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2016 Democratic Primary Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 05, 2015 11 Comments
Obama's goal of reversing the ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military seems likely to manifest itself next year.  Reports suggest that the transgender ban is slated to end in May, 2016.  In keeping with the Obama policy and perhaps angling himself to run to the left of Hillary and to the right of Sanders, Joe Biden announced Saturday that he backs transgender troops openly serving. The New York Times reports:
Vice President Joe Biden is throwing his unequivocal support behind letting transgender people serve openly in the military, as the Obama administration considers whether and when to lift the longstanding ban. Biden's declaration at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner Saturday goes further than anything the Obama administration has said before, evoking memories of when Biden outpaced President Barack Obama in endorsing gay marriage. . . . . Biden is considering running for president. He says transgender rights are "the civil rights issue of our time."
During the same dinner, Biden applauded gay rights activists for "changing the course of America." The Hill reports:

Posted by Amy Miller on October 03, 2015 8 Comments
A new Pew poll dropped on Friday and told us what we already know about this election cycle: American voters are ready for something different. We could have told you that months ago, citing the popularity of candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina as a prime example of been-there-done-that fatigue. The latest polling data (1,502 adults were surveyed, including 1,136 registered voters) serves to validate those candidates' rising stars More from Pew:
Since March, the share of all registered voters who say it is more important for a presidential candidate to have “new ideas and a different approach” has surged – with virtually all of the increase coming among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Today, by more than two-to-one (65% to 29%), Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say it is more important that a candidate have new ideas than “experience and a proven record.” Just five months ago, GOP voters valued experience and a proven record over new ideas, 57% to 36%.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 02, 2015 4 Comments
The progressive base of the Democratic Party is voting with their wallets and has pushed fundraising for Bernie Sanders up to the level of the Clinton machine. Over the last three months, Sanders has come within $2 million of Hillary's grand total. James Hohmann and Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post:
So much for the Clinton juggernaut Clinton raised $28 million from July 1 to Sept. 30. Bernie Sanders raised $26 million. Hillary personally headlined 58 fundraisers during that time period, the same number as she did during the previous quarter. Sanders only appeared at seven finance events! Almost all of his money came from online. The disclosures come with fresh evidence that the base of the Democratic Party is not ready for Hillary. Yesterday alone, the Sanders campaign raised more than $2 million online. About $500,000 of that came in from 10:30 p.m. until midnight, according to my colleagues Matea Gold and John Wagner. Sanders has received 1.3 million donations from about 650,000 different donors. That puts him across the threshold of 1 million contributions earlier than Barack Obama in both his presidential campaigns.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 01, 2015 8 Comments
A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows that Hillary Clinton's numbers have taken a dive since July, when she commanded 59% support for her nomination. This summer Bernie Sanders drew just 14% of the support of those polled, with an undeclared Joe Biden still raking in 8% support. Now, polling shows that Clinton's support has dropped almost 20 points to just 41% of likely Democratic primary voters. Sanders and Biden, meanwhile, have gained ground, earning 23% and 20%, respectively. She's still in the lead, but the field is spreading out---which could mean bad news for the left's presumptive nominee. More from The Hill:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 30, 2015 20 Comments
Wednesday afternoon, the State Department released a fifth installment of the embattled former Secretary's emails. This month's document drop (the DOS is releasing chunks of Clinton's emails monthly) contains more classified information than previous releases. According to the Washington Times, more than 5% of Clinton's emails in Wednesday's batch contained classified information, twice as much classified material of previous batches.
