H4A News Clips 6.12.15

From:aphillips@hillaryclinton.com To: aphillips@hillaryclinton.com BCC: hrcrapid@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-06-12 09:06 Subject: H4A News Clips 6.12.15

*H4A News Clips* *June 12, 2015* *LAST NIGHTS EVENING NEWS* There was no 2016 coverage on any network news program. Instead, news networks continued their coverage of the escaped prisoners. They also discussed new developments related to ISIS and the Middle East, including the US soldier who was killed, as well as U.S. strategy in the region. *LAST NIGHTS EVENING NEWS......................................................................... **1* *SOCIAL MEDIA................................................................................................. **4* *Hilary Rosen (6/11/15, 9:13 am)* - on the @usairways shuttle to NYC. Not a #HillaryClinton staffer in sight. #CheapTranspoIsANewThing...................................................................................................... 5 *Buzzfeed News (6/11/15, 9:52 am)* - JUST IN: @CNBC reporting that @rupertmurdoch is preparing to step down as CEO from 21st Century Fox *http://www.cnbc.com/id/102730161 <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102730161>*.............................................. 5 *Eli Stokols (6/11/15, 10:10 am)* - Jeb says absent fathers "limit the possibility of young people to live lives of purpose and meaning."............................................................................................................... 5 *Benjy Sarlin (6/11/15, 10:17 am)* - Asked Jeb Bush about 1995 book bemoaning lack of "shame" towards single motherhood. He said he'd "evolved" but restated importance of issue........................................... 5 *WSJ (6/11/15, 4:08 pm)* - Breaking: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is stepping down July 1 *http://wsj.com <http://wsj.com>* 5 *Bernie Sanders (6/11/15, 5:01 pm)* - It's time to declare once and for all: #BlackLivesMatter — on the streets and on the job. Read my piece in @Medium: *http://bernie.to/dream <http://bernie.to/dream>*.................................................. 5 *David Drucker (6/11/15, 5:30 pm)* - .@tedcruz tells @hughhewitt that his super PACs have BANKED $37 million, Interview broadcast this evening................................................................................................. 5 *LAUNCH PREVIEW STORIES............................................................................ **5* *Story of Hillary Clinton’s Mother Forms Emotional Core of Campaign* // NYT // Amy Chozick - June 12, 2015 5 *Hillary Clinton Plans to Show Her Roots in Rally Speech* // WSJ // Laura Meckler – June 11, 2015.. 8 *With stories of mother's struggle, Clinton seeks reintroduction in first major campaign speech* // AP // Lisa Lerer & Ken Thomas............................................................................................................................ 9 *Clinton's launch speech to focus on her mother's life* // Politico // Annie Karni – June 11, 2015...... 11 *Inside the relaunch of Hillary Clinton* // Politico Magazine // Glenn Thrush - June 12, 2015.......... 13 *Hillary Clinton: "It is your time"* // VOX // Jonathan Allen – June 11, 2015................................... 15 *Why is Hillary Clinton running for president? She'll answer that at a New York rally* // LA Times // Evan Halper – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................. 16 *Clinton plans personal kick-off speech, but Democrats want aggressive agenda* // WaPo // Philip Rucker & Anne Gearan – June 11, 2015.............................................................................................................. 18 *Hillary's rally and rationale: More Rodham, less Clinton* // CNN // Jeff Zeleny & Dan Merica – June 11, 2015 21 *Hillary Clinton Will Evoke Roosevelt and Try to Ease Fears on Trust in New York Speech* // NYT // Amy Chozick – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................ 23 *Hillary Clinton Plans to Re-Introduce Herself to Voters* // CBS News // Stephanie Condon – June 11, 2015 26 *Hillary Clinton gets personal* // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald – June 11, 2015................................. 27 *Hillary Clinton Will Push Personal Story at Campaign Launch* // TIME // Sam Frizell – June 11, 2015 30 *At Launch Rally, Hillary Clinton to Tell Americans 'It Is Your Time'* // Bloomberg News // Jennifer Epstein – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................. 31 *Hillary Relaunch to Have 'Airport Style Security'* // The Weekly Standard // Daniel Halper.......... 34 *HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................................................ **35* *Hillary Clinton and Wishful-Thinking Politics* // NYT // Brendan Nyhan – June 11, 2015.............. 35 *Virginia Is Latest Front in Democrats’ Voting Rights Battle* // NYT // Maggie Haberman – June 11, 2015 36 *These 9 words prove that Bill Clinton still doesn’t get it on the Clinton Foundation* // WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................ 37 *She won’t back down. Or go away.* // WaPo // Kent Babb – June 11, 2015.................................... 38 *Clinton’s Donor Dominance Not Absolute* // WSJ // Peter Nicholas & Laura Meckler – June 11, 2015 45 *Inside Hillary's house-party strategy* // Politico // Annie Karni – June 11, 2015............................ 47 *The Real Felony: Denying Prisoners the Right to Vote* // The Daily Beast // Barrett Holmes Pitner – June 12, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 50 *Hillary Rally Vs. the Gun Show at Iowa State Fair* // The Weekly Standard // Jeryl Bier – June 11, 2015 52 *Hillary Clinton's Truth-O-Meter record* // Politifact // Lauren // Carroll – June 11, 2015............... 53 *Change she can believe in: Clinton bets voters want more of the same, only better* // LA Times // David Lauter – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................ 55 *Hillary Clinton's big bet: Stress toughness, tenacity, Democratic agenda* // LA Times // David Lauter – June 11, 2015......................................................................................................................................... 59 *Centrist Dems wary of Hillary’s move to the left* // The Hill // Alexander Bolton – June 11, 2015... 62 *Hillary Clinton's Economic Inequality Whisperer* // National Journal // Eric Garcia – June 12, 2015 64 *THE LEGACY TRAP* // National Journal // Ronald Brownstein – June 12, 2015............................ 66 *POLITICAL INSIDERS POLL* // National Journal // Sarah Mimms – June 12, 2015....................... 68 *What Hillary Clinton Can Learn from Michelle Kwan's Figure Skating Career* // The New Republic // Elspeth Reeve – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................... 70 *With boost from Clinton, efforts to expand voting access advance* // MSNBC // Zachary Toth – June 11, 2015 71 *De Blasio says he will not endorse Hillary Clinton until she clearly opposes Trans-Pacific Partnership* // NY Daily News // Jennifer Fermino – June 11, 2015.................................................................................. 73 *Dem operative Woodhouse says NYT retracted charges of illegality in Clinton email story* // Politifact // Jon Greenberg – June 11, 2015......................................................................................................... 75 *Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Urges Hillary Clinton to Oppose TPP at Kickoff* // The Observer // Jullian Jorgensen – June 11, 2015.......................................................................................................................... 77 *Bill Clinton brushes aside foundation criticism* // CNN // Dan Merica – June 11, 2015.................. 78 *'Conversation' with Hillary Clinton? That'll be $2,700* // Daily Mail // AFP - June 12 2015............ 80 *Duggan's power now rivals Putin, Bill Clinton jokes* // Detroit News Washington Bureau – June 11, 2015 82 *Speech inflation: Why Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and others get massive speaking fees* // Fortune // Ben Geier – June 11, 2015......................................................................................................................... 83 *Clinton rally coincides with gun show at fairgounds* // The Des Moines Register // Josh Hafner – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 84 *Hillary Clinton Supports Women's Rights, Gay Rights in "Living History" Instagram Video* // E! Entertainment – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................ 86 *Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett to sing for Hillary* // NY Post // Emily Smith – June 9, 2015............ 86 *Quote Of The Day* // The Skimm – June 11, 2015........................................................................ 87 *OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE................................................. **87* *O’MALLEY................................................................................................... **87* *O'Malley: I haven't seen video of pool party brutality* // CNN // Alexandra Jaffe & Betsy Klein – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 87 *O’Malley touts progressive values, experience, results* // Quad City Times // James Lynch – June 11, 2015 88 *SANDERS.................................................................................................... **89* *Bernie Sanders Demands Hillary Clinton Take Trade Stance ‘Right Now’* // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 11, 2015......................................................................................................................................... 89 *Rival Challenges Clinton to Say Where She Stands on Trade* // AP // Ken Thomas – June 11, 2015 90 *Bernie Sanders insists his momentum is no fluke* // Politico // Jonathan Topaz – June 10, 2015... 91 *Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton's Silence on Trade Deal 'Offensive'* // Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 93 *Sanders Explains Obama’s Biggest Mistake And What Clinton Is Doing Wrong* // Buzzfeed // Evan McMorris-Santoro – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................. 95 *Bernie Sanders hires Elizabeth Warren 'draft' director for progressive campaign* // The Guardian // Ben Jacobs – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................ 97 *Youth Unemployment and Dr. King’s Dream* // Medium // Bernie Sanders – June 11, 2015.......... 98 *Sanders hires key Iowa staff members* // The Quad City Times // Ed Tibbetts – June 11, 2015.... 100 *Sanders pushes paid vacation legislation* // Burlington Free Press // Nicole Gaudiano – June 11, 2015 101 *OTHER...................................................................................................... **102* *Bayh won’t seek Indiana Senate seat* // The Hill // Jonathan Easley – June 11, 2015.................. 102 *GOP............................................................................................................... **103* *BUSH......................................................................................................... **103* *Wall Street lining up for Jeb Bush campaign fundraiser in New York // WaPo* // Matea Gold – June 11, 2015 103 *Jeb Bush’s legally nonexistent campaign has had a lot of problems* // WaPo // Max Ehrenfreund – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................................... 104 *In Europe, Jeb Bush sounds like Barack Obama* // Politico // Eli Stokols – June 11, 2015............ 105 *Sean Hannity scores first Jeb Bush interview* // Politico // Hadas Gold – June 11, 2015.............. 107 *Jeb Bush: 'Putin has changed' since brother George saw his 'soul'* // CNN // Tom LoBianco & Dana Bash – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................... 108 *Jeb Bush says view on unwed births ‘hasn’t changed at all’* // MSNBC // Benjy Sarlin – June 11, 2015 111 *Jeb Hated Easy Divorce. So Did Hillary.* // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 11, 2015.... 