podesta_email_01761.txt

podesta-emails 6,307 words email

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*​**Correct The Record Monday January 26, 2015 Morning Roundup:* *Articles:* *Politico: “Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown” <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/antonio-weiss-lizabeth-warren-treasury-114539.html>* “The larger question is the extent to which Warren continues to use her platform to push Hillary Clinton to the left and away from her more centrist, Rubinite roots.” *BuzzFeed: “DREAMers Are Back And They’re Coming For The GOP And Clinton” <http://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/times-britney-spears-was-so-good-to-her-fans#.siG92Rp4ej>* “National DREAMer activist Erika Andiola recently told BuzzFeed News that Clinton and Jeb Bush, two possible 2016 candidates with perhaps views on immigration policy more in line with the activists’, will be forced to clarify their stances.” *Time: “The Invisible Presidential Campaign Kicks Off in Earnest” <http://time.com/3681834/presidential-campaign-finance-donors/>* “Bush, Romney and Christie are especially squeezed by the fundraising pressures, as their candidacies are set to rely heavily on their predicted ability to match Hillary Clinton’s formidable potential.” *USA Today: “Cruz, Paul, Rubio spar on Cuba policy at desert forum” <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/01/26/cruz-rubio-paul-koch-bros-white-house/22337325/>* “Asked by Karl whether Republicans should nominate a candidate with no foreign policy experience — which none of the three senators on stage in Rancho Mirage had — Rubio took a shot at Hillary Clinton, Democrats' likely 2016 presidential nominee. ‘I think it would be a mistake to elect as president the architect of Obama's foreign policy,’ he said. ‘That would be a terrible mistake.’” *Forbes: “Hillary's Lead Over GOP Frontrunners Shrinks” <http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnzogby/2015/01/25/hillarys-lead-over-gop-frontrunners-shrinks/>* “The January Zogby Analytics Poll shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton keeping her leads over possible GOP contenders in 2016 – but her leads narrowing significantly.” *Articles:* *Politico: “Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown” <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/antonio-weiss-lizabeth-warren-treasury-114539.html>* By Ben White January 26, 2015, 5:37 a.m. EST [Subtitle:] How the Massachusetts senator rallied the left and blindsided the White House. NEW YORK — Supporters of Antonio Weiss knew the Wall Street banker’s nomination for a top job at the Treasury Department was in deep trouble the morning of Dec. 5. Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic senator from New York, went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and refused to say if she would back the Lazard banker. And she made clear who was really calling the shots. “I think Senator Warren’s very clear,” Gillibrand said, sounding a bit like the Massachusetts senator’s press secretary. “She believes that, as the person responsible for how consumers are affected, his background and his experience don’t fit the requirements.” Weiss supporters in the White House and on Wall Street were stunned. They expected some opposition from the left but not the explosion that greeted the nomination. Never mind that, as undersecretary for domestic finance, Weiss would not be the person chiefly responsible for consumer financial protection — Warren created a whole separate agency for that — or that neither Gillibrand nor Warren had ever met or spoken to the man. The verdict was in. And it was bad. “That moment stunned me,” said one close friend of Weiss. “For a senator from New York who is ostensibly part of the sensible center to say this, I was just flabbergasted.” Senior White House officials, led by chief of staff Denis McDonough and counselor to the president John Podesta, would continue to work the phones and argue in public and private for Weiss’ nomination for the next several weeks. But as Democrats kept coming out in opposition — while Republicans sat back and relished the show — it became clear that Weiss would have a very hard time getting confirmed. The game in Washington had changed. Elizabeth Warren, sometimes disregarded by the White House as a largely irrelevant nuisance, could no longer be ignored. Bolstered by grass roots groups eager for any anti-Wall Street crusade and a vibrant progressive media that hung on her every word, Warren succeeded in knocking out Weiss’ nomination. It was not a total victory. Weiss will still join Treasury as an unconfirmed counselor to Secretary Jack Lew. But in terms of symbolism, the Washington power game and the ideological direction of the Democratic Party, Warren won big. And the moderate, Wall Street- and business-friendly wing of the party — in past years happily occupied by Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton — got punched in the mouth. “They will have to be more careful now and you won’t see any bankers nominated for high-level positions,” said a person close to the campaign against Weiss, who said the episode could also influence the way Clinton staffs and runs her campaign. On the other side, the despair among Wall Street’s Democratic elite is growing acute. As is the belief that Weiss himself never mattered in this fight. “In this case, the thing Warren was against — adding another Wall Street anti-regulatory guy — wasn’t even remotely true,” said one senior Wall Street Democrat who has worked in government but, like many interviewed