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H4A News Clips 5.24.15

From:aphillips@hillaryclinton.com To: aphillips@hillaryclinton.com BCC: hrcrapid@googlegroups.com Date: 2015-05-24 12:38 Subject: H4A News Clips 5.24.15

*H4A Press Clips* *May 24, 2015* SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS Hillary Clinton took questions for reporters Friday for the second time in a week, commenting on the State Department’s disclosure of emails related to the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Mrs. Clinton has been publicly calling for the release of her emails by the State Department, and said on Friday that she’d like them to be released even faster. On Thursday, the campaign announced its big kick-off rally, where Clinton will address supporters with a big-picture speech about her candidacy and her vision for the future. SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS....................................................................... 1 TODAY’S KEY STORIES................................................................................... 2 *Hillary Clinton Takes Questions Again and Addresses Emails* // NYT // Jess Bidgood - May 23, 2015 2 *On policy, Clinton plays it safe* // Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015........................................ 4 *Hillary Clinton in Seacoast: 'I want to be small business president'* //Seacoast Online // Erik Hawkins - May 23, 2015........................................................................................................................................... 7 *Hillary Clinton's Surprisingly Effective Campaign* // The Atlantic // Peter Beinart - May 22, 2015... 9 SOCIAL MEDIA............................................................................................... 11 *The New York Times (5/23/15; 1:07PM):* Breaking News: Ireland Becomes First Country to Legalize Gay Marriage by Popular Vote......................................................................................................................... 11 HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE......................................................................... 11 *Va. Democrats hope to use Clinton mojo to improve their own position* // WaPo // By Rachel Weiner – May 24, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 11 *The Real Democratic Primary: Hillary Versus the Media* // The New Republic // Suzy Khimm -May 22, 2015 13 *Clinton’s NH appearance draws ardent supporters, curious onlookers* // Concord Monitor //Casey McDermott - May 23, 2015............................................................................................................................. 16 *Hillary Clinton says more emails will be released* // Boston Globe // Chris Cassidy -May 23, 2015. 18 *Question foreshadows Hillary Clinton’s biggest fear* // Boston Globe // Joe Battenfield - May 23, 2015 20 *Hillary Clinton responds to released emails while in N.H.* // WHDH // Byron Barnett - May 23, 2015 21 *What the resurfacing of Sidney Blumenthal says about Hillary Clinton* //Vox // Jonathan Allen - May 23, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 22 *Why Less Competition Is Hurtful to Hillary* // Real Clear Politics // Andrew Kohut - May 23, 2015 24 *Miss Uncongeniality* // Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - May 23, 2015.................................. 25 *Silda Wall Spitzer hosts Hillary fundraiser* // Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015..................... 28 *Hillary Clinton to Hold Fund-Raiser Hosted by Spitzer’s Ex-Wife* // NYT // Maggie Haberman - My 23, 2015 28 OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................ 30 *Elizabeth Warren and Democrats should be down with TPP* // WaPo// Johnathan Capehart - May 23, 2015 30 *7 ways Bernie Sanders could transform America* // Salon // Mathrew Rozsa - May 23, 2015........... 32 *Kaine’s quest for war legitimacy* // WaPo // George F Wil - lMay 23, 2015..................................... 35 *Democrats' Vanishing Future* // National Journal // Josh Kraushaar - May 21, 2015..................... 37 GOP................................................................................................................ 39 *Ben Carson wins SRLC straw poll* // Politico //Alex Isenstadt - May 23, 2015................................ 39 *Chris Christie: The strong, loud type* // CBS News // John Dickerson - May 22, 2015..................... 41 *A Rubio campaign blueprint, for all the world to see* // WaPo // Dan Balz - May 23, 105............... 43 *Rick Santorum’s got a point: Nothing helps poll numbers like winning* // WaPo // Philip Bump - May 23, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 45 *Kasich May Miss Cut in Ohio Debate* // RCP // Rebecca Berg - May 22, 2015................................ 46 *Ten Is Too Few* // Weekly Standard // Jay Cost - June 1, 2015..................................................... 48 *Reform Conservatism Is An Answer To The Wrong Question* // The Federalist // Robert Tracinski - May 22, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 50 *The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created our modern dysfunction* // Salon // Paul Rosenberg - May 23, 2015.................................................................................................. 52 *“The party of white people”: How the Tea Party took over the GOP, armed with all the wrong lessons from history* // Salon // David Sehat - May 23, 2015....................................................................................... 58 TOP NEWS..................................................................................................... 63 DOMESTIC.................................................................................................. 63 *After Senate vote, NSA prepares to shut down phone tracking program* // LAT // Brian Bennett and Lisa Mascaro - May 23, 2015........................................................................................................................... 63 *McConnell's NSA gambit fails* // The Hill // Jordain Carney and Julian Hattem - May 23, 2015..... 66 *States quietly consider ObamaCare exchange mergers* // The Hill // Sarah Ferris - May 23, 2015.. 68 INTERNATIONAL....................................................................................... 72 *Ireland legalizes gay marriage in historic vote* // USA Today // Kim Hjelmgaard - May 23, 2015.... 72 *ISIS Gains Momentum With Palmyra, Assad Squeezed on Multiple Fronts* // NBC News // Cassandra Vinograd - May 23, 2015............................................................................................................................. 74 *39 die in Mexico police shootout with suspected cartel members* // LAT // Deborah Bonello -May 23, 2015 76 OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS.................................................................. 77 *Weary of Relativity* // NYT // Frank Bruni - May 23, 2015............................................................ 77 *Echoes of Iraq war sound in 2016 presidential race* // LAT // Mark Z. Barabak - May 23, 2015....... 80 *Obama has a strategy for fighting ISIS -- one that isn't working* // LAT // Doyle McManus - May 23, 2015 82 *Is the Ex-Im Bank Doomed?* // NYT // Joe Nocera - May 22, 2015................................................ 84 *End Ex-Im Bank, the government's Enron* // Washington Examiner // Rep. Bill Flores and Senator Mike Kee - May 21, 2015............................................................................................................................. 86 *Banks as Felons, or Criminality Lite* // NYT // Editorial Board - May 22, 2015.............................. 88 *Why Obamacare makes me optimistic about US politics* // Vox // Ezra Klein - May 22, 2015........ 89 *The Islamic State is entirely a creation of Obama’s policies* // WaPo // Ed Rogers - May 22, 2015.. 93 *The Art of Avoiding War* // The Atlantic // Robert D. Kaplan - May 23, 2015................................. 94 *The Notorious R.B.G*. // National Journal // Editorial Board - May 22. 2015................................. 96 TODAY’S KEY STORIES Hillary Clinton Takes Questions Again and Addresses Emails <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/22/hillary-clinton-takes-questions-again-and-addresses-emails/> // NYT // Jess Bidgood - May 23, 2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton took questions for reporters Friday for the second time in a week, commenting on the State Department’s disclosure of emails related to the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I’m glad the emails are starting to come out,” Mrs. Clinton said at a campaign event in Hampton, N.H. “This is something that I’ve asked to be done, as you know, for a long time. And those releases are beginning. I want people to be able to see all of them.” The State Department made public 296 emails related to the attacks, which had been stored on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. Republicans have attacked Mrs. Clinton’s use of personal email during the time she was secretary of state, suggested she was trying to hide her correspondence. Mrs. Clinton has been publicly calling for the release of her emails by the State Department, and said on Friday that she’d like them to be released even faster. She noted that one of the emails was just declared classified. The email, forwarded to her by her deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, involved reports of arrests in Libya of possible suspects in the attack, and was not considered classified at the time. At the event in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’m aware that the FBI has asked that a portion of one email be held back. That happens in the process of Freedom of Information Act responses. But that doesn’t change the fact that all of the information in the emails was handled appropriately.” Mrs. Clinton made the remarks at the Smuttynose Brewing Company, where she led a round-table discussion on American small businesses. As the event wound down, reporters crowded around Ms. Clinton when she posed for selfies with those in attendance. And then, to the surprise of some who have grown accustomed to Ms. Clinton keeping her distance from the press in her nascent campaign, she took questions. In response to a question about Iraq, Mrs. Clinton said she agrees with American military strategy there and she did not allude to recent victories by the Islamic State in Ramadi, Iraq, and Palmyra, Syria. “I basically agree with the policy that we are currently following, and that is American air support is available, American intelligence and surveillance is available, American trainers are trying to undo the damage that was done to the Iraqi army by former Prime Minister Maliki,” Mrs. Clinton said. She added, “There is no role whatsoever for American soldiers on the ground to go back other than in the capacity as trainers and advisers.” And she had a curt response to a question about whether Americans trust her on Benghazi: “I’m going to let Americans decide that,” said Mrs. Clinton, before aides whisked her away. The emails siphoned attention from the intended theme of the day. During her small-business roundtable, which lasted about an hour, Mrs. Clinton discussed economic opportunities for the middle class, declaring at one point, “I want to be the small business president.” Mrs. Clinton also used the event to highlight her support for the Export-Import bank, which guarantees loans for American exports and which faces opposition from congressional Republicans – including some of the presidential candidates – as it nears a deadline for reauthorization. “It is wrong that Republicans in Congress are now trying to cut off this vital lifeline for American small businesses,” said Mrs. Clinton. “It’s wrong that candidates for president who really should know better are jumping on this bandwagon.” She also, briefly, seemed to lose track of where she was. “Here in Washington, we know that, unfortunately, the deck is still being stacked for those at the top,” Mrs. Clinton said. Mrs. Clinton has a long history in New Hampshire — she won the 2008 primary here before going on to lose the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama — and some audience members arrived here carrying relics from trips Mrs. Clinton made to the state in the 1990’s during her husband’s candidacy and presidency. David Schwartz, an 58-year-old attorney, had in his pocket a photograph of himself and Mrs. Clinton that he said was taken by Bill Clinton when he was a presidential candidate in 1992. Mr. Schwartz, who works with lenders, is a Republican, but said he would consider supporting Mrs. Clinton because the issue of small business loans is important to him. Mr. Schwartz compared his photograph to a framed one held by Lincoln Soldati, 66, a defense lawyer. The image showed Mr. Soldati in conversation with Mrs. Clinton when she paid a visit to the University of New Hampshire at some point in the 1990s, and he said he was thrilled that she has returned. “I don’t believe there’s ever been anybody running for president that is more qualified than she is,” said Mr. Soldati, who is a Democrat. On policy, Clinton plays it safe <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/on-policy-clinton-plays-it-safe-118236.html?hp=c3_3> // Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015 HAMPTON, N.H. — Hillary Clinton’s approach to policy, so far, has been as risk-averse as her media strategy. On the trail, she prefers the safe haven of the controlled roundtable setting, and for the most part avoids taking questions from the press. And when it comes to the issues she wants to talk about, Clinton sticks with those that are either so broadly popular as to present no threat to her brand or general-election prospects, or so small-bore as to carry little chance of backlash. On Friday in New Hampshire, Clinton spoke with a passionate, progressive voice, pounding away at Republicans for “jumping on the bandwagon” to kill the Export-Import Bank, whose authorization in Congress is set to expire June 30. It was a safe call, to say the least: House Democrats support the bank. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer support the bank. A liberal like Sen. Elizabeth Warren? She’s pro-bank, too. “It is wrong that Republicans in Congress are now trying to cut off this vital lifeline for American small businesses,” said Clinton, at the SmuttyNose Brewery in Hampton. Republicans, she said, would threaten the livelihoods of American workers rather than “stand up to the Tea Party and talk radio. It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing.” Weighing in forcefully on an issue where her outlook matches that of the majority of her party was right in line with Clinton’s posture on many policy issues during this first phase of her campaign. In her month and a half on the trail, Clinton has spoken in broad terms that give her the appearance of sometimes channeling Sen. Elizabeth Warren and championing the left — in the case of her appearance at SmuttyNose Brewery, sticking up for small businesses and bashing the GOP. She sounds like she’s wrapping her arms around the progressive wing of her party while alienating few. She uses rhetoric that sounds Warren-esque (“The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top”) while being vague about details of how precisely she would address the problem. One Democratic strategist described Clinton’s positioning as a “head fake, making the general audience of the left think she’s one of them.” The risk is that Clinton plays into the stereotype that she is a cautious and poll-driven politician more inclined to appease rather than lead. In an op-ed in the Portsmouth Herald Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio knocked Clinton for playing it safe and feeling no pressure to “offer new ideas.” Clinton campaign advisers, meanwhile, argue that her positioning is not a strategy at all, but rather a sincere reflection of her record of fighting for the middle-class. “The campaign is built on that record and consistent with the values Hillary Clinton has always championed,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. “It’s not about left or right, it’s about the values Hillary Clinton believes in and the fight she is continuing to wage.” But the issues her advisers cite tend to be broadly accepted Democratic chestnuts. Clinton has said same-sex marriage should be a constitutional right; the minimum wage should be raised; the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision should be overturned to remove big money out of politics; community college should be free; police departments should be equipped with body cameras; what works in Obamacare should be extended and the high cost of prescription drugs should be lowered; paid family leave should be instituted; effective treatment should be provided for those who suffer from mental health and substance abuse problems. Some of her stances, such as that on same-sex marriage, represent an evolution from where she has been in the past. But overall, Clinton has not supported progressive positions where she would have to stick her neck out from where the majority of her party is. Moderate Democrats have taken note. “She’s being smart by checking the boxes on progressive issues that have wide appeal across the party, but keeping her general election powder dry by not going too far to the left,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way, a think tank started by former Clinton administration staffers. Nonetheless, she’s succeeded in giving the impression of moving to the left. The right-wing America Rising PAC has already accused Clinton of “staking out far-left positions that are outside of the mainstream of most Americans.” Even some of her biggest donors claim they see a shift. “I think she is moving a little bit to the left and I think that’s fine,” hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, who recently hosted a fundraiser for Clinton, said in a television interview with Bloomberg. “People who are giving money to her understand that.” But supporting universal pre-k and reforming student loans are hardly bold positions for Democrats in 2015 — instead, Democratic strategists argued, they act as liberal stalking horse issues that allow a candidate to appear boldly progressive while risking little. A real sign that Clinton was tacking left would be a call for a single-payer healthcare system, or a promise to break the country’s large banks, or returning to a higher income-tax rate on everyone making more than $1 million a year. Clinton is unlikely to take those positions, and so far has not offered those kinds of specifics. Indeed, as Vox.com’s Jonathan Allen pointed out, 91 percent of voters said they favored police officers wearing body cameras, according to a Pew poll from last year. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from April showed that 58 percent of respondents favor legalizing same-sex marriage. And 57 percent of voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who live in this country, according to a CBS/New York Times poll from earlier this month. On those issues that could be potentially costly to her — like weighing in on President Obama’s trade deal or the Keystone XL Pipeline— Clinton has notably refused to weigh in. “Her strategy: alienate no one,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Give the left of the Party no reason to criticize. Rhetoric works better than detail. Rhetoric you can change or edit. Details are difficult to erase.” Details, such as how much she would like to raise the minimum wage, have yet to be shared. Even on immigration, where Clinton surprised many of the immigration activists who in the past had protested her speeches, some are still waiting eagerly for specifics. Clinton has yet to outline how, legally, she would be able to institute any policy that would go beyond where Obama went with an executive action to let millions more undocumented immigrants gain protections and work permits. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton eyes her chocolate peanut butter fudge ice cream Friday during a stop at Moo's Place in Derry, N.H. AP Photo “Everything we hear now is words on the campaign trail, but the proof is in the pudding,” said Javier Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road Action Fund. “We appreciate that she’s pushing the envelope. But the details will matter. We’re happy to hear that she’s taking that stance but we need to hear a little bit more.” The hope, Democrats said, is that Clinton will soon add specifics to the outlines of policy she has only traced so far. On Thursday, the campaign announced its big kick-off rally, where Clinton will address thousands of supporters with a big-picture speech about her candidacy and her vision for the future. Hillary Clinton in Seacoast: 'I want to be small business president' <http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20150522/NEWS/150529667/101098/NEWS> //Seacoast Online // Erik Hawkins - May 23, 2015 HAMPTON — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, began her day in the Seacoast Friday at Smuttynose Brewery, playing to the crowd of small business leaders gathered for the occasion. "I want to be the small business president," Clinton said. "Let's make 'middle class' mean something again." Before she sat down at the forum, Clinton took a 20-minute tour of the brewery with owner Peter Egleston. Clinton called the brewery "impressive." When Egleston noted his beer is served even in Dublin, Ireland, Clinton said, “It’s a small world story.” Clinton received a warm reception in the crowded warehouse stacked high with kegs as the strains of Miles Davis played and she joined Egleston and Joanne Francis, owners of Smuttynose Brewing, along with five other area business owners for a discussion on making small businesses successful. Clinton's remarks were brief. She said although the national economy is "out of the ditch," the country still has to "stand up and get running again." Clinton said small business owners' hard work and investments should pay off, and they should feel secure in saving for their children's college and their own retirement. "The big businesses have a lot of advantages that you don't," she said. Clinton also called for regulations to be loosened on community banks to ease lending to small businesses. Francis, the brewery's co-owner, said it had been a "white-knuckle ride" securing loans and other money to start the brewery and open a new operations facility in 2014. "It was terrifying, to be honest with you," Francis said. Panelist Charlie Cullen, of The Provident Bank, in his closing words with Clinton asked her to "please soften (the Dodd-Frank bill) just a little bit," then added, "I think now it's time for a Smutty!" There were a few eyebrows raised when, while standing in front of prominently placed Smuttynose signs, Clinton began a remark by saying, "Here in Washington ..." The apparent gaffe went unremarked on at the time, though it began circulating quickly online through social media and news reports. After greeting supporters and taking several brief questions from the press, Clinton departed for Exeter's Water Street Bookstore, for a grassroots organizing meeting. When asked about the recent release of her State Department emails, Clinton said she was glad the emails from her controversial private server were being released, albeit slowly. "It has been my request from the beginning that they release as many as possible," she said. "I also understand that there is a protocol being followed." When asked her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership currently being negotiated by President Obama, which has drawn criticism from the political left and perceived to be conceived in secrecy, Clinton was not prepared to take a firm stand. "I have some concerns about protecting American workers and a level playing field, as well as currency manipulation ... as I've said before, though, I will make up my mind — I will judge this when I see exactly what's in it," she said. Clinton also said regarding the conflict in Iraq and the setbacks in the fight against Islamic State militants that, "at the end of the thought process, this has to be fought and won by the Iraqis. There is no role whatsoever for American troops on the ground beyond training the Iraqis." At Water Street Bookstore in downtown Exeter, Clinton joined owner and town Selectman Dan Chartrand, along with other local Democratic activists and representatives including state Reps. Alexis Simpson and Marcia Moody, Selectwoman Nancy Belanger and Selectwoman Julie Gilman to continue her discussion of concerns facing small businesses. Water Street filled quickly with supporters, including a group of Phillips Exeter Academy students, who said