112 *RUBIO........................................................................................................ **114* *Marco Rubio, like a lot of Americans, is terrible with money* // WaPo // Jonnelle Marte – June 11, 2015 114 *Rubio And Five U.S. Congressmen Voted For Florida's 'Scarlet Letter' Adoption Bill* // HuffPo // Laura Bassett – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................... 116 *Is the GOP heartland ready to embrace Marco Rubio?* // LA Times // Lisa Mascaro – June 11, 2015 117 *Liberals defend Marco Rubio against blistering New York Times attacks* // Fox News – June 11, 2015 120 *PAUL.......................................................................................................... **121* *How Rand Paul Has Already Changed the 2016 Race* // TIME // Joe Klein – June 11, 2015.......... 121 *Rand Paul Signs on to Amendment Barring Ground Troops Against ISIS* // Bloomberg // David Weigel – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................................ 122 *WALKER................................................................................................... **123* *Scott Walker Says Supporters Have Suggested Walker-Rubio 2016 Ticket* // Bloomberg // John McCormick – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................... 123 *CRUZ.......................................................................................................... **125* *Ted Cruz under fire for Tennessee campaign chairman* // Politico // Adam Lerner – June 11, 2015 125 *Ted Cruz fights GOP approach on Obamacare subsidies* // Politico // Manu Raju – June 11, 2015 126 *Cruz ramps up attack on ObamaCare* // The Hill // Sarah Ferris – June 11, 2015......................... 127 *CHRISTIE.................................................................................................. **128* *Chris Christie Lays Out Education Plan* // NYT // Nick Corasaniti – June 11, 2015....................... 128 *Top Chris Christie Aide Goes to His Political Action Committee* // NYT // Maggie Haberman – June 11, 2015 130 *Christie: Debt-free college is 'wrong'* // Politico // Allie Grasgreen – June 11, 2015...................... 131 *Christie slams rival for 'scaring' voters* // The Des Moines Register // Jennifer Jacobs – June 11, 2015 131 *GRAHAM................................................................................................... **132* *Sen. Mark Kirk calls Lindsey Graham a 'bro with no ho'* // Politico // Nick Gass – June 11, 2015... 132 *Lindsey Graham Introduces Abortion Bill* // RealClearPolitics // Andrew Desiderio – June 11, 2015 133 *SANTORUM............................................................................................... **134* *Rick Santorum, moderate Republican?* // CNN // Alexandra Jaffe – June 11, 2015...................... 134 *Rick Santorum Says Economic 'Stagnation' Will Help Him Win in 2016* // Bloomberg News // Mark Niquette – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................... 136 *Rick Santorum signs ATR tax pledge* // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 11, 2015 136 *KASICH...................................................................................................... **137* *Is John Kasich Too Cranky To Be President?* // NBC News // Perry Bacon – June 11, 2015........... 137 *CARSON..................................................................................................... **139* *Ben Carson doesn’t want to talk about ‘the gay issue’* // MSNBC // Adam Howard – June 11, 2015 139 *Ben Carson’s hot mess of a campaign: A predictably dysfunctional mish-mash of fire-breathing rhetoric and insane policy ideas* // Salon // Simon Maloy – June 11, 2015...................................................... 140 *Ben Carson: ‘The people are frustrated — they’re waking up’* // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 11, 2015................................................................................................................................... 141 *FIORINA.................................................................................................... **142* *Fiorina's campaign-trail attacks leave out her own ties to Clinton* // LA Times // Joseph Tanfani – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................................... 142 *Carly Fiorina blasts media focus on her Hillary Clinton trolling* // The Washington Examiner // Ashe Schow – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................... 144 *OTHER...................................................................................................... **145* *Fox News Adds G.O.P. Candidate Forum Amid Criticism of Debate Plans* // NYT // Maggie Haberman 145 *The Koch brothers and the Republican Party go to war — with each other* // Yahoo News // Jon Ward – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................................ 145 *'16 At 30 Thousand* // NBC // Carrie Dann & Andrew Rafferty – June 11,..................................... 152 2015........................................................................................................................................ 152 *With Clinton bound for Sioux City, GOP piles on* // Sioux City Journal // Bret Hayworth – June 11, 2015 153 *Republicans release anti-Hillary Clinton ad ahead of her Charleston visit next week* // The Post & Carrier // Schuyler Kropf – June 11, 2015................................................................................................. 153 *Romney Hosting GOP Hopefuls at Utah Retreat* // RealClearPolitics // Courtney Such – June 11, 2015 154 *TOP NEWS..................................................................................................... **155* *DOMESTIC................................................................................................. **155* *Trade Fight Goes to the Wire* // WSJ // Siobhan Hughes, Kristina Peterson & William Mauldin – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................................................... 155 *Democrats block cyber bill, leaving measure in limbo* // Politico // Tal Kopan – June 11, 2015.... 158 *Dennis Hastert pleads not guilty on all counts* // CNN // Chris Frates, Bill Kirkos and Tom LoBianco – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................................ 160 *INTERNATIONAL...................................................................................... **161* *Obama Looks at Adding Bases and Troops in Iraq, to Fight ISIS* // NYT //Peter Baker, Helene Cooper & Michael r. Gordon – June 11, 2015............................................................................................................. 161 *OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS................................................................... **164* *Republicans must stop derailing the Benghazi committee* // WaPo // Elijah Cummings – June 11, 2015 164 *The Battle for the 2016 Middle Ground* // WSJ // Daniel Arbess – June 11, 2015......................... 166 *How Bill Clinton and Teneo duped the State Dept. ethics dummies* // Leader & Times // Dick Morris – June 11, 2015........................................................................................................................................ 167 *SOCIAL MEDIA* *Hilary Rosen (6/11/15, 9:13 am)* <https://twitter.com/hilaryr/status/608985338644697088>* - on the @usairways shuttle to NYC. Not a #HillaryClinton staffer in sight. #CheapTranspoIsANewThing* *Buzzfeed News (6/11/15, 9:52 am)* <https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/608995282068623362>* - JUST IN: @CNBC reporting that @rupertmurdoch is preparing to step down as CEO from 21st Century Fox **http://www.cnbc.com/id/102730161* <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102730161> *Eli Stokols (6/11/15, 10:10 am)* <https://twitter.com/EliStokols/status/608999833639227392>* - Jeb says absent fathers "limit the possibility of young people to live lives of purpose and meaning."* *Benjy Sarlin (6/11/15, 10:17 am)* <https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/609001507984449537>* - Asked Jeb Bush about 1995 book bemoaning lack of "shame" towards single motherhood. He said he'd "evolved" but restated importance of issue* *WSJ (6/11/15, 4:08 pm)* <https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/609089952115249153>* - Breaking: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is stepping down July 1 * *http://wsj.com* <http://wsj.com> *Bernie Sanders (6/11/15, 5:01 pm)* <https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/609103144681897985>* - It's time to declare once and for all: #BlackLivesMatter* * —* * on the streets and on the job. Read my piece in @Medium: **http://bernie.to/dream* <http://bernie.to/dream> *David Drucker (6/11/15, 5:30 pm)* <https://twitter.com/DavidMDrucker/status/609110550270894082>* - .@tedcruz tells @hughhewitt that his super PACs have BANKED $37 million, Interview broadcast this evening.* *LAUNCH PREVIEW STORIES* *Story of Hillary Clinton’s Mother Forms Emotional Core of Campaign* <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/politics/story-of-hillary-clintons-mother-forms-emotional-core-of-campaign.html>* // NYT // Amy Chozick - June 12, 2015* Dorothy Howell was 8 years old when her parents sent her away. It was 1927. Her mother and father, who fought violently in the Chicago boardinghouse where the family lived, divorced. Neither was willing to take care of Dorothy or her little sister. So they put the girls on a train to California to live with their grandparents. It did not go well. Her grandmother favored black Victorian dresses and punished the girls for inexplicable infractions, like playing in the yard. (Dorothy was not allowed to leave her room for a year, other than for school, after she went trick-or-treating one Halloween.) Unable to bear it, Dorothy left her grandparents’ home at 14, and became a housekeeper for $3 a week, always hoping to return to Chicago and reconnect with her mother. But when she finally did, a few years later, her mother spurned her again. It took a long time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to fully understand the story of her mother’s devastating childhood. But now, four years after her death, Dorothy’s story is forming the emotional foundation of her daughter’s campaign for president, and will be a central theme in her big kickoff speech on Saturday. Sharing that story is a shift for Mrs. Clinton, who in her 2008 campaign was fiercely protective of her mother’s privacy and eager to project an image of strength as she sought to become the first female commander in chief. And in this campaign, her mother’s story may help address one of Mrs. Clinton’s central challenges: convincing voters who feel they already know everything about her that there is, indeed, more to know, and that she is motivated by more than ambition. “I think for Hillary it’s about learning, and her mother’s story is just one of the big motivators of who she is,” said Ann Lewis, a former senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton. “She couldn’t go back and do more for her mother, but she could do more for other children who need protection or who need a better chance.” At the rally on Saturday on New York’s Roosevelt Island, the biggest public event so far of her 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton will explain how her mother’s experience shaped her life and inspired her to be an advocate for children and families at the Children’s Defense Fund, and as a first lady, senator and secretary of state. Given the closeness of their relationship, it is striking that Mrs. Rodham has been such a limited part of Mrs. Clinton’s biography. Dorothy Rodham and her husband, Hugh, moved to Little Rock, Ark., in 1987 to help Mrs. Clinton take care of Chelsea when she was working full time as a lawyer at Rose Law Firm. After Mr. Rodham died in 1993, Mrs. Rodham spent more time at the White House, accompanying the first lady and Chelsea on trips to India, China, Paris and Hawaii. She avoided the spotlight but enjoyed her time in Washington, with movie nights, trips to the zoo and margaritas at the Cactus Cantina. At the 1996 convention, Mrs. Rodham vouched for her son-in-law, saying in a brief video, “Everybody knows there is only one person in the world who can really tell the truth about a man, and that’s his mother-in-law.” But she also berated Mr. Clinton in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and encouraged Mrs. Clinton to forge her own political career, said several people who worked in the White House at the time. After Mrs. Clinton was elected to the Senate from New York in 2000, Mrs. Rodham moved to Washington to be closer to her daughter. At one point, mother and daughter shared a two-bedroom apartment while the Clintons’ townhouse in Northwest Washington was being renovated to make a larger, private space to accommodate Mrs. Rodham. “Hillary would get home after a long day in the Senate and they’d just sit there and talk about their days,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who worked for Mrs. Clinton from 1991 until 2008 and was campaign manager for much of her first presidential run. When she was secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton would return from a trip and plop down on the couch with her mom to hear about the latest twist in “Dancing With the Stars,” her mother’s favorite television show. Mrs. Clinton plans to spend time talking about her mother in a series of campaign events in early nominating states next week. She wants to highlight not only her mother’s background, but also the people, like teachers, who were kind to Dorothy as a child as a way to pivot to Mrs. Clinton’s philosophy that government and communities need to do their part to lift the middle class. In her 2014 book, “Hard Choices,’’ Mrs. Clinton described how one teacher in elementary school, realizing that Dorothy was too poor to buy milk at lunchtime, would buy two cartons herself every day and then say, “Dorothy, I can’t drink this other carton of milk. Would you like it?’ ” The woman who hired her as a teenage housekeeper took an interest in her, urging her to finish high school and giving her clothes. Mrs. Clinton has said these seemingly small gestures showed her mother the presence of goodness in the world, and later made her a caring mother and grandmother. Talking so extensively about Mrs. Rodham signals an evolution for Mrs. Clinton, from a deeply private, reluctant politician to a 67-year-old candidate who, according to her friends and aides, is running the campaign she wants to run. Mrs. Clinton has spent weeks writing Saturday’s speech, with the help of Dan Schwerin, a longtime aide and director of speechwriting for the campaign. A sympathetic tale of her mother’s struggles could help Mrs. Clinton convince a struggling middle class that she understands their problems, aides said. A CNN poll released on June 2 showed that 47 percent of voters thought that Mrs. Clinton “cares about people like you,” down from 53 percent last July. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides have publicly shrugged off such polls as evidence that voters distrust Washington and politics in general, but privately they are strategizing about how to reframe the conversation. The idea of incorporating Mrs. Rodham’s story was floated during the 2008 Democratic primaries, when Mrs. Clinton’s advisers tested how Dorothy Rodham resonated with focus groups in Iowa; the response was overwhelmingly positive. But back then Mrs. Clinton was uneasy talking about her mother. “It would be uncomfortable for any of us to talk about the struggles of any of our family members in such a public way, especially when your family members are living,” Ms. Doyle said. “And Dorothy was a very private person.” Mrs. Clinton was also fiercely private. When her husband first ran for president in 1992, Mrs. Clinton vehemently shielded Chelsea and her parents from the spotlight. She lost her temper when aides proposed a video of Chelsea, to show that Bill Clinton was a good family man, to be broadcast at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Mrs. Rodham died in 2011 at the age of 92. Her daughter has said that one of her mother’s heartbreaks was that she was never able to attend college. After she graduated from high school in California, her mother lured her back to Chicago with a promise that her new husband would pay for tuition. Dorothy dreamed of attending Northwestern University. But it turned out that her mother had lied, and actually wanted her back in Chicago only as a housekeeper. Eventually she found secretarial work. “I’d hoped so hard that my mother would love me that I had to take the chance and find out,” Mrs. Rodham once said. “When she didn’t, I had nowhere else to go.” *Hillary Clinton Plans to Show Her Roots in Rally Speech* <http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-plans-to-show-her-roots-in-rally-speech-1434066559>* // WSJ // Laura Meckler – June 11, 2015* Hillary Clinton plans to show how her policy prescriptions are rooted in her family’s personal history during the first rally of her presidential campaign, on Saturday. Mrs. Clinton’s speech, to supporters gathering on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, will portray her as a fighter who learned to navigate life’s challenges from her mother, who was abandoned by her own parents but went on to create a stable, middle-class upbringing for her children. Aides said Mrs. Clinton will cite her mother’s example in explaining that all children need someone in their corner. The story of Mrs. Clinton’s mother is meant to address what campaign aides say is the central question in the election-which candidate voters can count on to fight for them. “She’s not a quitter, and you can count on her to grind it out and get the job done,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign communications director, said of Mrs. Clinton. “We think it’s important people understand where that conviction comes from.” Mrs. Clinton will use Saturday’s rally, before an expected crowd of thousands, in a sense to reintroduce herself to voters. After a long period in public life, Mrs. Clinton is known for controversies ranging from the so-called Whitewater scandal, an Arkansas land deal gone bad, during her husband’s terms in the White House to recent issues surrounding her use of a personal email account and server for her government work as secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton will focus on other aspects of her biography-such as her work as a young lawyer on behalf of children-to show that she consistently fights for those needing help. On Thursday, the Republican National Committee released a TV ad ahead of the Saturday speech saying that Mrs. Clinton has lost public trust. “Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign reset won’t change a thing,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “Most people don’t think she’s trustworthy, and she’s still out-of-touch with everyday Americans.” From New York, she’ll travel to Iowa for a house party to be simulcast across the state and an organizing event in Des Moines. Visits to the other early voting states of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada will follow.The Saturday rally marks a new phase of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. A candidate for two months, Mrs. Clinton so far has appeared at small events, such as round table policy discussions. For the first time in the race, Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, will appear with her on stage. Each day of next week will have a biographical theme, Ms. Palmieri said. The campaign is also producing a biographical video highlighting Mrs. Clinton’s work, starting with her advocacy for children as a young attorney. Aides said that Mrs. Clinton’s approach in reintroducing herself to voters will address concerns expressed in some polls that voters don't find her honest and trustworthy. “We think the question on voters’ minds is who can you trust to fight for you?” Ms. Palmieri said. No new policy details are expected in Saturday’s speech, though Mrs. Clinton will mention many of her priorities if elected. They include addressing college affordability and wage stagnation and expanding early childhood education, all topics she’s mentioned on the campaign trail already. So far, Mrs. Clinton has expansively discussed her views on social policy such as immigration, voting rights and gay rights, but she offered few details of her economic plan, such as how to approach Wall Street regulation, how much to raise the minimum wage and whether she would advance a pending Pacific rim trade deal. Aides said Saturday’s speech was the not the right venue to flesh out policy details and that more policy details will come in speeches beginning next month. Despite Mrs. Clinton’s long experience in the public eye, her advisers say many people still don’t know important parts of her personal history, including the story of her mother, Dorothy Rodham. Mrs. Rodham’s parents divorced, and neither one wanted their two daughters, Mrs. Clinton wrote in her book “Hard Choices,” where said her mother’s childhood had been marked by “trauma and abandonment.” The Rodham girls were sent to live with grandparents, who Mrs. Clinton described as severe and unloving. After high school, young Dorothy Rodham moved to Chicago in hopes of reconnecting with her mother but was spurned again. Mrs. Clinton wrote that she learned from her mother to face adversity through perseverance and to “never quit.’’ *With stories of mother's struggle, Clinton seeks reintroduction in first major campaign speech* <http://www.newser.com/article/4e9c2155b6424ee4be46e472bd8b17ca/with-stories-of-mothers-struggle-clinton-seeks-reintroduction-in-first-major-campaign-speech.html>* // AP // Lisa Lerer & Ken Thomas* Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of the best-known figures in American politics, will seek to reintroduce herself to voters on Saturday by telling the story of her mother's childhood struggles, pitching her 2016 presidential campaign as a fight on behalf of such everyday Americans. In the first major speech of her bid for the Democratic nomination, Clinton plans to pay tribute to the hard work of Americans who she'll argue helped the country emerge from the Great Recession, saying they deserve to be rewarded for their sacrifices. "It is your time," Clinton will say, according to aides who described the speech she'll deliver from New York City's Roosevelt Island. While Republicans have already spent months seeking to make the 2016 election a referendum on Clinton, her speech aims to present the decision facing voters as more than just an assessment of her career as a former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state. Instead, her campaign wants to cast the race as a choice about the economic future of the middle class. Among her campaign aides, Clinton refers to the election as a "job interview" and the question before voters as a "hiring decision." "We think the question is: Can I count on you to be that person who is going to fight for me?" said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign's communications director. The speech, Palmieri said, will showcase Clinton's differences with a large, and what she will describe as a monolithic, Republican presidential field. Her remarks also represent an effort by her campaign to cast off the shadow of scandal that has dogged her over the past several months. Clinton has seen her personal approval ratings drop amid questions about her wealth, use of a private email account and server as secretary of state, and the financial dealings of her family charity. The emphasis on her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, is a change in course from Clinton's failed White House bid in 2008, when her campaign focused on her experience and toughness, presenting her as an American version of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Rodham died in 2011 after a life that has been described as Dickensian. Abandoned at a young age by her parents, she was sent as an 8-year-old with her 3-year-old sister on a four-day journey to live with strict, unloving grandparents in California. At the age of 14, she left their house to work for three dollars per week as a mother's helper. She eventually arrived in Chicago, where she married Hugh Rodham, a traveling salesman, and raised Clinton and her two brothers. In her nearly four decades of public life, Clinton has often cited her mother as an inspiration, recounting how she pushed her daughter to stand-up for herself. One of her earliest memories, Clinton has said, is her mother telling her to challenge a neighborhood bully. "I said, just go out there and show them you're not afraid," Rodham said in a rare 2004 