H4A News Clips 7.20.15

From:aphillips@hillaryclinton.com To: aphillips@hillaryclinton.com BCC: HRCRapid@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-07-20 09:15 Subject: H4A News Clips 7.20.15

*H4A News Clips* *July 20, 2015* *TODAY’S KEY STORIES..................................................................................... **4* Hillary Clinton's fair growth gambit // LA Times // Doyle McManus – July 19, 2015.................. 5 Hillary Clinton Draws Scrappy Determination From a Tough, Combative Father // NYT // Amy Chozick – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................. 6 Hillary Clinton Lambastes Republicans in Arkansas Homecoming // NYT // Amy Chozick – July 19, 2015 11 *HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................................................ **12* Hillary Clinton's political director brings key lessons from her own (losing) campaign // WaPo // Evan Halper – July 19, 2015...................................................................................................................... 12 Clinton to Push Revamp of Capital-Gains Tax Rates // WSJ // Laura Meckler and John D. McKinnon – July 20, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 15 GOP Peddles Hard the 'Hillary Can't Be Trusted' Line // HuffPo // Earl Ofari Hutchinson – July 19, 2015 18 Same-Sex Couple Featured In Hillary Clinton Video Get Married // CBS // Dana Kozlov – July 19, 2015 19 Ghost of Hillary Clinton Haunts Liberal Convention // TIME // Sam Frizell – July 19, 2015...... 20 Jeb and Hillary: Flawed front-runners generating little excitement // Fox News // Howard Kurtz - July 20, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 22 6 Facts About Hillary Clinton & Her Dad That Totally Gave Us #FatherDaughterGoals // Bustle // Tonya Riley – July 19, 2015...................................................................................................................... 24 Clinton insider faced IG probe for informal diplomacy // Washington Examiner // Sarah Westwood – July 19, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 25 *OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE................................................. **26* *DECLARED.................................................................................................. **27* *O’MALLEY............................................................................................... **27* O'Malley sorry for saying 'all lives matter' // CNN // Chris Moody – July 19, 2015.................... 27 Martin O’Malley’s Presidential Strategy: Try, Try, Try Again // Buzzfeed // Ruby Cramer – July 19, 2015 27 *SANDERS................................................................................................ **30* Liberal activists see Bernie Sanders as champion for causes failed by Obama // WaPo // David Weigel - July 20, 2015............................................................................................................................... 30 Bernie Sanders’ newest fan? Jesse Ventura. // WaPo // Hunter Schwarz – July 19, 2015.......... 32 How the NRA helped put Bernie Sanders in Congress // WaPo // David A. Fahrenthold – July 19, 2015 33 Sanders campaign claims highest turnout yet for Netroots Nation speech //Politico // Daniel Strauss – July 19, 2015.................................................................................................................................... 38 Bernie Sanders Continues to Draw the Biggest Crowds of Any 2016 Candidate // Bloomberg // Ali Elkin – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................ 39 Can Bernie Sanders win black voters? // CNN // Nia-Malika Henderson and Chris Moody – July 19, 2015 39 #BlackTwitter Turns On Bernie Sanders // The Daily Beast // Asawin Suebsaeng – July 19, 2015 44 Bernie Sanders draws largest crowds yet in Phoenix // MSNBC // Nisha Chittal – Jully 19, 2015 45 Sanders vaults from fringe to the heart of the fray // Boston Globe // Annie Linskey – July 19, 2015 47 Bernie Sanders voices concerns about police brutality in Dallas campaign stop // Trailblazers Blog // Ryan J. Rusak – July 19, 2015............................................................................................................ 51 ‘Police must be held accountable': Bernie Sanders rips bad cops who attack young black men // RawStory // Tom Boggioni – July 19, 2015................................................................................................ 52 Twitter users debate Bernie Sanders’ civil rights credibility with #BernieSoBlack hashtag // RawStory // David Ferguson – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................... 52 *UNDECLARED............................................................................................ **53* *BIDEN...................................................................................................... **53* Report: Joe Biden may still enter 2016 presidential race // MSNBC // Adam Howard – July 19, 2015 53 *OTHER.................................................................................................... **54* How Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley answer union’s questions about education // WaPo // Valerie Strauss – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................ 54 What the First Democratic Cattle Call Reveals About the State of the Presidential Race // Bloomberg // Arit John – July 19, 2015.............................................................................................................. 91 Democrats lose control of presidential event // CNN // Chris Moody – July 19, 2015................ 94 O'Malley, Sanders heckled by protestors during presidential forum // USA Today // Dan Nowicki – July 19, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 96 Hall Of Fame Wrap Up: Who Stood Out, Who Missed Out // Iowa Starting Line // Pay Rynard and Angela Ufheil – July 19, 2015........................................................................................................... 98 *GOP............................................................................................................... **106* *DECLARED................................................................................................ **106* *BUSH..................................................................................................... **106* Poll: Bush has edge over Rubio among Miami Cuban voters // Politico // Marc Caputo – July 19, 2015 106 How Jeb Tackled the Cocaine Cartels // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff and Alexa Corse – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 108 Jeb Bush Wants to Share // Real Clear Politics // Debra Saunders – July 19, 2015.................. 112 Jeb Bush consultant critiques Republican digital culture // Yahoo News // Jon Ward – July 19, 2015 113 Ralston Reports: Jeb Bush pandering to nativist wing // Reno Gazette-Journal // Jon Ralston – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 115 Leaner, meaner: Jeb Bush starts his climb // Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – July 19, 2015 117 *RUBIO.................................................................................................... **118* Marco Rubio: Trump insulted McCain and 'all POWs' // Politico // Kevin Robillard – July 19, 2015 118 Rubio: Trump's McCain attack a 'disqualifier' // CNN // Eric Bradner – July 19, 2015............. 120 Marco Rubio says Iran deal breaks 'anytime, anywhere' inspection promise by Barack Obama // PolitiFact // Louis Jacobson – July 19, 2015............................................................................................. 121 Rubio: Clinton’s Uber Criticisms Show Someone ‘Trapped In The Past’ // Free Beacon // Andrew Kugle – July 19, 2015.............................................................................................................................. 125 *PAUL...................................................................................................... **125* *CRUZ...................................................................................................... **126* Ted Cruz drops off D.C. bestseller list // WaPo // Ron Charles – July 19, 2015........................ 126 Ted Cruz Looks for His Iowa Moment // Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur – July 19, 2015................. 126 *CHRISTIE.............................................................................................. **128* 'I Wouldn't Let This Guy Buy a Car For Me': Chris Christie Slams Obama on Iran Deal // Vice // Gillian Mohney – July 19, 2015.................................................................................................................... 129 Chris Christie tries to trump Donald on immigration // NJ // Paul Mulshine – July 19, 2015... 130 *PERRY................................................................................................... **132* Rick Perry: Boy Scouts 'better off' without gay leaders // CNN // Eric Bradner – July 19, 2015. 132 Rick Perry Slams GOP Rival: 'We're Seeing the Real Donald Trump Now' // NBC // Dan Cooney – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 133 Perry Still Opposes Gay Scout Leaders, While Walker Backtracks // TIME // Justin Worland – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 134 *GRAHAM............................................................................................... **134* Lindsey Graham Defends John McCain: 'Being Captured Doesn't Mean You're A Loser' // HuffPo // Samantha-Jo Roth – July 19, 2015........................................................................................................ 134 *CARSON................................................................................................. **135* Ben Carson: Walking away from paid speaking commitments would be 'unethical' // Washington Examiner // Ryan Lovelace – July 19, 2015.............................................................................................. 135 *FIORINA................................................................................................ **136* Carly Fiorina on the bubble // Politico // Eli Stokols – July 19, 2015...................................... 136 Reynolds: Carly Fiorina, the other woman // USA Today // Glenn Harlan Reynolds – July 19, 2015 138 *JINDAL.................................................................................................. **140* Bobby Jindal calls for federal religious freedom order, draws big applause lines at Family Leadership Summit // NOLA // Kevin Litten – July 19, 2015............................................................................... 140 *TRUMP................................................................................................... **142* Trump Refuses to Apologize for Comments on McCain’s Service // NYT // Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin – July 19, 2015......................................................................................................... 142 Bombast Trumps Organization for One Republican Candidate // NYT //Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................... 144 Donald Trump didn’t apologize to John McCain. Because, of course not. // WaPo // Chris Cillizza – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................... 147 Trump’s attack on McCain marks a turning point for him — and the GOP // WaPo // Dan Balz – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 148 How to handle a bully like Trump // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – July 19, 2015......................... 151 Donald Trump Not Sorry for Comments, Not Dropping Out // WSJ // Louise Radnofsky and Sarah Portlock – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................................... 153 Trump Refuses to Back Down on McCain Criticism // WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – July 19, 2015.. 154 What Donald Trump Has Said — About McCain, Obama, Immigrants, His Hair // WSJ – July 19, 2015 156 Trump and His Apologists // WSJ – July 19, 2015................................................................. 