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Hillary Clinton Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 01, 2014 21 Comments
You can feel it growing. Barney Frank thinks Elizabeth Warren will run for President, despite her present-tense denials:
 What Barney Frank lacks in tact, he makes up for in clarity. The former Massachusetts congressman tells the State House News Service in Massachusetts that it's "very unlikely" Hillary Clinton won't seek the presidency in 2016. But he also believes Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., – who is in the midst of a publicity tour for her new book – privately harbors White House ambitions. She is a senator, after all. Asked whether Warren has any inclination to seek the presidency, Frank said, "Oh, I think yes. In the first place, why would you want to get into a profession and have no interest in rising to the top of it? I don’t know anybody who has that."
Despite Elizabeth Warren's statement that she isn't running for President (technically true), the media is making the case for her. The latest is Aaron Blake at WaPo's The Fix, Why Elizabeth Warren is perfectly positioned for 2016 (if she wanted to run):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 25, 2014 41 Comments
Forget the current polling as between Hillary and Elizabeth Warren. It pits Hillary against someone who "isn't running." For all my criticisms of Warren, and they are extensive, I am convinced that if she ran, she would crush Hillary, just as Obama did. Warren, as did Obama, has a unique ability to demagogue the core Democratic narrative of victimhood in ways that would make Hillary blush. She is more cunning than Hillary, more popular with the base, would bring an excitement the contrived Ready-for-Hillary movement could only dream of.   Democrats may be "ready" for Hillary, but they don't really want her. Face it, Democrats, in your heart of hearts, you want Elizabeth Warren to run.  She is the next One you have been waiting for.   You can imagine yourselves singing:
We’re gonna spread happiness We’re gonna spread freedom Obama’s Liz's gonna change it Obama’s Liz's gonna lead ‘em
You need to convince yourselves to support Hillary, and you will if you have to, but you don't really want to have to. Byron York makes the case that we should not rule out a Warren run:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2014 18 Comments
On the assumption that Hillary will be running, it's going to be interesting to see how liberals who attacked Hillary in 2008 will say, "that was then, this is now." One particularly nasty attack on Hillary was to accuse her of being a White Power advocate and using Klan talking points.   That line of attack, routinely and falsely used against Republicans, seemed to reflect Bill Clinton's complaint that the "race card" was played against Hillary. It came in response to this video in which Hillary opined on the significance of polling as reported by AP (h/t John Ekdahl) The attack appeared at the liberal website The Daily Banter from a liberal blogger who works for Media Matters but blogs both at Media Matters and independently. Hillary White Power Clinton Daily Bantor Oliver Willis 2008
Hillary White Power Clinton:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2014 58 Comments
Chelsea Clinton has announced she's pregnant. Congratulations. Best wishes for mother and child. It would be perfectly natural for Hillary to show off the grandbaby, particularly if, as expected, she runs for President. I can envision the family, including grandbaby, on stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 as Hillary accepts the nomination -- maybe with Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow playing in the background Hillary more than anyone needs humanizing, in what already is a multi-year rebranding project. And Hillary isn't waiting for the arrival to publicly express her joy: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/statuses/456903198834700288 Will Hillary be treated like Sarah Palin was back in 2008, when Palin appeared with her own child Trig, and was accused of using him as a prop? From the Legal Insurrection archives:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 12, 2014 49 Comments
Yeah, me too. Donald Trump. But I don't think that's what the Ban Bossy campaign is about. The #BanBossy movement pretends to protect little girls from the humiliation of being called "bossy," and thereby will empower a generation of strong, powerful female leaders (so long as you don't call them bossy, because that would crush them). The movement is backed by "Lean In" Sheryl Sandberg and The Girl Scouts, for whom every girl is a potential victim. (Put aside all the objective evidence that girls are outperforming boys in almost every measure.) A slew of major corporations and celebrities have lined up behind the banning of bossy. ) There nothing wrong, and much good, at encouraging young girls to lead. But this campaign has a strong victimization narrative. This teaches young girls that they are victims and need the emotional protections that little boys don't. At best that is a mixed message. And why now? Why have the word police suddenly descended on us to shape our speech? Can't boys and men be bossy too? Has there been some epidemic of bossy such that now is the time to act. A follower on Twitter made the connection to prepping the battlefield for Hillary:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on March 05, 2014 20 Comments
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Tuesday drew parallels between the aggressive actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine and those of Adolf Hitler in the 1930's. She made the comments while speaking at a private event, according to the Press-Telegram of Long Beach, California.
Putin’s desire to protect minority Russians in Ukraine is reminiscent of Hitler’s actions to protect ethnic Germans outside Germany, she [Clinton] said. Putin has been on a campaign to give Russian passports to anyone who has Russian connections, Clinton said. The Russian leader has recently done so in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which, Clinton said, is similar to what happened in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Hitler resettled tens of thousands of ethnic Germans who were living in parts of Europe to Nazi Germany. Clinton made her comments at a private event benefiting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s,” she said. “All the Germans that were ... the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 01, 2014 42 Comments
Alternative title: Is Hillary sick in the head? FWIW, I've notice Hillary lately having a vacant, sickly appearance. Not enough to have done a post about it, but I noticed. Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller writes that others have noticed, too. Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed
If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race. But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.... Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.” ... But the rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when Clinton’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover. But skeptics say there is much more to the story of her health, which has recently been the subject of increased speculation in Washington. Because of these rumors, some on the right have been convincing themselves that Hillary is sick and therefore won’t run — a bombshell that would upend the 2016 race. Roger Stone, the GOP consultant, wrote on Twitter recently that Clinton is “not running for health reasons,” telling followers to “remember you heard it first” from him.