they were missing a scheduled sports photo in order to catch a glimpse of Clinton. Across the street, a handful of Clinton opponents gathered for a brief time holding signs that read, "Clinton Lied. Four heroes died," and Tea Party slogans, but appeared to disperse quickly. Chartrand said after the event that Clinton's message about expanding access to capital for small business owners resonated strongly with him, and that although he only truly became politically active in 2012, he was "now a canvasser, through and through." "I've fallen in love with campaigning," he said. "What I love specifically is that she has a real focus in her economic plan for leveling the playing field for small businesses and community banks," he added. "That's a huge part of the reason I'm supporting her." Hillary Clinton's Surprisingly Effective Campaign <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/hillary-clintons-2016-campaign/393872/?utm_source=SFTwitter> // The Atlantic // Peter Beinart - May 22, 2015 Hillary Clinton has been an official candidate for president for five weeks, and she still hasn’t done the thing most candidates do on day one: given a speech laying out her vision for America. Nor is she planning on doing so anytime soon. Politico reports that Hillary’s “why I’m running for president,” speech, initially scheduled for May, has now been delayed until June, or even later. There’s a reason for that: The speech is unlikely to be very good. Soaring rhetoric and grand themes have never been Hillary’s strengths. That’s one reason so many liberals found her so much less inspirational than Barack Obama in 2008. And it’s a problem with deep roots. In his biography, A Woman in Charge, Carl Bernstein describes Hillary, then in law school, struggling to articulate her generation’s perspective in an address to the League of Women Voters. “If she was speaking about a clearly defined subject,” Bernstein writes, “her thoughts would be well organized, finely articulated, and delivered in almost perfect outline form. But before the League audience, she again and again lapsed into sweeping abstractions.” Team Clinton appears to understand this. And so it has done something shrewd. Instead of talking vision, Hillary is talking policy, which she does really well. The Many Measures of Hillary Clinton If Hillary’s struggles with vision go back a long time, so does her passion for wonkery. As a student government leader at Wellesley, Bernstein notes, Hillary developed “a better system for the return of library books” and “studied every aspect of the Wellesley curriculum in developing a successful plan to reduce the number of required courses.” In 1993, she took time off from a vacation in Hawaii to grill local officials about the state’s healthcare system. In his excellent book on Hillary’s 2000 Senate race, Michael Tomasky observes that, “In the entire campaign, she had exactly one truly inspiring moment” but that, “over time it became evident to all but the most cynical that she actually cared about utility rates.” Hillary’s handlers have played to this strength. On April 29, she devoted the first major speech of her campaign not to her vision for America, but to something more specific: race and crime. She began with a graphic and harrowing description of the young black men recently killed by police: Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina. Unarmed. In debt. And terrified of spending more time in jail for child support payments he couldn’t afford. Tamir Rice shot in a park in Cleveland, Ohio. Unarmed and just 12 years old. Eric Garner choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of this city. And now Freddie Gray. His spine nearly severed while in police custody. She recounted advocating for prisoners while director the University of Arkansas’ legal-aid clinic. She noted the parallels between race and class, observing that life expectancy is declining not only for many African Americans, but also for white women without high-school degrees. And she made the crucial point that because government currently treats drug addiction and psychiatric disorders primarily as criminal rather than public-health problems, “our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.” The speech was not merely substantive. It was authentic. It showcased the real Hillary Clinton: A woman who, whatever her faults, hates injustice and knows what she’s talking about when it comes to government. A week later in Las Vegas, Hillary gave another impressive speech, this one on immigration. In a media environment where “pro” and “anti” immigration often refers merely to how many people America lets in, Hillary turned the conversation to how America treats immigrants once we do. First, she talked movingly about her childhood memories of the migrant farm workers who worked in the fields around Chicago. Then she attacked the idea, common in “pro-immigration” Republican circles, that America should legalize undocumented immigrants without allowing them citizenship. “Today not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship,” she declared. “Not one. When they talk about “legal status,” that’s code for “second-class status.” America, Hillary insisted, must see the undocumented not merely as workers, but as human beings. Sooner or later, Hillary will have to move from policy to philosophy. It may be a rocky transition. And if the Republicans nominate Marco Rubio (which at this point looks like a decent bet), she will face a candidate who interweaves personal biography and national aspiration better than she does. But if Hillary stumbles, these opening weeks of her campaign may offer a template for how she regains her footing. She’s at her best talking about America not abstractly, but concretely. She’s most inspiring when talking not about what she believes, but about what she wants to do. And she most effectively humanizes herself by being true to who she is: knowledgeable, passionate, and vaguely obsessive about making government work. Against Rubio, or any other likely Republican challenger, that identity should provide an excellent contrast. SOCIAL MEDIA The New York Times (5/23/15; 1:07PM): <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html?smid=tw-bna> Breaking News: Ireland Becomes First Country to Legalize Gay Marriage by Popular Vote HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE Va. Democrats hope to use Clinton mojo to improve their own position <http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/2015/05/23/d564d62a-ff5c-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html> // WaPo // By Rachel Weiner – May 24, 2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton needs Virginia Democrats next year. But they need her now. In what is expected to be a heavily competitive presidential battleground in 2016, Democrats have a more pressing challenge this fall: trying to gain control of one of the state legislature’s two Republican-held chambers. Democrats are within one seat of taking the state Senate. But low turnout in off-year elections tends to favor Republicans, and there is little evidence so far that voters are engaging with unusual enthusiasm. That’s one reason organizers think a little Clinton excitement could help. That dynamic was on full display on a recent weeknight night in Arlington, when a couple of hundred Clinton enthusiasts gathered at a second-floor sports bar for one of the first campaign meetings in the state. “Hillary is all about building up the Democratic Party,” Susan Johnson told the crowd, many of whom knew each other from previous campaigns. “What she wants us to do is make sure our Democratic candidates in the state Senate, in the House of Delegates, get elected.” Ginning up grass-roots excitement during off-year state elections helps Clinton, too, by starting to build the organization she’ll need to win the battleground state next year and earning favor with Democrats who might think she is taking her nomination for granted. Johnson, a elementary school teacher turned full-time political activist, is the one paid Clinton staffer in the state. Since the Clinton campaign launched in mid-April, Johnson has been working to build up a network of volunteers aimed at sustaining momentum until the real staff comes in. She’s held similar events in Annandale and Richmond. Three more are scheduled for Newport News, Ashburn and Roanoke. Clinton is “extremely supportive of us in Virginia to take this opportunity, while we’re building the grass roots for her, applying that grass roots immediately and getting Dems elected this year,” Johnson said. A visit by Clinton in June is being promoted heavily as a chance to refill depleted state party coffers. Democrats are expecting so large a crowd that the annual Jefferson-Jackson event is no longer being called a “dinner” — the party hopes for so many attendees that a sit-down meal would be challenging. A spokesman said Clinton will “earn every vote” in Virginia’s primary and is “committed to strengthening Virginia Democrats so they win elections across the board in this year and beyond.” Democratic control of the state Senate would be a boon for a close friend of Clinton’s, too: Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). It would give the governor a bulwark against the Republican-dominated House in his final two years in office. It would show his clout as a Democratic leader on the national stage. And it would help build momentum in crucial areas of the state for Clinton, whose campaign he chaired in 2008. “The best way you can help Hillary is to help elect Democrats to the state Senate,” said Brian Zuzenak, who leads the governor’s political action committee. The Democrats’ path to that mutual victory won’t be easy, though they need to take only one Republican seat to create an even split in the Senate. (That would give Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam the power to break any tie votes.) Republicans are already mobilizing. “We’re expecting our targeted races to make thousands of voter contacts each week now, and if they’re not we’re having some real heart-to-heart conversations with them,” said Republican Senate Caucus Chairman Ryan T. McDougle (Hanover). In only one of the districts Democrats are hoping to flip have they consistently won the past few statewide elections. That seat is held by retiring Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Powhatan). Watkins represents both Demo¬cratic Richmond voters who Clinton will be looking to turn out in droves and ¬Republican-leaning suburban areas where she will need to be competitive. Other top Democratic targets may be harder to win, but they are in swing territory that will be critical in 2016 — Loudoun and Prince William counties, Hampton Roads. Arlington is now solidly Democratic, but it’s where some of the party’s most dedicated and well-connected members are based. Northern Virginia is “the top of the swing, the base of the tsunami that’s going to roll down south and turn the entire state blue,” Johnson told the crowd to cheers. But the cheering was far more muted when she turned to this year’s races. How many eager Clinton volunteers will turn out, as she urged, at the “awesome parade” in Falls Church on Memorial Day? Democrats hope many of them will be like Arman Azad, a voluble 17-year-old who can’t yet vote but has been volunteering for Democrats for years. He took the Metro from Tysons Corner to Arlington by himself and quickly gravitated toward the few other teenagers in a room of 20-to-50-something professionals. Azad got involved with the Arlington County Democratic Committee when he was looking for a school community service project. Soon he was a convert, trudging through the snow to help elect state Sen. Jennifer T. Wexton (Loudoun) in a hotly contested special election last year. Growing up, he says, “I always perceived Virginia as this conservative Southern state.” When he started paying attention to politics, gay marriage was banned in the state and the government was embroiled in controversy over transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. Now, the marriage ban has been overturned in court after the state attorney general refused to defend it. “It’s just a seismic shift,” Azad said. “It’s kind of cool to be part of that transition.” Some friends, he said, agree that progressive political activism is now “cool.” Others are persuaded that it will look good on their college applications. Maurice Champagne, 34, is way past