157 Donald Trump: No apology to McCain, vows to stay the course // Politico // Kevin Robillard – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 159 Donald Trump evades specifics on his draft deferment // Politico // David Rogers – July 19, 2015 160 Donald Trump Digs in as More Pile On // Bloomberg // Ari Elkin – July 19, 2015................... 162 Trump Awakens Kerry’s Vietnam Anger With Slam On McCain // The Daily Beast // Mike Barnicle – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................... 164 Trump offers no apologizes for McCain war record attack // MSNBC // Adam Howard – July 19, 2015 165 Donald Trump Says He Does Not Owe John McCain Apology // ABC // Benjamin Bell and Emily Shapiro – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................................... 167 John Kerry, who knows something about having his war record attacked, savages Donald Trump // Business Insider // Brett Logiurato – July 19, 2015............................................................................. 168 Trump: I don't need to be lectured // USA Today // Donald Trump – July 19, 2015................ 169 Donald Trump Says He Doesn’t Owe John McCain An Apology // TIME // Justin Worland – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 171 John McCain slam seen as new low for Donald Trump // Boston Herald // Lindsay Kalter – July 19, 2015 171 Has America gone nuts? Could Republican frontrunner Donald Trump really become president? // The Guardian // Tom McCarthy – July 19, 2015........................................................................... 172 Beat Trump, don't ban him from the debates // Washington Examiner // W. James Antle III – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 176 *WALKER................................................................................................ **177* Scott Walker on whether being gay is a choice: ‘I don’t know the answer to that question’ // WaPo // Jenna Johnson – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................... 177 Scott Walker tells undocumented worker that immigrants must follow the law // WaPo // Jenna Johnson – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................................... 178 Scott Walker Goes All In on Iowa // WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – July 19, 2015............................ 181 Scott Walker on the Boy Scouts' Ban on Gay Leaders // AP – July 19, 2015............................. 182 Scott Walker in Iowa: Relentlessly on message // Politico // Katie Glueck – July 19, 2015....... 183 Scott Walker: 'I don't know' if being gay a choice // CNN // Dana Bash – July 19, 2015........... 184 Walker talks everything but Trump // Boston Herald // Chris Villani – July 19, 2015............. 186 Republican Scott Walker brushes up on U.S. foreign policy // Reuters // Steve Holland – July 19, 2015 187 Scott Walker calls for more militaristic America: US needs to ‘put steel in the face of our enemies’ // Reuters – July 19, 2015....................................................................................................................... 190 Scott Walker Steers Clear Of Nuance On Foreign Policy // Reuters // Steve Holland – July 19, 2015 192 Walker says he supported path to citizenship, but not amnesty // Washington Examiner // Philip Klein – July 19, 2015.............................................................................................................................. 194 *UNDECLARED........................................................................................... **195* *KASICH.................................................................................................. **195* John Kasich Group's Video All But Declares Him a 2016 Presidential Candidate // Bloomberg // Steven Yaccino – July 19, 2015........................................................................................................ 195 How John Kasich could win in 2016 // Cincinnati Enquirer // Chrissie Thompson – July 19, 2015 196 Kasich prepared for long run in presidential bid // Columbus Dispatch // Darrel Rowland and Jessica Wehrman – July 19, 2015.................................................................................................... 200 *OTHER.................................................................................................. **203* Walker, Kasich and the GOP’s Midwest bracket // WaPo // E. J. Dionne Jr. – July 19, 2015.... 204 GOP field chases Iowa evangelicals // Politico // Ben Schreckinger – July 19, 2015................ 205 GOP Candidates' Rosy 4 Percent Growth Goal // RealClearPolitics // Rebecca Berg - July 20, 2015 208 *OTHER 2016 NEWS........................................................................................ **211* Some surprising winners and losers in the 2016 fundraising race // WaPo // Chris Cillizza – July 19, 2015 211 The Iowa Crisis the Candidates Aren’t Talking About // Politico // Clay Masters – July 19, 2015 213 'Too big to fail' a flashpoint in 2016 race // The Hill // Kevin Cirilli – July 19, 2015.................. 216 The Snapchat Elections Begin With Bernie, Hillary and Jeb // Recode // Mark Bergen – July 19, 2015 217 *OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS.................................................................... **217* What US leaders have never understood about Iran // NY Post // Amir Taheri –July 19, 2015 218 Deal with the devil // The News-Gazette – July 19, 2015....................................................... 221 *TOP NEWS..................................................................................................... **223* *DOMESTIC................................................................................................ **223* For G.O.P., Pope Francis’s Visit to Congress Comes With Tensions // NYT // Jennifer Steinhauer – July 19, 2015................................................................................................................................... 223 Inflation’s Steady Tick Poses Headaches in Congress // WSJ // Josh Zumbrun – July 19, 2015 226 Same-Sex Couple Featured In Hillary Clinton Video Get Married // CBS Chicago // Dana Kozlov – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 228 *INTERNATIONAL..................................................................................... **229* U.N. Vote on Iran Nuclear Deal Irks Congress // NYT // Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger – July 19, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 229 War Crimes and Rwandan Realities // NYT // Stephen W. Smith – July 19, 2015.................... 231 U.S. Seeks to Allay Concerns of Allies on Iran Nuclear Deal // WSJ // Carol E. Lee and Gordon Lubold – July 19, 2015.............................................................................................................................. 233 *TODAY’S KEY STORIES* *Hillary Clinton's fair growth gambit <http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0719-mcmanus-hillary-clinton-economics-20150719-column.html> // LA Times // Doyle McManus – July 19, 2015* For most of a generation, Democrats have divided into two broad camps on economic policy. There are "growth Democrats," who argue that a rising tide will lift all boats; that was the reigning view during the Bill Clinton administration under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers. And there are "fairness Democrats," who argue that the central problem is inequality. That's the view of the party's progressive wing, led today by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As she began spelling out her views for the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton faced a choice: Which Democrat was she going to be? Her answer: She wants to be both. "I believe we have to build a growth and fairness economy," she said last week. "You can't have one without the other." Politically, that put Clinton exactly where she wants to be: to the left of her husband's long-ago administration, which progressives think was too solicitous toward Wall Street, but to the right of Sanders, who's running as the scourge of the billionaire class. So her economic policy speech included a dose of the pro-worker Hillary, calling for stronger union bargaining power and demanding equal pay for equal work, but also the pro-business Hillary, extolling entrepreneurs and promising to be "the small-business president." There was recycled Obama administration policy too: a higher minimum wage, an infrastructure bank, investment in education and renewable energy. In economic policy a Hillary Clinton presidency would look more like a third Obama term than a third Bill Clinton term. But she offered some intriguing new elements as well — policies that could not only help her bridge the gaps between her party's wings but also make her pitch more than just a warmed-over version of the last eight years. She promised proposals to promote long-term investment by businesses instead of a chase for quarterly results — a problem she called "short-termism." (It may be the first time any presidential candidate has ever used that word.) "Too many pressures in our economy push us toward short-termism," Clinton said. "Everything is focused on the next earnings report or the short-term share price, and the result is too little attention to the sources of long-term growth: research and development, physical capital and talent." She promised proposals for "making sure stock buybacks aren't used only for an immediate boost in share prices," a practice economists fear is soaking up funds that might go to more productive investments. And she said she wants to make sure stock markets "work for everyday investors, not just high-frequency traders." Clinton hasn't spelled out any details yet. But it sounded as though she may propose changing Securities and Exchange Commission rules to make it harder for companies to buy back their own stock, an idea Warren and other progressives have championed. Aides said Clinton also plans to propose changes in the tax treatment of capital gains — income from investments — to reward long-term investors. Laurence Fink, chairman of the investment firm BlackRock, has proposed lengthening the holding period for long-term capital gains (which benefit from a low tax rate) from one year to three years, and perhaps making all gains tax-free after 10 years. "U.S. tax policy, as it stands, incentivizes short-term behavior," Fink wrote. "Tax reform that promotes long-term investment will benefit both the companies who rely on capital markets and the hundreds of millions of people saving for retirement." Finally, Clinton called for a broader shift in the way American businesses behave. "We need to get businesses back looking after their employees and their customers and their communities and our country, not just their executives and their shareholders," she said in New Hampshire on Thursday. In effect, she was arguing for abandoning a principle many U.S. firms have followed since the 1970s: the idea that the sole duty of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. "There's increasing debate in the business community over a fundamental question: What's the purpose of a corporation?" Judith Samuelson, director of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, told me. "We've been in thrall to a very simplistic idea — that the purpose is to maximize shareholder value. But that's not the only purpose, and it doesn't need to be." Some of these ideas, intriguingly, appeal not only to Democratic business leaders but to some Republicans. too. Conservative writer James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warned: "Arguing against short-termism should be a natural fit for Republicans…. Hillary Clinton just stole a potentially powerful theme right from under them." The details will be important, of course. But Clinton has managed not only to find a sensible starting point in the middle of the Democratic Party; she's introduced some useful new ideas to the campaign and launched a debate that will force rivals in both parties to respond. *Hillary Clinton Draws Scrappy Determination From a Tough, Combative Father <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/us/politics/hillary-clinton-draws-scrappy-determination-from-a-tough-combative-father.html?