for this article, declined to be identified by name to avoid Warren’s wrath. “There is no one in government right now who has any market or finance experience. It’s not like there are ‘too many.’” How it began The White House nominated Weiss, a highly respected Wall Street banker at boutique firm Lazard, on Nov. 12. Treasury wanted him because no one in its top leadership tier — including Lew and deputy secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin — had any real financial markets experience. Lew worked briefly at Citigroup, as did under secretary for international affairs Nathan Sheets. Raskin worked for a time at Promontory Financial Group. But none had the kind of deep relationships or international financial experience that Weiss did. And Weiss, in addition to his work on Wall Street, was a big financial supporter and bundler for President Barack Obama. It did not take long for Warrren to declare war on the nomination. On Nov. 14, POLITICO first reported, citing a Warren aide, that the senator would oppose Weiss for the job. “She is a no on Antonio Weiss. She was a Treasury official herself, she cares a lot about who is in the domestic finance role,” the aide said at the time. “It oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and other core economic policymaking.” Shortly after the POLITICO story, Warren penned an op-ed for The Huffington Post laying out her case against Weiss, ripping his extensive career on Wall Street and his work on a controversial deal in which Burger King bought Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Horton’s and moved its headquarters to Canada. The morning the first POLITICO article about Warren’s opposition came out in the “Morning Money” tip sheet, a small group of progressives at CREDO Action in San Francisco gathered to plot strategy, poring over the Warren aides’ every word. This was the perfect fight, they decided. After the midterm election drubbing, the battle was on for the soul of the Democratic Party. And another fight was already brewing over the inclusion of pro-Wall Street language in the year-end spending bill. “It was the exact right campaign at the exact right time,” said Murshed Zaheed, deputy political director at CREDO and a former aid to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “We felt this nomination presented the perfect battle that would drive the narrative of where the party needs to go and where the progressive movement is right now.” Warren and other Democrats — along with Republican Chuck Grassley — slammed the Burger King deal as an un-American “inversion” transaction. The counterargument from Weiss supporters, that the Burger King deal was not an inversion because Tim Horton’s was the larger company and putting the headquarters in lower-tax Canada was the only reasonable thing to do, never got any traction. It did not help matters that Lew himself had recently launched an effort to crack down on inversion deals, though not the Burger King transaction. For Warren, the Weiss nomination was a last-straw moment, people close to her say. She didn’t come out hard against Mary Jo White for Securities and Exchange Commission chair, despite White’s record of defending Wall Street clients as an attorney in the private sector. She didn’t try to block Stanley Fischer as Federal Reserve vice chair despite Fischer’s work at Citigroup. And there were others. It was time to fire up the troops against Weiss. And they came eagerly along. By early December, with no coordination with Warren or anyone else on the Hill, CREDO said it had close to 200,000 signatures on a petition to oppose Weiss. Progressive groups Democracy for America and Moveon.org also joined the fight. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor group, raised questions about millions of dollars in accelerated compensation Weiss was to receive if he left Lazard for Treasury. The pressure came not just from the left. The Independent Community Bankers of America sent a letter to top senators questioning whether Weiss would do enough to champion the interests of smaller banks. Through an aide, Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, indicated he would oppose Weiss. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also came out in opposition, an early indication that a full-scale populist assault was underway. Then Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, viewed as fairly moderate, said she could not back Weiss because of his work on tax deals. Outgoing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden made it clear Weiss would not get a confirmation hearing in the lame-duck session of Congress in December. Weiss would have to wait until Republicans took over in 2015, allowing the opposition movement to gather strength. “Warren successfully put together this incredible coalition of activist groups and liberal media organizations that sprang into action without her really having to do much of anything,” said a Wall Street executive who tried to help steer Weiss through the process. “These people can now stop pretty much anyone they want and the White House can’t do much about it.” Others view Warren’s power as somewhat more limited. She succeeded in derailing Weiss in part because Obama could not count on Republicans — who typically like nominees with business experience — to put Weiss over the top. “Unrecognizable” As opposition began to grow, Weiss, who declined to comment for this story, hunkered down in New York. He could not speak out on his own behalf, hamstrung by the need to wait for confirmation hearings. He did not get to sit down in advance with