college. He just finished graduate school. When he saw Clinton’s announcement video, he laughed, because the first story was his own. Like the woman in the video, his mother moved from Pittsburgh to Falls Church so he could go to a school where a 7-year-old wouldn’t get jumped in the halls. He volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 but was too busy with his dissertation in 2012. The Clinton event Tuesday was his “first step to get back into the real world.” Asked whether he would keep volunteering from now through 2016, however, he was skeptical. “Until I find a job,” he said. The Real Democratic Primary: Hillary Versus the Media <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121884/hillary-clinton-vs-media-real-democratic-primary> // The New Republic // Suzy Khimm -May 22, 2015 Beth Lilly, 29, remembers the first time she felt like the media was doing Hillary Clinton wrong: It was in 1992, when she was just about six years old, and remembers that people weren’t happy about Hillary’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe. The incident was actually one of the most infamous moments of the 1992 campaign. “I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession,” Hillary said. The comment prompted a media firestorm—and an invitation from “Family Circle” magazine to pit her cookie recipe against Barbara Bush’s. “The press coverage was just so absurd,” recalls Lilly, who’s now a policy attorney in Washington, D.C. It was Lilly’s very first memory of Hillary. Twenty-three years later, Lilly sees the Hillary pile-on is happening yet again, and she’ll be there to support her. “So her foundation took money. It’s kind of what foundations do,” she tells me at a recent happy hour for Clinton supporters in Arlington, Virginia. To the irritation of her biggest devotees, the controversial donations to the Clinton Foundation—and the efforts to tie them to Hillary's policymaking at the State Department—have loomed over the early weeks of her official campaign. Jack Bardo, a young Democratic activist from Arlington, believes “the media is missing the mark” by focusing on such issues. “I wasn’t surprised—that’s what you’d expect in this media landscape,” says Bardo, who supported Clinton in the 2008 primary. The lack of competition in the Democratic primary has left Hillary’s most ardent supporters with the strange task of having someone to root for, without having someone to root against. Her Republican opponents are a distant challenge; the other Democratic candidates are mere speed bumps in the polls. Instead, the most visible threat to Hillary is her own public image, leaving her early supporters with the dual mission of ginning up enthusiasm for her campaign—and pointing fingers at the media for trying to drag her down. Just a few Metro stops from the White House, the northern Virginia corner of Hillaryland is particularly well suited to the task of flacking for Clinton, full of political junkies, yellow-dog Democrats, media-savvy consultants, grad students, wannabe Hillary campaign staffers, and other ambitious professionals who are old enough to have grown up with Hillary but too young to have been burned out on anti-Clinton mudslinging. Nate Maeur, 29, remembers seeing Hillary for the first time on TV when he was young. She was advocating for children’s rights in Africa. “I remember being glued to the TV as a really little kid, watching her, almost being entranced by what she was saying, what she believed in, because it was exactly what my mother was saying,” says Maeur, who runs a workforce development organization. “I’m surprised I didn’t confuse my mom for her, and say—‘Oh, there’s Mom right there.’” For Clinton’s younger supporters—many of whom, like Maeur, were Barack Obama campaign volunteers—their memories of the scandals and pseudo-scandals of the Clinton years are hazy at best, filtered through the soft focus of childhood. In sharper relief for them are the accomplishments that Hillary has racked up since then—U.S. senator, 2008 candidate, secretary of state—which her young Arlington supporters quickly rattled off when asked why they were backing her. “She’s going down in history whether people like it or not,” says Renzo Olivari, 19, a political science major at James Madison University who hopes to run for office one day. He was still in middle school during the 2008 campaign but remembers watching her speeches at age 12 and getting “emotionally invested” in the Clinton campaign even then. In Clinton, young supporters see someone who’s risen up through the political establishment on her own merits: the ultimate Washington success story. What they missed earlier in the ‘90s was what Josh Marshall describes as the “Vince Foster moment” that the Clintons had to overcome first: For those of you not familiar with Vince Foster, his tragic suicide or the years-long right-wing clown show it kicked off, it is probably best described as the '90s version of Benghazi...It's never enough for the Clintons' perennial critics to be satisfied with potential conflicts of interest or arguably unseemly behavior. It's got to be more. It always has to be more. There have to be high crimes, dead people, corrupt schemes. And if they don't materialize, they need to be made up. Both because there is an organized partisan apparatus aimed at perpetuating them and because there is a right-wing audience that requires a constant diet of hyperventilating outrage from which to find nourishment. Hillary’s older supporters remember those days all too well and are quick to point out the larger machinations of the anti-Clinton apparatus. “You think of all this dirt that gets thrown out at her every day. There are what, 30 organizations that have been founded to throw crap at her?” says Allida Black, 63, a historian and long-time Hillary supporter who co-founded the Ready for Hillary SuperPAC. The Clinton Foundation story is almost perfectly designed to polarize Clinton’s supporters and opponents along traditional lines. Critics say donations from foreign governments and business interests with a stake in administration policy raise conflict-of-interest questions, but even the conservative author leading the charge on the issue, Peter Schweizer, acknowledges there’s no “direct evidence” linking Clinton to any specific quid pro quo deal. Whether you believe there’s more to the story than just bad “optics” mostly depends on whether you see it as merely the latest in a long line of trumped-up Clinton scandals that didn’t pan out or the newest example of those ruthless and corrupt Clintons flouting the rules for personal gain. But like many of Hillary’s young supporters gathered in Arlington, Olivari doesn’t blame Republicans or a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Instead, he faults the media itself for driving the controversy over the Clinton Foundation, the Libya intervention, and Clinton’s use of her personal email at the State Department. (The New York Times broke the story on her personal email, going off a tip from an unidentified source.) “The media—they’re bringing these allegations and these scandals up to see if anyone else in the Democratic side will emerge as a strong candidate and they can go head to head,” says Olivari, who hopes to run for office one day. He adds: “That sells, if you put that out, it sells. It’s them trying to tailor the election to their own needs, rather than what the election is.” Hillary herself has been keeping the media at an arm’s length, taking only a handful of questions from the press in the early weeks of the campaign. And that control—otherwise known as campaign “discipline”—has even extended to the upstairs bar in Arlington where her early supporters gathered on Tuesday. I try to talk to Nalini Pande, a health policy consultant who had organized the happy hour in Arlington as a more casual alternative to the traditional house party. But a Clinton grassroots organizer in Virginia offers herself up for comment instead. Obama’s own campaign had a similarly defensive attitude toward the media, but also pioneered new ways to bring his own message directly to supporters without the press. And that’s ultimately what the Clinton campaign is trying to draw on as well: Growing its own grassroots network of support—online and on the ground—that doesn’t need external news outlets to carry her message. And ultimately, the need for that ground-level enthusiasm that will be a far biggest obstacle for Clinton to overcome than Clinton Foundation-palooza. The Clinton campaign has been organizing similar grassroots events with paid staffers in all 50 states. It’s building not only a base of volunteers for Hillary’s campaign, but also a way to push back against the barrage of negative attention in the media that Clinton’s early supporters are so frustrated with. “Every day I meet people who are so happy about this in a way that’s different,” says Black. “This is what you want to get done, not about what you’re against.” After everyone goes home, Pande keeps the cheering squad alive on Twitter: “So excited that the Hillary Happy Hour I planned in Arlington,VA had an awesome turnout! It looked like we had about 200 people!#Hillary2016.” Clinton’s NH appearance draws ardent supporters, curious onlookers <http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/politics/17004898-95/clintons-nh-appearance-draws-ardent-supporters-curious-onlookers> // Concord Monitor //Casey McDermott - May 23, 2015 The windows were papered over from the inside, and on the door of the Water Street Bookstore in the middle of Exeter, a sign informed customers: “We are closed from 12-3 p.m. today due to a private event. We apologize for the inconvenience!” For those who hadn’t seen the candidate arrive firsthand, these clues — and the steadily growing crowd of onlookers waiting on the sidewalk outside of the bookstore — were enough to attract dozens and dozens more as the afternoon wore on. “Hillary Clinton is inside the bookstore,” one young woman, who waited well over an hour outside of the store yesterday afternoon, assured a friend on the other end of her cell phone. “I’m not kidding . . . I’m sure it’s Hillary Clinton, dude.” Indeed, dudes, Clinton was there inside greeting an audience of about 50 supporters — taking questions and signing books before eventually emerging to an enthusiastic group. It was her second stop on her second trip to New Hampshire in her second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and one that attracted the largest audience of onlookers of any of the events she’s held so far this year. Earlier in the day, Clinton toured Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton and hosted a roundtable to talk about the challenges facing small businesses. Later in the day, her schedule included a stop for ice cream at Moo’s Place in Derry and more time spent in private events with supporters. Inside the bookstore, the group included a mix of those invited by the campaign and by the owner. Outside, the group was even more varied: plenty of ardent supporters, others who were somewhat supportive but not entirely sold on Clinton’s latest bid for the White House, some students from nearby Phillips Exeter Academy, and lots who wanted to meet (or, at the very least, take a picture of) the presidential candidate. One woman held a handmade sign that declared, “We (heart) Hillary!”; another man held a less-enthusiastic sign that played off of Clinton’s supporters’ “Ready for Hillary” rallying cry, “I’m Ready for Oligarchy.” Two of the students who were waiting outside, Ariana Patsaros and Nicole Don, will be voting in their first presidential election next year. Both 18 years old, they were drawn to the chance to see the candidate up-close — but they held different sentiments toward Clinton. Patsaros, who said she’s been active in her school’s Democratic Club, was already a big fan and is hoping to soon intern with the candidate. She only arrived about 15 minutes before Clinton exited the store, but she still lucked out with a good spot. “Some tall person let me in front of him, and I ended up getting a selfie with her,” she said, adding, “She’s my idol, to be honest. I’m so glad that I had this opportunity.” Don, meanwhile, is still making up her mind. She said she’s socially liberal, but economically more conservative, and she’s paying close attention to candidates’ foreign policy positions. “I’m torn,” Don said after the event, as the crowd had mostly disappeared and the street