_r=0> // NYT // Amy Chozick – July 19, 2015* As a little girl, if Hillary Rodham forgot to screw the cap back on the toothpaste, her father would toss the tube out the bathroom window. She’d scurry around in the snow-covered evergreen bushes outside their suburban Chicago home to find it and return inside to brush her teeth, reminded, once again, of one of Hugh E. Rodham’s many rules. When she lagged behind in Miss Metzger’s fourth-grade math class, Mr. Rodham would wake his daughter at dawn to grill her on multiplication tables. When she brought home an A, he would sneer: “You must go to a pretty easy school.” Mrs. Clinton has made the struggles of her mother, Dorothy Rodham, a central part of her 2016 campaign’s message, and has repeatedly described Mrs. Rodham’s life story to crowds around the country. But her father, whom Mrs. Clinton rarely talks about publicly, exerted an equally powerful, if sometimes bruising, influence on the woman who wants to become the first female president. The brusque son of an English immigrant and a coal miner’s daughter in Scranton, Pa., Mr. Rodham, for most of his life, harbored prejudices against blacks, Catholics and anyone else not like him. He hurled biting sarcasm at his wife and only daughter and spanked, at times excessively, his three children to keep them in line, according to interviews with friends and a review of documents, Mrs. Clinton’s writings and former President Bill Clinton’s memoir. “By all accounts he was kind of a tough customer,” said Lissa Muscatine, a longtime friend and adviser to Mrs. Clinton. “Hard working, believed in no free rides, believed you had to earn what you’re going to get, believed his kids could always do better.” Presidential candidates often turn to hard-knocks family stories to help them connect to voters, but for years, Mrs. Clinton refrained from sharing a detailed portrait of her childhood. In her 2016 campaign, she has shown an increased willingness to talk about her mother, a warm and devoted parent who had been abandoned by her own parents and who worked as a housekeeper as a teenager before she met and married Mr. Rodham. But Mrs. Clinton refers in only oblique ways to her father. At a house party in Iowa this month, a supporter gave Mrs. Clinton garlic pills to help her fend off illness on the campaign trail. The unexpected gift brought about an olfactory, and impromptu, memory. “My late father was a huge believer in garlic,” and not the odorless kind, Mrs. Clinton said. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw him eating a garlic and peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Even her Father’s Day message this year, posted on Twitter, was, essentially, an ode to her mother. “I wish she could have seen the America we are going to build together,” she wrote of Mrs. Rodham, who died in 2011. “An America,” Mrs. Clinton continued, “where a father can tell his daughter: Yes, you can be anything you want to be. Even President of the United States.” It is unclear what Mr. Rodham, an ardent conservative, would have thought about his only daughter’s trying (again) to capture the Democratic nomination. He died of a stroke at age 82 in 1993, not long after he watched his daughter hold the Bible as his son-in-law was sworn into office, but long before she began her own political career. When Mr. Clinton eulogized Mr. Rodham, he described him as “tough and gruff” and said he “thought Democrats were one step short of Communism — but that I might be O.K.” If Mrs. Rodham, a homemaker who never attended college but who raised her daughter to be confident and caring, is forming the emotional core of Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign, invoked as the inspiration behind her decades of public service, then Mrs. Clinton’s father quietly represents the candidate’s combative, determined and scrappy side. The inspiration, friends said, that toughened his daughter up to not just withstand but embrace yet another political battle. “He was such a force in the family, and there’s a lot of him in Hillary,” said Lisa Caputo, a friend and former White House press aide who knew Mr. Rodham. “The discipline, the tenacity, the work ethic, a lot of that’s from him.” When Mrs. Clinton does invoke her father on the campaign trail, she talks about him as a small-business owner who “just believed that you had to work hard to make your way and do whatever you had to do to be successful and provided a good living for our family.” (Mr. Rodham shut his drapery business in 1965.) Or, Mrs. Clinton reminds people that her father was a Republican, an aside to show she can work with the other side. She did highlight her father’s geographic roots in her 2008 campaign, when she tried to win white working-class voters in the Democratic primaries against Barack Obama. Mr. Rodham was born to strict Methodists in working-class eastern Pennsylvania. His father, Hugh Simpson Rodham, toiled in a Scranton lace mill, and his mother, Hannah Jones Rodham, came from a long line of coal miners. When she was a girl, Hillary and her two brothers spent summers at a cabin in the Pocono Mountains that had no indoor bath. Mrs. Clinton tries to visit her father’s grave, in the Rodham plot at the Washburn Street Cemetery in Scranton, when she passes through. She will return to Scranton on July 29 to raise money, her first trip back since she began her 2016 campaign. “My grandfather, like so many of his generation, came to this country as a young child, as an immigrant, went to work at age 11 in the lace mills in Scranton,” she says. “So when my dad was born in Scranton, he was born with that American dream.” But unlike her mother’s struggles, the darker parts of her father’s biography rarely come up when Mrs. Clinton speaks. Depression ran in the family. Mrs. Clinton’s father found his brother Russell hanging but alive in the attic of his parents’ home and had to cut him down. Russell came to live with the Rodhams in their one-bedroom Lincoln Park apartment in Chicago. (In 1950, when Hillary was a toddler, the family moved to a two-story brick house in the affluent suburb of Park Ridge, Ill. Russell rented an apartment nearby, but he died in 1962 when he left a cigarette burning, setting his home afire.) Mr. Rodham, who was 230 pounds and 6-foot-2, with thick black hair and furrowed eyebrows, had played football at Pennsylvania State University and worked as a fitness instructor in the Navy during World War II. He would hurl criticism at his wife around the kitchen table at 235 Wisner Street. When she encouraged Hillary to learn for learning’s sake, Mr. Rodham, who drove a Cadillac, would quip: “Learn for earning’s sake.” If his children asked for an allowance for their many household chores, he would reply bluntly: “I feed you, don’t I?” The family was isolated from its neighbors because of Mr. Rodham’s sour, demeaning nature and his misanthropic tendencies, said Carl Bernstein, who wrote a 2007 biography of Hillary Clinton, “A Woman in Charge.” “It was anything but ‘Father Knows Best,’” Mr. Bernstein said in an interview. Mrs. Rodham was on blood thinners and unable to travel to see her daughter deliver the 1969 commencement speech at Wellesley. Hillary was devastated that her mother could not make it. Mr. Rodham attended instead. Her relationship with her father had deteriorated as she drifted away from the party of Barry Goldwater and got swept up in the liberalism of the late 1960s. “In typical Hugh Rodham fashion, he flew to Boston late the night before, stayed out by the airport, took the MTA to campus, attended graduation” and, after lunch with some of Hillary’s classmates, went right back to Chicago, Mrs. Clinton wrote in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.” But their relationship was not without warmth. Mrs. Clinton and her father shared the same distinct laugh, a “big, rolling guffaw that can turn heads in a restaurant and send cats running from the room,” as she described it in “Living History.” They played heated games of pinochle (though Mr. Rodham was known to flip the table if he lost). Mr. Rodham taught his only daughter that she could play sports and do anything the boys did. When she was racked with self-doubt at Wellesley and Yale, her father wrote her tough but tender letters telling her to buck up. “Even when he erupted at me, he admired my independence and accomplishments,” she later wrote. At his daughter’s wedding in 1975, Mr. Rodham was hesitant to give the bride away to Mr. Clinton, a penniless Southern Baptist Democrat. “You can step back now, Mr. Rodham,” the minister finally said. In 1987, after Mr. Rodham had quadruple-bypass surgery, he and Dorothy moved to Little Rock, Ark., to be closer to their daughter and granddaughter, Chelsea. Mrs. Clinton arranged for them to live in a condominium in the city’s leafy Hillcrest district. Chelsea Clinton called her grandfather Pop Pop. The Rodhams attended her softball games, cheering her on and taking her and her friends out for frozen yogurt afterward. “Her father at that point was beginning to decline, so I think it was to be close to family, and obviously Hillary was close to her family, especially to her mom,” said Skip Rutherford, a longtime friend in Little Rock. After President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, when friends and family toasted the Clintons’ arrival in Washington at a party, Mr. Rodham was spotted stewing in a corner and nursing a drink. “My daughter is a real special girl,” he told a friend from Scranton, Manny Gelb, who relayed the story to The Associated Press. When her father had a stroke in 1993, Mrs. Clinton, who was having difficulty adjusting to life in the White House, was deeply shaken. After his life-support machines had been removed and Mr. Rodham lay in a coma at St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock, a scrum of news cameras and reporters waiting outside for any updates, Mrs. Clinton traveled to Austin, Tex., to deliver a speech she felt obligated to give. It became one of the more unusual addresses ever delivered by a first lady. Ms. Caputo, who accompanied Mrs. Clinton on the trip, described the stream-of-consciousness speech — about the meaning of life, death and the need to remake civil society, delivered without a script — as “cathartic.” “When does life start? When does life end? Who makes those decisions? How do we dare to impinge upon these areas of such delicate, difficult questions?” Mrs. Clinton asked the crowd. She never mentioned her father, but quoted Lee Atwater, the Republican strategist who wrote that America was suffering from a “spiritual vacuum,” caught up in its “ruthless ambitions and moral decay,” before he died of cancer at age 40 in 1991. “You can acquire all you want and still feel empty,” Mrs. Clinton said. “What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family?” Hugh Rodham died the next day. *Hillary Clinton Lambastes Republicans in Arkansas Homecoming <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/19/hillary-clinton-lambastes-republicans-in-arkansas-homecoming/?