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Thomas Frank: When Clinton, Obama Sold ‘Hope,’ They Sold Out Rank-and-File Democrats

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What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank believes the matter with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as presidential campaigners was that they spent too much time “selling tidy homilies” about “hope” and too little advocating ideas such as single-payer health care. Frank stated his case Sunday in his latest weekly column for the liberal online magazine Salon.

Frank suggests that all the non-ideological rhetoric of hope from Clinton and Obama presaged the sort of lefty-disappointing policies they’ve often yielded (e.g., “Clinton’s deregulations [and] Obama’s spying program”). In that regard, he comments, they’re typical of Democrats over the past three-plus decades:

…Maybe [‘hope’] and these two presidents’ fecklessness actually complement and explain one another. Maybe ‘hope’ is the ideal philosophical doctrine for a party determined to dump its old constituents and chart a brave new course in a marketized world. As a slogan, ‘hope’ is vague and ethereal…but perhaps that is what makes it the consummate brand identity for a party that so often triangulates away the concerns of its rank and file…

Moreover, declares Frank, “this particular platitude is not harmless…To describe politics in terms of ‘hope’…allows [Democrats] to sell us out over and over.”

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Hilary Clinton: Abortion Needed for Equality —and Human Development…

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey / Creative CommonsBy Stafano Genarinni, J.D.

Twenty years after the Clintons failed to get countries to declare a right to abortion, Mrs. Clinton told a posh UN crowd that humanity cannot advance without reproductive rights.

“You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development without safeguarding women’s reproductive health or rights,” she declared. Clinton is adamant that reproductive health includes abortion.

The undisputed leader in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was the highlight of International Women’s Day at UN headquarters last Friday, drawing thunderous applause from a well-heeled audience as she decried how women’s equality remains “the great unfinished business of the 21st century.”

Reproductive rights are the starting point for a successful development agenda, according to the former U.S. Secretary of State who called this a “bedrock truth.” Many countries do not share that truth.

The most recent UN conference on development, held in 2012 while Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State, did not mention reproductive rights, instead emphasizing social and economic development.

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Photo Credit: AIMClintonworld Determined to Contain Latest Controversy

By Roger Aronoff.

Much of the media have been obsessed with “Bridgegate,” the local New Jersey story about traffic jams caused by the closing of some lanes on the George Washington Bridge leading into Manhattan—and other potential scandals—simply because the person who figures into it most—Chris Christie—is the governor, and was considered by many to be the Republican with the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton in a 2016 matchup.

“The fact is that we have to take these guys on directly,” Christie shot back at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. “You know, I’m shy and retiring and I don’t like to speak my mind, especially regarding the media. But what we need to start saying is…that we’re not going to put up any longer with them defining who we are.”

Politico was quick to point out that this was the first time that Christie had given a speech “to a crowd of base Republican voters since his administration was roiled by scandal.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who has been among the most obsessive about Bridgegate, told a late-night talk-show host this week that the reason it is so captivating is “I think in part because it’s not over and we still don’t know what happened.” By that standard, she should really want to sink her teeth into this latest Hillary Clinton controversy, which is already bordering on being a full-fledged scandal.

A local Washington D.C. political scandal that has Mayor Vincent Gray in the hot seat has expanded to ensnare the Clinton campaign machine, with actual evidence that illegal money was used to support her 2008 presidential primary campaign to defeat Barack Obama in the Democratic primary. But the former first lady and secretary of state claims that she had no knowledge of these actions, so she is, of course, exonerated by most of the mainstream media. “A campaign adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton was involved in an off-the-books operation to help the former first lady’s 2008 presidential campaign in four states and Puerto Rico, according to federal court documents,” reports CBS News. Will this get enduring wall-to-wall coverage on par with Bridgegate? We doubt it.

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Clinton Files: Advisers Pushed to ‘Humanize’ Hillary, Soften ‘Stern’ Image

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Photo Credit: APEven in the early days of the Clinton White House, consultants and political advisers were scrambling to soften Hillary Clinton’s hard-edged image, looking for ways to “humanize her” for the press and public.