returned to normal. “Still torn.” Unlike her friend, she didn’t get a chance to see Clinton up-close. She picked a spot on the other side of the store, and the candidate was farther out of view. “I know it’s totally random what happened,” Don said. “Still, it hits you in the gut when you wait an hour and a half.” Laura Lunardo was passing through town when it seemed like things were buzzing outside of the bookstore. The Exeter resident didn’t stick around with the rest of the crowd, but she said she would have liked to see more face-to-face interaction from Clinton on the campaign trail. “I think there should be more public events. I think she needs to be accessible, and people want to hear some answers,” said Lunardo, who hasn’t yet committed to Clinton but tends to lean toward Democratic candidates. “People who hate her are going to hate her. People who want to try and support her, just tell us what’s going on. And the reporters, let the reporters talk to you.” Martha Kies was picking up her daughter, Solveig, at school up the street when she saw the gathering on the sidewalk. Luckily for the two of them, they managed to get a place right next to a Secret Service officer and had a prime spot to wave to Clinton when she left the store. Kies, who also leans Democrat, said she’s still “waiting to hear a bit more” before making her mind up on who to support for the 2016 presidential race. In any case, she thought it would be great for her young daughter to see the candidate up close. “If she wins she’ll be the first woman to win,” Kies said. “So we talked about that. It’s exciting for young girls to see that possibility.” Overall, Kies was grateful to have the chance to see Clinton. Still, she said, “It would have been great to have her talk, rather than just sort of make an appearance” outside before leaving. One of those inside the store with Clinton was Nancy Richards-Stower, whose long history of campaign work in New Hampshire includes an active role in Bill Clinton’s 1992 bid for president. Earlier in the day, Richards-Stower was stationed at the bottom of the hill at Smuttynose Brewery — balancing a giant “Hillary” campaign sign against a tree while holding another handmade sign supporting her. As she waited to give the candidate a warm welcome ahead of the brewery tour, Richards-Stower said there’s no question in her mind about supporting Clinton this time around. “They’re issue people,” she said of the Clintons, recalling how impressed she was with Hillary during her time campaigning for her husband two decades ago. “They’re issue people and loyal friends, and that’s what I love.” Now, as Clinton takes on another campaign of her own, Richards-Stower said she doesn’t think the focus on roundtables and private events, over more public ones, will be a problem in the long run. “There’s being president, and there’s being a campaigner. So which do you care more about — that she’s going to be a fabulous president or a fabulous campaigner?” she said. “This is her opportunity — it sounds so trite, but it’s true — to really hear what the struggles are of the normal person. And you can’t get that if you’re standing in front of a thousand people in a big auditorium. You have to get that in a small group. Now, how does Hillary Clinton get to be in a small group? It has to be organized.” Hillary Clinton says more emails will be released <http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/2015/05/hillary_clinton_says_more_emails_will_be_released> // Boston Globe // Chris Cassidy -May 23, 2015 HAMPTON, N.H. — Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she wants more of her private emails as secretary of state to come out faster as she faced the press yesterday just minutes after the State Department released nearly 300 of her messages, many of them on the Benghazi attack. “I’m glad the emails are starting to come out,” Clinton told reporters. “This is something I’ve asked to be done for a long time. Those releases are beginning. I want people to be able to see all of them.” Among the highlights of the 896-page email treasure-trove: • One of her emails about the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack was upgraded from unclassified to “secret” with 23 words of a November 2012 message redacted at the FBI’s request. • Clinton appears to mistakenly refer to one of the Benghazi attack victims as “Chris Smith,” though it’s unclear whether she’s referring to diplomat Sean Smith or Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — who both died. The email asks whether the State Department should announce the death that night or in the morning. • Clinton asked to “pls print” an article called “Benghazi Was Obama’s 3AM Call,” a headline referencing Clinton’s famous attack ad against then-Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary. • As Clinton recovered from health issues, including a concussion that forced her to miss a congressional hearing, she wrote to two State Department officials attending in her place: “I’ll be nursing my cracked head and cheering you on as you ‘remain calm and carry on!’ ” In a follow-up email, she wrote: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (as I have rationalized for years), so just survive and you’ll have triumphed!” Clinton hardly seemed defensive about the emails yesterday. “I would just like to see it expedited so we can get more of them out more completely,” she said. Clinton held a tightly controlled small business roundtable at the Smuttynose Brewery and answered five questions from the mob of reporters — but none from the 50 people gathered at the invitation-only event. Arrows printed on paper were hung up to guide Clinton through her brewery tour, and an event organizer repeatedly ordered a Herald reporter to push back to arbitrary places on the warehouse floor to prevent any unplanned interaction between the candidate and a member of the press. “I wouldn’t want you to jump out at her,” one of the organizers warned. Afterward, Clinton spoke to campaign supporters in Exeter and Amherst, and stopped at Moo’s Place in Derry, where she greeted customers and ordered a “kiddie”-size chocolate peanut butter and fudge sundae with a cow-shaped cookie on top. “Most excellent,” Clinton declared. “One of my most favorite things.” Question foreshadows Hillary Clinton’s biggest fear <http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_battenfeld/2015/05/battenfeld_question_foreshadows_hillary_clinton_s> // Boston Globe // Joe Battenfield - May 23, 2015 Only once did Hillary Clinton’s armor show signs of cracking — just enough to reveal a glimpse into what her cruise control campaign fears the most. On the floor of a New Hampshire brewery, surrounded by kegs and cases of porter and IPA, Clinton easily batted away media questions until this one got through: “Many Americans don’t believe you’ve told the truth about Benghazi ...” Clinton didn’t wait for the finish to shoot back: “Well, I’m going to let the Americans decide that.” Just one word, “Americans,” but the annoyance was audible. Clinton, of course, already knows voters will pick her. A remnant from the arrogant White House days. But here’s the problem: If Clinton is so sure voters are behind her, why is she mostly avoiding them in her visits to New Hampshire? Not a single town hall meeting with unscreened questions. Clinton is just mailing it in right now, and she really doesn’t have to do much more. During her visit to Smutty­nose Brewery, where the general public was kept far away by campaign aides and Secret Service, Clinton didn’t even have to demand “equal pay for women.” One of the invited guests at the “small business” roundtable, Smuttynose co-owner Joanne Francis, did it for her. The other co-owner of the brewery, Peter Egelston, who sat on the other side of Clinton, is a stalwart Democratic donor, records show. And FYI, Hillary, he lives in Maine, not New Hampshire. It’s not uncommon for candidates to pack their events with ringers, but all the others have subjected themselves to sometimes unpleasant questions at town hall meetings. Not Clinton, yet. She did make a quick stop for ice cream yesterday, posing for photos. And she’s finally starting to answer questions from the press — yesterday mostly national reporters who know her. She walked over to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell first. But on those new revelations that she used her private server for emails in the aftermath of Benghazi, Clinton stuck to script. She wants the State Department to release those gosh darn emails as quickly as possible, of course. Those answers won’t suffice when the campaign gets more heated and more details about the emails surface. That’s not even counting potentially more damaging questions about donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary and Bill raking in huge corporate paychecks for speeches. Republicans will get their chance soon in debates to hone their attacks on Clinton, and the most skilled one will probably get the nomination. And luckily, “Americans” who aren’t in the tank will eventually get their chance. And savvy Granite Staters will probably want to know one thing from Hillary Clinton. Just what are you afraid of? Hillary Clinton responds to released emails while in N.H. <http://www.whdh.com/story/29136472/hillary-clinton-responds-to-released-emails-while-in-nh> // WHDH // Byron Barnett - May 23, 2015 EXETER, N.H. (WHDH) - Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton received information on her private email server that has now been classified about the deadly attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi. The email in question, forwarded to Clinton by her deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, relates to reports of arrests in Libya of possible suspects in the attack. The information was not classified at the time the email was sent but was upgraded from "unclassified" to "secret" on Friday at the request of the FBI, according to State Department officials. They said 23 words of the Nov. 18, 2012, message were redacted from the day's release of 296 emails totaling 896 pages to protect information that could damage foreign relations. Because the information was not classified at the time the email was sent, no laws were violated, but Friday's redaction shows that Clinton received sensitive information on her unsecured personal server. No other redactions were made to the collection of Benghazi-related emails for classification reasons, the officials said. They added that the Justice Department had not raised classification concerns about the now-redacted 1 1/2 lines when the documents were turned over to the special House committee looking into the Benghazi attack in February. The committee retains a complete copy of the email, the officials said. It is at the end of a chain of communication that originated with Bill Roebuck, the then-director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs, that pointed out that Libyan police had arrested several people who might have connections to the attack. The redacted portion appears to relate to who provided the information about the alleged suspects to the Libyans. A total of five lines related to the source of the information were affected, but only the 23 words were deleted because the FBI deemed them to be classified. Roebuck's email was sent to a number of senior officials, including the former assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, Elizabeth Jones, who then sent it to Sullivan with the comment: "This is preliminary, but very interesting. FBI in Tripoli is fully involved." Sullivan then forwarded the email to Clinton with the comment: "FYI." There was no immediate indication that Clinton herself forwarded the email. While touring the Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton, New Hampshire, the main focus of Clinton's visit was promoting small businesses. She addresses the State Department releasing her emails and said she was "glad" the emails are beginning to come out. "I'm aware that the FBI has asked that a portion of one email be held back," said Clinton. "That happens in the process of Freedom of Information Act responses. But that doesn't change the fact that all the information in the emails was handled appropriately." Clinton participated in a roundtable discussion at the brewery, where she said she wants to be the "small business president." She also criticized the Republican presidential candidates for supporting measures to