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article> // NYT // Amy Chozick – July 19, 2015* LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A Democrat is not likely to win this state in the 2016 presidential election, not even one with the last name Clinton. But on Saturday, Hillary Rodham Clinton returned to Arkansas where she and her husband began their political ascent, delivering a fiery critique of Republican policies and a pep talk of sorts for Democrats who suffered dramatic losses in the midterm elections. Mrs. Clinton lambasted Republicans as “the party of the past” and tried to portray the extreme comments of one candidate, the businessman and reality TV star, Donald Trump, as representative of the entire party. “There’s nothing funny about the hate he is spewing at immigrants and their families,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Trump who addressed Arkansas Republicans in Hot Springs, Ark. on Friday. But, she added, of the other Republican candidates, “The sad truth is if you look at many of their policies, it can be hard to tell the difference.” Mrs. Clinton denounced comments made by Mr. Trump (who she referred to as the “Republican frontrunner”) about Senator John McCain’s war record and she said it was “shameful” how long it has taken other Republican candidates “to start standing up to him.” (The night before, Mr. Trump, speaking at an Arkansas Republican Party convention said the Clintons had “deserted” the state.) The visit to Arkansas whose six electoral votes will not likely up for grabs in 2016 was brief; Mrs. Clinton flew in from Iowa in the early afternoon and departed back to New York that night. But it was nevertheless a homecoming of sorts. It was Mrs. Clinton first visit back to the place where Bill Clinton served as governor and she as first lady, since she made her 2016 campaign official. Earlier in the afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had stopped by the red brick home where she and Mr. Clinton lived and the apartment the Clintons stay at on the top floor of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center here. Before the Democratic Party Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner, which drew around 2,500 people paying as much as $200 a plate for a buffet dinner, Mrs. Clinton greeted donors and old friends at a backstage reception. Her visit comes in the midst of an existential crisis for Arkansas Democrats. The place that bred such centrist “yellow dog Democrats” as Mr. Clinton, and former governors Dale Bumpers, David Pryor and Mark Beebe, turned deep red in the midterm elections. The audience was sprinkled with prominent Democrats who lost their midterm races, including former Rep. Mike Ross who got his start as Mr. Clinton’s driver and who lost his race for governor to Republican Asa Hutchinson. For many Arkansans, no matter how many times Mrs. Clinton visits, the prospects of a Democrat winning the state in 2016 seemed slim, but having her name on the ticket could help lift down-ballot Democrats in local races. “There’s no doubt she helps to energize the Arkansas Democratic base,” said Will Bond, a former chairman of the state’s Democratic Party who is running for state senate. Mr. Beebe, the popular Democratic governor who left office last year due to term limits, called the 2014 midterm elections “a huge sea change” and said Mrs. Clinton’s speech “revitalizes a lot of folks.” Despite the turn away from Democratic candidates in Arkansas, voters here have embraced some of the party’s policies including a minimum wage increase and a private-option health insurance program. “I am well aware that here in Arkansas last year was a hard one for Democrats,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But don’t forget, voters did come out and pass an increase in the minimum wage, Arkansas voters know pay checks need to grow.” She said she hoped the 2016 election could also help lift Democratic candidates “on school boards and county offices and, yes, the state legislator and hold onto the White House.” *HRC** NATIONAL COVERAGE* *Hillary Clinton's political director brings key lessons from her own (losing) campaign <http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-clinton-political-director-20150719-story.html#page=1> // WaPo // Evan Halper – July 19, 2015* The most prized credential of Hillary Rodham Clinton's political director may not be her connections on Capitol Hill, her experience courting the crucial Latino vote or the diversity she brings as the child of a Mexican immigrant, but her run for office — which she lost. Last year, Amanda Renteria returned home to California's Central Valley to run for Congress and got crushed. The race in the heavily Latino district exposed blind spots in Democratic strategy with Latino voters, who largely stayed home. The message for Clinton in her 2016 presidential run was clear: The gains Democrats had been making among Latinos could stall anytime. Now, as Clinton's political director, Renteria is putting the campaign's vast resources to work avenging the 2014 midterms, when Democrats were unable to mobilize the coalition of minority voters that had helped elect President Obama twice. "It is really time for Latinos to understand who is with them and who is not," Renteria said during a break from the National Council of La Raza conference in Kansas City, where she was working the hallways before Clinton addressed a packed ballroom. "One of the real opportunities in a presidential election is to truly have a message that can break through, even in the little towns where I grew up." Clinton's massive Latino outreach machine is unprecedented for this stage in a primary. Most Latinos don't even know the name of Clinton's closest challenger for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, according a new Univision poll. Yet about 500 days before the general election, the outreach effort overseen by Renteria is running on all cylinders. Some of it is clearly visible, with the candidate's aggressive positioning on immigration, her much-talked-about Nevada round table with "Dreamers" — immigrants brought to the country illegally as children — and an economic agenda targeted at empowering minorities. But in an election in which the Latino vote is likely to be decisive, it's the on-the-ground work that could pay the biggest dividends. "You can't take it for granted," Clarissa Martinez de Castro, a deputy vice president at La Raza, warned attendees of a session at the conference. "Some people are like, 'Hey, I'm good, so they will vote for me even if I don't do anything.' No. You've got to get out there." Renteria, who grew up in the hardscrabble town of Woodlake, near Visalia, went on to become the first chief of staff of Latino descent for a U.S. senator, when she worked for Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow. Under Renteria's direction, Clinton organizers are showing up in Latino and other minority communities in a variety of ways. Often it's not even to talk much politics. Renteria, 40, recalls a recent networking event at a bar in Philadelphia where the millennials who showed up wanted to discuss career strategies, how to go about paying off student loans and what her family thinks of what she is doing with her life. So they did. "It is not just about come vote for me, but … how can I help?" said Renteria, who disarms with a rare mix of a candidate's charm and an operative's urgency. "We have the resources in this election to talk about it." Renteria talks without the pretension common in the inner circle of presidential campaigns. She can carry on a conversation with the apolitical. Many in Washington can't. Clinton's campaign is burning through an eye-popping $230,000 per day in this stage of the campaign, and much of it is going toward making contact with voters more aggressively than is the norm so early on, whether it be through hiring field organizers with community ties, investing in the newest microtargeting technology or holding events like the one in Philadelphia. The Clinton team is scouting for consultants in every state with a large Latino presence to develop localized strategies for boosting turnout. Buzz-stirring events like the Dreamers gathering Clinton held in Nevada in early May are conceived with input from local activists. They are all the campaigning tasks Renteria was unable to do when she ran for Congress. "With the hand she was dealt, she did the best she could," said Mark Salavaggio, a Central Valley political analyst. "It did shock people that she lost by so much." Her opponent, Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), relentlessly pounded Renteria, then a staffer on Capitol Hill, as a carpetbagging Washingtonian. "She is not one of us," several of his mailers shouted. Valadao, who was concluding his first term in Congress, benefited from a Latino-sounding last name, despite his Portuguese ancestry, which made his accusations that Renteria was the interloper in a district heavy with migrant farmworkers sting all the more to her. She recalls how her family would sometimes not get served at Denny's until after the white customers, how she sat in a chair for hours at a Border Patrol station as agents grilled her parents, how she proudly danced as a child in the traveling Ballet Folklorico. "It means a lot to us in the Latino community to have someone like Amanda at the table making decisions … and making sure the community is at the table," Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) said. Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, also a Democrat, said Clinton's appointments of Renteria to one the campaign's most senior jobs and of Lorella Praeli, a Dreamer, to be the director of Latino outreach, resonated deeply among Latino leaders. "Those are the decisions that make you feel like [Clinton] is one of us," he said. GOP strategists say Renteria's race in California was not a fluke, but a reflection of a wall Democrats are about to hit nationally with Latino voters. "The idea that if you just bring out more Latinos to the polls you will win is a big mistake, and one I hope Democrats continue to make," said Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant in California. "Amanda Renteria was running in an area where Latinos tend to be very conservative. They are similar to what the Latino voters will look like in Colorado, New Mexico, rural Virginia and a lot of battleground states." Republicans are hopeful that 2016 will be the year they achieve what they last did in 2000, when George W. Bush, a Texan with a knack for Spanglish and a firm grasp of border culture, was able to slow the surge of Latino support toward Democrats. He also attracted strong Latino support in his 2004 reelection. This year, Bush's brother Jeb, a former Florida governor, speaks even better Spanish and his wife is a native of Mexico. Another Floridian seeking the GOP nomination, Sen. Marco Rubio, is the child of Cuban immigrants. Even so, the Univision poll and others show neither of those contenders is gaining the kind of traction among Latinos that George W. Bush did when he ran against Al Gore, whose patrician demeanor did not play well. Hard as Republicans try to cast Clinton in the same mold, it is proving a tougher sell. When Clinton last ran for president, in 2008, two Latinos voted for her for every one who voted for Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. "Everyone has the abuela who ran the show when it came to dinner, giving you a hard time about school, or how you treated your parents," Renteria said, using the Spanish word for grandmother. "That strong woman you look up to in the Latino community.... There is a lot in the community we see in her." *Clinton to Push Revamp of Capital-Gains Tax Rates <http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-to-push-revamp-of-capital-gains-tax-rates-1437365173> // WSJ // Laura Meckler and John D. McKinnon – July 20, 2015* WASHINGTON—Hillary Clinton will propose a revamp of capital-gains taxes that would hit some short-term investors with higher rates, part of a package of measures designed to prod companies to put more emphasis on long-term growth, a campaign official said. The proposal, to be laid out in a speech later this week, is one of a number of ideas designed to tackle what Mrs. Clinton, some economists and some on Wall Street consider the overly short-term focus of corporate strategy. Other topics will include the risks and benefits of shareholder activism and the role of executive compensation. At the center is Mrs. Clinton’s proposal to change capital-gains tax rates, the details of which are being finalized. The Democratic presidential candidate’s plan would create a sliding scale with at least three new rates that change depending on how long an investment is held, the official said. Investments held for less than a year would continue to be taxed at regular income-tax rates, which can top out at 39.6% or more for the highest earners. For those held just a little longer—likely two or three years—the current capital-gains tax rate of 23.8% for top earners would rise. The Clinton rate, which hasn’t been finalized, would be higher than the 28% President Barack Obama proposed earlier this year for the highest earners. The Clinton campaign hasn’t ruled out taxing such investments at the regular income-tax rate. The plan would include additional rates tied to the length that an investment is held, with the lowest rates for investments held the longest. Under current law, the capital-gains rate for