interview with Oprah Winfrey. "And if she does hit you again, which she kept doing, hit her back." While Rodham largely stayed out of the public eye, Clinton has long credited her mother with giving her a love of learning and a sense of compassion. "She has empathy for other people's unfortunate circumstances," Rodham said of her daughter in a 2007 campaign ad. "I've always admired that because that isn't always true of people." Clinton will be joined by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, at Saturday's rally, marking the first time the family has been seen together in public since Clinton announced her intention to again run for the White House in early April. After the speech, she'll embark on a tour of early voting states, with events focused on her relationship with her mother, work as a young lawyer on behalf of poor children, and her father's background as a veteran and small businessman. In the coming weeks, her campaign will begin rolling out specific policy initiatives on issues including college affordability, jobs and the economy. Those policies, campaign aides argue, will help build Democratic enthusiasm for her bid, despite the lack of a serious primary challenge. "They're a great organizing tool," said Marlon Marshall, Clinton's head of early state strategy. *Clinton's launch speech to focus on her mother's life* <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/clintons-launch-speech-to-focus-on-her-mothers-life-118907.html>* // Politico // Annie Karni – June 11, 2015* After nearly two and a half decades in the glare of the public spotlight, Hillary Clinton will reintroduce herself on Saturday by highlighting her personal journey marked heavily by the deprivations faced by her own mother. Starting with the story of her mother’s abusive and traumatic childhood, Clinton will explain the role her family played in making her an advocate for other people, campaign officials told POLITICO, previewing the highly touted speech on New York’s Roosevelt Island that will set the tone for the rest of her campaign. (Chelsea and Bill Clinton will attend, but Bill Clinton will have no speaking role.) That personal focus will be driven home by the release, shortly afterwards, of a biographical video about Clinton’s career as a fighter for the middle-class, dating back to her work for the Children’s Defense Fund after graduating from law school. While Clinton has often spoken in recent months about her pride in becoming a grandmother, it is another matriarch, Dorothy Rodham, who will be the binding theme in her remarks Saturday. Dorothy Rodham’s dysfunctional and abusive parents shipped her off to live with her grandparents in California when she was 8. But the grandparents proved no more capable of caring for a young child. By age 14, Rodham had fled from her grandparents home to live with a family working as a housekeeper earning $3 a week. It was there that Rodham for the first time saw what a functional family acted like, Clinton will say. And it is her mother’s surrogate family, she will say, who first motivated her to be a champion for everyday Americans who need an outside advocate to help them achieve a better life. “Her story is wanting to be an advocate for other people. Where does it all come from? That’s where it all comes from,” said communications director Jennifer Palmieri, referring to Dorothy Rodham’s story. “We think that’s an important thing for people to understand. Some people know it, we think a lot of people don’t.” In her memoir, “Living History,” Clinton wrote of her mother’s tragic childhood: “I thought often of my own mother’s neglect and mistreatment at the hands of her parents and grandparents, and how other caring adults filled the emotional void to help her.” That is the theme she will strike Saturday. It’s been decades since Clinton lived a life that could be relatable to any of the voters she seeks to represent. Hillary and Bill Clinton together earned more than $30 million since 2014 alone, according to a recent financial disclosure. But the focus on her mother’s childhood and her own middle-class upbringing in suburban Chicago allows Clinton to draw on personal stories relatable to the “everyday Americans” she seeks to represent. She is also expected to strike an economic populist message in explaining her vision for the country. She will state that prosperity should not be reserved for CEOs and hedge fund managers, but should be available to everyday Americans, according to campaign officials. Her message to middle-class families struggling to make it: “It is your time.” Clinton is not expected to roll out and detailed policy proposals in the speech, which campaign officials described as the “foundational document” of her campaign. Those detailed policy proposals will begin to be rolled out in July, with her platform on student loans, and continue into the fall. But Clinton will outline some of the fights she wants to take on, including: college affordability, early childhood education, national security and wages, Palmieri said. And she will say frame the race as a clear choice for Americans, between Clinton’s ideas and the Republicans’ top-down economic policies, like lower taxes for the rich and fewer regulations for corporations. On social policies, she will frame the Republican field as out of touch with where the country has moved. “The question of the campaign is, who is the candidate in the race who understands what my life is like, what the problems are, has solutions and is going to hang in and fight for me everyday and get things done,” Palmieri said. “There’s not any candidate that’s better qualified than her to be that fighter for people.” Clinton, Palmieri said, is still in the process of editing her own speech, and has spent a lot of time figuring out how best to frame her first big-picture pitch to voters. Campaign officials said despite the fact that Clinton has been on the national stage for over two decades, it was important to her and to them to tell her family story again. “We’re starting from scratch here,” Palmieri said. “We’re going through all the paces and explaining why you’re motivated to have been an advocate in the first place. we think it’s an important part of the process.” Wonk Warrior *Inside the relaunch of Hillary Clinton* <http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-2016-wonk-warrior-118910.html#ixzz3cqIu3GIg>* // Politico Magazine // Glenn Thrush - June 12, 2015* Hillary Clinton hasn’t always been a profile in political courage, but she’s had her moments. One of them came in late December 2006, a month before Clinton announced her first run for the presidency, as she huddled with her team to discuss policy proposals to differentiate her from two rivals flanking her on the left, Barack Obama and John Edwards. The conversation, which included former Clinton White House aides like Gene Sperling and Neera Tanden, who still have the candidate’s ear today, bogged down on the biggest, nastiest policy fight of her life, health care. Several of Clinton’s top advisers, the ’90s debacle fresh in everyone’s mind, counseled her to avoid proposing an individual mandate, the politically unpopular requirement that the uninsured buy insurance or face penalties. When it came to the widely unpopular individual mandate, however, she was adamant about plowing ahead, according to a former aide who related the story. “If I run for president, I’m going to run on universal health care,” Clinton told the group—and authorized attacks on her Democratic opponent Obama for opposing a mandate (he would eventually embrace it as president, much to Clinton’s amusement). “What’s the point of running if I’m not going to run on universal health care?” she asked her team. Eight years later, on the eve of Clinton’s formal campaign kickoff in New York this weekend, the “what’s the point of running?” question looms over the presumptive Democratic front-runner and her campaign. Over the past few months, even some of Clinton’s most fervent and loyal supporters have fretted to me, over and over, that she hasn’t yet articulated a compelling rationale for her second race for the White House beyond the sense that it’s finally her turn and her political view that she’s facing a relatively weak Republican field. Clinton is no Teddy Kennedy, who suffered the most infamous case of lockjaw in political history when asked why he wanted to be president during the 1980 campaign; Her problem is that she’s far more interested in the how than the why of the presidency, and views her greatest assets as a willingness to engage all participants in a debate and a workmanlike capacity to hammer out policy solutions. Clinton’s big speech will be a rare opportunity to change that narrative. It will be held at New York’s Roosevelt Island—a none-to-subtle signal that she’s aligning herself with FDR, the boldest of Democratic presidents and the one who established the deepest personal connection with voters—something Clinton has struggled to do throughout her three-decade career. And she’ll do so with a broad progressive agenda, her advisers told me, studded with policy proposals to be unveiled in greater depth in a series of speeches this summer, starting with an ambitious plan to cut student debt and lower tuition and a program to coax corporations into paying their workers more. Clinton’s staff believes this is where the campaign will be won or lost—it will signal to voters, and to ideologically driven Obama donors, that she’s every bit as committed to their cause as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders—or the Hillary Clinton of 1993 for that matter. This isn’t some pro forma exercise for Clinton, who started her professional career working on child welfare programs and sits, poolside, with briefing books when she’s on vacation. Policy is what Hillary Clinton lives for, and her team is committed to portray her as a wonk warrior, which has the added virtue of being true. In 2008, the candidate emphasized her inevitability and her toughness (she was obsessed with the idea that male voters would view a woman as a weak potential commander-in-chief), but for 2016, she’s building her strategy around a series of domestic policy rollouts. How she’s doing this is equally telling: Advisers told me it was an elaborate, even West Wing-style policy process, with concentric circles of advisers and pollsters who are cooking up a comprehensive economic policy, some of which will be for public consumption, some of which will be employed if she’s elected. Over the past year, Clinton has quietly met with a rotating—and sharp-elbowed—cast of Democratic economic experts, pollsters, staffers and advocates to craft a just-so economic program to attack wage stagnation and economic inequality. The very explicit goal has been political: to invent a program for Clinton that captures the popular imagination—and, to no small extent, redefines a candidate with a trustworthiness problem. “We’re talking about three- and four-hour meetings, briefing papers, weeks of back-and-forth,” says Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who says the candidate will unveil pieces of her agenda, one by one, in a series of events starting in July and stretching to the fall. “This is the foundational work of the election. She’s a wonk. This is stuff she loves to do.” What’s emerging—and her staff maintains she’s made no big decisions on the stickiest subjects, such as whether to propose tax increases and Wall Street regulation—are classic Clinton thread-the-needle proposals, albeit with a slightly sharper needle, pointing unmistakably to the left. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz had a one-on-one meeting with Clinton last December to discuss his aggressive progressive agenda, pushing for deep tax cuts against the wealthy and pay cuts for CEOs. She already knew the subject inside out, he told me, and probed him for details on how some of his proposals could be implemented. Like most of the economists and advocates she’s met with recently, Stiglitz left satisfied he’d gotten a fair hearing, but with no concrete commitment. “I would be surprised at this point that she would want to make it clear where she is going on the specifics, so I wouldn’t expect to hear that from her anytime soon,” said Stiglitz, who worked on Bill Clinton’s economic team—then went on to become one of the country’s most influential champions of economic equality. “My sense was that she was very responsive to the overall agenda. … It’s important for her to get elected, but we want to make sure that she understands that we have to deal with the failure of the system overall, and not just make small changes.” The goal, according to a dozen people close to the process who spoke to POLITICO, is to find the “sweet spot”—bold solutions that aren’t too bold. She has tasked her small in-house policy team led by former State Department aide Jake Sullivan with a pragmatic mission: Attack the biggest problems—higher education debt, a tax system that encourages short-term gain over long-tern investments, out-of-control CEO pay, crumbling infrastructure, the non-job-security “gig” economy, women’s pay equity—in a way that satisfies a restive left wing of the party. But do it without needlessly alienating general election voters, or potential donors. “She wants to do just enough,” is how one New York-based Clinton donor who speaks to both Clintons regularly put it. *** As important—and complex—as the health care debate was seven years ago when Clinton last ran for president, it’s dwarfed today by the sheer magnitude of the structural problems in the American economy, a sapping of dynamism and middle-income purchasing power that has given consumers (and voters) a permanent sense of the blahs, even as big banks and corporations book record profits. *Hillary Clinton: "It is your time"* <http://www.vox.com/2015/6/11/8768601/Hillary-Clinton-rally-Roosevelt>* // VOX // Jonathan Allen – June 11, 2015* Trying to shed an image of elitism, Hillary Clinton will deliver a concise message for the masses during her first big campaign rally Saturday: "It is your time." The 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner is scheduled to speak at Four Freedoms Park on New York's Roosevelt Island, a site that offers the symbolism of linking herself to Franklin Roosevelt, the well-to-do president whose New Deal social programs provided work and financial security for Americans during and after the Great Depression. The Clinton campaign on Thursday released a basic sketch of the themes of her speech, which is being billed as the formal announcement of a campaign that began two months ago. Since then, she has focused on raising money and meeting with voters in small groups in early primary states. Now Clinton is ready to articulate her motivation for seeking the presidency, her vision for the country, and the contrast she will draw with her Republican rivals for the job, according to her campaign. The last point, which will be driven by a populist argument that Republican policies benefit those in the top economic strata, connects to Clinton's main theme: She wants to be the champion for what she calls "everyday Americans." Her mother's example She will also lean heavily on the story of her late mother to explain her rationale for public service and seeking the presidency, a choice that appears to reflect her desire to talk more about her personal life — and about her gender — in this campaign than she did in her failed 2008 bid. "She is a well-known figure, but when you're asking the American people to support you as president, even if it is for the second time, there is no skipping of steps. If you want to understand Hillary Clinton, and what has motivated her career of fighting for kids and families, her mother is a big part of the story," Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement. "The example she learned from her mother's story is critical to knowing what motivated Hillary Clinton to first get involved in public service, and why people can count on her to fight for them and their families now." Her campaign also revealed that she will use a video to show biographical highlights of her career. Clinton advisers have said the speech will provide the basic architecture for specific policies she intends to detail over the course of the summer, but her campaign did not offer any insight into what exactly she will say about her platform on Saturday. *Why is Hillary Clinton running for president? She'll answer that at a New York rally* <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-clinton-speech-preview-20150611-story.html>* // LA Times // Evan Halper – June 11, 2015* llary Rodham Clinton will forcefully lay out her motivation for running for president during a major rally in New York on Saturday, campaign officials say, drawing from her personal story to frame the theme of a White House run that some Democrats worry has lacked in inspiration. In her formal announcement speech at Four Freedoms Park, on a small city island named after Franklin D. Roosevelt, Clinton will talk about how the tough childhood experiences of her mother drove her to enter public service. She will seek to dispel the notion that she is running because it is her turn to inherit the Democratic nomination and offer instead a personal, detailed biographical sketch that campaign advisors say will make a compelling case for why the White House is her calling. The speech will be Clinton’s most expansive since she announced her candidacy in April, and it provides an opportunity to reboot a campaign that is way ahead in the polls but has yet to spark the kind of enthusiasm among the grass roots that twice carried Barack Obama to victory. Advisors have been working on the address for weeks. They are seeking to replicate for Clinton the kind of response Obama triggered with his 2007 kickoff address in Springfield, Ill., where he presented himself as an agent of change and hope. “This is an important foundational moment for the campaign,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director. “If she wins, this is how she will govern. ... She has been working on this for a while." The absence of any formidable opponent has allowed Clinton to run a cautious campaign, sticking to boilerplate Democratic issues and mostly avoiding answering questions from the media. Campaign officials say her approach will change as she moves into this new phase of her run. The roundtables with handpicked audiences will soon be accompanied on the calendar by larger, unscripted events such as town halls and news conferences. But like everything else in the Clinton campaign, Saturday’s speech will be carefully crafted. The setting is notable for its associations with Clinton’s own background. New York was where she launched her political career, serving the state as a U.S. senator. Roosevelt Island is, of course, named for the architect of the New Deal, and Clinton’s messaging – if not her actual policy proposals – borrows heavily from the time. “She will talk about the principles behind FDR’s policies that continue to be true to the Democratic Party,” Palmieri said. “He is someone that she has admired and been inspired by.” Some parts of the speech that campaign officials previewed Thursday, in fact, could just as easily have come from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who is also running for the nomination, albeit as a major underdog to Clinton. She will say that hedge fund managers and bankers need to take more responsibility for the welfare of the country, ostensibly by contributing more of their earnings to government. She will herald “everyday Americans” for making sacrifices that mended the national economy and proclaim it is their turn to be rewarded, announcing, “It is your time.” Clinton will be accompanied in New York by her husband, former President Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea. It will be the first time the family has appeared together at a campaign event since Clinton announced her run. The candidate was notably absent from another major family event this week, the annual gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative in Denver. It's part of the family's foundation, which has been a source of relentless negative press for Clinton of late, as reporters investigate the millions of dollars in donations it received from foreigners with business interests in America while she was secretary of State. Hillary Clinton attacks Republicans over voting restrictions Saturday’s rally will be followed by a whirlwind of events in early caucus and primary states. Clinton will be in Iowa by nightfall on Saturday, in New Hampshire on Monday and then off to campaign events in South Carolina and Nevada by the middle of next week. Clinton will tease some of the big policy proposals the campaign will unveil over the summer. Whether the speech will live up to the billing of campaign officials as an event that will give voters a personal connection to Clinton remains to be seen – many of the proclamations Clinton intends to make in it seem a mere amplification of points she has been raising already in more intimate settings. But the goal is to supplant what voters may think they know about Clinton’s personal story with a more textured portrait to which they can relate and find inspiration in. “People know she is a fighter who does not quit and hangs in there,” Palmieri said. “It is important that they understand where this comes from. … She has been on the national stage for a long time, but we think there is a lot to fill in. When you are asking people to put their faith in you to be their president, it is a big ask." Clinton will talk in detail about her mother, the late Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned as a child, sent to California to live with harsh and unloving grandparents, and found redemption in her early teen years through the kindness of an employer who provided cheap room and board and encouraged her to finish high school. “Clinton will discuss how her mother shaped the person she is today and why she could not duck away from this fight,” said a preview from the campaign. Clinton will attribute her “fighter’s instinct” to her mother, according to the campaign, as well as her belief that “everyone needs a champion.” The speech will be accompanied by a major social media push, centered on a video the campaign is producing about the “fights Hillary Clinton has taken on during her career.” *Clinton plans personal kick-off speech, but Democrats want aggressive agenda* <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-plans-personal-kick-off-speech-but-democrats-want-aggressive-agenda/2015/06/11/4bc107e6-1077-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html>* // WaPo // Philip Rucker & Anne Gearan – June 11, 2015* Democratic activists have been hungry for their presidential front-runner to articulate a detailed and aggressive path forward on issues ranging from the economy to the environment to gay rights. Hillary Rodham Clinton will begin her effort to meet those expectations on Saturday when she formally kicks off her 2016 campaign with a major speech in New York City. At an outdoor rally on Roosevelt Island, Clinton will cloak her candidacy in the symbolism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal as she offers her rationale for running and her vision for a more activist federal government. But Clinton is not planning to offer specific policy prescriptions — at least not yet. Instead, her advisers said Thursday, she will speak about her upbringing as the daughter of a woman who was abandoned as a child and why she sees herself as an advocate for those left behind in a fast-changing economy. She also intends to draw contrasts with Republicans, portraying them as champions of corporations and the super-rich. “It’s a big speech, but it’s not the venue to do a lot of specifics on individual pieces of policy,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director. “The speech is the cornerstone of the campaign — that’s how she looks at this. It’s the foundation from which you run the rest of the campaign, and if she is elected president it’s the foundation of how you govern.” “She can’t just be a tribune of the Democrats,” said Robert Reich, a liberal economist who served as labor secretary in former president Bill Clinton’s administration. “It would be useful for her to make a very strong economic statement about why inequality is eating away at our economy, our democracy and the moral fabric of the country.” Clinton’s speech comes amid an intense debate on Capitol Hill over an Obama-backed trade bill that has divided Democrats. Clinton, who as secretary of state was involved in negotiating the trade deal, so far has been careful not to take a position — much to the chagrin of labor unions and liberal leaders, who are pressuring her to oppose it. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) — who was campaign manager on Clinton’s 2000 Senate run but has not yet endorsed his former boss — said he wants to see her make “a very clear statement that this trade deal should be opposed and should be stopped.” Otherwise, De Blasio suggested, she could jeopardize the support of working-class voters in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania who were central to her 2008 campaign. “I think it’s very important that she speak up and say there will be no more NAFTA’s,” he said, referring to the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s. It is unclear whether Clinton intends to mention trade. Her campaign aides previewed a markedly personal address framed around the wrenching story of her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned and mistreated as a child and whom Clinton has credited with giving her lessons of hope and perseverance. The heavy emphasis on Clinton’s personal story is part of a rebranding strategy to humanize a candidate who sometimes comes across as chilly and aloof. Her husband, Bill, and their daughter, Chelsea, plan to appear with her on Roosevelt Island — their first appearance of the campaign. Shortly after the speech, Clinton’s campaign will release a biographical video that casts the candidate as a fighter and advocate, dating to the earliest days of her adult life. “The speech is about her — what I think is the diagnosis of the problems in the country, this is my vision of where I want to take the country, here are my solutions,” Palmieri said. Clinton’s solutions, however, will not come until later this summer and fall when she gives a series of policy speeches. Across the Democratic coalition, expectations for Saturday’s event vary. Behind the scenes, environmentalists have been pressing Clinton aides to ensure she prioritizes global warming in her remarks and signal she would be more aggressive than Obama in tackling greenhouse gas emissions. “We believe this speech is a great opportunity for her to make crystal clear that she cares deeply about addressing climate change and will make it a top priority throughout her campaign,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at League of Conservation Voters. Gay rights activists hope Clinton champions priorities beyond legalizing same-sex marriage, such as passing comprehensive federal non-discrimination legislation. “It would benefit her and it would certainly benefit members of our community to see her dedicate herself and be on the record about her commitment to a more inclusive America for all of its people,” said Fred Sainz, a vice president at the Human Rights Campaign. Meanwhile, economic progressives, many of whom tried unsuccessfully to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) into the race, want to see Clinton address economic inequality with specific solutions. Will she call for busting up the big banks? Raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans? Closing the carried interest tax loophole that benefits hedge fund managers? Tougher anti-trust regulations? “I would love to see some specifics — expanding Social Security, debt-free college, holding Wall Street accountable,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, an advocacy group that grew out of former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “But I don’t want to make it sound like there’s a menu and she just needs to go down and check the boxes. The key is we want to see a real fighter out there.” Some activists likened it to the president’s annual “State of the Union” address, in which each interest group hopes the speech touches on its priorities. But many acknowledged, as American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten put it, that the speech will be about “values and aspiration” rather than a policy agenda. “As always happens with anything involving the Clintons, people spend a lot of time thinking about what are they going to do, what are they going to say, but as important a speech as it is, this is one speech,” said Weingarten, who is a Clinton ally, although AFT has not yet made its endorsement. Matt Bennett, a veteran of past Democratic presidential campaigns, said Clinton is smart to put off her policy plans. Otherwise, she would give her opponents targets. “She’s being bombarded with people seeking space in her speech for their wool and mohair subsidies or their piece of the action, but we think it would be unwise for her to go too deep into the details,” said Bennett, a senior vice president at Third Way. “She will be pecked to death by ducks for the next 18 months if she does that.” In the first two months of her campaign, Clinton has given important speeches on three policy matters — immigration, criminal justice and voting rights. But she has said relatively little about the issue many Democrats see as shaping the 2016 election: the structure of the economy. “She’s got to take this on,” Reich said. “She said when she launched her campaign that ‘the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.’ She’s got to tell us what she’s going to do to un-stack the deck.” *Hillary's rally and rationale: More Rodham, less Clinton* <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-rally/index.html>* // CNN // Jeff Zeleny & Dan Merica – June 11, 2015* When Hillary Clinton sweeps onto the stage Saturday for the first major rally of her campaign, she will set aside her family's presidential legacy and concentrate on a chapter of her life she rarely speaks about: the Depression-era story of her mother, Dorothy Rodham. As she seeks to present herself as a candidate who will fight for the middle class, aides say Clinton will turn to lessons learned from her mother, who was abandoned by her parents as a child and was forced to bring herself up. She will argue that her Rodham roots have made her the person she is today, a subtle concession the power of the Clinton legacy alone will not carry her into the White House. "She is a well-known figure but when you're asking the American people to support you as president, even if it is for the second time, there is no skipping of steps," said Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign's communications director. "If you want to understand Hillary Clinton, and what has motivated her career of fighting for kids and families, her mother is a big part of the story." The rally on Saturday at Roosevelt Island in New York, which will be awash in symbolism of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, offers a moment for Clinton to reset her candidacy. She intends to offer a more expansive rationale for why she believes she should be president, an argument that some Democrats believe she and her campaign have failed to clearly articulate. That was among the conversations at a dinner Clinton attended early last week at the home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein in Washington, where several other Democratic women senators gathered for an intimate discussion about her candidacy. They urged Clinton to present herself as more of a fighter, participants said, who is passionate about improving the plight of everyday Americans. Two months after she launched her candidacy, Clinton remains in command of the Democratic nominating fight. Yet she has struggled to rally excitement among some liberals in her party. It's an open question whether there will be enough substance to satisfy critics who have said Clinton has been short on specifics, particularly on trade and other liberal priorities. While the calls for Sen. Elizabeth Warren to enter the race have cooled, the long lines of Democrats waiting to see Sen. Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail underscore that she cannot take anything for granted. The opening chapter of her second presidential bid has been far rockier than she and her advisers expected, more than a dozen Democrats close to the campaign told CNN this week. She enters the summer facing far more questions about her long-term prospects than when she first jumped into the race. A CNN/ORC poll last week found that 57% of Americans thought Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, which was up from 49% in March. And less than half of people feel she cares about people like them, 47%, which is down from 53% last July. Campaign aides familiar with the speech on Saturday say Clinton's chief goal will be to outline her rationale for running, providing voters with a reason to elect her and responding to those who have said her run is based on nothing more than inevitability. The entire day will focus on Clinton, aides said. Although both Bill and Chelsea Clinton will attend -- the first time either will appear at a campaign event -- they will not be the focus and will likely not speak. The speech will be centered around the story of Rodham, aides said, far more than the legacy of Clinton. "The example she learned from her mother's story is critical to knowing what motivated Hillary Clinton to first get involved in public service," Palmieri said on Thursday. "And why people can count on her to fight for them and their families now." Clinton's speech will not be a detailed policy rollout. Instead, the former secretary of state will preview a list of critical policy issues, aides said, but will wait until later in the summer to outline the details of each policy proposal. Aides said that Clinton's speech will be a mix of her biography and vision, with the former first lady arguing that the guiding principle in her campaign will be how America's families are doing, not those at the top. Clinton will repeatedly use the phrase "it is your time," aides said, to hammer home that Americans who help bring the country back from recession now deserve to enjoy the benefits. Campaign aides are producing a biographical video documenting different points in Clinton's career, including her work as a lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund. The Clinton campaign used Hillary Clinton's Twitter account to tease the video that is expected to be released after Saturday's rally. And Clinton's speech, of course, will not be without partisan politics. Aides said she will argue Republicans are a repeat of their predecessors and will ensure voters that she will offer a clear choice in 2016. While the first two months of her candidacy have been intentionally downsized -- small roundtable conversations over big rallies -- Clinton has spent considerable time appearing before small groups of donors. Clinton has personally headlined 37 fundraisers in 13 states. It is likely, given the attendance of each event, that more than $16 million has been raised from Clinton-headlined fundraisers. Her top aides and operatives have headlined dozens more. Clinton aides have said they hope to raise $100 million by the end of 2015. In the weeks after her campaign kickoff, CNN has learned, Clinton will headline four more fundraisers in California, three in Massachusetts and one in Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and New Hampshire. Before June 30, the final day of the first fundraising deadline, Clinton will have personally headlined over 50 fundraisers. "She has to raise a lot of money," said former ambassador Edward Romero, who hosted a Clinton fundraiser in New Mexico earlier this month. "Every candidate has that pressure." *Hillary Clinton Will Evoke Roosevelt and Try to Ease Fears on Trust in New York Speech* <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/us/hillary-clinton-to-invoke-roosevelt-in-new-york-speech-laying-out-vision.html>* // NYT // Amy Chozick – June 11, 2015* Hillary Rodham Clinton, at a major outdoor rally planned for Saturday, will directly address concerns that have emerged in the early weeks of her candidacy, telling voters they can trust her to fight for the middle class and stressing that she cares about their problems, several people briefed on her plans say. The speech, at an event shaping up to be the most ambitious public gathering undertaken by the campaign since Mrs. Clinton began her quest for the White House in April, will be shaped by symbolism as she seeks to make the case for why she should be president. It will be held in New York City on an island named for Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the shadow of diverse middle-class neighborhoods, as Mrs. Clinton tries to evoke the legacy of the New Deal and lay out her vision for a federal government substantially engaged in lifting American families that feel economically insecure and increasingly left behind. Mrs. Clinton has yet to put forth a clear rationale for her candidacy since announcing in a brief online video that she would run for the Democratic nomination. “She has to articulate an authentic, compelling rationale for her candidacy, a cause and vision that is larger than her own ambitions,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama. But the large outdoor event, complete with a marching band and a space for an overflow crowd to watch the speech on giant monitors, must also counteract some signs of decline in Mrs. Clinton’s personal appeal, with polls showing that a growing number of Americans do not trust her or think she understands their lives. A CNN poll released June 2 showed that 57 percent of Americans thought that Mrs. Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, up from 49 percent in March, and that 47 percent of voters thought that Mrs. Clinton “cares about people like you,” down from 53 percent last July. Publicly, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides have shrugged off such polls as evidence that voters distrust Washington and politics in general. Privately, they are strategizing about how to reframe the conversation. Rather than defend attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s trustworthiness regarding her use of a private email address at the State Department while she was secretary of state or foreign donations to her family’s philanthropy, the campaign will seek to turn the trust issue on its head. “But who do you trust more to fight for you when they get in the Oval Office?” the Democratic strategist, Steve Elmendorf, said, repeating a line often used by Mrs. Clinton’s senior advisers. The campaign will try to turn another one of Mrs. Clinton’s challenges, her tendency to incite strong and divisive reactions from people, to her advantage, emphasizing her perceived toughness. Her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, often refers to Mrs. Clinton as a “tenacious fighter,” a theme that will echo throughout the speech and her campaign. Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, will appear with her at the rally, the first time the family will make a joint campaign appearance since Mrs. Clinton became a candidate. Saturday’s event will signal the end of the first phase of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which mainly featured the former first lady holding round-table discussions with small groups of voters. Mrs. Clinton has said that she has learned a lot from those meetings, but they could come across as scripted and lacking in energy, especially as one rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has already drawn large crowds. In the coming weeks, Mrs. Clinton will present more specific policies, speak to larger audiences and appear at town hall gatherings. The staging of Saturday’s event has been meticulous. Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Mrs. Clinton and vice chairwoman of the campaign, and Greg Hale, an Arkansas-based consultant who has handled events for the Clintons for years, have taken a lead on planning. Jim Margolis, the news media consultant behind both of Mr. Obama’s inaugurations, and Mandy Grunwald, the longtime Clinton adviser who helped choreograph the appearance of Mr. Clinton and his family at the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York, have also been involved. For weeks, aides weighed various locations. Rather than choosing Iowa or New Hampshire, they settled on New York, where Mrs. Clinton served as a senator and where a friendly crowd of supporters was simple enough to summon. Looking at a map of New York, aides in the campaign’s Downtown Brooklyn headquarters settled on Roosevelt Island, the 2-mile-by-800-foot strip of land on the East River between Manhattan and Queens. The event is open to the public, and the campaign has received several thousand requests to attend, though the forecast of scattered thunderstorms could affect turnout. The campaign angered some island residents after a community day for children had to be rescheduled. Others have grumbled that the national news media has, in terms of accessibility, compared Roosevelt Island to the nearby jail complex of Rikers Island. (Roosevelt Island is reachable via public transportation as well as a tram that has in the past stalled, leaving passengers suspended over the murky brown waters of the East River.) Mrs. Clinton will deliver the speech at Four Freedoms Park, a memorial with a grassy tree-lined mall, named after the four tenets that Roosevelt presented in his 1941 State of the Union address: freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear. She has defined her campaign as taking on “four fights,” including strengthening the economy, helping families and communities, getting unaccountable money out of politics and protecting the country from foreign threats. She is expected to evoke Roosevelt’s policies to reiterate her belief that government is needed to help lift wages, create jobs, make college and health care more affordable, and rebuild antiquated infrastructure. “It’s important for the campaign to demonstrate the sense of energy and excitement,” the Democratic pollster Geoff Garin said. But what is more important, he added, “is laying out an agenda that makes people feel that Hillary Clinton will be a fighter for them.” Mrs. Clinton’s message will reflect the Democratic Party’s leftward shift and stand in sharp contrast to the new covenant of personal responsibility that Mr. Clinton preached when he announced his candidacy in 1991 at the Old Statehouse in Little Rock, Ark. “Government’s responsibility is to create more opportunity,” Mr. Clinton said in that speech. “The people’s responsibility is to make the most of it.” Dan Schwerin, a policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton, is among the aides who have helped her shape her speech. Mrs. Clinton has already tested many of the main themes, including a populist critique of Wall Street excesses. She has called for equal pay for women, an overhaul of the criminal justice system and voting rights policies that would make the process easier for young people and minorities. Framing all of this with the pomp and celebration of an official announcement speech can serve not just as an introduction for a candidate (or in Mrs. Clinton’s case, a reintroduction), but also as a crucial chance to counteract negative opinions more than a year before a general election. In 2000, Vice President Al Gore’s campaign tried to reposition his wooden and cerebral demeanor as an advantage against the more affable George W. Bush. “At the end of the day, with critical decisions impacting your family, do you want someone you know is smart or not?” was how Chris Lehane, an adviser to Mr. Gore, summed up the strategy. Or, in shorthand: “You date Bush and marry Gore.” With Chelsea nearby, Mrs. Clinton will remind voters about her years as a working mother, her experience working for the Children’s Defense Fund in the 1970s and her record of as an advocate for women and children as a first lady, senator and secretary of state. The campaign also has a biographical video in the works. “You can become a caricature of how the press has determined who you are,” said Thomas R. Nides, a friend and adviser who worked for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. “But the good news about Hillary Clinton is that she has a long history of who she is and what she stands for.” *Hillary Clinton Plans to Re-Introduce Herself to Voters* <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-plans-to-re-introduce-herself-to-voters/>* // CBS News // Stephanie Condon – June 11, 2015* After decades in the spotlight, Hillary Clinton this Saturday will use her first major address as a 2016 presidential candidate to re-introduce herself to voters, explaining how her personal story has driven her career aims of helping children and middle class families. Since launching her 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination in April, Clinton has held small events in key voting states. This Saturday's speech and rally at Four Freedoms Park in New York City marks the next phase of her campaign, according to a campaign official. Four key elements will comprise Clinton's speech: her motivations, who she's fighting for, her vision for the nation and a comparison between her vision and the GOP vision. The undergirding concept behind the whole speech is her personal story, the Clinton campaign said. Clinton, of course, heads into the 2016 race as one of the most well-known presidential candidates ever, after serving as secretary of state, a U.S. senator, the first lady of the United States and the first lady of Arkansas. Still, the campaign says, her personal story explains Clinton's drive to be a champion for everyday Americans. "She is a well-known figure, but when you're asking the American people to support you as president, even if it is for the second time, there is no skipping of steps," Jennifer Palmieri, the Hillary for America communications director, told CBS News in a statement. That story starts with Hillary Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham. In her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton wrote, "No one had a bigger influence on my life or did more to shape the person I became" than her mother. Dorothy Rodham's childhood was "marked by trauma and abandonment," Clinton wrote, noting that her mother was on her own and working as a housekeeper and nanny by age 14. In spite of the challenges she faced, Dorothy Rodham told her daughter she thrived in life because of the help of others. In her speech, according to a campaign official, Clinton will share that story and talk about how she adopted a fighter's instinct from her mother. She'll also explain how her mother's reliance on the help of others shaped her belief that everyone needs a champion. That belief drove her career in public service. To further share her story, Clinton's campaign is producing a biographical video, expected to be rolled out in the days after Saturday's event. It will highlight Clinton's work as an advocate for children and families, dating back to her work as a young lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund. Meanwhile, as Clinton readies her message for Saturday, Republicans are ratcheting up their own efforts to frame Clinton's campaign. The Republican National Committee is releasing a new ad, called "Wrong for America," as part of its larger #StopHillary campaign. The ad is airing on cable in Washington, D.C. and New York City starting Friday. The new effort also includes a targeted digital push in the key states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, in conjunction with Clinton's upcoming campaign stops. *Hillary Clinton gets personal* <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-gets-personal>* // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald – June 11, 2015* Hillary Clinton will lay out a personal rationale for her second attempt at the presidency Saturday in a major campaign rally to be held at a party honoring Frank Delano Roosevelt in New York City. The former secretary of state soft-launched her White House bid April 12 in a video posted online. But Saturday’s rally will mark the beginning a full-fledged presidential campaign after eight weeks of a low-key ramp-up. In the presence of a giant bust of FDR on an island named after the former president between Manhattan and Queens, Clinton will offer her most expansive remarks yet on why she’s running for president. Thousands are expected, with tickets to the event no long available on Clinton’s campaign website. Bill and Hillary Clinton will be on hand, but are not expected to speak. Those who make onto Roosevelt Island or watch on TV from home will see a very different Clinton than the one who lost the 2008 Democratic primary. Whereas Clinton was seen as impersonal and bloodless then, she now says the chief motivation of her public life is her mother. Whereas Clinton was seen as moderate and cautious then, she will now