Warren or other senators coming out against him. People who spoke with Weiss during this time described him as bewildered by the characterizations of him as a super-wealthy tycoon who favored tax inversions and would come to Washington to do Wall Street’s bidding at Treasury. “The picture they painted of him was totally unrecognizable to him,” one friend said. Instead, friends and colleagues described Weiss as a fairly progressive Democrat who liked poetry, bought the Paris Review to keep it afloat and fell in love with policy while working part time — at Podesta’s invitation — on tax reform issues at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, where he co-authored a paper calling for curtailing tax loopholes for Wall Street executives, among other things. These people say the 48-year-old Weiss had long been thinking of a career shift, especially in the years since his father passed away. He did some teaching but became most attracted to the idea of doing policy work in Washington. When Lew reached out to him for the undersecretary job, he jumped at the chance. People who know Weiss say he expected to get some opposition. And they say he knew his high salary — he earned at least $15.4 million from Lazard over the past two years — would become public knowledge and the source of some embarrassment. But friends say Weiss did not expect to be portrayed as a proponent of tax inversions, since his role at Lazard did not include working on the tax implications of merger deals. And they say he thought his broad international experience — he spent eight years in Paris — would be seen as a plus. Instead, Warren and others used it as a cudgel to argue that he lacked enough experience in issues of domestic finance. And they said that it would be better if Weiss had experience in Asia rather than Europe because of China’s and Japan’s large holdings of U.S. debt. Meanwhile, White House officials including Podesta, Lew and National Economic Council Director Jeff Zients continued to speak out on Weiss’ behalf and say they thought the GOP Senate would confirm him in 2015. By all accounts, the White House never gave up on Weiss. Lew told CNBC as recently as Friday that he thought Weiss could have been confirmed: “I still thought that there was a pathway for him to be confirmed. My concern when he said he didn’t want to be renominated was that we’d get the benefit of his talent.” Some moderate voices — Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times and the Bloomberg News editorial page — came out in favor of Weiss. But progressives just laughed off those endorsements as indications that the Lazard banker really should not be trusted. Opposing Weiss become even more critical for progressives as the White House pushed hard for support of the year-end spending bill despite a provision rolling back a section of Dodd-Frank prohibiting banks from holding certain derivative securities inside their tax-payer backstopped subsidiaries. Wall Street fought for the provision for years and Warren and many on the left railed against the White House for allowing Republicans to sneak it into the bill. Letting that happen and approving Weiss as well would be just too much. As all this was going on, people close to Weiss say he took a long holiday break and decided it would not be worth it to keep up a confirmation fight that could take months and leave him little time to actually do the job. “Antonio learned a lot of lessons the hard way about how Washington really works now,” one friend said. And while the White House still hoped that Weiss would eventually receive a heavy dose of Republican support, there was no guarantee. Republicans could have simply delayed a hearing for Weiss and let Democrats continue to fight among themselves. Friends say Weiss, after a lengthy series of conversations with friends and colleagues, decided leading up to the weekend of Jan. 10 that he would ask the White House not to resubmit his nomination in the new Congress. Officials at Treasury and in the West Wing pushed back at first on the decision but then relented and asked that he still join the administration as a counselor to Lew with a senior advisory role on a wide range of issues from fiscal policy to debt management and financial regulation. He would not have the clout of a confirmed position or the ability to testify publicly on the administration’s behalf. But he could still do most of the stuff he wanted to do. Some on the left squawked that he should not be allowed to go to Treasury at all. But Warren, herself a former unconfirmed Treasury official, mostly left the issue alone, content in scoring a major headline win and sending a message to the administration that they should not mess with her or the progressive movement on anything to do with Wall Street. What it all means Warren’s message clearly resonated. Obama came out with strong populist themes in a State of the Union address that adopted much of the Massachusetts senator’s rhetoric on standing up for the middle class against the wealthy and powerful. Obama called for a big bank tax, an increase in the capital gains rate and crackdowns on other loopholes enjoyed by the wealthy. And Warren shot to her feet and applauded vigorously when Obama promised to veto any bill sent to him by the GOP Congress “unraveling the new rules on Wall Street.” This was the Obama the activist left loves, rather than the more cautious centrist with Wall Street sympathies who tried and failed to install former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as Federal Reserve chair. Summers, a protégé of banker Robert Rubin — perhaps the