Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Morning Roundup

From:burns.strider@americanbridge.org To: CTRFriendsFamily@americanbridge.org Date: 2014-11-07 11:10 Subject: Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Morning Roundup

*​**Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Morning Roundup:* *Headlines:* *New York Times: “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/politics/midterms-for-clinton-aides-arent-all-gloom-.html>* “Before any campaigning begins, Mrs. Clinton will first embark on a listening tour that echoes what she did first as a candidate for the Senate in New York and then as a freshman senator, gathering ideas and advice from a cross-section of influential people about their concerns.” *Politico: “Clinton may put campaign HQ in Westchester” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-headquarters-112652.html?hp=l1>* “Her [Sec. Clinton’s] aides are all preparing for a campaign based in New York – and talks about where to set up shop have increasingly focused on Westchester County, according to several people familiar with the discussions.” *New York Times blog: The Upshot: “What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About the 2016 Ones: Not So Much” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/upshot/what-2014-elections-can-tell-us-about-the-2016-ones-not-so-much.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1>* “In particular, the widespread Democratic losses weren’t a ‘repudiation’ of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who played a minor role). But despite claims that they actually offer her a useful opportunity to contrast herself with a Republican Congress, she doesn’t face a ‘great situation’ for her prospective 2016 presidential candidacy either.” *Bloomberg: “Is Clinton the Biggest Winner or the Biggest Loser of the Midterms?” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/is-clinton-the-biggest-winner-or-the-biggest-loser-of-the-midterms>* “The question creeping onto everyone’s mind is: How ought the sages of ClintonLand read the midterm leaves?” *Slate: “What Does It Mean for Hillary?” <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/republican_midterms_and_hillary_clinton_what_does_the_gop_s_success_mean.html>* “The question for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is this: Will voters see her as a singular figure—Hillary—standing against an unpopular Republican Party, or will they see her as just another Democrat against just another Republican?” *Bloomberg: “Post Midterms, the 2016 Presidential Contenders Recalibrate” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/heres-what-the-2016-contenders-have-been-up-to-since-the-election>* “Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any major appearances, or even minor ones, but is still the talk of the town. What do the midterms mean for Hillary? One thing we know for sure is that, according to the exit polls, more people thought Clinton would be a bad president than a good president. Paul, Christie and other GOP hopefuls fared worse, but it’s another sign that running for president isn’t good for your popularity.” *New York Times opinion: Timothy Egan, NYT correspondent: “The Big Sleep” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/timothy-egan-the-big-sleep.html>* “Clinton would be running for a third term of her husband, the most popular president of the last 20 years and the last Democrat who knew how to win over white people in red states.” *MSNBC: “The curse of the Obama coalition” <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-curse-the-obama-coalition>* “One silver lining here for Democrats is that Hillary Clinton tends to do well among working class whites, and thus could make up for some of Obama’s major losses among those groups in 2016.” *Mediaite: “O’Reilly to GOP: Stop Fighting or Hillary Will Cruise to Victory in 2016” <http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-to-gop-stop-fighting-or-hillary-will-cruise-to-victory-in-2016/>* “He [O’Reilly] warned that if Republicans “continue to fight each other [and] don’t compromise,” they will lose and Hillary Clinton will glide to victory in 2016.” *Washington Free Beacon: “The Biggest Loser” <http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-biggest-loser/>* “The 2014 election was a disaster for Hillary Clinton.” *Articles:* *New York Times: “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/politics/midterms-for-clinton-aides-arent-all-gloom-.html>* By Amy Chozick November 6, 2014 In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind the iconic “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign and a leading strategist at a Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys. The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential candidacy, including exploring White Plains as a possible national headquarters and digesting exit polls to determine what the midterm results could mean for the presidential electoral map. A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party’s midterm defeats. Before then, opinions had been mixed about when she should form an exploratory committee, the first step toward declaring a presidential candidacy, with some urging her to delay it until late spring. But over the past few days, a consensus formed among those close to Mrs. Clinton that it is time to accelerate her schedule: She faces pressure to resurrect the Democratic Party, and she is already being scrutinized as the party’s presumptive nominee, so advisers see little reason to delay. No action will be taken before the Dec. 6 runoff in Louisiana between Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat and a Clinton friend, and her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, putting the likely date for the establishing an exploratory committee in early next year, said several Clinton advisers who insisted on anonymity in discussing private conversations. Donors, meanwhile, have already started to discuss a Clinton candidacy, at times barely veiling a giddy excitement. On Wednesday evening, Ready for Hillary, a “super PAC” that supports her candidacy, sent a fund-raising email. “Now more than ever we need to show Hillary that we’re ready for her to get in this race,” the plea for donations read. “America needs Hillary’s leadership.” In many ways, Tuesday’s election results clear a path for Mrs. Clinton. The lopsided outcome and conservative tilt makes it less likely she would face an insurgent challenger from the left. And a Republican-led Senate creates a handy foil for her to run against: Rather than the delicate task of trying to draw a stark contrast with an unpopular president in whose administration she served, her loyalists say, Mrs. Clinton can instead present herself as a pragmatic alternative to what they predict will be an obstructionist Republican Congress. "Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and their allies in the House" will be "pushing Republican leadership hard," said Geoff Garin, a pollster who succeeded Mark Penn as chief strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. "When that happens it will give Hillary Clinton or whoever the Democratic nominee is a better platform to run." But before any campaigning begins, Mrs. Clinton will first embark on a listening tour that echoes what she did first as a candidate for the Senate in New York and then as a freshman senator, gathering ideas and advice from a cross-section of influential people about their concerns. “She’ll slow down a bit, get off the radar, get ready for this, and ready includes being a good freshman senator, with a legal pad and lots of conversations,” said one