cut government funding that helps small businesses. What the resurfacing of Sidney Blumenthal says about Hillary Clinton <http://www.vox.com/2015/5/23/8647727/the-resurfacing-of-sidney-blumenthal> //Vox // Jonathan Allen - May 23, 2015 Old Clinton hands don't fade away. They always resurface. That's the case with Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton scandal veteran and purveyor of opposition research who turned up in a trove of Hillary Clinton e-mails at the center of the House Benghazi Committee's investigation into the attack that killed four Americans in Libya in 2012. As the New York Times first reported, Blumenthal sent Clinton a big batch of memos about the situation on the ground, many of which she forwarded to other State Department officials and many of which were deemed off-base by the agency's own experts. According to the Times, Blumenthal was, at the same time, advising associates who were trying to win business from the transitional Libyan government Clinton had helped install by pushing for a coalition war to oust Qadhafi. His pet theories included a warning that the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa would use American weapons to retaliate against the U.S. for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The emails, which were released Friday as part of a larger disclosure by the State Department, don't provide much texture to Clinton's decision-making on Libya or how she assessed the situation in Benghazi in real time. The real question is what was in the emails Clinton destroyed after determining unilaterally that they did not deal with government business. But the emails released by State do show that Blumenthal, who had no connection to the U.S. government, acted as an unofficial adviser to Clinton on Libya — and that she sent her own aides to chase down his leads, no matter how implausible. More saint than sinner Blumenthal's ability to access her when she was secretary of State is a reminder that it's damn near impossible to be ex-communicated from Clinton's orbit, especially if one has been bloodied defending her and her family in Washington's political wars. Even after President Obama promised to let Clinton pick her own team at State, the White House drew a line at hiring Blumenthal. That's because they suspected him of peddling the nastiest "opposition research" about Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary. But he's seen much more as a saint than a sinner in a Clinton world that values loyalty above all other traits. That's why his proximity to Clinton didn't come as a shock to people in her inner circle. He was among her most ardent and vicious defenders during the Clinton White House years. Back then, his aggressive tactics included digging into reporters and was frequently accused of pushing negative storylines about officials who investigated Bill Clinton. As a former reporter, he could be counted on to have a view of how to manipulate the press, and, in the emails released Friday, he appeared to take credit for placing a story by Craig Unger in Salon in an email to Clinton. He's a walking reminder of the bloodsport politics that defined the Clintons in the 1990s. Longtime Clinton advisers say one her great strengths and weaknesses is that she seldom casts anyone aside. That means she gathers information from a vast array of sources. But it also means political players like Blumenthal who have burned through their good will with many other Washington figures can still gain influence through her. Blumenthal, who wrote a book about his years as a White House defender called "The Clinton Wars," stands out because he's well known in Washington and because he was e-mailing Clinton about Libya and Benghazi, the very topics at the center of Republican inquiries into Clinton. The State Department Some of the dozens of emails Blumenthal sent Clinton on Libya and the Benghazi attack. But former advisers frequently send Clinton long memos on all manner of issues, from politics and communication to policy. She likes to absorb it all. In that way, and perhaps only in that way, her communication with Blumenthal is orthodox for Clinton. And there's nothing wrong, per se, with him sending her memos. That said, she kept her longtime adviser working for her, against the will of the Obama White House, while he worked for the Clinton Foundation. Why Clinton won't cast him aside now Now, there's even more reason for her to hold Blumenthal close: He will appear before the Benghazi Committee. If she cut him loose, he might be less inclined to keep her best interests at heart when testifying. Clinton gave him a vote of confidence during a Tuesday press conference. "He has been a friend of mine for a long time. He sent me unsolicited e-mails which I passed on in some instances," she said. "When you're in the public eye, when you're in an official position, I think you do have to work to make sure you're not caught in the bubble and you only hear from a certain small group of people. And I'm going to keep talking to my old friends, whoever they are." Why Less Competition Is Hurtful to Hillary <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/23/why_less_competition_is_hurtful_to_hillary_126684.html> // Real Clear Politics // Andrew Kohut - May 23, 2015 It is increasingly clear that Hillary Clinton will have to overcome a number of serious voter concerns about her to win the presidency. These challenges have been complicated by the unprecedented position in modern times of not having a real challenger from within her own party. Though the latest polls continue to show her leading the modest field of announced and potential Democratic candidates, they also show significant declines in her favorability rating and concerns about her honesty and trustworthiness. One of the most troubling findings for her in recent national surveys is that while she leads most Republican candidates in head-to-head match-ups, she runs about even with Sen. Rand Paul and is not that far ahead of several others. Her strategic problem is that, absent a strong Democratic challenger to duke it out with, questions about various Hillary controversies, her age and the “Bill factor” will hang there to be resolved in the general election against a Republican candidate who has been on the road addressing his or her own image weaknesses. Meanwhile, the press, which would ordinarily be covering a full set of Democratic candidates, has and will continue to turn its undivided attention to Hillary. And that has a downside. Note, for example, recent criticisms over Clinton not taking press questions for 21 days, getting speaking fees from lobbying groups, the income she and Bill have earned in recent years, and so on. While media attention is a positive for a candidate, being its almost sole focus on the Democratic side has not been easy. And this could well serve to demoralize Democratic voters. There are already signs of that in the national polls. The Pew Research Center found Democrats far less engaged in the presidential race than they were eight years ago, while Republicans are not. A March survey found just 58 percent of Democrats saying they had given a lot or some thought to the presidential candidates, compared to 71 percent back in 2007. There was no significant falloff in Republican campaign interest. Indeed, according to the latest Pew survey, Republicans are more positive about the GOP field than they were at nearly comparable points in the past two presidential campaigns: 57 percent rate it excellent or good. In contrast, fewer Democrats (54 percent) are positive about the current group of candidates than felt the same way in September 2007 (64 percent). Not surprisingly, then, an April Gallup poll found 54 percent of Democrats saying a number of strong candidates competing for the nomination would be better for the party, while only 40 percent thought it would be better for a single strong candidate to emerge early. In the end, Hillary’s problems are not with Democrats, who will ultimately back her if she is the nominee, but with the broader electorate. And recent polls showed the impact of the latest round of Clinton controversies. Gallup found her unfavorable rating climbing steadily—from 39 percent in March to 46 percent in mid-May—which virtually matches her unfavorable rating in Pew’s May survey (47 percent). And the April Wall Street Journal/NBC poll added that 50 percent of its respondents gave her a negative rating when it comes to being “honest and straightforward.” The good news for Hillary is that she recovers well. Her favorable ratings have dipped into the 40s in the Gallup rating on a number of occasions over the past 20 years, only to strongly recover into the 60s for significant periods of time. And while voters worry about her honesty, they give her a positive rating for being knowledgeable and having the experience to handle the presidency (51 percent, according to WSJ/NBC) and having strong leadership qualities (65 percent, CBS/New York Times). From this vantage point, Clinton would be well served at this stage by having other Democratic candidates to absorb some of the torrent of press scrutiny to which she has been subjected. On the Republican side, only Jeb Bush has received anything close to the same focus. At this pace, one can only wonder about the condition of her public image when she starts to take on the Republican nominee. Miss Uncongeniality <http://freebeacon.com/columns/miss-uncongeniality/> // Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - May 23, 2015 There it was—the classic Hillary charm. Close to a month had passed since the Democratic frontrunner answered questions from the press. So this week, when reporters were invited to gawk at the spectacle of Clinton sitting with “everyday Iowans,” Ed Henry of Fox wanted to know: Would the former secretary of state take a moment to respond to inquiries from non-stage-managed reporters? Before Henry was able even to finish his sentence, however, Clinton interrupted him, tut-tutting his impertinent shouting and raising her hand, empress-like, to quell her subject. After a few seconds of talking over each other Clinton must have realized that she had to give Henry an answer. Whereupon she said, slowly and sarcastically: “I might. I’ll have to ponder it.” What a kidder. After the photo-op was over, Clinton did take six questions from reporters—raising the total number of media questions she has answered since announcing her candidacy in April to a whopping 26. She committed no gaffes, but unleashed the full blizzard of Clintonian misdirection, omission, dodging, bogus sentimentality, false confidence, and aw-shucks populism. Voting for the Iraq war was a “mistake,” like the kind you make on a test; she and Bill are lucky people (that’s one way of describing them); Charlotte needs to be able to grow up in an America where every little boy and girl has the chance to go from public office to a foreign-funded slush fund; and family courtier and dirty trickster Sid Blumenthal is just an “old friend” who sent her emails about Libya, where he had business dealings, so that she could get out of her “bubble.” Not much for an enterprising reporter to go on. And for all we know, the ice caps will have melted before Clinton submits to more questions. It’s part of her strategy: limiting press availabilities also lessens the chances of another “dead broke” moment, of giving answers that raise more questions. Clinton is busy—raising money, positioning herself on the left to thwart a liberal insurgent, doting on Iowa so as not to repeat her defeat there in 2008. Talking to reporters would be a distraction or, worse, an error. Everyone knows who she is. And interviews leave exposed the most vulnerable part of her campaign: herself. Nor is it like she doesn’t have anything to hide. She has a whole lot to hide: her record, her emails, her charity, her brothers, and her friends. Why risk it? This strategy of press avoidance worked for Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe in 2013 when he was elected governor of Virginia. McAuliffe rarely if ever spoke to reporters, and instead visited with carefully selected businesses and interest groups and sob stories to whom he would nod sympathetically and explain, in the vaguest of ways, how he would make the commonwealth a better, more progressive place. McAuliffe’s campaign manager was Robby Mook, who now performs the same job for Clinton. The lesson he must have drawn