investments held for at least a year is 15% for middle-income investors, and people with the lowest incomes pay no tax on capital gains. The former senator and secretary of state is diving into an area of significant debate about which policy steps could or should be taken to discourage what Mrs. Clinton calls “quarterly capitalism,” meaning overly focused on the next earnings report. Some economists and many Republicans argue there is little the government can do to change corporate behavior. GOP presidential contenders by and large want to go in the opposite direction by eliminating taxes on investment income or at least reducing them. Activist investors, who generally take positions in stocks and then push for changes they believe would boost share prices, have in the past few years gained more influence and won more battles with larger companies. These investors, such as Nelson Peltz at Trian Fund Management LP and William Ackman at Pershing Square Capital Management LP, say they hold weak corporate managers accountable and help lift share prices for all holders. Detractors, including Laurence Fink, chief executive at money manager BlackRock Inc., and Martin Lipton, a leading corporate-defense lawyer, say the typical activist wish list, including share buybacks, dividends and corporate breakups, diverts cash from long-term investments in plants or people to appease investors who want to sell out quickly. Mrs. Clinton’s speech represents part of her effort to distinguish herself on economic policy from GOP candidates, who focus largely on growth, and her Democratic primary challengers who focus on income inequality and are pushing ideas that are popular with the liberal base, such as breaking up large banks. Wall Street regulation and inequality are topics Mrs. Clinton plans to address separately in coming weeks. Foreshadowing this week’s announcement, Mrs. Clinton last week promised to propose “reforms to help CEOs and shareholders alike to focus on the next decade rather than just the next day.” This week, Mrs. Clinton will expand on that theme, arguing that companies that invest in their workers and focus on long-term growth are better positioned to succeed, the campaign official said. Mrs. Clinton also plans to discuss the pros and cons of shareholder activism and call for steps to address “hit-and-run” activists she argues contribute to short-term planning. Still, the campaign official said, she believes that some activism is good in that in holds managers accountable. Mrs. Clinton will also discuss the dramatic increase in companies’ repurchasing their shares, as well as ways to promote long-term considerations in setting executive compensations. The campaign didn’t estimate how much in additional taxes the proposal would raise. The official said the primary goal is to change behavior, not increase revenue. U.S. companies in the S&P 500 index spent a median 36% of operating cash flow in 2013 on their buybacks and dividends, moves designed to deliver gains to current shareholders, compared with 18% in 2003. Over that same period, those companies cut spending on plants and equipment to 29% of operating cash flow, from 33% in 2003, according to S&P Capital IQ. When the companies have an activist shareholder, the changes are even sharper, the data show. Those who back the kinds of changes Mrs. Clinton will propose say current tax rules for investment income are a little-noticed part of the problem. Low tax rates on capital gains and dividends, along with a relatively short one-year holding period to qualify for capital-gains treatment, encourage companies to return more profits to shareholders as opposed to investing in long-term growth. In a recent paper, Clinton adviser Neera Tanden wrote that activist investors are hurting some companies’ capital investments. Company spending on buybacks and dividends surges in the five years after shareholders start putting pressure on a company, and capital investments fall, she wrote in a paper for the Center for American Progress, where she is president, along with Blair Effron of Centerview Partners. Ms. Tanden suggested a sliding scale for capital-gains tax rates, where the longer an investor holds the asset, the lower the rate. Mr. Fink of BlackRock has suggested a similar scale, with a three-year holding period for basic capital-gains treatment, among other changes. Mrs. Clinton appears to be adopting a version of their idea. It is a matter of debate whether such changes would make much difference to how companies operate. In practice, many corporate shares are held by tax-exempt entities such as pension funds that are largely indifferent to tax changes. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist, noted in an interview the tax code already requires investments to be held for a year and is skeptical increasing the time period would make much difference. Managers are more swayed by changes to taxes and regulations relating to their core business, not the tax rate paid by investors. “My gut instinct is this is going to sound good but it’s not going to change very much. It’s just not that powerful,” he said. U.S. tax law has had multiple holding periods and rates for capital gains in the past. President Bill Clinton signed a law in 1997 that would have created a special low rate for assets held at least five years. That system was eliminated as part of the tax breaks adopted under his successor, President George W. Bush. Many Republicans running for president want to reduce or eliminate taxes held on investments. Among the arguments: They are a form of double taxation, where the income is taxed first at the company level and then again when it is returned to shareholders. *GOP Peddles Hard the 'Hillary Can't Be Trusted' Line <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/gop-peddles-hard-the-hillary-cant-be-trusted-line_b_7824898.html> // HuffPo // Earl Ofari Hutchinson – July 19, 2015* Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is the runaway pick among voters when asked who among the presidential candidates is the most credible, honest and trustworthy, and even the most compassionate. Her rank on the voter trustworthy meter is far higher than that of Barack Obama and easily tops that of all other GOP presidential contenders. The problem with this is the AP-Ipsos poll that gave Hillary high marks on trustworthiness was taken in March, 2007. The two big questions are: What happened in the eight years since that that poll was taken and today to change voter's attitudes on the trust issue toward Clinton? The other even bigger one is: Does this pose a real problem for Clinton's campaign? The trust issue and Hillary has been the sole fixation of the pollsters and they seem to crank out a new poll monthly hitting that theme. If one believes the barrage of polls, one comes away with the notion that voters, especially Democrats, simply don't trust Hillary. Playing up Clinton's supposed free fall in integrity has been the one constant in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign. The Republican National Committee early on put Hillary dead in its hit sights to do everything possible to render her candidacy stillborn even before it officially became a candidacy. It not so subtly recycled the old trumped up scandals of the past from Whitewater to the Lewinsky scandal. It then cranked out a sneering "poor Hillary" video that touted Hillary's quip that she and Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House. It then intimated that she shook down poor cash strapped universities for her alleged outrageous speaking fees. There was little doubt that the first chance the GOP got it would seize on a real or manufactured Obama foreign policy flub and make Clinton their hard target. The Benghazi debacle seemed to be just the right flub. In August 2013, the Republican National Committee rammed the attack home with a half-minute clip of her Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony earlier that year on the Benghazi attack. The aim as always was to embarrass and discredit her not because of her alleged missteps as Secretary of State, but as a 2016 presidential candidate. Republicans got what they wanted when their phony accusations against her of cover-up and incompetence got tons of media chatter and focus and raised the first shadow of public doubt. The GOP then tirelessly searched for something else that could ramp up more public doubt about Clinton's honesty. It didn't take long to find. This time it got two for the price of one. Congressional Republicans jubilantly waved a fresh batch of Clinton emails to the media, claiming that it proved that she deliberately mislead Congressional investigators, and the public, on what she knew and how she handled or allegedly mishandled the Benghazi debacle. This ties in with the GOP's and the media's incessant flailing of Clinton for supposedly hiding, deleting or misusing her private emails for some sinister and nefarious reason during her stint as Secretary of State. There will be more to come on this rest assured. Meanwhile, the GOP mockingly ridicules Clinton's attempt to reimage her campaign and herself as a hands, on in the trenches with the people, caring, feeling candidate as just more of the Clinton con, and an ineffectual one to boot. The supposed proof of that is to finger point her plunging favorability numbers in the polls. Of course, what's conveniently omitted from the Hillary smear is that every one of her GOP rivals is doing an even lousier job trying to convince voters that they are any more "trustworthy" than Clinton. In the case of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, and especially Jeb Bush, their integrity meter score with the public fall somewhere between Watergate Richard Nixon and that of a used car salesman. There's more. A USA Poll and an ABC-Washington Post poll found that not only does Clinton have solid numbers in terms of approval with voters, but bags big time general favorability numbers from Democrats. This is even more impressive given the spirited, and populist issues run that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is making at Hillary. It's certainly true that voters do want a president that they can trust to say and do the right thing both on the issues and in their dealing with the public. But they also want a president who is experienced, well-versed, thoughtful, and firm on dealing with the inevitable crises that will confront the country, here and abroad. There's absolutely no hint in the polls or anywhere else that the general public has shut down on Clinton in this vital area of public policy. But this won't stop the GOP and those in the media obsessed with depicting Hillary as two-faced from peddling that line. *Same-Sex Couple Featured In Hillary Clinton Video Get Married <http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/07/19/same-sex-couple-featured-in-hillary-clinton-video-get-married/> // CBS // Dana Kozlov – July 19, 2015* CHICAGO (CBS) — A few months after a Chicago couple that was in Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch video invited the candidate to their wedding, they got married without her, reports CBS 2’s Dana Kozlov. Jared Milrad and Nathan Johnson appeared in Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch video. They represented her support of gay marriage. On Sunday, they actually tied the knot. They were surrounded by family and friends at Montrose Harbor this afternoon. Absent, though, was the presidential candidate. They sent her a Twitter invitation to their wedding today right after they publically appeared in her campaign announcement video. They say they were honored to be included in that and wanted to include her in their wedding day. The couple says Clinton’s staff immediately got back to them with a sort of ‘we’ll see.’ In the end, she didn’t make it. “She rightfully pointed out that if she came to the wedding, it might distract from our special day so we understand she supports us,” said Milrad. Clinton did send them a congratulatory note. Milrad and Johnson have been together for several years. Being that they got married in a public space, Clinton’s attendance would have likely caused quite a security nightmare on an already really busy beach day. *Ghost of Hillary Clinton Haunts Liberal Convention <http://time.com/3963825/hillary-clinton-netroots-nation/> // TIME // Sam Frizell – July 19, 2015* The raucous Democratic base is skeptical of Hillary Clinton For an eclectic snapshot of the Democratic left, look no further than a squat civic building in downtown Phoenix on Friday night. A loud punk band was packing up, men in uniforms were clearing away vats of orange-and-mint flavored ice water, and stragglers were tucking away thin cucumber slices topped with cheese and bacon bits. The last of the elaborately tattooed young folks were mixed in with the suits, as the party, hosted by a food workers union, wound to a close. “I’m a long, longtime admirer of Secretary Clinton,” Greg Stanton, the mayor of Phoenix was saying. He wore a jacket, sipped a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and mingled. “I’m probably in the minority here, but mayors across the country are big Hillary fans.” Surrounded by union organizers and progressive activists, Stanton was definitely the exception. Hillary Clinton may safely be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, but at the largest gathering of the liberal grassroots in the country, enthusiasm for her campaign was as mushy as day-old oatmeal. The Netroots Nation conference was much more excited about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist and populist firebrand. “It’s a pragmatist versus idealist race,” said Krissi Jimroglou, communications director for Working America, explaining the enthusiasm for Sanders as the union-hosted party cleared out. “This is a very idealist crowd.” It didn’t help that Clinton was nowhere to be found. In fact, she was in Iowa and heading to Arkansas, even while her rivals for the Democratic nomination—Sanders and Martin O’Malley—were en route to Phoenix and preparing to court the progressives. The bloggers, unions, teachers, techies, activists, organizers, laborers, musicians and non-profit founders who come to Netroots are the vocal base of the Democratic Party. They’re key for Democrats seeking to winning national elections. Clinton has sought to attract progressives like these her campaign, many of whom believe that she is too closely connected to Wall Street and corporate interests, and too similar to her centrist husband, President Bill Clinton. The folks at Netroots may well ultimately vote for her in a general election, but for now they’re not enthusiastic about the prospect. Clinton has talked like a populist and laid out a liberal vision for the country, centering her economic policy around solving income inequality instead of some “arbitrary growth figure” like gross domestic product. She has already called for raising the minimum wage, requiring paid family leave, reducing the cost of college and reining in Wall Street, and she has a host of other progressive policies lined up for the coming months. And she is leading in the polls by large margins, with polls showing her favorability ratings on solid ground. But the the Netroots attendees are thirsty for specifics. “She’s done a great job explaining the problem: that we have economy that works really well for the top 1% and not everyone else, and we need to fix it,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, the grassroots organization founded by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. “Now she needs to detail the policy behind it that puts meat on the bone.” And even then, they may not be sated. A lot of attendees spoke of a general feeling—a sort of populist touch—which they say they’re not sure Clinton has. Sanders, they say, has it. There was also a widely shared resentment at Netroots that Clinton hadn’t come to kiss the ring. “There’s something people have been looking for that they haven’t been seeing,” said a woman at the Phoenix Convention Center on Friday named Hillary Keyes. She was wearing a button that said “I’m a Hillary for Bernie.” Clinton not coming, Keyes said means for “the people here she loses credibility.” “We’re disappointed the Democratic frontrunner could miss such a great opportunity,” said Arshad Hasan, chair of the board of directors of Netroots Nation. “The silence from her side makes Bernie shine all the brighter.” With Clinton gone, the Sanders crowd had full rein. The morning he addressed the crowd, a group dressed as robber barons replete with top hats and bow-ties chanted ironically, “Capitalists for Bernie!” while holding signs saying “Long live the oligarchs!” Others carried huge cutouts of Sanders’ head with a Robin Hood hat. Clinton’s campaign said their candidate could not attend because of scheduling conflicts—though the organizers set the date for the conference a year in advance. Netroots would have been an unwieldy and raucous stage for Clinton, who tends to favor controlled spaces. And this year was less controlled than usual, as Black Lives Matters protesters derailed the presidential town hall meetings featuring O’Malley and Sanders. Despite her absence, Clinton’s ghost defined much of the proceedings here. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who is beloved among the Netroots crowd, said in a speech on Friday that all the presidential candidates should move to stop the revolving door between Wall Street and the Cabinet, an applause line that was largely seen as aimed at Clinton. Many of the activists spoke about “moving Hillary to the left,” a common refrain among Democrats. And activists said at Netroots they could build a huge progressive network to support Clinton in her left-leaning positions. “It is up to everyone in this hall to actually draft a progressive agenda,” said AFL-CIO executive vice president Tefere Gebre in an interview. “And give Hillary Clinton a backbone, or give Bernie Sanders a backbone, or give anyone else a background to govern on that agenda.” For Clinton, who is establishing her progressive credentials but has not yet managed to capture the imagination of the Netroots demographic, the key will be driving them out in heavy numbers to vote for in a general election. Sanders may know how to rile up the base. But if Netroots is a barometric reading of devotion, then Clinton may have some work to do. “It’s a degree-of-enthusiasm question,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Democratic activists here will probably go out and vote for her. But will they go out to canvass for her, mobilize for her and make calls for her? It really depends on her.” Meanwhile, on Saturday night, Sanders gave a speech in Phoenix’s convention center, the final big event of the weekend. It was the largest rally of Sanders’ campaign, and 11,300 people streamed through the sand-colored streets of Phoenix and down two long escalators into a cavernous auditorium with the feel of an ocean trench. Sanders took the stage and delivered his blistering attack on billionaires and the multinational corporations. But first, some context. “When we were coming to Arizona, somebody said Arizona is a conservative state,” thundered Sanders. “What were they talking about?!” *Jeb and Hillary: Flawed front-runners generating little excitement <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/20/jeb-and-hillary-flawed-front-runners-generating-little-excitement/> // Fox News // Howard Kurtz - July 20, 2015* America may well get another Bush-Clinton race once this whole presidential thing shakes out, with predictable groans about royal families and political retreads. But in looking at the coverage this past week, I was struck by this thought: This is one weak pair of front-runners. Jeb is losing to a guy who’s never run for public office and is in hot water over comments about Mexican immigrants. In short, he’s been Trumped. (Though maybe The Donald has trumped himself by making light of John McCain’s Vietnam captivity, not that the media were in love with him before.) Hillary is way ahead in her race, but a socialist senator is generating most of the excitement. A majority of voters have doubts about her honesty. And she’s long been at odds with the press. As the New York Times has noted, Hillary may have raised $47.5 million, but less than one-fifth has come in contributions of $200 or less. That means big-money donors, many of whom have maxed out at $2,700, are powering her campaign. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, has gotten four-fifths of his $15 million in small donations. (Hillary has also spent a chunk of her haul, stirring concerns about another bloated, consultant-heavy campaign.) Equally worrisome, the latest Fox News poll confirms the findings of several other surveys that Hillary has a trust problem. Some 58 percent of respondents say Clinton’s natural instincts lean more toward “hiding the truth” than “telling the truth.” It’s hardly shocking that Hillary isn’t firing up the grass roots. She’s been in public life for a quarter century, as first lady, senator, presidential candidate, secretary of State and global celebrity. She’s a Democrat running to succeed another Democrat. And the lack of a major opponent is draining much of the drama from her race. That’s why Elizabeth Warren, not HRC, is on the cover of Time. At the same time, even Hillary’s team is said to be concerned that Sanders, a 73-year-old who isn’t even a Democrat and who’s been a bit player in the Senate, could knock her off in Iowa. Or worse. Yet in a New York Times Magazine piece that’s in part about the press staff micromanaging Mark Leibovich (no tweeting from her headquarters!), campaign manager Robby Mook said: “I take issue with the excitement question.”’ Jeb has problems that go beyond Donald Trump. He’s at odds with conservative Republican voters over illegal immigration and Common Core education standards. He’s raised $114 million, but he’s had to talk repeatedly about his brother and why his last name isn’t a liability. And while Bush has been solid and substantive in his campaign, aside from his initial Iraq stumble, he has not been a dominating presence. He regularly talks to the press, in stark contrast to Hillary, but makes little news. And Trump is looming as an obstacle for Bush, particularly with the Fox debate coming up next month. “During one recent phone call with a political ally,” Politico says, “Bush pointedly asked about the surging real estate mogul. What, the friend recalled the former governor wondering out loud, was behind Trump’s antics, and what was he trying to accomplish?” Jeb is trying to be the grownup in the room. He told the Los Angeles Times: "I think candidates ought to lay out proposals to solve problems rather than basically prey on legitimate fears and concerns.” The Donald, meanwhile, speaks of Jeb with open disdain. “He raises 100 million, so what does 100 million mean?” Trump asked. “100 million means he's doing favors for so many people, it means lobbyists, it means special interests, it means donors," said Trump. "Who knows it better than me?” The eventual nominees often seem lackluster during the preseason. I remember lots of political and media grumbling over Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry and Al Gore, whereas the likes of Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich generated more excitement. Those who win their party’s nod have to be acceptable to a broad coalition, which usually means they can’t be fire-breathing insurgents. Maybe even Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush aren’t immune from premature boredom. *6 Facts About Hillary Clinton & Her Dad That Totally Gave Us #FatherDaughterGoals <http://www.bustle.com/articles/98259-6-facts-about-hillary-clinton-her-dad-that-totally-gave-us-fatherdaughtergoals> // Bustle // Tonya Riley – July 19, 2015* Even as a first lady, the now-presidential candidate refused to be defined by the man in her life. But as the New York Times reported Sunday, Hillary Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, had a substantial influence on the woman she is today. Clinton spoke candidly about the strength of her mother in her speech announcing her campaign, but she rarely speaks about her father, who passed away in 1993, in public. Clinton, who veered away from her father’s conservative political values in college, had a tumultuous relationship with him in her early years. Clinton’s former advisor Lissa Muscatine told The