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2016 Democratic Primary Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on April 20, 2015 29 Comments
The book is called Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich---and it could be the undoing of a woman much of the country assumed would one day hold the presidency. Peter Schweizer's latest work won't officially hit stores until May 5, but the buzz generated by the release of advance copies already has Team Clinton on defense, and Republican heavy-hitters running offense against the financial history of the Clinton Foundation. The basic premise of the book is that during the time Clinton served as secretary of state, the Department would grant favors to foreign entities in exchange for high-dollar speaking fees paid directly to the Clinton Foundation.
“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 19, 2015 11 Comments
Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done such a tremendous job of defining the Democratic Party's central beliefs lately, especially in her response to Rand Paul's challenges on abortion. We're so impressed that we think Wasserman Schultz has become a possible, um, Plan B for Democrats should Hillary faulter. As evidence for our argument, here are some of Debbie's greatest hits. Here she is asserting that Obama hardly does his job at all:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 17, 2015 12 Comments
America Rising PAC dropped a new video earlier this week and boy does this one sting. This latest addition to the open Hillary oppo file recounts the scandalicious candidate's most memorable lies in all their video-taped glory. Will the truth make a dent in Hillary's plans? Though she's launched her official burrito-filled presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton's email scandal woes are far from over. Rep. Gowdy requested two interviews, a private, transcribed interview before the Select Committee on Benghazi as well as a public hearing. While Mrs. Clinton has said she would testify in a public hearing before the committee, to date, neither she nor her counsel have responded to Gowdy's request.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 16, 2015 1 Comment
Anyone who has ever worked for a candidate (or any public figure, really) has had that Oh, God moment. It's the moment that you prepare for, pray will never come, but somehow always manages to sneak up kick the crap out of your best-laid media plans. Democrat almost-candidate for president Lincoln Chafee served his comms shop an Oh, God moment this morning on CNN's New Day when he may or may not have let it slip that his exploratory committee is, at least in his mind, a formality:
After rattling off a list of sins that Hillary Clinton committed as secretary of state, John Berman asked Chafee if he was going hard against her record on purpose. “Yes, that’s why I’m running,” he seemingly confirmed. “Because I feel strong about where we’re going as a country.”
You can watch the spot here.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2015 38 Comments
Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed reports that Hillary's often-told story about all her grandparents being immigrants is 3/4 false. Only one was.
Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents. The story of her grandmother specifically immigrating is one Clinton has told before. Clinton’s sole foreign-born grandparent, Hugh Rodham Sr., immigrated as a child."
Extensive public records support Kaczynski's findings. Here's a Buzzfeed video file of Hillary recently telling the story. [video width="600" height="338" mp4="https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/HillaryinIowacomments-624x350.mp4"][/video] There's also a Youtube video linked by Buzzfeed.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2015 19 Comments
Via Drudge, The Daily Mail reports to the surprise of no one who has followed the Clintons, that Hillary's coffee shop talk in Iowa was staged:
Hillary Clinton's astroturf candidacy is in full swing in Iowa. Her Tuesday morning visit to a coffee shop in LeClaire, Iowa was staged from beginning to end, according to Austin Bird, one of the men pictured sitting at the table with Mrs. Clinton. Bird told Daily Mail Online that campaign staffer Troy Price called and asked him and two other young people to meet him Tuesday morning at a restaurant in Davenport, a nearby city. Price then drove them to the coffee house to meet Clinton after vetting them for about a half-hour. The three got the lion's share of Mrs. Clinton's time and participated in what breathless news reports described as a 'roundtable'– the first of many in her brief Iowa campaign swing.

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 15, 2015 15 Comments
It's interesting that Hillary Clinton started off her 2016 presidential campaign with a video that showed what appeared to be middle class Americans at a transitional point in their lives. Hillary talked about being a "champion" for them and punctuated her kick-off by going on a road trip to Iowa, stopping at gas stations and eating at Chipotle, like "every day" Americans. While people have been enjoying themselves at Hillary's expense with her road trip and her burrito bowl adventures, the Republican Party is looking to do what Democrats did to Mitt Romney in 2012 and what the GOP did to John Kerry in 2004: Portray Hillary Clinton as an out of touch plutocrat who says all the right things about "the middle class" but cannot possibly relate to their situation. From Politico:
While Hillary Clinton’s residences in New York and Washington may not have car elevators, there’s still a lengthy trail of paid speeches, tone-deaf statements about the family finances and questions about Clinton family foundation fundraising practices that will serve as cornerstones of the anti-Clinton messaging effort. “She’s admitted she hasn’t driven a car for decades; she probably doesn’t ever go into a coffee shop and talk to regular people unless it’s for a staged photo-op,” said American Crossroads CEO Steven Law, alluding to Clinton’s portrayal in her campaign’s launch video on Sunday. “She really has lived the life of a 1-percenter these last several years, and it shows.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 15, 2015 6 Comments
Uh oh, it looks like a certain someone didn't get the message the first time. Bill de Blasio's effectiveness as the mayor of New York City is open for debate, but his dedication to progressive politics is beyond dispute. The American left adores him, so his reticence to endorse Mrs. Clinton comes as no surprise. Like many people in the Warren Wing of the Democratic Party, he's not quite ready for Hillary. Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard:
De Blasio Shuns Hillary: 'This Is a Different Country We’re Living in Right Now' New York City mayor Bill de Blasio once again refused to endorse his former boss, Hillary Clinton, in remarks today. "This is a different country we’re living in right now, and I think we need to hear a vision that relates to this tim," de Blasio said. The mayor also suggested that Clinton indeed is a candidate of yesterday. She's "a candidate who has not been in the public eye in this sense for almost eight years, and we're still beginning to hear what she stands for," he said. "It's normal to want to hear more."