from his Virginia experience was that the press, at best, is a nuisance and irrelevant to the outcome of an election. Strategic communications, lots of money, television advertising that defines one’s opponent as extreme, and the Democratic “coalition of the ascendant” are enough to win. At least it’s enough to win Virginia in a—surprisingly close—off-year election. But treating the press with contempt may not work at the presidential level. On the contrary: It could backfire. Not because voters care about how the press is being treated; they don’t. But because the media are exactly that: the medium through which a candidate is presented to the public. Disturb the medium, tic off its individual components, and the presentation may begin to change. Slowly and subtly, a candidate may find herself shown to be inaccessible, aloof, conniving, manipulative, privileged, elusive, dishonest. The questions she faces might grow more hostile; the investigations into her wealth might widen; interest in her husband’s friendship with Jeffrey “Lolita Express” Epstein might sharpen. The message she wants to communicate could be displaced by a media-driven caricature. Republicans know what I’m talking about. They live with it every day: rising stars that go into eclipse, hidden behind media cartoons. Dan Quayle, Clarence Thomas, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz. The latest target is Tom Cotton—see how a Harvard-educated combat veteran is being labeled an amateur, out of his depth, disruptive because of his efforts to stop the nuclear deal with Iran. Our media are fickle, sensationalistic, anxious, insecure, and petty. They’re surprising me with their tough coverage of the Clinton Foundation. Imagine what might happen if Hillary really begins to annoy them. The assumption has been that the mainstream press will guard Clinton like they did Obama in 2008—avoid damaging lines of inquiry, play up the gender angle just as they played up the racial one. I don’t see it happening yet, however. Clinton can’t be happy with the way her candidacy has been portrayed in the media, from her speaking fees to her email server to the family foundation. You can’t ascribe this treatment to the conservative press alone—though we’ve happily played our part. Since Bill first became president the Clintons have held a suspicious attitude toward the media, an attitude the media seem to have reflected back at them. Obama was new, cool, postmodern, suave; Clinton is old, a grandmother, clumsy, a millionaire many times over who has been one of the most famous people in the world for more than two decades. She has none of Obama’s edge, his antiwar bona fides, the quasi-mystical importance his followers bestowed on him. No one would have written a story about Obama like the one McClatchy wrote about Hillary on Thursday: “Clinton campaigning in a bubble, largely isolated from real people.” That’s why she has Sid. The press will no doubt take a different approach once the Republicans choose a nominee, who can then be written off as primitive or corrupt or inexperienced or stupid. I’m not expecting a revolution here, a paradigm shift in the way the media establishment conducts itself. But I am surprised at the way in which Hillary and her supporters dismiss media complaints as extraneous. Bad press hurts campaigns—ask Al Gore, John Kerry, or Mitt Romney. It can hurt Hillary Clinton too. Saturday Night Live is already portraying her as a power-mad robot; think of the damage that could do to perceptions of her over time. And there’s plenty of time. By not talking to the press Clinton has made a strategic choice, as valid as any other. But it may be the wrong choice—in fact it probably is the wrong choice, because most of the choices Hillary Clinton has made since 2006 have been bad. She lost the Democratic nomination, she was the top foreign policy official for a president who is widely seen to have bungled foreign policy, she joined the ethically murky Clinton Foundation and gave high-paying speeches to business groups despite knowing she’d soon be running for president. It’s the same lack of judgment and mismanagement that would cause her to vote for Iraq, then oppose the surge, then support the troop withdrawal; to do Obama’s bidding on Russia, Israel, Iran, Libya; to keep up the pen pal correspondence with Blumenthal; to act unlike any presidential candidate in recent memory. Maybe I’m dreaming, but the press could respond by taking someone who’s likable enough—and making her not likable at all. Silda Wall Spitzer hosts Hillary fundraiser <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/silda-wall-spitzer-hosts-hillary-fundraiser-118239.html> // Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015 Call it the wronged political wives club. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s ex-wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, is hosting a $2,700-a-head fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on June 1 in Manhattan, from 12 to 2 p.m., billed as “a conversation with Hillary Clinton.” In 2008, Silda Wall Spitzer drew notice for standing stoically by her husband’s side when he resigned from office after it was revealed that he was caught up in a prostitution ring scandal. The “Hillstarter” event is notable as the former governor — who ran unsuccessfully for New York City comptroller in 2013 and now oversees his family’s real estate firm — has ties to Team Martin O’Malley. O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, is expected to announce his candidacy for president on May 30 in Baltimore, Md., and Spitzer has been in a long-term, committed relationship with O’Malley’s spokeswoman, Lis Smith, for close to two years. But Spitzer is now said to be completely out of politics and not expected to donate to either Democratic candidate. Silda Wall Spitzer has kept a low profile since her divorce from the former governor was finalized last year, when she reportedly received a $7.5 million payout, including the former couple’s Fifth Avenue home. She has been a stalwart Clinton supporter, giving $5,000 to the independent Ready for Hillary super PAC in 2013. On the same day as the Manhattan event, Clinton is also scheduled to hit up a fundraiser in Queens, N.Y. and a fundraiser at the home of longtime supporters Mindy and Jay Jacobs in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., according to a copy of the email invitation obtained by POLITICO. On June 5, Clinton will attend a fundraiser at the home of philanthropists Carolyn and Malcolm Wiener in Greenwich, Conn. Hillary Clinton to Hold Fund-Raiser Hosted by Spitzer’s Ex-Wife <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/23/hillary-clinton-to-hold-fund-raiser-hosted-by-spitzers-ex-wife/> // NYT // Maggie Haberman - My 23, 2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton will hold a string of fund-raisers on June 1, including one hosted by the ex-wife of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York who resigned amid scandal in 2008. The event for Mrs. Clinton, one of three New York-based events that day, will be hosted by Silda Wall, according to the invitation. The hosts of Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raisers this cycle haven’t been particularly noteworthy — most have been longtime supporters, and Ms. Wall is no exception. But Ms. Wall is also the ex-wife of Mr. Spitzer, who resigned after he was caught up in an investigation into a prostitution ring. Mr. Spitzer is in a long-term relationship with Lis Smith, a well-known Democratic operative who is also a longtime spokeswoman for Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland who is expected to begin his 2016 presidential campaign on May 30. The fund-raising event was first reported by Politico. Some of Mrs. Clinton’s allies still recall with frustration the Democratic presidential primary debate in October 2007 in Philadelphia, when she stumbled over a question about a plan by Mr. Spitzer to allow driver’s licenses for unauthorized immigrants. That stumble was seen as contributing to her downward spiral in the polls. Mr. O’Malley has frequently talked about his support for such driver’s licenses. Mr. O’Malley is seen as a potential vessel for more left-leaning Democrats looking for a challenge to Mrs. Clinton within the party. He has been ratcheting up his populist oratory, drawing comparisons to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a vocal proponent of curtailing Wall Street excesses. Yet that language is also very similar to how Mr. Spitzer carved out a role on the national stage; he became known as the “sheriff of Wall Street” when he was the New York attorney general. Mr. O’Malley has hired Jimmy Siegel, a Madison Avenue ad-maker whose first political campaign was Mr. Spitzer’s run for governor in 2006, and who subsequently worked for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Mr. O’Malley’s aides, meanwhile, have grown sharper in drawing a generational contrast with Mrs. Clinton, who will be 69 on Election Day 2016. Mr. O’Malley, 52, was a strong supporter of Mrs. Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. But in recent days, his aides have signaled that they will point to him as a more future-looking candidate than she is. Asked about the fact that some Maryland elected officials, such as Senator Ben Cardin, have been backing Mrs. Clinton, and her team’s aggressive efforts to corral support in Mr. O’Malley’s home state, one of Mr. O’Malley’s aides, Haley Morris, gave a statement to the Baltimore Sun that used the word “old” twice. “The establishment backing the establishment is the oldest story in politics,” Ms. Morris said. “If Governor O’Malley runs for president, he’ll bring new leadership — not old-guard establishment thinking — to the race.” Mrs. Clinton is holding more than a dozen fund-raisers in different cities ahead of her June 13 campaign kickoff rally. OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE Elizabeth Warren and Democrats should be down with TPP <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/05/23/warren-and-democrats-should-be-down-with-tpp/> // WaPo// Johnathan Capehart - May 23, 2015 Now that the Senate has passed a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill that would fast-track passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, the action moves to the House where my hope for cooler Democratic heads will surely be dashed. And we will have Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) partially to thank for it. The leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has whipped into a frenzy members of Congress who insist on fighting the last war. Warren was dead set against TPA, which is basically a broad, congressionally approved outline that sets the parameters for the TPP that President Obama is negotiating with 11 other nations. Her steadfast opposition to TPP on behalf of American workers who believe global trade shipped their jobs overseas is understandable. I just wish Warren were telling the truth. During an interview with Peter Cook of Bloomberg News on May 19, Warren trod her usual path to slam a trade deal she strongly believes is detrimental to the American people. “We’re being asked to grease the skids for a deal that’s basically done but is being held in secret until after this vote,” Warren said in a double-play diss of TPA and TPP. Here’s the thing: nothing’s secret. Yes, it is secret from you and me. As Ruth Marcus correctly explained, “This is not secrecy for secrecy’s sake; it’s secrecy for the sake of negotiating advantage. Exposing U.S. bargaining positions or the offers of foreign counterparts to public view before the agreement is completed would undermine the outcome.” But TPP is not secret to Warren. She has read it. “Have you been able to read the deal,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Warren during an April interview. “Yes,” Warren replied. She went on to explain that any member of Congress can do so. That is true. The voluminous and changing deal sits in a basement room in the Capitol where members and staff with security clearances can read it. Any member of Congress who wants to be briefed on the emerging agreement or ask questions about what they are reading can call the offices of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). According to the folks at USTR, there have been more than 1,700 in-person briefings on the deal. In fact, Ambassador Michael Froman, who is the USTR, has personally briefed Warren on various aspects of TPP. Now, about Warren’s assertion that TPA “grease[s] the skids for a deal that is basically done.” She used that phrase six times in the 10-minute Bloomberg interview. And she makes it sound like Congress has no and has had no input whatsoever into TPP. Not true. Warren conveniently neglects to mention that every proposal in the deal is and has been previewed with Congress. Or that members of Congress can offer and have offered proposals of their own to USTR. Again, the concerns about the effect another trade deal will have on the American worker are real. The opposition roaring out of the House Democrats is understandable. After 21 years, the bitter aftertaste of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) remains. Shuttered factories and the lost jobs that ensued led many Americans, Democrats and Republicans, to turn inwards to protect their livelihoods. That’s why Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in a statement last month that past trade deals “put the American Dream out of reach for countless working families.” Even the president acknowledges that “past trade deals haven’t always lived up to their promise.” United States Trade Representative Michael Froman (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Post) But as I read and do my own reporting on TPP, I keep coming back to a reported conversation between Obama and the late Apple maestro Steve Jobs. According to the New York Times, at a 2011 dinner in Silicon Valley, the president asked Jobs why iPhones couldn’t be made in the United States? Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest. Froman told me the United States has three options with regard to TPP. The first option is the status quo. That’s the state of play we have now where “those jobs aren’t coming back,” as Jobs said. It’s also a state of play where large companies may see greater benefits to moving operations abroad and smaller ones face a hill too steep to export. And let’s not even talk about the existing trade deals between some of our biggest trading partners that put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. The second option is implementing TPP. Froman and the administration have argued consistently that unprecedented labor requirements (minimum wage, the right to collective bargaining) and environmental standards (protections for endangered wildlife and oceans) would “level the playing field” for American workers to compete with their counterparts in what would be the largest free-trade zone in the world. “With open markets there, you give U.S. companies an incentive to keep manufacturing here and ship goods overseas,” Froman said. The third option, Froman said, was for the U.S. to sit back and let China set the rules in the region with its own trade deals with nations in the region. China would love nothing more than for TPP to fail. According to a story from MarketWatch, China’s State Council is “panicky” over the trade deal. The report points out that the Council believes, “Implementation of the TPP will ‘further impair China’s price advantage in the exports of industrial products and affect Chinese companies’ expansion’ abroad….” “They are working to carve up the market,” Froman told me. “Would you rather a world where the Chinese set the rules of the road or we set the rules of the road?” The latter option is unacceptable. With its polluted air and controlled economy that has a seemingly endless supply of controlled workers, Beijing couldn’t care less about labor, the environment or any of the other values forming the foundation of TPP. In addition, the geopolitical benefit of the deal is a stronger U.S. presence in the region as a counterweight to China. No trade deal is perfect. The U.S. won’t get everything it wants in the negotiations, but it’s getting pretty darned close. And the people’s representatives in Congress have and have always had the ability to see and shape the forthcoming agreement. Once completed, its terms will be seen by all and debated at the Capitol. That’s as it should be. But this nation cannot pretend the world and the global economy haven’t changed since 1994. And Democrats cannot pretend that a progressive president who has championed the cause of the middle class and who they have supported for the last six years would negotiate “a bad deal” that further put American workers at risk. The House needs to pass TPA so that TPP can be completed and move towards final passage. It’s not “greasing the skids.” In the 21st century global economy, it’s a necessity. 7 ways Bernie Sanders could transform America <http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/7_ways_bernie_sanders_could_transform_america_partner/> // Salon // Mathrew Rozsa - May 23, 2015 Say what you will about the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), but if nothing else, it has certainly introduced some interesting ideas into America’s political debate. Considering that the most recent polls show Hillary Clinton with a nearly five-to-one lead over her nearest rival, this can only be viewed as a positive thing. As Reddit‘s favorite politician, Bernie Sanders has enormous influence on our political discourse, and his recent policies have been making huge headlines on the Internet. Here are seven ways in which our national discussion on a wide range of issues could be transformed by the Sanders campaign. 1) Guaranteeing free college In a press conference on Monday, Sanders advocated that the government fund tuition at four-year public colleges and universities through a so-called Robin Hood tax on Wall Street, one that would set a 50 cent tax on every $100 of stock trades on stock sales, as well as lesser amounts on other financial transactions. More from The Daily Dot: “This death metal band fronted by a parrot is real and it’s amazing” While Sanders’ critics are expected to denounce the plan as socialistic, the Vermont Senator is quick to point out that similar proposals are already in effect and successful elsewhere. “Countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and many more are providing free or inexpensive higher education for their young people,” Sanders points out. “They understand how important it is to be investing in their youth. We should be doing the same.” Although Obama promised free community college for students who qualify, Bernie Sanders’ proposed policy shows that with America’s burgeoning debt crisis, we need to go even further. 2) Addressing income inequality In an interview with the Associated Press confirming his presidential run, Sanders cited America’s growing income inequality as one of the chief motivators behind his campaign, a well-timed stance given the recent #FightFor15 on Twitter. “What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels,” Sanders argued. “This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans.” Sanders has proposed a number of reforms to solve this problem, from legislation that would close corporate tax loopholes to raising the minimum wage above $7.25 an hour, a rate Sanders describes as a “starvation wage.” For the working poor, getting by continues to be a daily struggle, and Sanders is fighting to change that. ADVERTISEMENT 3) Regulating Wall Street If you think Sanders’ free college plan has Wall Street concerned, you can only imagine how they feel about Sanders’ proposed bill for breaking up banks that are considered “too big to fail.” In fact, polls show 58 percent of likely voters agreewith his basic argument that “if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” indicating that merely denouncing Sanders as a radical won’t necessarily work for this measure. What’s more, banking lobbyists are concerned that anti-bank sentiment within the Democratic grassroots could push Clinton to the left on this issue. “The prospects of it becoming law are nil,” reported one banking lobbyist to the Hill. “But we care about whether this impacts Hillary and whether she’ll try to pander to the far left.” More from The Daily Dot: “‘The Crow’ is recasting its supervillain as a woman” But for the millions who continue to be affected by the 2008 crash and the effects of the American banking bubble on our Great Recession, it’s not just about pushing Hillary to the left. It’s about pushing America forward. 4) Legalizing marijuana Although Sanders told Time magazine that he doesn’t consider marijuana legalization to be “one of the major issues facing this country,” his sympathies on the subject are pretty clear. “If you are a Wall Street executive who engaged in reckless and illegal behavior which helped crash the economy leading to massive unemployment and human suffering, your bank may have to pay a fine but nothing happens to you,” heexplained in an AMA session on Reddit. “If you’re a kid smoking marijuana or snorting cocaine, you may end up in jail for years.” He also supports increased use of medical marijuana and takes pride in the fact that no one was arrested for marijuana possession or use when he was mayor of Burlington, Vt. Given the negative impact of three decades of the War on Drugs on incarcerating urban residents at disproportionate rates, particularly black men, this is a policy that is long overdue. Although Hillary has vowed to fight the prison-industrial complex, Sanders shows he’s already ready to take the first steps. 5) Fighting free trade There is another issue in which Bernie Sanders may push Clinton to the left: free trade. Although hardly a trending topic, Sanders is a longstanding opponent of international trade agreements like NAFTA that he believes work against the interests of average American laborers. His current target is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being pushed by the Obama administration despite the fact that its provisions have not been made public. “It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP,” Sanders wrote in a letter to the Obama White House, “while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it.” 6) Confronting climate change Sanders’ has made no secret of his contempt for global warming deniers. To embarrass anti-science Republicans, he introduced a “sense of Congress” resolution in January that simply acknowledged man-made climate change was real and needed to be addressed. By voting in favor of the measure, Congress would do little more than place itself “in agreement with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community.” More from The Daily Dot: “People are freaking out over this photo of a woman being walked around on a leash” Although the amendment was tabled by a mostly party-line vote of 56-42, Sanders’ reputation as an unwavering advocate of pro-environmental policies when dealing with climate change hasn’t gone unnoticed. Climate Hawks Vote, a super PAC dedicated to addressing global warming, ranked Sanders as the number-one climate leader in the Senate. 7) Criticizing Israel If elected in 2016, Sanders would be America’s first Jewish president, and that makes his willingness to criticize Israel all the more significant. During a town hall event last year, Sanders got into a shouting match with constituents who were angered by his statement that Israel “overreacted” in its military campaign against Hamas and was “terribly, terribly wrong” for bombing UN facilities. His stance on Israel could hardly be described as blindly pro-Palestinian, however. In the same town hall meeting, he acknowledged that Israel was in a tricky situation because Hamas was firing rockets from populated areas, but he has no love for Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, distinguishing himself as the first Senator to openly refuse to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Regardless of whether one agrees with Sanders’ views on these issues, the odds are still far greater than not that he won’t receive the Democratic nomination next year. In addition to being on the far left in his own party, Sanders is a septuagenarian from a minority background who hails from one of America’s smallest states. At the same time, he is still giving voice to a series of positions that deserve a more prominent place in our political debate. When all is said and done, this can only be a good thing. Kaine’s quest for war legitimacy <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tim-kaines-lonely-quest-for-war-legitimacy/2015/05/22/60daf46a-ffde-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html> // WaPo // George F Wi