person with direct knowledge of her plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been made public. Meanwhile, the people around Mrs. Clinton will speed up their efforts to vet potential campaign aides, casually connect with donors and begin to help Mrs. Clinton craft a clearer message, especially on the economy. Although Mrs. Clinton’s midterm campaigning schedule took her to Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina and other important 2016 states, she did not spend much time getting to know the specific concerns of voters, something she would need to do ahead of a presidential campaign. Exit polls from Tuesday are being pored over for signs about what voters’ opinions could mean for Mrs. Clinton’s message and approach. Midterm voters expressed frustration with government, but also economic unease. “One of the questions for 2016 is: Which of those will 2016 be about? Will it be about the size and cost of government, or will it be about who the economy works for?” Mr. Garin asked. “If it’s an election about who the economy works for, then the Democratic nominee will be in a much better position to win,” he added. To help Mrs. Clinton do just that, several advisers are already being eyed for senior positions in a potential 2016 campaign. People close to Mrs. Clinton often point to a potential campaign manager in Robby Mook, a 34-year-old operative who managed the campaign for the Clintons’ longtime money man, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. In addition to her small personal staff, Mrs. Clinton also receives advice from Minyon Moore, a savvy former White House adviser who works at the Dewey Square Group, a Boston-based consultancy with an office in Washington. A spokeswoman for Dewey Square said the firm has no formal relationship with Mrs. Clinton. Ms. Moore is close to other potential campaign aides like Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and who previously worked at Dewey Square. Other advisers are more far-flung. Roy Spence, the Austin advertising executive who helped develop the state’s ubiquitous “Don’t Mess with Texas” anti-littering campaign and who has known the Clintons for decades, is offering advice about image and messaging. Mrs. Clinton turned to Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor and presidential historian, for advice on shaping her stump speech ahead of Tuesday’s election. During the 2008 Democratic primary, Professor Wilentz, a longtime Clinton defender, accused Barack Obama’s campaign of “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988.” (A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton declined to comment, and Mr. Spence and Professor Wilentz did not respond to requests for comment.) During the midterm campaign, Mrs. Clinton raised more than $10 million for Democrats, and she and former President Bill Clinton attended at least 75 events on behalf of more than 30 candidates, building and rebuilding the relationships she and her husband are known for. The Clintons worked hard on behalf of Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate for Senate in Kentucky, and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and were somewhat startled by their double-digit losses. But it was former Gov. Charlie Crist’s loss to Gov. Rick Scott of Florida that carried the biggest implications for a 2016 presidential campaign, as the Clintons had hoped for Democratic leadership in a critical battleground state. Other Democratic defeats had a silver lining. The Maryland governor’s race in which a Republican, Larry Hogan, defeated the Democrat, Anthony G. Brown, 51.6 percent to 46.9 percent, for example, diminished the likelihood that former Gov. Martin O’Malley, another Democrat, could emerge as a serious primary challenge to Mrs. Clinton. As the outline for a campaign is drawn, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters describe what they envision as a “New Clinton Map” that they believe could create a winning coalition for 2016, drawing on the white working-class women who have long supported Mrs. Clinton and the young voters and African-Americans who helped elect Mr. Obama. *Politico: “Clinton may put campaign HQ in Westchester” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-headquarters-112652.html?hp=l1>* By Maggie Haberman November 6, 2014, 3:51 p.m. EST Hillary Clinton has yet to say for certain whether she’ll run for president, or for that matter who her campaign manager or what her message would be. But this much she has settled one: if a second presidential campaign happens, it will not be run out of Washington, D.C. Her aides are all preparing for a campaign based in New York – and talks about where to set up shop have increasingly focused on Westchester County, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Westchester is Clinton’s home county – she lives in Chappaqua, an affluent hamlet north of New York City. Having the campaign there would not just keep it close to Clinton – but it would place it far away from New York City and the hordes of political reporters and elites who live there. It will be a far cry from Ballston, the Virginia suburb where Clinton’s campaign was based in 2008, in a onetime Immigration and Naturalization Services building. While a few of Clinton’s advisers at the time wanted her to put her campaign in upstate New York, most of her senior advisers wanted it based near Washington so they wouldn’t have to move. This time, the only question is how far away from Manhattan it will be. Clinton advisers say no decision has been made about where she will put a campaign, and they continue to insist there is a chance – no matter how small – that she doesn’t run. Still, one group of Clinton insiders has advocated for White Plains, a city in the south-central part of Westchester County replete with office parks. It’s more socioeconomically diverse than some other parts of a county best known as a haven for wealthy suburbanites who commute to Manhattan. “It’s close to the city,” one Clinton insider explained, adding that it’s easily accessible by rail service. Other sources have said that officials like Westchester because many places there are more than an hour’s car ride away from the city. Brooklyn has also been under discussion for the campaign headquarters, according to people close to Clinton. And Queens and Long Island have also been in the mix. “We’re certainly ready for Hillary Clinton if Hillary Clinton’s ready for us,”said Brooklyn Congressman Hakeen Jeffries, a Barack Obama supporter in 2008, who called the borough “one of the coolest… most diverse places on the planet.” But others say that separation from New York City — and proximity to the Clinton household — weigh in favor of Westchester. “That tendency is to have it close the family house and convenient to them….and [Westchester is] better than the West Side of Manhattan,” said James Carville, a longtime Clinton ally. In 1992, Carville said, the family chose Little Rock, Ark. for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign “because that’s where they lived.” “It’s not about the place, it’s about an attitude,” Carville, who has provocatively suggested locating the campaign in Buffalo. That attitude, according to a number of operatives and veterans of past campaigns, is that people are opting to make the campaign their lives. So a less centrally-located headquarters may allow for a more complete focus on the job. President Obama’s campaign aides have often said that being in Chicago in 2008 was crucial to their success. It kept them out of the Beltway feedback loop, kept their staffers focused on the task at hand and stanched the viral spread of gossip from operatives