...there are at least 400 messages that contain information the government now deems classified, out of nearly 12,000 emails released so far. But 214 of those messages came in the latest batch of 3,869 messages, for a classification rate of 5.5 percent. None of the messages were marked classified at the time they were sent — usually in 2010 or 2011, for the latest batch — but the government has gone back and determined they contain information that shouldn’t be out in public.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 29, 2015 31 Comments
The Democratic primary is a strange animal. Hillary Clinton is the obvious and expected front runner, but she's got a mad socialist chomping at her heels in key primary states; meanwhile, a respected former governor is waging an all-out war against the party apparatus over the party's apparent protectionist attitude towards Clinton---and actually getting headlines and activists behind his efforts. Wasn't this supposed to be Hillary's year? Isn't it her turn? You'd think she'd be more prepared for it. Last night NBC aired the second half of a "meet the candidates"-style conversation between Hillary Clinton and Chuck Todd. When Todd asked Clinton to differentiate herself from President Barack Obama, she demurred, arguing that she wasn't running for Obama's third term; when he pressed the issue, she completely and utterly failed to provide a single distinguishing trait of herself, her campaign, or her plans for the presidency. Watch the spiral:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 28, 2015 6 Comments
While riding the Sunday talk show circuit, Hillary Clinton encountered what should've been a brutal segment on her long-standing history of philosophical changes. On Meet the Press, a damning mashup called Clinton vs. Clinton would have been an uncomfortable for just about anyone one else, but not for Hillary. The former Secretary of State was at ease watching and addressing video footage of her ever-changing beliefs. Of course it didn't hurt that Todd didn't ask one single challenging question, either.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 27, 2015 24 Comments
On top of last Monday's news that Hillary Clinton was underwater for the first time in New York state, polls released today show Hillary still losing ground against Sanders and her favorability underwater in almost all demographics. NBC reports:
Hillary Clinton has lost ground to Bernie Sanders — she leads him by just seven points with Joe Biden in the race, and 15 points without the vice president. That's down from Clinton's 34-point lead over Sanders in July and her whopping 60-point lead in June. . . . . Hillary Clinton is the first choice of 42 percent of primary voters, Sanders is in second at 35 percent and Joe Biden third at 17 percent. No other Democrat gets more than 1 percent.
The Fox News poll also show grim results for Hillary:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 26, 2015 17 Comments
Bill Clinton has something of a historical role reversal. Whereas in the 1990s it was Hillary complaining of the vast right wing conspiracy against Bill, now it's Bill complaining of the vast right wing conspiracy against Hillary. The New York Times reports, Bill Clinton Blames G.O.P. and Press for Wife’s Email Woes:
Former President Bill Clinton blamed Republicans who hope to undercut his wife’s presidential chances and a voracious political news media uninterested in substance for the furor surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private email account and server while she was secretary of state. “I have never seen so much expended on so little,” Mr. Clinton said in a taped interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that will be shown on Sunday. The network released excerpts on Saturday afternoon. “She said she was sorry that her personal email caused all this confusion. And she’d like to give the election back to the American people,” Mr. Clinton said. “I think it will be all right. But it’s obvious what happened.”

Posted by Amy Miller on September 25, 2015 7 Comments
Fledgling campaigns tend to focus on the most high profile primary states---Iowa and New Hampshire---as a source of both grassroots power and media exposure. They're good places to build a profile; but what if your candidate already has a huge profile, and the campaign experience to match? You expand, of course. Vice President Joe Biden's "Draft Biden" PAC is doing just that. Biden has been teasing the idea of a presidential run for some time now, and a senior advisor to the PAC confirmed to the media today that the outfit is staffing up its operation in the 11 states that are set to host their primary elections on "Super Tuesday."
“We’re very pleased with the organizing we’re doing in the early states. The goal of Draft Biden has always been to build out the infrastructure Vice President Joe Biden will need if he decides to enter the race," said Josh Alcorn, a former Beau Biden adviser. News of the was first reported by Reuters. "We’re looking beyond the early states, to Super Tuesday and the contests in March, and looking forward to expanding our team in the coming weeks. When he’s ready, we’ll be ready."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 25, 2015 19 Comments
The FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email usage grows increasingly serious. Whether Clinton deleted emails pertinent to a Congressional investigation is only one facet of the unfolding story. Among the emails made public by the State Department, several were later upgraded to "classified." a FOIA lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch also found Hillary was not the only individual using a clintonemail.com email. Huma Abedin, one of Clinton's closest aides, also had an email address with the clintonemail.com domain that was used during Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. Repeatedly, Clinton has said half of all emails sent from her personal email account and contained on her home-brewed server were personal in nature and thus, not passed on to the Department of State for record retention. She's also claimed that emails sent from secured government email accounts were automatically captured by the State Department. This carefully worded claim does not account for those emails sent to aides like Abedin, who we now know also used a clintonemail.com email address. What began as an inquisition into the former Secretary handled classified information on her unclassified server has been broadened to include her aides:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 23, 2015 22 Comments
A new book called Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary reveals what author Edward Klein claims are insider accounts of a meeting between Hillary and President Obama. According to Klein, Hillary blew up at President Obama during a meeting over the investigation of her emails. Scheduled for release Monday, the New York Post obtained a colorful excerpt:
An enraged Hillary Rodham Clinton blew up at President Obama, demanding he “call off your f–king dogs” looking into her emails during a tense Oval Office meeting, according to a new book. The book, “Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary,” says the former first lady was furious at what she believed were damaging leaks by Obama aides that led to investigations of her use of a private email server as secretary of state. So she went right to the top to settle the matter. Clinton requested a meeting with Obama, against the advice of hubby Bill Clinton, believing “she was being persecuted for minor, meaningless violations,” author Edward Klein writes. Clinton initially took a friendly approach during the meeting and Obama reacted as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, the book claims. “He was almost being deliberately dense,” a Clinton source said. “It really angered her.”