Posted by New Neo on February 23, 2014 22 Comments
The title of this post may seem somewhat of an oxymoron, but let's look at the numbers:
A clear majority of Americans, 59%, still view Hillary Clinton favorably a year after she left her post as secretary of state. Clinton's current rating is noticeably lower than the 64% she averaged while serving in President Barack Obama's cabinet. The last time she had a higher unfavorable than favorable rating in the U.S. was in February 2008, when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Obama. The latest findings come from a Gallup poll conducted Feb. 6-9.
At the time Clinton signed on as Secretary of State under Obama, it was hard to understand. Those of us who thought it was a bad decision (in the political sense) on her part seem to have been wrong. She is a very smart political animal, and apparently she rightly ascertained that it was only her temporary opposition to the Great Obama that had made her look bad, and that if she joined him it would burnish her image. And so it has, no matter what she actually did while in his Cabinet, because what she did was every bit as awful as what Obama did, and she did it as his underling. Somehow, though, that seems to have helped her in the minds of the American public. Her favorability rating is a great deal higher than his right now. Here's her favorability chart over time:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 19, 2014 6 Comments

What's in a name?...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 18, 2014 26 Comments

What's in a name?...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 09, 2014 18 Comments
Alana Goodman at The Washington Free Beacon has published The Hillary Papers (embed at bottom of this post). Here's Alana's summary:
The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her “closest friend” before Blair’s death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky. The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium. Diane Blair’s husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of “Cattlegate,” a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wife’s papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death. The full contents of the archive, which before 2010 was closed to the public, have not previously been reported on and shed new light on Clinton’s three decades in public life. The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was “tough and mean enough.”
Much of the portrayal is of the bitter, brutal, belligerent Hillary we all know. But her early support for single-payer, despite later denials, is directly relevant to the Obamacare debacle that will be an issue in the 2016 election. Again Alana summarizes:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 27, 2014 18 Comments
Much like insurance, Hillary Clinton isn't bought, she's sold. And it's always been a hard sale. She has name recognition, and is the default candidate for a significant percentage of the electorate, but there's always been something missing. It's why Obama could appear out of nowhere to take her down, and it's why Elizabeth Warren could do the same thing if only she would run. That's why there is the Ready for Hillary shadow campaign apparatus -- we must want Hillary. The selling of Hillary by the Ready for Hillary PAC is playing out in the earliest stages of the Iowa caucuses, as Ruby Cramer at Buzzfeed reports, Clinton Supporters Want Iowa To Want Her:
After the meetings, the exhausted team declared the day a success. Attendees had been excited; had pinned “Iowans Ready for Hillary” buttons to their lapels; had smiled wide watching video clips from Clinton speeches; had even, at one point, broke into spontaneous applause and cheering at her mention. “If we build it, she will come,” said one of the meeting’s organizers, Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general and Clinton administration appointee.... Another frustration emerged during meetings. In spending time and resources on a candidate who isn’t even in the race yet, some said, Ready for Hillary stages a “total inversion” of the traditional primary, as state Rep. Jo Oldson put it. Iowa, Oldson said, likes its candidates to beg voters — not the other way around. “This is just a different twist on how Iowans view getting into presidential campaigns,” she said. “It’s Iowa asking her to run, rather than the candidate asking Iowa to elect her.”
All this We Want You To Want Hillary stuff could backfire, as Michael Warren at The Weekly Standard points out, Hillary Supporters in Iowa: She Can't Be Seen As 'Ordained':
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