Image 01 Image 03

Hillary Clinton Tag

If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, will she pull an Obama, and blame everything on her predecessor, the way Obama still blames Bush for everything? Even if it's a President from her own party?  And an administration she participated in? And a Foreign Policy she helped develop? From recent interviews, looks like Hillary has found her George Bush, and it's Obama. A new report from FOX News seems to indicate that when it comes to foreign policy, she she'll be running against Obama's legacy:
Clinton critical of Obama foreign policy, says 'failure' to act in Syria created vacuum for jihad Hillary Clinton, the front-runner among potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, is sharply distancing herself from President Obama's foreign policy, particularly in Syria, as Americans appear to continue losing confidence in his handling of key international affairs. Clinton, who as secretary of state was Obama’s top diplomat, suggested during an in-depth interview with The Atlantic magazine that the president’s foreign-policy mantra of “don’t do stupid stuff” lacked sufficient depth. “Great nations need organizing principles,” she said in the roughly 8,000-word interview released Sunday. “And ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” The interview comes as Americans’ opinion of how Obama is handling crises in Israel, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, continues to sink. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released Tuesday, three days before Obama ordered airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops in Syria, showed a record-high disapproval rating. Sixty percent of those polled disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy efforts, compared to 36 percent who approved. The interview also could help or hurt the former first lady’s effort to burnish her own foreign policy credentials ahead of an official 2016 campaign.
The significance of Hillary's position wasn't lost on Maggie Haberman of Politico:

John Dickerson at Slate makes the case that Elizabeth Warren Should Run for President:
If Warren joined the race, she would not win [waj - I disagree], but she would till the ground, putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest. She would energize the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which would then stir up other Democrats who seek to moderate or contain that group. Warren would challenge the Democratic Party on issues like corporate power, income inequality, and entitlements. She would be a long shot and she would have nothing to lose—which means she could keep talking about those ideas out loud. Because Clinton is close to Wall Street and finance executives and Warren is gunning for them, she has the potential to put campaign pressure on Clinton that other candidates can’t. Clinton and other candidates would be forced to explain where they stood more than if Warren weren’t in the race.
The concern, according to Dickerson:
The reason a Warren candidacy should have broad ideological appeal is that if you’re a conservative there’s something in her campaign for you, too. It will either expose Democrats for the socialist one-worlders that they are or bruise Clinton for the coming general election fight.
I think Warren should run and challenge Hillary. But that's just me. Meanwhile, if Warren does run, she's going to have to do a much better job at being responsive to reporters and speaking off the cuff rather than in pre-programmed contexts (like Senate hearings where she gets to ask but not answer the questions), via Capitol City Project: Reminds me of this:

I know, you thought I'd been trolling you these past few months with all my writing about how Elizabeth Warren might actually run for President, and how she would crush Hillary if she did (and they both know it). But I wasn't trolling. Warren's surge in the Wisconsin delegate straw poll was noticed mostly only by us, but was a sign that there could be a groundswell of support. Despite all her present tense denials, there is no doubt in my mind that Warren is seriously considering running but waiting until Democrats demand it. Warren is a unique political talent, in ways we have been documenting since early 2012. There is no one on the political scene today who plays upon and preys upon a sense of victimization and envy as well as Warren. So it doesn't surprise me that Ready for Warren has formed, as reported at HuffPo:
An enthusiastic band of activists has launched a campaign to slow the momentum of Hillary Clinton and convince Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that she should run for president in 2016. "I think there's an opportunity for us to convince her if we're really able to make the case as to why we think she's the right person," said Erica Sagrans, who has signed on as the Ready For Warren campaign manager. The group already has a Facebook pageTwitter account and a new website with a petition encouraging Warren to run. Sagrans, who worked on President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, will be joined by political activist Billy Wimsatt, who previously founded the League of Young Voters and is going to be a senior adviser to the new group. Reached for comment, Lacey Rose, Warren's press secretary, told HuffPost, "No, Senator Warren does not support this effort."
They are not intimidated by the well-monied Ready for Hillary:

Hillary Clinton is a lawyer, and a smart one at that. So she knows better than this statement she made about the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision:
It’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.
Politifact rates Clinton's statement as Mostly False. The WaPo's fact-checker gave it 2 Pinocchios. But although both articles say Clinton is dissembling to a certain extent, they both give Clinton's statement a more generous interpretation than it deserves, with the WaPo even insinuating that her error might have been inadvertent. Absurd; as I said, Clinton is a razor-sharp lawyer when she wants to be. She should have gotten the maximum number of Pinocchios and then some.

Hillary didn't have to defend the child rapist. Once she took the case, she had to do everything ethical to provide the defense. But she didn't have to take the case. Hillary could have just said no. And she didn't have to cackle about getting the guy off easy. There's nothing funny about it. Nothing. It's Mitt's dog, haircut, and secret tape cubed. If the media wants it to be. It also goes to a core political issue, Hillary’s sisterhood questioned again as rape victim speaks out. This will be a big f-ing deal if and when Hillary runs. It already is. (video via Free Beacon) Added:  Some background on the MSNBC segment, noting Hillary's explanations are inconsistent with past statements and correcting errors, from the Free Beacon:

If Hillary Clinton runs for President, she's still the odds-on favorite because she has the Democratic machine behind her. The conventional wisdom is that the nomination is Hillary's to lose. If Hillary's disastrous book rollout and tone-deafness about her wealth are any indication, Hillary might just accomplish the unthinkable of imploding a second time as presumptive nominee. Hillary's worst enemy is Hillary. There's only so long you can pretend to be something you are not. Enter Elizabeth Warren. We have been arguing for years that Warren is a unique political talent, someone who can demagogue the national victim narrative better than anyone in recent memory. Do not underestimate the power of a politician whose entire reason to be is to convince people that the problems in their lives are not of their own doing, but of a rigged system in which they are abused by powerful, if unseen, forces. Put aside all the hypocrisy's of Warren's own life. There are many people willing to overlook how Warren tried to rig the system to her own advantage if that is what is needed to believe in their own victimhood. In a nation suffering from an unending decline in workforce participation rates, in which every month hundreds of thousands of people give up hope of finding a job and drop out, blaming a rigged system is a powerful message. Jonah Goldberg calls Warren The Obama of 2016:

It hasn't been a good month for Hillary Clinton. It has been a very very bad month, in fact. This was supposed to be a great month with the launch of her new biography "Hard Choices." The book tour had her featured on every major television news and entertainment program in the country. Hillary's face was popping up across the fruited plains from Albuquerque to Zanesville. Things were looking good for Hillary Clinton's 2016 preview. But then the wheels came off. Here are the five horrible stories that slowed down the Clinton Express in the last few weeks:

I told you so.  Elizabeth Warren's repeated supposed refusals to run for President always were framed in the present tense: I am not running for President. That, of course, technically was correct.  I don't think anyone of note "is" running for President yet, but many are seriously considering it and likely will run. Nothing makes Warren's word games more clear than her interview with (my law school classmate) Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post:
The Massachusetts Democrat insists that she’s not running for president, and there’s little reason to doubt her — although, interestingly, Warren sticks doggedly to the present tense to describe her intentions. I asked Warren about this phrasing the other afternoon over iced tea mixed with lemonade at a restaurant near her Capitol Hill office. In these precincts, senator sightings are commonplace but, even here, Warren enjoys celebrity status; the manager promptly presented Warren with a copy of her memoir, “A Fighting Chance,” to sign. Why not simply declare that she will not run for president in 2016? “I am not running for president in 2016,” Warren responded. Yes, I pressed, but why not say, I am not running and I will not run?