most hated Democrat among the activist left — eventually had to step aside in favor of Janet Yellen, a beloved figure to progressives. Warren clearly demonstrated her ascendance as a political force. The larger question is the extent to which Warren continues to use her platform to push Hillary Clinton to the left and away from her more centrist, Rubinite roots. So far, Clinton has proved less than adept at co-opting Warren’s message. She’s struggled mightily to talk about her own significant wealth, complaining about being “dead broke” when leaving the White House in 2000. And she stumbled on the stump in the midterms when she said that it’s not corporations that create jobs. Running on Warren’s issues — reining in Wall Street, protecting consumers — is not a political liability. The public – and certainly the Democratic Party – is largely with Warren on all these issues, polling data show. But Democratic insiders and analysts all question whether Clinton would be successful at shifting left or come across as hypocritical and insincere. There is also the question of financial support. Clinton has long enjoyed heavy backing from Wall Street. But that could dry up if she keeps criticizing the industry as she did in a tweet on Jan. 16: “Attacking financial reform is risky and wrong,” she said. “Better for Congress to focus on jobs and wages for middle class families.” Clinton, in the tweet, criticized Dodd-Frank changes strongly supported by Wall Street. The former first lady and secretary of state will hardly be beholden to the financial-services industry for money, especially in the era of billionaire-funded “super PACs.” But she would still face charges of changing her tune if she were to tack too hard toward the Antonio Weiss-bashing left. “My guess is she will try to thread her way through this by saying that Warren has very legitimate concerns but that Wall Street is still an important part of the economy,” said one of Clinton’s biggest Wall Street supporters who also backed Weiss for Treasury. “But that’s just a very tricky needle to thread.” *BuzzFeed: “DREAMers Are Back And They’re Coming For The GOP And Clinton” <http://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/times-britney-spears-was-so-good-to-her-fans#.siG92Rp4ej>* By Adrian Carrasquillo January 25, 2015, 8:16 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] After playing a key role in securing Obama’s executive actions on immigration, DREAMer activists are back, confronting Republicans, with an eye towards Hillary Clinton too. In 2014, DREAMer activists, undocumented youth brought to the country as children, established themselves as a pivotal force in the immigration fight. But if you thought the immigration protests that interrupted speeches from both Democrats and Republicans during 2014 would end with President Obama’s executive actions, you thought wrong. If anything, last year showed them that the strategy works, and so DREAMer activists are back. Their first volley of 2015 came at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a gathering of conservatives, many with presidential aspirations, where they had one question: Do you stand with us, or with immigration hardliner Steve King? “2016 is around the corner, so we want to see where Republicans stand, would they overturn [Obama’s actions]? Would they deport DREAMers?” said activist Cesar Vargas, one of the nearly 10 who crashed the GOP event, interrupting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “For Hillary Clinton, yes, she tweeted that she supported the president on executive action, but for us it’s not just about approval — what else will she do?” The young activists gave Clinton headaches last year during her book promotional tour and later on the campaign trail, when they repeatedly confronted her. National DREAMer activist Erika Andiola recently told BuzzFeed News that Clinton and Jeb Bush, two possible 2016 candidates with perhaps views on immigration policy more in line with the activists’, will be forced to clarify their stances. If the strategy seems counterintuitive, Vargas says the activists’ strategy is constantly misunderstood. “This is not just about political tactics, it’s just about real questions, there are real people affected by this, whether they’re parents or workers,” Vargas said. “All 2016 hopefuls say, ‘We want to talk to the real Americans.’ Well these are the real people affected by these policies.” Why protest Perry, for instance, someone who has faced criticism from the right on immigration (Perry famously said “you don’t have a heart” if you oppose in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants), when Sen. Ted Cruz and others also there? Activists say they see it differently after Perry sent the National Guard to the border during the unaccompanied minors crisis, and Marco Malagon, who interrupted Perry at the event and was arrested, was there because of that in particular. But Cruz has advocated for stricter policy on undocumented immigrants and had strong words about immigrants at the event too. “Ted Cruz is a lost cause,” Vargas said. “He’s a far right political figure for the Tea Party. Chris Christie, Scott Walker, on the other hand, they’re trying to stay away from the issue, we want to know where they stand. Jeb Bush, he’s seriously considering not only running, but also working with the Latino community.” One activist in Iowa for the confrontation, Giancarlo Tello, a New Jersey DREAMer, said that after the president’s announcement, future immigration actions won’t only feature young undocumented advocates. “Its not just going to be DREAMers, but