embrace a president who remade the country in a more progressive image. It shows that as the Democratic Party has moved left on social issues and both parties have become more populist, Clinton is finally catching up, said Bob Shrum, a former Clinton White House aide. “Maybe it’s left compared to the era of triangulation, but the era of triangulation over and is not where the party is or where the country is, as she discovered in 2008,” he said. Times have changed and with even Republicans discussing income inequality, Clinton is demonstrating she gets it. “I think she’s sending a very clear signal,” said Shrum. That comes from a personal place, she will say. On Saturday, Clinton will say that her mother’s brutal childhood is what motivated her to get into public service and work as an advocate of women and children, the campaign official said. Her mother’s story will be the foundation of her rationale for running for president. As a child, Dorothy Rodham was abandoned by her parents and sent to live with strict relatives. Not able to bare it anymore, she ran away at 14 and worked as a housekeeper for a kind-hearted woman who took her in and showed her what parenting should look like. That trauma and resilience, Clinton has said, taught her and how to be tough and made her want to help people in difficult circumstances. “No one had a bigger influence on my life or did more to shape the person I became,” Clinton wrote in her 2014 autobiography “Hard Choices.” Clinton’s mother will likely emerge as a recurring motif of the campaign. Immediately following her kick-off in New York City, Clinton will travel to Iowa and then New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, and is likely to discuss her mother there, too. “If you want to understand Hillary Clinton, and what has motivated her career of fighting for kids and families, her mother is a big part of the story,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director. In an attempt to reintroduce her to voters – or introduce her for the first time to millennials, a critical voting bloc that missed most of the 1990s – the campaign has produced a biographical video covering Clinton’s lengthy career, the official added. It starts with her work at the Children’s Defense Fund, just after she left Yale Law School, and continues through her time at the State Department. It will be unveiled in the coming days. The rest of her speech will strike a decidedly populist economic tone, the official said. And she’ll preview policy ideas that will be rolled out in more detail later this summer. And Clinton will take on Republicans. Instead of addressing the Democrats running against her for the party’s nomination, she’ll look clear past them to the hypothetical GOP nominee she would face next year if she wins the primary. She’ll frame the election as a choice between her economic ideas and those of the Republicans. Likely to go unmentioned are Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who have all mentioned Clinton in their presidential announcements. Like many good presidential kick-offs, Clinton’s launch will be about symbolism as well as substance. Barack Obama chose the place where Abraham Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speech. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders announced at outdoor rallies in the cities where they once were mayor. Rick Perry last week launched his run in front of a cargo plane he flew in the Air Force. Clinton chose a park honoring FDR in the state where she served as senator for eight years, a choice campaign officials say is meant to invoke Roosevelt’s legacy. “She could have chosen anywhere to make her announcement,” said Felicia Wong, the President of the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank dedicated to carrying on the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. “By choosing this venue, she and her team have put themselves squarely in the legacy and the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt, who re-wrote the rules of the 20th century.” Roosevelt is credited with creating the modern welfare state, saving the economy from collapse, taking on entrenched wealthy interests, and defeating an expansionist, totalitarian foreign power. At the same time, he built the modern Democratic Party and the values that would emerge at its core to this day. Clinton has long seen Eleanor Roosevelt, a fellow first lady, as a role model and last year spoke admiringly about Teddy Roosevelt, saying she devoured Ken Burns’ expansive documentary series on the family. The kick-off comes at time when Clinton is trying to win over restive progressives. Tying herself to Roosevelt is a smart move, says New York-based Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “It is very much aimed to the left,” said Sheinkopf. “She needs to get rid of everybody who’s pestering her on her left, and one of the best ways to get rid of them is to invoke Franklin Roosevelt.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a leader of the national progressive movement, will notably not attend the rally, his office has said. Clinton and de Blasio are longtime friends and he managed her Senate campaign in 2000. So far, however, de Blasio has declined to endorse Clinton’s presidential bid. Sheinkopf thinks de Blasio is playing hard to get in order to amp up the value of his endorsement down the road. Comparing de Blasio to “artillery” when it comes to defending her left flank, Sheinkopf said it’s too soon: “De Blasio is less needed now and more more needed later. Why do you want to use a howitzer now, when frankly when you can use much lighter weapons?” Her embrace of Roosevelt and progressive ideas is about more than the primary, however. She’ll need the so-called Obama coalition to turn out for her in a general election if she makes it there, and these are the issues they care about. “With the increasing polarization of the country, the fact is the key to winning these election is turning out your base,” said Shrum, who has held senior roles in Democratic campaigns. Still, Clinton has not yet weighed in on a few top issue for liberals. The House will vote Friday on a Trade Promotion Authority bill, which labor unions and others are fighting tooth and nail. That will have to wait until sometime after her kick-off. *Hillary Clinton Will Push Personal Story at Campaign Launch* <http://time.com/3918339/hillary-clinton-launch-new-york-city/?xid=tcoshare>* // TIME // Sam Frizell – June 11, 2015* For Hillary Clinton, this campaign is personal. When the democratic presidential candidate holds her much hyped rally on Saturday in New York City, her team said Thursday, she will emphasize her own history, discussing her family, her mother and her upbringing as a central part of her rationale for running for President. The speech will build on many of the tropes that Clinton has developed throughout the first two months of the campaign, as she uses her past to talk about income inequality and building stronger families. Much of her remarks will also center on her domestic and economic vision for the country. Clinton will in particular talk about her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned by her parents and worked as a secretary before marrying Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham. “If you want to understand Hillary Clinton, and what has motivated her career of fighting for kids and families, her mother is a big part of the story,” Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s director of communications, said in an email to reporters. “The example she learned from her mother’s story is critical to knowing what motivated Hillary Clinton to first get involved in public service, and why people can count on her to fight for them and their families now.” In 2007 and 2008, Clinton ran as a determined and businesslike candidate whose unofficial campaign slogan was “ready on Day One,” turning off some voters who found her difficult to relate to and distant. This time, Clinton has taken an entirely different, speaking frequently about her granddaughter, Charlotte, her father’s drapery business and her mother. Her website prominently displays photos of her as a baby and during her younger days with Bill Clinton. On Thursday, her newly minted Instagram feed featured a photo of her as a toddler riding a tricycle with the caption “Pedal to the metal. #tbt” Clinton’s team is marking Saturday as official the start of her full-blown campaign, though she announced her candidacy in mid-April and has been holding small events in the four early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada over the past nine weeks. During those months she largely insulated herself from the media while holding carefully controlled roundtable conversations with voters. She will deliver her speech on Roosevelt Island in New York’s East River, a narrow four-mile-long residential haven with views of midtown Manhattan and Queens. Saturday’s event will be the first large rally of Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Since joining the race and reentering partisan politics, Clinton’s favorability among voters has dropped. According to a CNN poll published last week, 57% of Americans view her as dishonest and trustworthy, up from 49% in March. Clinton’s campaign will be resting their hopes on her personal story reinvigorating voters over the course of the campaign. “There’s still a lot of things people don’t know about her,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist unaffiliated with Clinton’s campaign. “The fact she came from Republican family, that she’s a person of faith. Her long history working for women and children… I think these numbers will pick up particularly among independent women as they get to know and see her better.” On Saturday, the campaign said, Clinton will discuss the lessons she learned from her mother and will return to some of the populist tones she has struck so far: that prosperity has to reach more than just the super rich, and be about everyday Americans and families—the ones that she has been meeting with on the campaign trail. Clinton will roll out major policy proposals throughout the summer, but she has talked frequently about income inequality and criminal justice reform, and laid out specific ideas about expanding voter participation and immigration. *At Launch Rally, Hillary Clinton to Tell Americans 'It Is Your Time'* <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-11/at-launch-rally-hillary-clinton-to-tell-americans-it-is-your-time->* // Bloomberg News // Jennifer Epstein – June 11, 2015* Hillary Clinton has spent the past two months reintroducing herself to voters with carefully controlled campaign stops and minimal interaction with the media. On Saturday, she’ll initiate the next phase of her presidential candidacy with her first campaign rally, where she’ll discuss oft-omitted pieces of her personal story and tell the country why she’s best suited to be the next occupant of the Oval Office. She’ll discuss what motivates her, who she is fighting for, her vision for the country and what the choices are for voters in the 2016 election, Clinton officials said Thursday. The rally, slated for late morning at Four Freedoms Park on New York’s Roosevelt Island—a tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, to a lesser extent, Eleanor Roosevelt—won’t be heavy on policy details, but it will kick off a summer that will be full of economic proposals, including Clinton’s views on the minimum wage, Wall Street regulation and student debt. “She’s begun to lay an important foundation on which to build the next phase of her campaign.” Clinton’s economic positions will be progressive without leaning as far left those of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist who in many polls is running a distant second to her for the Democratic presidential nomination. And they’ll draw on the principle of fairness that drove FDR’s presidency. “It is your time,” she will tell the people who her campaign has chosen to call everyday Americans, arguing that America’s success is measured not by how those at the top are doing but how the rest of the country is doing. Prosperity is for every American, she will say, not just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Clinton will also argue that the election will leave voters with a clear choice betwee