to political reporters. The same was true for George W. Bush, who chose Austin as a base for his 2000 campaign. “I’m not saying that lobbyists, hangers on, and special pleaders couldn’t find there way to the campaign, but at least they couldn’t just walk across the street,” said former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. “It had a fundamental impact on our entire attitude, our DNA, and the core approach and messaging of the campaign. We were not by, of, or sponsored by Washington. We were from outside the beltway and, therefore, better understood voters and what they wanted.” Being sponsored by New York is not necessarily a selling point for the rest of the nation. Neither is Westchester, a wealthy and fairly homogenous area. But Clinton’s advisers believe it’s preferable to Washington. For months, Washington-based operatives have been preparing to move to New York; they just weren’t sure exactly where. Even when it isn’t explicit, New York as the new center of Democratic political gravity seems to be understood. For instance, allies of Robby Mook — a potential Clinton campaign manager whose legion of former staffers talk on a “Mook Mafia” listserv and go on vacation together yearly — recently posted that their annual retreat will likely be held in New York next year. Being in Westchester “would pose some logistical challenges, but look, everything’s done these days electronically,” said Judith Hope, a longtime friend of the Clintons and a former New York State Democratic Party chair. “It might be a good thing to do,” she added. “And it would be a suburban-based campaign, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.” *New York Times blog: The Upshot: “What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About the 2016 Ones: Not So Much” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/upshot/what-2014-elections-can-tell-us-about-the-2016-ones-not-so-much.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1>* By Brendan Nyhan November 6, 2014 America has again embraced our long history of electoral overreaction. While it’s true that Republicans won a major victory at the polls, the results tell us far less about future elections than some commentary has suggested. In particular, the widespread Democratic losses weren’t a “repudiation” of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who played a minor role). But despite claims that they actually offer her a useful opportunity to contrast herself with a Republican Congress, she doesn’t face a “great situation” for her prospective 2016 presidential candidacy either. Historically, midterm results, which are typically unfavorable to the president’s party, tell us relatively little about the coming presidential election, as the accompanying chart illustrates. The record shows that the president’s party can rebound from major losses to win at the polls in two years. Bill Clinton, for instance, bounced back from the 1994 Republican landslide to easily win re-election in 1996. Similarly, President Obama, whose party suffered major losses in 2010, went on to defeat Mitt Romney in 2012, and George Bush won the 1988 election after Republicans suffered major losses in 1986, President Reagan’s sixth year in office. Candidates from the president’s party can also perform poorly immediately after a favorable midterm election. Most notably, Democrats performed unusually well for the party of the incumbent president in 1998, gaining seats in the House and avoiding losses in the Senate in what was seen as a repudiation of the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton. However, Al Gore significantly underperformed what most forecasting models expected just two years later, winning the popular vote only narrowly (and losing the White House) despite campaigning against the G.O.P. Congress. Similarly, George Bush was soundly defeated by Mr. Clinton just two years after his party lost only one Senate seat. The reality is that the fundamental factors that dictate presidential elections will again matter in 2016 – principally, the state of the economy in the months before the vote. Mrs. Clinton faces an additional headwind because Democrats have held the presidency for two terms, which seems to reduce incumbent party performance. From that perspective, party control of Congress is a relatively minor issue for future presidential elections. If the economy is strong, Mrs. Clinton won’t need to distance herself from Mr. Obama – she’ll be rushing to take credit for the prosperity Democrats have brought to America. If Americans are still feeling pessimistic about wages and jobs, however, she is likely to lose no matter who or what she tries to run against. A more significant consequence of the recent election results may be the effect it has on the pool of candidates in future campaigns. Wave elections decimate lower-level officeholders on the losing side, depleting a party’s ranks and depriving it of possible aspirants for higher office in future races (though some may be able to mount comebacks). Senator George Allen of Virginia, for example, was once thought to be a promising Republican presidential candidate, but lost in 2006 and is now forgotten. By contrast, wave elections can help fuel – or preserve – political careers for the winning party. In 1994, George W. Bush easily defeated the incumbent Democrat, Ann Richards, for the Texas governorship, starting a career in elected office that took him to the White House just six years later. In this sense, it’s far more likely that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin or one of the other G.O.P. candidates who narrowly won on Tuesday will be the ultimate beneficiaries of Tuesday’s result, not Mrs. Clinton. *Bloomberg: “Is Clinton the Biggest Winner or the Biggest Loser of the Midterms?” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/is-clinton-the-biggest-winner-or-the-biggest-loser-of-the-midterms>* By Emily Greenhouse November 6, 2014, 6:11 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] The answers to that question were surprisingly diverse. The Republicans won big on Tuesday—or, depending on which part of the bifocals you’re peering out of, the Democrats lost bad. President Obama is terribly unpopular, and Americans, on the whole, do not feel their country is going in the right direction—not close. But Obama is done facing national election, and he knows it; he was practically chipper with relief at yesterday’s press conference. So the question creeping onto everyone’s mind is: How ought the sages of ClintonLand read the midterm leaves? *She's a loser* In the very first hour of the first day after midterms—and therefore to some the very first day of the 2016 campaign—Sen. Rand Paul unleashed this clot of virality, complete with a new hashtag: [IMAGES OF SEN. PAUL’S #HILLARYSLOSERS] In his rundown of the Midterm winners and losers, Mark Halperin, the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, put her squarely in the “Loser” column. Whatever her plan was before, Halperin said, “it’s all thrown up in the air because no one expected the result they got. . . The party is now in disarray. Hillary Clinton and her team are so cautious–they overthink, overanalyze everything–this gives them a lot of new complexity to deal with.” *She needs a vision* In The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin reduced “Clinton’s main selling point [to] her gender identity," then wondered if Clinton would be “as delusional and defiant about the state of the Democratic Party as Obama is.” She added: As the GOP becomes harder to typecast, it becomes harder to think of Clinton as the future of a major political party and a movement that