New York Times, “By all accounts he was kind of a tough customer … believed in no free rides, believed you had to earn what you’re going to get, believed his kids could always do better.” Despite his sometimes tough personality, Rodham had a huge impact on his daughter, who would go on to be both a senator and Secretary of State. He gets several mentions in her 2003 biography Living History, in which she describes him as a hardworking, “hardheaded and often gruff” business owner descended “from a line of black-haired Welsh coal miners.” And though he died long before he could have ever seen his daughter transition from first lady to possible president, Here’s what we know about their relationship. Clinton’s Father Was Stern, But Cared About Her Education One of the reasons you may have heard so little about Clinton’s father is that he wasn’t always the nicest guy, according to The New York Times. Rodham was a strict man and depression ran in his family. The Times, who spoke with Clinton biographer Carl Berstein, wrote: He would hurl criticism at his wife around the kitchen table at 235 Wisner Street. When she encouraged Hillary to learn for learning’s sake, Mr. Rodham, who drove a Cadillac, would quip: “Learn for earning’s sake.” If his children asked for an allowance for their many household chores, he would reply bluntly: “I feed you, don’t I?” When Clinton was in fourth grade, her father woke her up at dawn every day to help her catch up on the multiplication tables she was falling behind on. Rodham never sugar-coated things for Clinton, so it’s no wonder she can now tough it out with the hardest of politicians domestically and abroad. Hillary Learned How To Play Tough From Her Father Clinton’s father always encouraged her to play sports and taught her that she was equal to any man. According to the Associated Press, one spring he practiced with her every day until she was able to hit a curveball. According to her biography Living History, he also taught her how to shoot a gun. Her Father Encouraged Her Throughout Her Early 20s Later when Clinton attended Wellesley and Yale, her father sent her letters to encourage her to persevere through tough times. Clinton once wrote about her father that “Even when he erupted at me, he admired my independence and accomplishments.” Hillary’s Conservative Father Loved Her — Even After She Married (& Became) A Democrat Clinton’s father was a Goldwater Republican, but even after she became a Democrat herself and married a man who would go on to be a Democratic governor and president, he expressed pride in her. In 1993 right before his death, Rodham told a friend “My daughter is a real special girl.” They Shared The Same Great Laugh Clinton wrote in her 2003 autobiography Living History, “I inherited his laugh, the same big rolling guffaw that can turn heads in a restaurant and send cats running from the room.” He Was A Great Grandpa While Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, both of Hillary’s parents moved to Little Rock to be closer to her. They always went to games to watch their granddaughter Chelsea play softball and would take the team out for frozen yogurt after the game, according to the New York Times. *Clinton insider faced IG probe for informal diplomacy <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-insider-blumenthal-faced-ig-probe-for-informal-diplomacy/article/2568516> // Washington Examiner // Sarah Westwood – July 19, 2015* A longtime Clinton ally who was once under investigation for a possible violation of the Logan Act may have helped Sidney Blumenthal prepare intelligence memos for Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state. Cody Shearer was the subject of a State Department inspector general probe in 1998 after he allegedly conducted rogue negotiations that "caused temporary diplomatic damage in Bosnia," according to documents obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act. The inspector general found that Shearer, whose ties to the Clintons stretch back to the 1992 election, "may have represented himself as speaking on behalf of the U.S. Department of State" in private conversations about the proposed partitioning of Bosnia — a policy the U.S. publicly opposed. More than a decade later, Shearer is entangled in another instance of back-channel information peddling at the State Department. Shearer assisted Blumenthal and Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA operative, in preparing a series of informal intelligence memos for Clinton as she waded deeper into the Libyan conflict, according to Pro Publica. The edited tranche of emails published by the State Department in May and June suggest she relied almost exclusively on their guidance to inform her decision-making in the country. Shearer's sister Brooke first grew close to Clinton during the 1992 presidential election, when she traveled with the former first lady on the campaign trail. Shearer's brother-in-law, Strobe Talbott, has been close to the Clintons for decades. After rising through the ranks of the State Department to become deputy secretary of state, Talbott accepted a position as head of the Brookings Institution. But it appears he, too, maintained influence at the agency through his connection to Clinton. When she went looking for a new assistant in June 2009, Clinton turned to Talbott for suggestions on who to hire. Clinton's emails suggest she and Talbott were in frequent contact and even had "catch-up calls" to provide each other with diplomatic updates. Talbott's name surfaced in the inspector general documents as having written a letter to his brother-in-law that warned Shearer to "be careful in his actions" in Bosnia during Bill Clinton's presidency. The records suggest the FBI participated in the probe of Shearer's independent diplomacy. *OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE* *DECLARED* *O’MALLEY* *O'Malley sorry for saying 'all lives matter' <http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/politics/martin-omalley-all-lives-matter/> // CNN // Chris Moody – July 19, 2015* Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley apologized on Saturday for saying "All lives matter" while discussing police violence against African-Americans with liberal demonstrators. Several dozen demonstrators interrupted the former Maryland governor while he was speaking here at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal activists, demanding that he address criminal justice and police brutality. When they shouted, "Black lives matter!" a rallying cry of protests that broke out after several black Americans were killed at the hands of police in recent months, O'Malley responded: "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." The demonstrators, who were mostly black, responded by booing him and shouting him down. Later that day, O'Malley apologized for using the phrase in that context if it was perceived that he was minimizing the importance of blacks killed by police. "I meant no disrespect," O'Malley said in an interview on This Week in Blackness, a digital show. "That was a mistake on my part and I meant no disrespect. I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue." Judith Butler, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, recently explained why some find it offensive to respond to the "Black Lives Matter" movement with the "all lives matter." "When some people rejoin with 'All Lives Matter' they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter, which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve," Butler said in an interview with The New York Times. "If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, 'all lives matter,' then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of 'all lives.'" O'Malley isn't the first Democrat to come under fire for the remark. Hillary Clinton was criticized in June for doing the same thing. *Martin O’Malley’s Presidential Strategy: Try, Try, Try Again <http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/martin-omalleys-presidential-strategy-try-try-try-again#.heBnMngYE> // Buzzfeed // Ruby Cramer – July 19, 2015* The southwest corner of 1st Avenue and 3rd Street was Martin O’Malley territory. This — for much of the hot and humid Friday afternoon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa — was not in dispute. A few dozen O’Malley people, each wearing an O’Malley t-shirt, stood chanting near a line of cars, each taped with an O’Malley sign. “O-Mall-ee! O-Mall-ee!” Then came the Hillary Clinton people — twice as many, with more signs and louder cheers — an army of “H” arrows. They moved in on the corner, singing the refrain from “Land of 1000 Dances”: Naaa, na-na-na-naaa, na-na-na-naaa, na-na-naaa-na-na-NA. But even as the Hillary group took over, engulfing the smaller contingent almost entirely, the O’Malley fans stayed put until the main event: a state party dinner. Across the street was the convention center where, for the first time, from the same stage, O’Malley would face Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — the competition he’s been trying to overtake with as much persistence and as little success as his t-shirted cheer-squad. The great sign wars of 1st Avenue kicked off a weekend that, in effect, served as the start of the Democratic contest — and put on display the distinctions in approach between the three candidates as the first caucuses and primaries draw closer. Inside the convention hall, Clinton and Sanders each fell into what is, by now, their own familiar rhythms. He made his call for a “political revolution” to close the gap between rich and poor — and she for a unified front against the other party. Clinton, who leads the field in fundraising and among early voters in key states like Iowa, didn’t acknowledge her primary opponents. “I’m already having a great debate with Republicans,” Clinton told the crowd. The next day, she skipped the annual progressive conference, Netroots Nation, held this year in Phoenix, to headline a state party dinner in Arkansas — the Republican-leaning state where her campaign could hope to compete next year in the general election. At every point this weekend — as Clinton and Sanders held to their carefully hewn strategies — O’Malley telegraphed, with trademark persistence, that no matter how bad the polls look, he is the candidate who simply won’t go away: who will work harder and mingle longer, who will shake more hands, answer more questions, propose more policy, be the most progressive and most aggressive — the candidate who will always engage. He has, now 50 days into his campaign, taken almost every opportunity. While Clinton draws headlines about her “strained relations” with the press, O’Malley’s staff rarely turns a reporter away. (On Friday night, his super PAC invited members of the media to an afterparty with the sign-carrying field organizers. “It’s open-press and we promise no rope-lines,” an official said in an email, adding a smiling emoticon. The Clinton cheer-squad, meanwhile, said they weren’t allowed to talk to reporters.) And while other Democrats in the race, including Sanders, don’t often go after Clinton, O’Malley makes a habit of it — indirectly, at least. (In his Iowa speech, he stressed his support for a $15 minimum wage, days after Clinton declined to endorse it, and suggested she was slow to oppose “bad trade deals” like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.) But there was no greater show of the O’Malley method than inside the Phoenix Convention Center on Saturday morning — when activists aligned with Black Lives Matter, a social justice group, upended a presidential forum at Netroots Nation. O’Malley and Sanders spoke separately. The protesters asked each candidate to address questions about violence against blacks involving law enforcement. Both “responded poorly” at the time, as the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, put it later. But after the forum — a jarring event that drew attention in and far outside the Netroots gathering — Sanders canceled his afternoon line-up of small meetings, including one with Black Lives Matters backers, according to participants. O’Malley, as his aides were quick to note, added events and sought to apologize for his reaction to the protest. O’Malley was only