whole immigrant families. Not just those who qualify for [deferred action], but also for Obama’s actions for families,” Tello said. “It left 7 million behind. As long as the undocumented community is still being criminalized, we’re going to go after them, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.” It’s important to note that the activists are not all from one organization. There are local groups, leaders like Andiola and Vargas of the Arizona-based Dream Action Coalition, and also one major national organization: United We Dream (UWD). For its part, UWD spent Friday to Sunday in Maryland holed up at their yearly retreat, mapping their strategy for the year. BuzzFeed News has learned that the group has so-called offensive and defensive priorities, as well as local and national plans for 2015. Going on offense looks a lot like what went down in Iowa this weekend, but just as importantly, the organization wants to defend Obama’s executive actions, which they feel are under attack by Congressional Republicans, as well as in the 25-state Texas lawsuit on the constitutionality of the executive actions. UWD also wants to work on educating the community on implementation of Obama’s actions, getting all of those who are eligible to apply to be protected from deportation. A new strategy for UWD this year centers on some local battles they want to aid affiliates in, like in Texas, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick campaigned on far stricter border enforcement and dismantling the in-state tuition program (the issue is contentious within the Republican Party there — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott largely distanced himself from Patrick during his campaign, but said if the legislature passed the in-state tuition bill, he would sign it). The organization also wants to help in states that may be looking to add in-state tuition like Massachusetts and Connecticut. The activists in Iowa on Saturday held signs that said “Deportable?” on them, a reference to a much-maligned tweet by Steve King, who organized the Iowa Freedom Summit. King was referencing Michelle Obama’s guest at the State of the Union, a young undocumented immigrant whom he called a “deportable.” DREAMers say that King like Cruz, is a lost cause, but the signs were meant as a question to prospective presidential candidates, as in, “Are we deportable?” Vargas said Christie calling King a friend on Saturday told them a lot. “In Spanish there is a saying, ‘Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres,’” Vargas said. “Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” *Time: “The Invisible Presidential Campaign Kicks Off in Earnest” <http://time.com/3681834/presidential-campaign-finance-donors/>* By Michael Scherer, Alex Altman, and Zeke Miller January 25, 2015 Presidential candidates-to-be, and a passel of well-known clingers on, converged in Iowa this weekend with all the flash and fun the nation has come to expect of the Grand Old Party. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina managed substantive introductions, alongside businessman Donald Trump, who declared there is “nobody like Trump,” and Sarah Palin, who struggled with diction and metaphor, offering phrases like “We don’t sit on our thumbs this next time when one of our own is being crucified.” The real action, however, lay elsewhere, off the stage and out of sight, in an invisible primary taking place behind closed doors in states not known for their place in the nominating calendar. Candidates have been crisscrossing the nation and working the phones, dialing for dollars and loyalty in a contest that may prove far more consequential than speech that can be given before any crowd at this point. The goal is not to win votes, but to win the support of Republicans like Bobbie Kilberg, who hosted an off-the-record event in Virginia for Christie last week with 96 corporate technology leaders. In recent months, she has taken not one, but two calls from Mitt Romney informing her of her thinking, as he edges toward another campaign. And having worked for the administrations of both Presidents Bush, she feels a special affinity for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whose son, George P. Bush, she recently supported in his race for Texas land commissioner. “I have three wonderful friends in this race,” said Kilberg, who runs the Northern Virginia Technology Council, but supports candidates only in a personal capacity. “My expectation is that all three of them will run.” But the physics of political fundraising does not allow for her fealty to be equally divided for long. Connecters like Kilberg now face enormous pressure to decide on a single candidate to benefit from their vast Rolodexes. “I think there is enough donor bandwidth for all three of them in the center right lane,” Kilberg explains of the three candidates. “The finite group are the bundlers.” Securing the 2012 nomination cost Romney $76.6 million, raised in increments up to the legal limit of $2,500. His super PAC, Restore Our Future, which could accept unlimited contributions, added nearly $50 million to the tally. Operatives affiliated with multiple campaigns say candidates will need at least $50 million to win the nomination this time around, but predict more of the spending will tilt toward the outside groups. Bush, Romney and Christie are especially squeezed by the fundraising pressures, as their candidacies are set to rely heavily on their predicted ability to match Hillary Clinton’s formidable potential. The early start to the race — candidates are traveling the country earlier and more