likes to think of itself as progressive. What exactly is she progressing toward and how is she going to get there? Yuval Levin took a more overtly aggressive tack, in the National Review, writing that “people are bored of her and feel like she has been talking at them forever.” Levin saw Tuesday’s results as evidence of the Democrats' "overwhelming intellectual exhaustion”—nothing fresh to offer or say. He wrote of Clinton, “She is a dull, grating, inauthentic, over-eager, insipid elitist with ideological blinders yet no particular vision and is likely to be reduced to running on a dubious promise of experience and competence while faking idealism and hope.” Ouch. At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart used milder terms, but similarly considered the Democratic voter’s hunger for inspiration. “Her gender alone won’t be enough,” he wrote. “She lost to Obama in 2008 in part because she could not overcome her penchant for ultra-cautious, hyper-sanitized, consultant-speak.” *Actually, she is now golden* So Clinton may have to work on energizing and rebranding, but what candidate doesn’t? She sure has the energy—she did 45 campaign events for 26 candidates in 18 states (and Washington, D.C.) in less than two months. It may be her fame and the bath of inevitability around her, but many feel that Hillary’s day has come. A good number of journalists found silver linings for Clinton in Tuesday’s news. Writing for Politico, Maggie Haberman noted that "Clinton’s major problem was always going to be running as the candidate of the two-term party in power ... But a newly minted Republican Senate helps her to solve the problem of how to run against Washington.” This logic was found in many pockets online. Rick Ungar, in Forbes, energetically announced that the Republican sweep will “make it easier to let Hillary be Hillary.” He concluded, “Inside the Clinton camp, the results of the 2014 midterms no doubt feel like a large steam valve has been turned, allowing all that left-wing pressure to release and dissipate.” Make no mistake, he said, it is she who emerged on top. Andrew Romano at Yahoo News followed the same line of thinking, with greater verve and a little more wonk talk. The "easy answer" for 2014 midterm election winner is the Republican Party—but the "long-term winner" is Hillary Clinton. He wrote: Under the surface, almost everything about last night’s midterm results — and the map, the math and the legislative morass that lies ahead in the run-up to 2016 — suggests that the former first lady and secretary of state could have a better next two years than the party currently guzzling champagne. He detailed how many seats were likely to open up to the Democrats in 2016, and pointed out that, for Mitch McConnell, who “says he wants to compromise with Democrats, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll be able to control his party’s vehement Just Say No caucus for long.” Fox News took after NewsBusters in running a headline, “Hillary Clinton won the 2014 midterms? That's what Yahoo says,” in which Tim Graham, author of "Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election and How to Stop Them From Doing It In 2016,” lightly mocked Romano. But mostly he just pasted in paragraphs of Romano’s column, without bothering to add any words by way of disagreement. *One thing is for sure* Competition is necessary for evolution, and the Democratic party, the week proves, certainly needs to evolve. Clintons always survive, but it’s yet to be seen if Hillary Clinton will be the fittest. Inevitability smells stale, especially after Tuesday's shake-up. Her political brand needs spontaneity. *Slate: “What Does It Mean for Hillary?” <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/republican_midterms_and_hillary_clinton_what_does_the_gop_s_success_mean.html>* By Jamelle Bouie November 6, 2014, 1:33 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] The Republicans ran the table on Election Day. What does it mean for the Democrat in waiting? The night was hardly over before Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul had his take on Tuesday’s election results. “I think this election was basically a repudiation of the president, but also Hillary Clinton,” he said. “The Democrat [in Kentucky] ran and wouldn’t admit that she voted for President Obama. She was very specific—‘I am a Clinton Democrat.’ ” As political explanations go, this is unusually self-serving. Yes, the Clintons campaigned for Alison Lundergan Grimes, but there’s no evidence Kentuckians were voting against Clinton as much as they were voting against Obama. Paul’s take is purely a product of his aspirations; he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, and he wants you to think that he’s the only one who can take on Hillary Clinton and win. Still, his comment raises a question: What does Tuesday mean for the unofficial—but very real—Clinton campaign? Writing for Yahoo News, Andrew Romano says that the Republican win is a boon for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Because it’s “hard to imagine” soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “will be able to control his party’s vehement Just Say No caucus.” In fact, there’s a great chance Washington will stay broken, allowing Clinton to “run as the antidote to D.C.’s dysfunction,” writes Romano. On the other side, the National Review says this is nonsense. “Let’s get something clear: Watching your party get stomped like a narc at a biker rally in a midterm election is not something that helps a party’s presidential frontrunner,” writes Jim Geraghty for the conservative magazine. “America is not happy with Washington, and particularly furious with Obama and Democratic governance as a whole.” Both takes get part of the picture right. The new Senate Republican majority is filled with Tea Party politicians—like Joni Ernst of Iowa and Tom Cotton of Arkansas—who have no interest in compromising or even working with the president, much less the Democratic minority. What’s more, the most extreme lawmakers—like Sen. Ted Cruz and the hard-right caucus of the House—likely feel vindicated. After two years of obstruction—including a government shutdown and a debt ceiling standoff—they won a huge midterm victory. Why change course? What’s the incentive? In which case, the antics of an irresponsible Republican Congress will burden the eventual Republican presidential nominee, which only helps a Clinton candidacy. At the same time, the Democratic Party is in utter disrepair. Some progressives have comforted themselves by noting the popularity of Democratic ideas: Otherwise conservative states have raised the minimum wage, legalized marijuana, and protected abortion rights from draconian “personhood” laws. But this only highlights the problem with the Democratic brand, which is so unpopular it weighs down candidates who push otherwise popular proposals. The question for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is this: Will voters see her as a singular figure—Hillary—standing against an unpopular Republican Party, or will they see her as just another Democrat against just another Republican? If it’s the former, then Tuesday doesn’t mean much for her prospective candidacy; voters will see her as Clinton first and a Democrat second, and may even see her ideas as Clinton ideas and not Democratic ones, which could help if she tries to expand the national issue space to include things like universal child care. If it’s the latter, however, then Team Clinton has a new challenge: to turn the Democratic brand into something worth supporting in 2016. But even that comes with the important caveat that presidential candidates