Monday Open Thread [1.26.15]
There is a Politico story out today on Hillary Clinton’s nascent campaign for President (yes, she is running), and I think it is a must read, and it contains some very encouraging signs for those disappointed in her 2008 effort and worried about it being a Bill Clintonion-1990’s-DLC-Third Way style of campaign.
Most of the top slots have been decided, with one notable exception: communications director, a job that is now the subject of intense lobbying and jockeying by some of the biggest names in Democratic politics. One top contender is White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, who is close to likely campaign chairman John Podesta (former Obama Administration Counselor to the President).
Numerous lessons from Clinton’s failed ’08 campaign are being baked into the 2016 plan, including a determination to improve relations with the press – or, at the very least, to have a “good cop” role to help her get off on a better foot with the journalists who will help shape her image.
Reflecting other lessons learned, the campaign is being planned with more of a “big-tent mentality,” as one adviser put it. And Bill Clinton is being integrated from the start, after feeling isolated from parts of her campaign against Barack Obama.
One component of Hillary Clinton’s emerging strategy involves quietly but aggressively courting key endorsers from the left, who could help increase progressives’ comfort level and take the wind out of a potential challenge. Two top targets: Robert Reich, the economist and former Labor secretary for her husband, and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil-rights icon. In December, she won public endorsements from Howard Dean and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).
Bill Clinton is already deeply engaged in the campaign, warning that Jeb Bush is a real threat, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is probably just a sideshow.
Wall Street Journal: “Potential presidential candidates — top-tier contenders and long-shots alike — have already spent years quietly laying groundwork, building email lists, recruiting staff, and generally doing the scut work of building an organization on which to call if they flip the switch and launch a 2016 campaign. Mr. Biden, who said this week that he is still weighing a presidential run, is one of the few potential candidates with no political organization, nonprofit, foundation, or campaign staff-in-waiting.”
That is because Biden is not running for President, and, according to the Politico article above, is only saying he is considering it in order to be some kind of Plan B in case Clinton dies, implodes, or something else truly horrible happens.
Speaker Boner and Majority Leader Turtle were interviewed on 60 Minutes last night and they bombed when they were asked what their replacement for Obamacare was. Michael Brendan Dougherty says the GOP needs to muster the courage of the great President Obama in order to come up with a real Obamacare alternative:
If Republicans want to avoid the fate of other center-right parties in Europe that become mere budget-fixers on national health systems, they have to be much more united on their strategy than they are now. A gigantic GOP-led reform could lead to the same electoral disasters that befell Democrats after they passed the ACA, and fear of losing power could easily translate into a drift towards single-payer. ObamaCare required the incredible courage of President Obama, as well as many of his more awkward and embarrassing legislative buyouts, like the Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase. Republicans are going to need a president and legislative leadership with at least as much mettle as he had.
Ezra Klein says the Republicans, naturally, do not have the courage of President Obama.
[U]pheaval in the health-care system typically makes for terrible politics. Democrats learned that the hard way with the Affordable Care Act. Republicans would likely learn it double if they made a serious effort to repeal, replace, or overhaul Obamacare. This is the central problem for conservative health reformers: because Republicans don’t care that much about health reform and because so much of what health reform demands offends conservative sensibilities or constituencies, the party doesn’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to unite behind an alternative to Obamacare, much less actually pass and implement it.
Byron York: “Chris Christie is in better shape than you think. There was a widely-held assumption that Christie’s Jersey Guy persona wouldn’t play well in Iowa — that he is just too hot and too confrontational to get along with a bunch of nice Midwesterners. But it turns out a lot of Iowa Republicans actually like Christie, even if they’re not quite ready to support him. Christie connects with audiences in Iowa just like elsewhere in the country, and more importantly, Iowa Republicans really want someone to fight for them in the next campaign. Most felt Romney just wouldn’t take it to President Obama in 2012, so now Christie is OK with them as long as they believe he will give Democrats hell.
Joshua Spivak: “What separates Romney from other comeback presidents is that he’s already received his party’s nomination and lost once before. The recent comeback kids did not receive the nomination in their first runs for office. For example, both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush came in second in their earlier attempts for the nomination. Reagan, probably the most noteworthy candidate who ran more than once, boosted his name-recognition and his credibility with the party’s conservative base in his first two runs, especially when he almost toppled sitting President Gerald R. Ford in 1976.”
“But once you look at the candidates who received the nomination, lost the general election and ran again, the road back to the White House appears much tougher. The last person to lose as a nominee and then go on to win the presidency — or even to get his party’s nomination more than once – was Richard Nixon, who lost the election on a razor-thin margin in 1960 and then won triumphantly in 1968. Before that, it was fairly common for a party to renominate a candidate. William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic nominee three times and never won; Adlai Stevenson got the Democratic nomination twice in the 1950s; Thomas Dewey was the unsuccessful Republican nominee in 1944 and 1948. But all of these candidates share something Romney lacks: Their campaigns occurred before the advent of the current primary and caucus system for choosing a nominee. These earlier nominees needed only to appeal to the narrow support of a political convention.”
Michael Koplow on how Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is harming Israel.
It’s one thing to blame Netanyahu for bad relations with a president who will be out of office in two years; one can argue that this is a problem that will resolve itself with no residual effects. But if you view Netanyahu’s machinations in a larger context, by constantly and openly favoring the Republican Party – either himself or through Ron Dermer’s actions in Washington – he is putting Israel itself at long term risk by helping make it a wedge issue in American politics.
I constantly argue that Israel’s primacy of place in the U.S. is due to popular opinion, but the caveat there is that this only works when it is bipartisan popular opinion. Netanyahu’s actions, where he sides with the Republicans in a very exaggerated manner, are having a serious effect and eroding traditional cross-spectrum popular support for Israel, and once that passes a point of no return, Israel is going to have serious problems. I don’t place the blame for wavering support in the Democratic Party for Israel solely at Netanyahu’s feet by any means, but he is a big part of the problem and has stoked the fires at many points. The GOP has an obvious political interest in making Israel a full-fledged wedge issue and using it as a cudgel to hammer the Democrats as often as it can. The burning question for me is why Netanyahu is so willing to allow himself to be used in furthering this outcome when it is so obviously not in Israel’s interests.