frequently than ever on the Republican side — adds strain across the board. Complicating matters further are changes to the nominating calendar with fewer debate opportunities and a compressed timeline that favor well-funded candidates once voters get to the polls. Kilberg and her husband Bill, a prominent Washington lawyer, helped bundle together more than $100,000 in checks of less than $2,000 in 2004 for George W. Bush. In 2012, she helped lead Mitt Romney’s fundraising in Virginia, bringing in a reported $322,000 at just one event at her home. The Tuesday event Kilberg had with Christie and northern Virginia technology executives was not a fundraiser, she said, but a get-to-know-you session. At almost the same time the event was happening, Bush was meeting in the offices of Dirk Van Dongen, a Republican fundraiser who runs the National Association of Wholesalers. Dongen, a Washington fundraiser for another White House aspirant, Marco Rubio, plans to support Jeb Bush this time, if he runs. The Bush events were not fundraisers either, though forms were distributed inviting donors to begin bundling for Bush’s new political action committee, Right to Rise. The main purpose, as with the Virginia events, was to win over the networkers who traditionally hold the purse strings of presidential politics. According to people who attended, Bush spoke broadly about his views of the country and the best way to approach the presidential race. He said a winning candidate would have to connect with middle-class anxiety by walking in the shoes of regular people, said one attendee. “The contrast was obvious,” the attendee said, explaining how Bush appeared to be contrasting himself with Romney’s 2012 campaign. “That’s 100 degrees from the 47% comment.” Romney, meanwhile, has been reactivating his own donor base, having chosen a donor event in New York early in the month to formally announce his decision to begin pursuing a third presidential campaign. The former private-equity executive has been working the phones since then, telling donors he is serious about considering another bid. Senator Marco Rubio, meanwhile, held his annual retreat for his top donors in Miami over the weekend, a move designed to keep his loyalists close while he considers his options. He later joined fellow Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul on stage in Palm Springs at the winter meeting of the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a spending vehicle for the billionaire GOP megadonor Koch brothers and their allies. Also in attendance, after a well-received appearance in Iowa, was Walker, who was making the first stop on a multi-day West Coast fundraising swing for his new fundraising committee, which will be announced as soon as Monday. While Republican voters have more than a year to decide on the candidate they want to take on Democrats in 2016, the donors clock is ticking. Quarterly fundraising totals, which will come out early this summer and again in the fall, will help shape the race, determining which candidates have the money to mount serious contests, with the grassroots organizing ability and television firepower to withstand the early contests. “It’s really what we would call in the business a pre-sell,” says a senior Republican strategist about Bush’s visit to Washington this week. “They’ll come back in the next 60 days and do some big fundraising, and they’ll hope to get a lot of those same people to be on their committee.” For those keeping score, the results of such appeals will be the ones that count, not the applause of activist crowds. In this democratic process, the voices of the people only matter after the first waves of money have been counted. *USA Today: “Cruz, Paul, Rubio spar on Cuba policy at desert forum” <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/01/26/cruz-rubio-paul-koch-bros-white-house/22337325/>* By Sammy Roth January 26, 2015, 2:51 a.m. EST Three likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination shared a stage in Rancho Mirage, Calif. on Sunday night, where they outlined similar visions for helping the middle class but differed sharply on foreign policy, including Cuba. The wide-ranging panel discussion — which featured U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida — was part of an annual desert gathering for high-profile Republicans, sponsored by a group aligned with the billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch. The summit is traditionally closed to outsiders, but in a limited concession to their critics, the Koch brothers allowed members of the media — but not the public — to watch a live stream of Sunday's panel. The three Republican senators — none of whom has officially declared a presidential candidacy — largely avoided criticizing each other directly, in an event that some observers described as the first debate of the 2016 election. But they didn't hesitate to attack President Barack Obama, starting with the rosy economic outlook he presented in his State of the Union Address last week. "It seemed to me like we were watching a description of an alternate reality," Cruz said. "It reminded me of 'Alice in Wonderland.'" POPULIST TONE The Republican senators did, however, echo Obama's focus on the middle class and income inequality, with Cruz and Rubio especially looking to strike a populist note. Rubio said income inequality has "increased dramatically" under Obama's economic policies, while also tweaking Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. "The central narrative of the last campaign, what the voters heard, is, 'We don't have to worry about the 