have done just fine following a bad midterm year and have failed after a good one. George H.W. Bush won the election after the Republican failure of 1986—the closest analogue to Hillary Clinton’s situation—and Al Gore lost it after the Democratic success of 1998. I should say that there’s a third option in all of this: that Tuesday didn’t matter at all, and in a way that has nothing to do with Clinton’s persona. Put simply, there’s a good chance that 2014—like 2010—was driven by the demographics of American politics, in which Republican voters dominate midterm elections, and Democratic voters dominate presidential years. In which case, Clinton doesn’t have to worry about 2016 since she won’t be speaking to the people who elected a Republican Congress; she’ll be speaking to the people who twice elected Barack Obama. And that is a good position to be in. *Bloomberg: “Post Midterms, the 2016 Presidential Contenders Recalibrate” <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-06/heres-what-the-2016-contenders-have-been-up-to-since-the-election>* By Arit John November 6, 2014, 2:47 p.m. EST [Subtitle:] Some candidates are already gearing up for 2016, while others are nowhere to be found. The 2014 midterm elections may be in the books, but for the crop of contenders who hope to be elected president in 2016, the next chapter is already being written. For some that means jumping into campaign mode, for others it means laying low and nursing political wounds, and for Texas Governor Rick Perry it means spending the morning in court. Here’s how the politicians expected to run for their party’s nomination have spent their time since Tuesday. *Rand Paul* Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s main goal since the GOP's D-Day has been to tie Democrats’ losses not just to Obama, but to favored 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton. “Today, voters sent a message to President Obama and Hillary Clinton, rejecting their policies and many of their candidates,” he wrote in a Facebook post late Tuesday called #HillarysLosers. Paul has also said that he would push for tax reform in January. *Paul Ryan* Republican Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan is the favorite to become the Ways and Means Committee chairman. Given the nature of the job—proposing sometimes unpopular reforms to entitlement programs—it would probably not be helpful to a presidential bid. Like Paul, Ryan also went after Hillary Clinton. During an appearance on the "Hugh Hewitt Show" Thursday, Ryan said that the substantial Democratic loses showed that she could lose in 2016. “It just tells you that she’s not inevitable,” he said. “I think she’s very beatable.” *Rick Perry* Not all Republicans are having a great post-election week. After being allowed to miss the first two pretrial hearings, Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry will made his first court appearance on Thursday morning. The governor was indicted in August by an Austin grand jury on abuse of power charges, which his team has called a politically-motivated attack from Democrats. His lawyers will attempt to get the case dismissed on technicalities. *Bernie Sanders* Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has made it clear that he thinks Americans made a mistake on Tuesday. “I fear that the American people who want change … I think perhaps they have just voted for some folks whose agenda is very different than what they want and need,” Sanders said Wednesday during an appearance on CNN. Sanders, also retweeted a link to a statement he released last month, making it clear that he’s not going to caucus with Republicans. In the statement, he said he intended to caucus with the party that supports stances like rebuilding infrastructure, raising the wage, pay equity for women and a single-payer health-care system. “I could be wrong,” Sanders said, “but my guess is that will not be the Republican Party.” *Hillary Clinton* Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any major appearances, or even minor ones, but is still the talk of the town. What do the midterms mean for Hillary? One thing we know for sure is that, according to the exit polls, more people thought Clinton would be a bad president than a good president. Paul, Christie and other GOP hopefuls fared worse, but it’s another sign that running for president isn’t good for your popularity. *Scott Walker* Winning re-election means Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gets to stay on the 2016 presidential long list. Earlier this year he declined to commit to serving his full term if elected, but on Tuesday night he told the Associated Press that his decision on running “will have to wait [until] long after” he passes the next state budget, which might be next spring. *Mitt Romney* *Gov. Mitt Romney* @MittRomney: Big tent Republicans win big races. Congratulations. [11/5/14, 10:24 a.m. EST <https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/530017943573520384>] *Ted Cruz* In an interview with The Daily Beast Tuesday night, Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz said he was prepared to work with the White House. But on Wednesday he and a few likeminded senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, threatening to use “all procedural means necessary” to prevent Obama from following through with his promise to “lawlessly grant amnesty.” Cruz, who will likely be the bane of Mitch McConnell’s existence, has also repeatedly refused to say whether he supports him for Majority Leader. *Jeb Bush* Jeb Bush released a statement Tuesday night congratulating “Majority Leader Mitch McConnell” on a great night. “Republicans in Congress now have the opportunity–and the responsibility–to demonstrate to American voters that our party can effectively govern,” he wrote. *Marco Rubio* Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio released his own statement, saying he looks “forward to working in a Senate Republican majority to advance the reform agenda I’ve presented this year.” In January the senator released a plan to help families lift themselves out of poverty, which doesn’t include raising the minimum wage. *Chris Christie* After visiting 19 states in 5 days to help rally the troops for Republican governors, New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie probably took a well-deserved nap. On Wednesday, he has a fancy two-course lunch at the four Seasons Grill Room with a few billionaires. *Bobby Jindal* Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal gave a late endorsement on Wednesday to Republican Representative Bill Cassidy, who’s heading into a runoff election to try to unseat Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. "I don't think Mary, anymore, represents Louisiana's values in Washington D.C.," Jindal said of Landrieu. *Martin O’Malley* After watching his second in command lose, Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has spent his post-election days being taunted by Governor Christie. The outgoing governor’s lieutenant, Anthony Brown, suffered a surprise defeat for governor against Republican Larry Hogan and many saw the race as a referendum on O’Malley, including Christie. “Even for Maryland, it got to be too much,” Christie said Wednesday of O’Malley’s policies. “That’s quite an accomplishment.” *Joe Biden* On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife hosted a reception commemorating Breast Cancer Awareness month, but otherwise he has kept a low profile. Given that he predicted on Monday that Democrats would keep the Senate and that Greg Orman would likely caucus with his party, that’s probably for the best. *Elizabeth Warren* The general