Posted by Amy Miller on September 22, 2015 5 Comments
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is not having a good time this cycle. Charges over the DNC's "rigged" debate schedule have gained traction, and activists and prominent Democrats from presidential candidate Martin O'Malley to congressional leader Nancy Pelosi have taken to national media outlets to question DWS's decision to limit the number of official debates her candidates are allowed to participate in. On Saturday, that frustration boiled over. Spectators at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention drowned out DWS's speech with cries of "we want debates! We want debates!" further embarrassing the party and giving stronger legs to efforts meant to push the DNC toward a more substantial debate schedule. MSNBC caught on to the controversy this week. Not only did they call DWS out for limiting the number of debates, they directly accused the party of playing flack for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Ouch. Courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 21, 2015 2 Comments
Monday Judicial Watch released 50 new pages of emails from top Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin. Released as a result a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit instigated by Judicial Watch, the emails are from the clintonemail.com server and were penned during Former Secretary Clinton's tenure at the Department of State. To be clear, the emails are not part of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's home-brewed email server. They were found in the Department of State's records, but contain an address on the clintonemail.com domain. Judicial Watch asserts the State Department is intentionally delaying release of emails recently submitted by Abedin. As Judicial Watch notes, the emails show Clinton was not the only one using her non-secured server.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 20, 2015 21 Comments
Hillary Clinton appeared on Face the Nation today and responded to questions from host John Dickerson on a wide range of issues, notably the Benghazi attack and her controversial email server. On Benghazi, Clinton claimed that she felt no political pressure to blame the attack on a video. On her email, she continued to insist everything was above board. Here's a partial transcript via CBS News:
DICKERSON: Benghazi. CLINTON: Right. DICKERSON: Was that your 3:00 a.m. phone call? And how well did you handle that crisis, by the standard you raised in that ad? CLINTON: Well, of course it was a crisis. And we lost four brave Americans, including the person that I asked the president to send as ambassador, Chris Stevens. But we live in a dangerous world. And even our diplomats are at threat. And that goes all the way back to, for goodness' sake, taking over our embassy in Tehran or the bombings of our embassy in Beirut, when President Reagan was in charge. This is a dangerous world. And I think what we had to do during that period of time, in trying to protect our people after the attack on the consulate, getting them evacuated, not only working on what was going on in Libya, because, remember, we had embassies that were under attack or threatened to attack by terrorist groups across North Africa, indeed, across a much larger swathe of the world. So, I think it was terribly tragic, what happened. I immediately asked for an independent review, just like former secretaries of state did. And I made that public. And the only other person who did that was Secretary Albright after our embassies were bombed in Africa.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 19, 2015 12 Comments
During the CNN GOP debate, Carly Fiorina challenged Hillary supporters to name one of her accomplishments. This is an exceedingly fair question of the former First Lady, senator from New York, and Secretary of State who is now hoping to become the president, but it's one that causes even her staunchest supporters to stammer uncertainly and babble inanely. Remember this:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 19, 2015 2 Comments
The inner-party tension over the Democratic primary debate schedule boiled over at a New Hampshire Democratic Party convention Saturday. According to the Washington Post, more than 4,000 delegates and guests were at the event. When Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped up to speak, convention goers began chanting, "we want debates!"
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