through about two questions from Jose Antonio Vargas — a journalist and activist who moderated the forum — before the activists started up their chorus: “What side are you on, my people,” they yelled through the hall. “What side are you on?” At first, O’Malley tapped his knee along with the chant. But the protesters continued on, bringing the event to a stand-still. O’Malley leaned back and sighed. Vargas didn’t know what to do. When one of the activists mounted the stage, he handed her the microphone. O’Malley stood off to the side, waiting. Cullors, the Black Lives Matter co-founder, joined her colleague on stage. “We don’t like shutting shit down.” But we have to, she told the crowd. “We are in a stage of emergency.” Given the chance to respond, O’Malley fumbled. When he promised to roll out a “criminal justice reform package,” an activist shouted back, “Don’t generalize that shit.” And when he mentioned his push as governor of Maryland to repeal the state death penalty — telling the protesters that “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” — the group boomed back in anger. “We already know white lives matter,” one man yelled. “We don’t want to hear that shit!” Then Vargas cut the event off. “Oh, man,” O’Malley said. “We just started.” He walked off, quietly chanting along with the crowd. “Black. Lives. Matter… Black. Lives. Matter.” Sanders was waiting backstage — and apparently ready to deliver his same call for “political revolution,” a stump speech that is almost exclusively centered on the economy and has drawn crowds of thousands from the progressive and labor communities. As he took his seat next to Vargas, there were regular cheers from the crowd — “we love you, Bernie!” — but the activists still dominated, chanting over the candidate. “Whoa, whoa,” Sanders said. “Let me talk about what I want to talk about for a moment.” “Say her name, say her name, say her name,” the group yelled back, referring to Sandra Bland, a black woman found dead of an apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell. “Should I continue or leave?” Sanders asked Vargas. “It’s okay with me.” Sanders tried shouting his speech over the protesters. “Of course black lives matter,” he finally told them. Sanders looked to the moderator. “What are we doing here?” “Hold on one second, sir,” said Vargas. Sanders stared back. “OK. Are you in charge?” *SANDERS* *Liberal activists see Bernie Sanders as champion for causes failed by Obama <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/liberal-activists-see-bernie-sanders-as-champion-for-causes-failed-by-obama/2015/07/19/8b5fc752-2e09-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html> // WaPo // David Weigel - July 20, 2015* PHOENIX — First came the People for Bernie reception, held by Occupy Wall Street veterans, at a club modeled after a Venetian estate. One night later came the We Want Bernie party, hosted by Progressive Democrats of America in a low-key tacqueria. On the third day of Netroots Nation, an annual meeting of liberal activists that wrapped up over the weekend, Bernie Sanders himself appeared — and named what many of the activists gathered here consider the original sin of the Obama presidency. “Today, the largest six financial institutions in this country have assets of some $10 trillion, equivalent to 60 percent of the GDP of America,” the senator from Vermont told a crowd of 11,000 people on Saturday night. “After we bailed them out, because they were ‘too big to fail,’ most of them are now a lot bigger than they were before.” The surge of Sanders’s presidential campaign has been widely viewed as a gambit, by liberals, to force Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to the left. The netroots activists see no downside to that. To them, it was the Democrats’ failure to prosecute Wall Street after the 2008 crash enabled the tea party movement and the Republican Party’s comeback in Congress. It was the kludged, mandate-driven design of the Affordable Care Act that prevented it from being a boon to Democrats, as Medicare for all might have been. These activists are not just supporting Sanders’s agenda, or asking Clinton to embrace free college tuition or vast new infrastructure spending. They’re telling an alternate history of modern liberalism. And Sanders has been telling it with them. In a February speech, he bemoaned how President Obama had “missed the opportunity, politically, of doing what [Franklin] Roosevelt did when he was elected and making it clear to the American people what is happening and why.” In an interview last year with Bloomberg News, he said that “the key mistake of the Obama administration, starting from the day after he was elected, was to more or less disband the grass-roots network that he had put together to get elected.” Sanders’s campaign, and its allies, are pledging never to repeat that. In late June, the grassroots group Ready for Warren gave up on drafting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president and rebranded as the pro-Sanders Ready to Fight. It joined Progressive Democrats for America — whose founder, Tim Carpenter, died in 2014 — after beseeching Sanders to run, and the Occupy-colored People for Bernie. Some of the loudest applause at the meeting came when Warren recounted how progressives had campaigned against some Obama administration appointees. Some of the best-attended Netroots Nation panels dealt with how activists could bypass the mainstream media, and make a bad bill, or bad law, or bad police tactic too infamous to continue. “As soon as [Obama] got elected, they should not have held back their pressure,” said Netroots Nation participant Felipe Andres Coronel, a rapper best known by his stage name Immortal Technique. “We should have put the pressure on and made it even harder. There were people who made their presence known. Wall Street made its presence known.” When the doors opened here for Sanders’s speech on Saturday morning, people who had been waiting in line sprinted to get as close as possible to the stage. “[Sanders] and Elizabeth Warren are saying the sorts of things — like Jon Stewart is saying the sorts of things — we wish we heard everywhere,” said Connie Aglione, 67, an Arizona activist. Athena Soules, 36, an artist who designed banners for the Occupy Wall Street movement, said Sanders’s success is possible in part because of the energy generated by the 2011 protests that began in Lower Manhattan. She unfurled a new banner — “Feel the Bern,” it read — surrounded by fellow activists. “We learned the hard way from Obama,” Soules said. Said Katherine Brezler, 33, the national digital organizer for People for Bernie: “We elected Barack Obama on the idea that we were going to get a universal health-care system. We have 35 million people uninsured in this country.” Outside of Netroots Nation, among the Democrats who had followed the Obama strategy, these critiques sounded part cruel and all wrong. “Look, I wish this country were further left than it is, but I live in reality,” former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who worked with the White House to overhaul Wall Street regulations, said in a phone interview. “These people watch MSNBC, and they talk to each other on the Internet — in some ways, they’re like the tea party. They’re in this parallel universe.” David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist who was a senior White House adviser during the crisis years, said Sanders-style criticism ignored the reality of the economic crash. *Bernie Sanders’ newest fan? Jesse Ventura. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/07/19/bernie-sanders-newest-fan-jesse-ventura/> // WaPo // Hunter Schwarz – July 19, 2015* Jesse Ventura feels the "Bern." The professional wrestler turned former Minnesota governor wrote on Off The Grid that he would help Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders anyway he could and hopes he's successful in his longshot presidential primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. It's just short of an endorsement, but not by much. "I think what Bernie Sanders is doing is extremely healthy," he wrote. "I love the idea of somebody throwing a fly in the ointment. I'm sick and tired of the handpicked two candidates." Ventura, who ran and won a third party bid in 1998, doesn't go for the conventional political picks; in 2012, he endorsed Ron Paul in part because of the Texas Republican's anti-war and pro-audit-the-Fed views. Paul and Sanders might have their disagreements and run as candidates for opposing parties' nominations, but for Ventura to go from libertarian-turned-Republican Paul in 2012 to Socialist-turned-Democrat Sanders isn't that big of a stretch. Both tap into a growing frustration with voters over the two-party system, the influence of money in politics, and the prospect of another dynasty election. They also each claim grassroots support with small-dollar donors. About three-quarters of Sanders' campaign donations were $200 or less in the first three months of his campaign; 45 percent of Paul's 2012 campaign donations were $200 of less. The relative success of Paul and Sanders is a product of a time when identifying as politically independent is more popular than ever. A January Gallup poll found 43 percent of Americans described themselves as independent, a record. There's frustration with the system, and voters are showing it with who they're supporting for president and how they identify themselves. But does that mean we're going to soon see Socialists, libertarians, or third-party candidates in the White House? Not exactly. Sanders and Paul both might have avid fanbases, but Paul fell far short of the nomination, and Sanders still trails Hillary Clinton by a significant margin. And despite both of their third-party pasts, both Sanders and Paul ran as candidates for major party nominations. That move by Sanders is something Ventura believes was a savvy move. "By jumping in and going for the Democratic nomination, he'll have to be included in all the Democratic debates and that'll put him on TV, that'll get his face out there, so in a way, it's kind of a brilliant tactical move," he said. It's not just a matter of getting on TV, though. For as much as voters say they're independent, a 2012 Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 63 percent of independents actually act like "disguised" Democrats or Republicans. Americans increasingly want to change the status quo, but a lot of it's just lip service. That means a lot of hype and support for candidates like Sanders early in the race, but it doesn't bode well for them come Election Day. *How the NRA helped put Bernie Sanders in Congress <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-nra-helped-put-bernie-sanders-in-congress/2015/07/19/ed1be26c-2bfe-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html> // WaPo // David A. Fahrenthold – July 19, 2015* BURLINGTON, Vt. — A few days before Election Day in 1990, the National Rifle Association sent a letter to its 12,000 members in Vermont, with an urgent message about the race for the state’s single House seat. Vote for the socialist, the gun rights group said. It’s important. “Bernie Sanders is a more honorable choice for Vermont sportsmen than Peter Smith,” wrote Wayne LaPierre, who was — and still is — a top official at the national NRA, backing Sanders over the Republican incumbent. That was odd. Sanders was the ex-hippie ex-mayor of Burlington, running as an independent because the Democrats weren’t far enough left. He had never even owned a gun. But that year, he was the enemy of the NRA’s enemy. Smith had changed his mind about a ban on ­assault weapons. The NRA and its allies wanted him beaten. They didn’t much care who beat him. “It is not about Peter Smith vs. Bernie Sanders,” LaPierre wrote, according to news coverage from the time. “It is about integrity in politics.” Today, Sanders is a senator and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, drawing huge crowds with his calls to break up big banks, increase taxes on the rich and make college free. The election of 1990 launched him. When Sanders won, he became the first socialist in Congress since the 1950s. That campaign also marked the beginning of Sanders’s complicated relationship with the