consensus is that unlike Biden, O’Malley and Clinton, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and populist hero, backed winners. Her record on the trail (of the 11 candidates she campaigned for, six won and five lost) is decent given the circumstances, and while she’s still a “no” on running in 2016, her supporters saw the results as more proof that Democrats need to get with the Warren program. *New York Times opinion: Timothy Egan, NYT correspondent: “The Big Sleep” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/timothy-egan-the-big-sleep.html>* By Timothy Egan November 6, 2014 Maybe it’s best to close your eyes and fall into a Rip Van Winkle slumber for the next two years. The party that has refused to govern for half a decade and ran a substance-free campaign will now play at governing and not take up anything of substance. Of course there will be votes, investigations and intrigue. Having worked tirelessly to make the Senate inert, Mitch McConnell now says he wants it to be relevant again. The man most likely to head the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, would flunk a high school science class. He claims climate change is a huge hoax. The new senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, vowed to bring at least one thing to the capital. “I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter and it goes with me virtually everywhere,” she cooed. Did you vote for that? No, you voted against President Obama. Why? David Letterman had the best line of the campaign. “Take a look at this: Gas under $3 a gallon — gas under $3 a gallon! Unemployment under 6 percent — who ever thought? Stock market breaking records every day. No wonder the guy is so unpopular.” Democrats would not embrace that record, or even try to explain it as a decent start for a country shaken by two decades of income stagnation. And so they were trounced. Where substance was allowed on Tuesday’s ballot — minimum wage increases in four red states, gun background checks in a blue state — big majorities did what the new Congress never will. But enough with the postmortems. On to 2016! Hill and Jeb. Can we get to it now, and treat the next two years as a fog of fractious do-nothingism that has already passed? Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are poised to complete some unfinished business. Bush would be running for the second term of his dad, the now beloved George H.W., and to make everyone forget the two terms of his brother. And Clinton would be running for a third term of her husband, the most popular president of the last 20 years and the last Democrat who knew how to win over white people in red states. Call it monarchy in a country that got its start by throwing off a king, or a dynasty in a nation that still likes to think of itself as a model of egalitarianism. But a moderate Bush and a problem-solving Clinton are really the only choices. Everyone else is flawed in special ways. Take Senator Rand Paul, who always manages to look like a guy who just woke up from a long nap and missed a button on his shirt. Sure, he has some of his kooky father’s baggage, the 18th-century view of 21st-century issues. But of late, Paul’s been trying a little outreach beyond the Republican base of old white Southerners. He thinks our prisons shouldn’t be stuffed with drug offenders, predominantly black. He says Republicans should not be passing laws making it harder for the poor, minorities and students to vote. And he says his party’s brand “sucks” — his word — in many, many parts of the country. All of this will get him nowhere, and be replayed in attacks ads, when the Republican presidential primary moves to its whitest of bastions in the South. We saw a lot of Gov. Chris Christie in the last week of October. If you liked seven days of a red-faced guy shouting “shut up” and “get in line” and medical diagnosis from afar — “She was obviously ill,” he said of a healthy nurse — you’ll love a Christie presidency. The New Jersey governor demonstrated, again, the character traits we don’t want in a president: poor judgment, a temper, pettiness. He’s all bombast without even the belly anymore. Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor re-elected Tuesday after taking on and taking down organized labor, will be a flavor of the month. That’s part of the problem: Scott is personality-free. But more important, an anti-labor candidate will not fare well in old-school blue-collar states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Ted Cruz will be around — a microphone, that is. He’ll be shadowed by his female doppelgänger, the new Iowa senator, Ernst. His problems are myriad. He loves brinkmanship and shutdowns, but more than that, he really loves himself. Nearly everyone who comes in contact with him in the Senate, no matter the party, can’t stand him. That leaves Jeb Bush, a seemingly sensible nonpartisan. He’s for immigration reform, the kind his base despises. If he can get over that hurdle, he’s the nominee. And then he’ll face one final problem: his name. He is, of course, the younger brother of a man who will long remain on the list of worst presidents. Take it from his mother, the reliably blunt-speaking Barbara Bush, last of the flinty New Englanders. The country, she said, has had “enough Bushes” in the White House. Hillary Clinton, it’s yours to lose. You’ve already started co-opting the progressive flank, making nice with Senator Elizabeth Warren. And yet, Wall Street likes you! The best thing Hillary has going for her right now is what happened in this week’s midterms. Republicans will overreach, because they always do, prompting much nostalgia for the days when Stuff Got Done. Two years is a long time to wait if, say, you are a fan of the New York Jets and believe that professional football teams should get more than one win every now and then. But it’s nothing in politics. It’s here now. Take a long snooze, and then wake up to 2016. *MSNBC: “The curse of the Obama coalition” <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-curse-the-obama-coalition>* By Alex Seitz-Wald and Trymaine Lee November 6, 2014, 4:40 p.m. EST Barack Obama’s coalition has become a curse for Democrats, in addition to a blessing. In 2008, running to become the first black president, Obama made history by inspiring Americans who don’t typically vote to get to the polls. The problem is that it’s difficult to reliably capture that kind of lighting in a bottle on the first Tuesday of November every two years. There may be more people in Democrats’ “coalition of the ascendant” – young people, minorities, single women and others – than in the GOP grouping, which skews white and male and old. But the Democratic coalition is much more fragile, as Tuesday night’s victory proved. There are lots of important numbers that help explain Democrat’s drubbing, but here’s the underlying landscape of Tuesday’s vote, as well as virtually every other election: There are more conservatives in America. Far more. And they vote in every election, not just in presidential years. Exit polls from Tuesday night show 37% of voters identify themselves as conservative, compared to just 23% who say they’re liberals. About 40%, say they’re moderate. That’s consistent with survey data going back decades, and the numbers have held more or less steady over time. In 1996, 20% of Americans said they were liberal and 40% conservative, according to Pew. Ideological partisans tend to be the most dedicated voters and the ground troops of the party, so Democrats start every election with a deficit here. Lately, Democrats have only overcome that drag with the intensity of a presidential campaign and the inspirational force of a charismatic leader. “There’s basically two Americas – there’s midterm America and there’s presidential-year America,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer told The Washington Post. “They’re almost apples and oranges. The question was, could Obama voters become Democratic voters?” The answer to that question looks like a resounding “no.” Part of what attracts Democrats to Hillary Clinton 2016 is the groundbreaking possibility of electing the first woman president. But is a reliance on history-making presidential contenders really a sustainable approach? In North Carolina, which hosted this year’s most expensive Senate race, progressives have been trying to create a more durable coalition under the Moral Monday Movement banner. Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP and leader of the Moral Monday Movement, is trying to move past the “messiah” politics of the Obama era. Barber said the task moving forward would be building a wider coalition that isn’t simply charged by one charismatic politician, in this case, Obama. “If you’re going to change America you’ve got to break through that,” Barber said after a speech and rally the night before the election in Greensboro. “If you get whites, blacks and women and young people and Latinos to begin to come together and begin to change their language and not be trapped by Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative, but really begin to talk about coming together around five issues,” Barber said. He listed among those issues: Poverty and labor rights, educational opportunity, healthcare for all, fairness in the criminal justice system and protecting voting, LGBT, women’s rights and immigration reform. “Those five areas can garner and pull together a different kind of movement and we’ve seen that right here in North Carolina that does not back away from the race critique but allows people to come together across many, many different lines,” he said. Still, the effort was ultimately unsuccessful in reelecting Sen. Kay Hagan. Even with the most sophisticated and expensive turnout operation ever deployed in a congressional midterm election, Democrats got crushed when the Obama coalition didn’t show up. The electorate skewed along racial and generational lines, very much similar to what happened four and eight years earlier. The drop-off among young voters, who fueled Obama’s insurgency in 2008, was particularly pronounced. Nationally, 18-29-year-olds made up only 13% of the electorate this year, while a quarter of voters were seniors, who lean Republican. That’s a steep drop from 2012, when 21% of the electorate was young. Across the country, voters were much older and whiter than they were in 2012, according to William Frey, a demographer with The Brookings Institution who analyzed exit polls and data from Tuesday’s election. Still, Frey said demographic and cyclical factors point to the sweeping Republican victory as more of an “aberration” than a trend indicator. Frey also said there are a few key points to distill from the election data. He said the data suggests less of a referendum on the president than a pattern consistent with a cultural and generation gap, where older whites are resistant to policies associated with a younger, progressive and more diverse America. In a way, Frey said, North Carolina even in this Democratic loss, is a sign that the Democratic coalition of hardcore whites, young and diverse voters isn’t going anywhere – even if it didn’t work this time. “They just didn’t turn out. They weren’t as interested,” he said. Democrats will have a much better shot during the presidential election in 2016, but Republicans will try to head them off at the pass. “What GOP really won yesterday was a huge opportunity to recast our brand before 2016, when the terrain will swing back toward the Ds,” longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy tweeted. What Democrats gained among minorities and young people with Obama, they’ve lost among whites and older voters, who still make up the larger single segments of the voting population. And worse – those demographics are more likely to vote regularly. For instance, Democratic Senate Candidate Bruce Braley was been leading among women by several percentage points in the final polls, but Ernst easily doubled that margin in her lead among men. And in a state that’s 95% white, no amount of minority turnout could make up for Braley’s 11 point deficit among whites. One silver lining here for Democrats is that Hillary Clinton tends to do well among working class whites, and thus could make up for some of Obama’s major losses among those groups in 2016. But she’ll also have to contend with the possibility that blacks won’t turn out in the record numbers they did in 2008 and 2012 to vote for an African-American president. Clinton does have the potential to electrify a diverse coalition if she decides to run. But once again, Democrats may be lurching from one messiah to another. *Mediaite: “O’Reilly to GOP: Stop Fighting or Hillary Will Cruise to Victory in 2016” <http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-to-gop-stop-fighting-or-hillary-will-cruise-to-victory-in-2016/>* By Josh Feldman November 6, 2014, 8:18 p.m. EST Bill O’Reilly kicked off tonight’s Factor with some advice for Republicans on how to fix the country, and predicted President Obama would be remembered as a “villain” if he vetoes any of it. In order to establish their authority, O’REilly said, Republicans should lower corporate income tax, grant a six month tax amnesty on corporate money so that companies will have a window to bring money back into the U.S., and raise the minimum wage, among other things. O’Reilly said all of this would bring an immediate boost to the economy and if Obama dares veto any of it, he “will go down in history as a villain.” That being said, O’Reilly did have some cautions for the GOP to keep in mind. For one thing, they shouldn’t try to kill Obamacare while there’s a president in office who will veto it every time. And he warned that if Republicans “continue to fight each other [and] don’t compromise,” they will lose and Hillary Clinton will glide to victory in 2016. Watch the video below, via Fox News: [VIDEO] *Washington Free Beacon: “The Biggest Loser” <http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-biggest-loser/>* By Matthew Continetti November 7, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EST The 2014 election was a disaster for Hillary Clinton. Why? Let us count the ways. She will have to run against an energetic and motivated Republican Party. If the GOP had failed to capture the Senate, the loss would have been more than demoralizing. It would have led to serious discussion of a third party. Donors would have reconsidered whether their spending was worth the reputational cost. Candidate recruitment efforts would have stalled. Republican voters would have asked why they bother to show up. The Republican circular firing squad, always a problem, wouldn’t use conventional weapons. They’d use ICBMs. Clinton would have loved to capitalize on this scenario. It would have enabled her to prolong strategic decisions such as how and when and to what degree she breaks from Obama. She would have claimed partial credit for saving the Senate. She would have promised to build on Democratic success. You would have been able to see her aura of inevitability for miles. But she has been denied. Instead she must calculate how to salvage the wreckage of 2014. She must convince Democrats that their savior is a grandmother who lives in a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue. It is her party that is shell shocked, not