47 percent,'" Rubio said, recalling Romney's now-infamous remarks at a private fundraiser. "I think Republicans should be the party of the 47 percent." Generally, the candidates had similar prescriptions for helping the middle class: smaller government, lower taxes across the income spectrum, and other policies they said would grow the economy as a whole. They criticized government as much as they criticized Obama, with Paul saying that government "is not stupid, but it's a debatable question." "Income inequality is indirectly, if not directly, related to big government," he said. But pressed by moderator Jonathan Karl for specifics on hot-button economic policy issues, the candidates at times equivocated. While all three said they oppose raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour, Cruz and Paul wouldn't say whether they support having a minimum wage at all. Rubio came closest to answering the question, saying that "as a practical matter," he's not calling to abolish the minimum wage. CRUZ, RUBIO CONDEMN CUBA POLICY The biggest disagreements of the night came when the conversation shifted from economic policy to foreign policy. Cruz and Rubio strongly condemned Obama's recently announced plan to normalize relations with Cuba, but Paul said he sees a lot to like about the new policy. "We have embassies everywhere. Diplomacy is a good thing, not a bad thing," Paul said. "Reagan talked to the Russians. Every president we've ever had talked to the Russians for 70 years, and it's a damn good thing they did." The candidates were similarly divided on Iran, with Paul arguing that Congress should let ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program play out before approving more economic sanctions. Cruz and Rubio painted the negotiations as a waste of time, calling for a more aggressive stance against Iran. Asked by Karl whether Republicans should nominate a candidate with no foreign policy experience — which none of the three senators on stage in Rancho Mirage had — Rubio took a shot at Hillary Clinton, Democrats' likely 2016 presidential nominee. "I think it would be a mistake to elect as president the architect of Obama's foreign policy," he said. "That would be a terrible mistake." *Forbes: “Hillary's Lead Over GOP Frontrunners Shrinks” <http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnzogby/2015/01/25/hillarys-lead-over-gop-frontrunners-shrinks/>* By John Zogby January 25, 2015, 6:30 p.m. EST The January Zogby Analytics Poll shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton keeping her leads over possible GOP contenders in 2016 – but her leads narrowing significantly. In the January 16-18 online poll of 890 likely voters, Mrs. Clinton leads former Florida Governor Jeb Bush by only 8 points — 45% to 37% (down from 49% to 34% in mid-December’s Zogby Analytics Poll) – and 9 points over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 46% to 37% (down from 48% to 33%). The poll has a margin of sampling error of +.-3.4 percentage points. A lead is still a lead but her margins are narrowing among several key subgroups. For example, among women she now leads Bush 48%-34%, where it was 55% to 30% just last month. Her leads have shrunk from 35 points to 16 points among 18-29 year olds, 28 points to 17 points among 30-49 year olds, 16 points to 10 points among independents, and 58 points to 24 points among Hispanics. She has actually gone from a 20 point lead among Catholics to a 6 point deficit. The numbers are showing very much the same trend line against Romney. In two other races, she now leads Kentucky Senator Rand Paul by 14 points (48% to 34%), while last month it was 18 points (51% to 33%). Against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Clinton now leads by 12 points (45% to 33%), whereas last month it was by 15 points (48% to 33%). Now these are not good numbers for Republicans. While these are the only four candidates we tested, they are all prominent and none of them even hits 40% — a very bad sign for a national party. But essentially, Clinton simply running against herself is not doing well, certainly not enough to close any deal. In fact, during the course of a year of polling, she has dropped into the mid-40s, down from the mid-50s. And, very significantly, these numbers include “leaners” – i.e. those who initially said they were undecided and were asked if they had to choose a candidate today. More leaners chose the GOP candidates than chose her. This is only a temporary reading and there is a very long way to go. For now, there is some movement already and we are watching it closely. *Calendar:* *Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.* · February 24 – Santa Clara, CA: Sec. Clinton to Keynote Address at Inaugural Watermark Conference for Women (PR Newswire <http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hillary-rodham-clinton-to-deliver-keynote-address-at-inaugural-watermark-conference-for-women-283200361.html> ) · March 4 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to fundraise for the Clinton Foundation (WSJ <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/15/carole-king-hillary-clinton-live-top-tickets-100000/> ) · March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes American Camp Association conference (PR Newswire <http://www.sys-con.com/node/3254649>) · March 23 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton to keynote award ceremony for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting (Syracuse <http://newhouse.syr.edu/news-events/news/former-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-newhouse-school-s> )