Here's the video:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2015 41 Comments
The Hillary Chipotle story is either one of the most amazing unintended earned-media campaign stories ever, or a contrived set up. Regardless, put points in Team Hillary column. Maggie Haberman at The NY Times broke the story about Hillary's supposedly secret trip to Chipotle on her Scooby trip to Iowa. The story goes like this:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is all about “everyday Americans,” she made clear in announcing it on Sunday. On Monday, she showed how unassuming she herself could be. Driving to Iowa for her first campaign swing, Mrs. Clinton’s van — with two aides and Secret Service agents aboard — pulled into a Chipotle restaurant for lunch in Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. And no one recognized her. Maybe it was the dark sunglasses. Or maybe she had a certain je ne sais — qui? But nobody took notice of the celebrity in front of the counter. Fellow patrons paid her no more attention than a driver would get from a toll taker. Nor did the restaurant’s staff notice Mrs. Clinton, until this reporter, tipped off that she had dined there, telephoned. The Chipotle manager, Charles Wright, insisted at first that the tip must have been false. But he offered to review his security-camera recordings, and quickly reversed himself. There was Mrs. Clinton, in a bright pink shirt, ordering a chicken burrito bowl — and carrying her own tray. “The thing is, she has these dark sunglasses on,” Mr. Wright said. “She just was another lady.”
Haberman explained in a different column:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 14, 2015 31 Comments
Much in the same way President Obama's campaigns featured a reimagined 'O', Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House includes a reconfigured letter 'H'. The internet though? Less than impressed with the embattled former Secretary's branding effort. Interestingly, it's not just the intrepid photo shoppers who are having a jolly good time at the awkward H's expense. Even The New Yorker was... confused:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 13, 2015 9 Comments
I'm firmly on Team Hillary Parody 2016. Meaning, I'm definitely a fan of the insultingly hilarious "Candidate Hillary" skits that Saturday Night Live is churning out. This weekend, SNL's Kate McKinnon donned the pantsuit once more to riff on Hillary's Big Presidential Announcement©, and it was pretty great. Watch: Any day I get a bonus reprise of Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton is a great day, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. But let's not see these skits for anything other than what they are---skits. Why? Because they're not really a sincere attack on Clinton.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2015 38 Comments
Hillary Clinton's campaign has been the subject of intensive packaging, down to image consultants trying to figure out how to present Hillary. It now has been revealed. Meet Hillary 2016. I mean, meet John Podesta, long time Clinton operative, confidant and head of the left-wing Center for American Progress, who made the announcement for Hillary:
Hillary Rodham Clinton will seek the presidency for a second time, one of her top advisers said Sunday, ending two years of speculation and coy denials and immediately establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. The announcement came in emails from John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, to donors and others. “I wanted to make sure you heard it first from me – it’s official: Hillary’s running for president,” the email reads. It goes on to say that Mrs. Clinton will soon meet with voters in Iowa and will host a formal kickoff event some time next month.
This all makes sense.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 11, 2015 3 Comments
Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee last week, and he's wasting no time going after Hillary Clinton. In an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday, he suggested that Hillary's vote for the war in Iraq makes her a poor choice for president. Watch: Chafee solves one problem for Democrats by providing Hillary with another challenger but reinforces the idea that the Democratic bench is made up of faces from the past.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 11, 2015 22 Comments
Hillary Clinton has a number of hills to climb and unflattering revelations about her character to overcome, but one of the most problematic things that she faces is that no one can seem to name even one accomplishment from her time at State or even from her time in the Senate.  And by "no one" I don't mean republicans, libertarians, or anyone lurking in the darkened corners of the vast right-wing conspiracy, I mean attendees of the Democratic National Convention: The folks at Morning Joe can't think of anything, either:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 10, 2015 8 Comments
Presidential election cycles are exciting times. Normally, we like to focus on the "important issues" facing our candidates---the sorts of things that can really make or break a candidacy like policy, polling numbers, or debate prowess (or lack thereof.) Too often we get wrapped up in the things that actually matter and forget to enjoy the human circus that parades before us for years before the polls finally open, bringing an end to our long national nightmare. Sometimes the best stories are the ones that come about as candidates try---sometimes insultingly, sometimes hilariously---to fit in with voters in different parts of the country. Back in 2007, Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop in Selma, Alabama, and faked what would become the southern accent heard 'round the world:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 05, 2015 15 Comments
You may have noticed that almost every time Elizabeth Warren is interviewed, she is asked if she plans to run for president in 2016. FOX News media analyst Howard Kurtz thinks it's because the press is longing for a competitive race on the Democratic side in 2016 and perhaps because journalists feel an "affinity" for Warren. Watch this segment from FOX News on Saturday: I think there's a much simpler explanation for the media's obsession with Warren; they love her. The media is overwhelmingly liberal and many journalists view Warren as the next Obama. They'll settle for Hillary and even pull the lever for her in 2016 if they have no choice, but they'd rather get behind a candidate like Warren who has become the left's standard bearer on issues like income inequality.

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 01, 2015 8 Comments
Martin O'Malley has made it pretty clear that he expects to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President in 2016. While most of the media is frothing over the Indiana/RFRA issue, O'Malley is quietly going around, giving interviews and meeting with people (and likely donors). O'Malley represents a challenge from the left for Hillary that doesn't come with the polarization that accompanies Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Hillary email scandal is not going away as more information drips out every day that contradicts the claims she made in that now famous press conference at the UN. On Tuesday O'Malley was asked about the email scandal and essentially said if she has nothing to hide than she shouldn't have an issue talking about it: https://youtu.be/E89s8ElHry0?t=1m59s
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