the GOP. Trust me: You don’t want to be in that position. The results also showed that the electorate looks forward rather than backward. Clinton’s 2016 argument will be based in part on recollection. Her message: If you liked the 1990s, the last period of broad-based growth and full employment, put my husband and me back in the White House. But voters are not retrospective. They judge based on the conditions of the moment. In 2010, Democrats tarred Rob Portman as a former Bush official. In 2014, they tried something similar with congressional candidate Elise Stefanik. Both Portman and Stefanik won. This year, several candidates ran explicitly as “Clinton Democrats.” They tried to associate themselves with fond and gauzy memories of a better time. They lost. Arkansas—the birthplace of Bill Clinton, the test tube of Clintonism—became a GOP stronghold. Tom Cotton defeated Mark Pryor by 17 points. The Clintons’ star power, such as it is, was overwhelmed by the Republican wave of discontent and anger at liberal incompetence. The Clintons aren’t gods. They are human beings—extremely, terribly, irredeemably flawed human beings. Their specialty: Mitigating Democratic losses among whites without college degrees. In 2014, the Clintons couldn’t stop the bleeding. Republicans won the white working class by 30 points. And it will be difficult for Hillary Clinton to reduce this deficit over the next two years. That is because of her problematic position as heir apparent to an unpopular incumbent. Her recent talk of businesses and corporations not creating jobs illustrates the dilemma: She has to identify herself with her husband’s legacy in Elizabeth Warren’s left-wing Democratic Party, while dissociating herself with the repudiated policies of the president she served as secretary of State. Has Clinton ever demonstrated the political skill necessary to pull off such a trick? A failed president weighs heavily on his party. He not only drags it down in midterm elections such as 2006, 2010, and 2014. He kills its chances in presidential years. Think Hubert Humphrey. Think John McCain. The McCain-Clinton comparison is worth considering. Both would be among the oldest presidents in American history. Both are slightly at odds with their party: McCain on campaign finance and immigration, Clinton on corporatism and foreign policy. Both lost the nomination to the presidents they sought to replace. Both campaigned for rare third consecutive presidential terms for their parties in the cycle after those parties lost Congress. The environment was so hostile to Republicans by the time Election Day 2008 arrived, and the Democrats had so successfully defined themselves in complete opposition to the incumbent, that McCain didn’t have a chance. But who in 2006 had predicted that a financial crisis would be the most important issue of 2008? Who in 2012 had the slightest idea that the Islamic State and Ebola and illegal migration would be factors in 2014? Who in 2014 knows with even the faintest degree of certainty what will loom over the electorate on Election Day 2016? Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and al Qaeda are not moving to another planet. The Federal Reserve is not about to acquire the power of prophecy. The business cycle is exactly that—a cycle. I do know this: Whatever voters are upset about two years from now, they are unlikely to hold it against John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They are more likely to direct their ire at the president and his party: Hillary Clinton’s party. Do the Democrats begin presidential campaigns with the advantage? Absolutely. The distribution of the population, the composition of the presidential electorate, and the clustering of liberal voters in major metropolitan areas give the party of government a head start in the race to 270 electoral votes. Republicans can win. But, like in 2000 and 2004, it will be close. What the 2014 results suggest, however, is that the “coalition of the ascendant” that elected and reelected Barack Obama may be more tied to him personally than to a generic Democrat. The panicked racial appeals to motivate black turnout failed not only because conditions are poor, but also because Obama was not on the ballot. The significance of electing the first black president, and then of legitimating his first term, did not apply. Nor will it in 2016, in which voters are likely to once again face a choice between two white people. A lot will depend on those two candidates. If there was a sure lesson in 2014, it was that candidate performance matters. Colorado, Iowa, and Arkansas are the clearest examples of states where the Democratic Senate candidate became an embarrassment, and his Republican opponent made no unforced errors. The importance of candidates was also the lesson of Virginia, where Ed Gillespie used substance, clever advertising, and a winning personality to come within striking distance of Mark Warner. It was the lesson of New Hampshire, where Scott Brown’s reputation as a carpetbagger may have prevented a tenth GOP pickup. And it was the lesson of Maryland, a deep blue state where the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Anthony Brown, stumped so poorly coming off two terms of Martin O’Malley that partisan and demographic advantages could not save him. Hillary Clinton is famous, ambitious, methodical, and clever. As I write, she faces no significant challengers for the Democratic nomination. She is the frontrunner to win the 2016 election. But she is not flawless. Her political skills are limited. She says things she later walks back. She represents the past. There are so many skeletons in her family’s closets that the skeletons have closets. Her favorable numbers have already returned to Earth, and she will spend the next two years under attack by both Democrats and Republicans. Faced with a younger, positive, appealing Republican candidate who avoids gaffes and runs not on amnesty and entitlement reform, but on a platform aimed at middle-class families and working-class whites, there is no telling how Hillary Clinton would look, how she would perform, what choices she would make. And if she slips and falls, who’s going to rescue her? David Brock? *Calendar:* *Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.* · November 14 – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton attends picnic for 10thAnniversary of the Clinton Center (NYT <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/10/17/?entry=2674&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0> ) · November 15 – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton hosts No Ceilings event (NYT <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/10/17/?entry=2674&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0> ) · November 21 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton presides over meeting of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Bloomberg <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race> ) · November 21 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the New York Historical Society (Bloomberg <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race> ) · December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton keynotes a League of Conservation Voters dinner (Politico <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-green-groups-las-vegas-111430.html?hp=l11> ) · December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>) · December 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton honored by Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (Politico <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-ripple-of-hope-award-112478.html> )