s best mayor of 2005 and Governing’s public official of 2009 has defined his brand as a stickler for non-partisan, data-driven management and administrative competence. In his coming out speech in Iowa – keynoting this June’s state Democratic convention — O’Malley devoted several minutes to discussing the technocratic approach he used to fight crime: “When I was elected mayor in 1999 … Baltimore had become the most violent, most addicted, most abandoned city in America … So we set out to make our city work again. We saw trash in our streets and alleys, so we picked it up every day. We saw open air drug markets, and we began to relentlessly close them down … Over the next 10 years, Baltimore went on to achieve the biggest reduction in part 1 crime of any major city in America.” He has used the same non-ideological approach on issues ranging from biotechnology and aerospace to roads, bridges, transit projects, new schools, and rural broadband connectivity. But the most interesting thing about O’Malley is his exploration of an intriguing, heart-centered strategy that could potentially shake up our national political paradigm: using the language of faith and universal moral values to ground public policy. Republicans have owned the faith space since the Reagan era. Presidential candidate Barack Obama tried valiantly to take it back in 2008, but after the embarrassment of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the right wing’s maniacal campaign to brand him a Muslim, Obama’s rhetorical strategy was mostly abandoned. O’Malley appears to be reaching to pick up the scepter. The regular weekday Mass attendee — who brings to mind the beer-drinking, Irish Catholic everyman rather than the pious moral scold — described his religious beliefs to me as the underpinning of his public vocation. He referred me to a speech he delivered to his high school alma mater way back in 2002 in which he connected his Catholic education with his passion for problem solving: “I learned … to search for Christ in the faces of others including, and especially, the faces of the poor, the faces of the homeless men who lined up for a meal every morning alongside the foundations of this church … I learned … to recognize and confront the enemy within – the original sin of our own culture and environment that would have us think less of people who – because of race, or class, or place – are not like us … And I learned that it is not enough to have faith, you must also have the courage to risk action on that faith, to risk failure upon that faith: the faith that one person can make a difference and that each of us must try.” It’s no wonder, then, that he grounded his angry denunciation of Obama’s immigration policy in the faith tradition: “Through all of the great world religions, we are told that hospitality to strangers is an essential human dignity. … It is a belief that unites all of us.” Note that he didn’t mention his Christianity, nor even the slightly more politically correct construct of “Judeo-Christian values.” Instead, he reached to a broader audience, with the understanding that all religious and spiritual traditions in world history share at their core the same universal moral values, of welcoming the stranger and loving one’s neighbor — of compassion and community. This appeal to unity — to a common higher ground — can potentially disrupt the GOP’s monopoly on faith, without frightening religious minorities, or even agnostics, from the Democratic fold. Most significantly, by embracing shared moral values, O’Malley might even find the path to counter today’s dominant politics of self-interest that underlies both Tea Party libertarianism and the more cynical, transactional-based politics that serves as Washington’s greatest bi-partisan consensus. Perhaps that’s enough dreaming. Back here in the real world of politics, O’Malley has quite an arduous journey ahead of him, especially if Clinton decides to run. He can expect bruising personal and professional scrutiny from a cruel and punishing new media, which may constrain his ability to define himself and articulate the vision. Most pertinently, recent critical focus on a Baltimore jail scandal and Obamacare’s rocky roll out in Maryland could directly undermine both his problem-solver and moral paladin narratives. But at least from my vantage point, Martin O’Malley could be the right messenger with the right message. And the rising star still standing just might be in the best position to offer some elixir to our deeply ailing political system. *Washington Examiner: “Why some donors are giving to dark horse Martin O'Malley” <http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-some-donors-are-giving-to-dark-horse-martin-omalley/article/2551602>* By Rebecca Berg August 3, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EDT As it turns out, not everyone is ready for Hillary. Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic frontrunner, leads by as much as 50 percent in some polls, there is some evidence that some former supporters are looking with interest at Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. As many Democrats might have expected, O’Malley has attracted respectable support from within Maryland, as well as from some prominent former Obama supporters, such as the bundler Stewart Bainum. But, more surprisingly, O’Malley’s early base of support also overlaps somewhat with Clinton’s network, even as she appears as poised as ever to run for president and swamp him in the race, at least at the outset. There are several reasons why potential donors or aides might eschew supporting Clinton for O’Malley, at least for now. On the staffing side, there is a sense among some young, up-and-coming Democratic operatives that the waiting list for a potential Clinton presidential campaign is already closed — but not so with a fresh candidate like O’Malley, whose campaign could be a prime launching pad for new political talent. One senior position on O’Malley’s political team has already been scooped up by a Clinton alum. Adam Goers, who served as Clinton’s midwest finance director during her bid for president, is the executive director at O’Malley’s federal political action committee, O’ Say Can You See PAC, known colloquially as “O’PAC.” A similar story is being told in donations to the PAC, which brought in nearly $800,000 during the most recent fundraising quarter. Already, two former Clinton bundlers — so-called “Hillraisers” from the 2008 campaign — have stepped up to contribute thousands of dollars to O’Malley: Lainy Lebow-Sachs of Maryland and C. Thomas McMillen of Washington. The donations don’t necessarily reflect dissatisfaction with Clinton. Paul DiNino served as the Democratic National Committee’s national finance director under President Clinton, and he supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 — but he’s steering potential donors to O’Malley, making the case that it is a wise investment. Because O’Malley does not possess a vast donor network on par with Clinton’s, each big-money donor could wield that much more influence within O’Malley’s campaign, should it take flight. DiNino, who lives in Maryland but has deep ties to Iowa politics, has also stressed O’Malley’s role as a party surrogate during the 2014 midterm elections. The Maryland governor has, unlike Clinton, been crisscrossing the country to campaign for Democrats — in early presidential primary states, of course, but in others as well. “Right now, it's Martin O’Malley, and it's only Martin O’Malley,” DiNino said. “He’s filling a giant void for Democrats.” A spokesperson for the pro-Clinton group Ready For Hillary told the Washington Examiner earlier this year that the group would “look to amplify the efforts that Hillary engages in for the midterms.” But those efforts, if they develop, likely won’t come to fruition until late in the fall. In the meantime, O’Malley is one of the few Democrats making all the overtures characteristic of a would-be presidential candidate, including frequent, publicized trips to early primary states. He has traveled on multiple occasions to Iowa, including last week, when O’Malley, the former chair of the Democratic Governors Association, campaigned with the state’s Democratic nominee for governor, Jack Hatch. O’Malley has also traveled twice to New Hampshire to raise money for Gov. Maggie Hassan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, campaigned in South Carolina in May for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen, and even made a trip in May to Nevada, another early primary state. O’Malley has not yet decided, officially and publicly, to run for president, although he has been candid about seriously considering that avenue. There is also a sense, however, fortified by hints from O’Malley’s allies, that he might not follow through with a campaign should Clinton run for president. O’Malley, after all, does not have an adversarial history personally or on policy with the Clintons. In fact, he was a bundler for Clinton during her 2008 campaign. O’Malley, 51, is also young enough to wait to run for president later should he decide the opportunity is not ripe this time. “He's not going anywhere,” DiNino said. “He has a long political career ahead of him.” And at least as long as Clinton publicly hems and haws about whether she will run for president, O’Malley will welcome some of her allies into his fold in support of that career, wherever it might lead. *Calendar:* *Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.* · August 6 – Huntington, NY: Sec. Clinton signs books at Book Revue ( HillaryClintonMemoir.com <http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/long_island_book_signing>) · August 9 – Water Mill, NY: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the Clinton Foundation at the home of George and Joan Hornig (WSJ <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/17/for-50000-best-dinner-seats-with-the-clintons-in-the-hamptons/> ) · August 13 – Martha’s Vinyard, MA: Sec. Clinton signs books at Bunch of Grapes (HillaryClintonMemoir.com <http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/martha_s_vineyard_book_signing>) · August 16 – East Hampton, New York: Sec. Clinton signs books at Bookhampton East Hampton (HillaryClintonMemoir.com <http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/long_island_book_signing2>) · August 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes Nexenta’s OpenSDx Summit (BusinessWire <http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140702005709/en/Secretary-State-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-Deliver-Keynote#.U7QoafldV8E> ) · September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today <http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html> ) · October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network <http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>) · October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation Annual Dinner (UNLV <http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>) · ~ October 13-16 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (salesforce.com <http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/keynotes.jsp>) · December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)