In the latter years, as the media turned, the advice was far more blunt. “Be real,” media consultant Mandy Grunwald told her in a 1999 memo. Grunwald told the first lady the public tends to see her only in “very stern situations,” and warned her not to let the press see her “uncomfortable or testy.”

The advice was contained in roughly 4,000 pages of previously confidential documents from the Clinton administration years, released Friday by the National Archives. The document dump is just the first batch of Clinton papers that will trickle into the public domain in the coming weeks.

The materials will be closely combed by political operatives on both sides of the aisle, as Hillary Clinton weighs a presidential bid in 2016. What the documents reveal about former President Bill Clinton may be less important, politically, than what they reveal about his wife.

The 1999 memo was a particularly frank example of advisers looking to style Clinton for the public. At the time, Grunwald was with the Grunwald Communications firm she founded and was trying to smooth relations between retiring New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Clinton — who would later win Moynihan’s seat. The memo referred to an upcoming “Moynihan event.” Grunwald urged Clinton to stay “conversational” and not raise her voice.

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Biden: I Would Run Against Hillary (+video)

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Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaVice President Biden made it clear Tuesday he’s open to running against Hillary Clinton in a 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

Speaking on ABC’s “The View,” Biden pushed back when co-host Barbara Walters claimed he had said he would not enter the next race for the White House if the former secretary of State did.

“No, I haven’t” said that, Biden told Walters. He added later that “whether [Clinton] runs or not will not affect my decision.”

The 2016 questions came as Biden sought to promote ObamaCare’s marketplaces with the show’s heavily female audience.

The White House is urging mothers to tell their kids to sign up for health plans before March 31, when open enrollment ends for 2014.

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In South Carolina, Clinton Forces Try to Tap Obama Magic (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNNTo hear some tell it, the 2008 South Carolina primary clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was a few steps away from a full-blown race riot.

“It was unbelievable down here in 2007 and 2008,” said Bridget Tripp, a Democratic organizer from Lexington who supported Obama in that year’s primary. “Bill Clinton was going through downtown Columbia calling Barack Obama a racist.”

It never got that bad, of course. But in the runup to the contest and in its aftermath, the Clinton campaign scrambled to explain away comments that rankled the black community: Hillary Clinton seeming to downplay Martin Luther King Jr.’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act, Bill Clinton’s biting characterization of Obama’s campaign as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen” and a range of remarks from Clinton allies that seemed to belittle Obama’s achievements.

Bill Clinton’s remarks in particular went over so poorly that South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, then the state’s highest-ranking African-American in Congress, went on national television and told the former president to “chill.” The morning after Obama’s crushing 28-point victory, Bill Clinton waved it off in glib terms, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, just another black candidate with black support.

The loss was a stinging defeat for the Clintons, a Southern power couple who viewed their longstanding friendships in the African-American community as crucial bulwark against any Democratic foe.

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Benghazi Justice Could Help Hillary Run

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Obama administration is under growing pressure to make an arrest in the Benghazi attack to quash lingering criticism of its response and help clear the road for a possible Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016.

Blame for the shortcomings that contributed to the deaths of four Americans has increasingly focused on the former secretary of State as she weighs her next move. That heat is only expected to intensify as the U.S. prepares to pass the 18-month mark since the attack on the U.S mission.

Republicans have revived their probes into the attack ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections, with the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees both releasing reports in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence panel used their additional views on a recent bipartisan investigation to pin the blame on Clinton for embassy security failings and excoriate the slow pace of justice.

“There simply is no justification … for not doing more to capture and interrogate terrorists who caused the deaths of four Americans,” they wrote in the Jan. 15 report. “The United States can and should do better.”

This past week, the chairman of the House oversight committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), traveled to New Hampshire to “hopefully shape the debate for 2016.” He used the occasion to tear into Clinton, accusing her of preventing the Department of Defense from sending forces to relieve the besieged Americans, despite the Pentagon’s own conclusion that it had no forces in the area ready to be deployed.

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HillaryWatch: Last Week Cable News Spent More Than 400 Minutes on Hillary Clinton

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Photo Credit: MediaiteHave we aleady reached peak Hillary Clinton?

Mediaite’s weekly study of the three major news networks’ Clinton coverage, this week spanning Monday, February 10 to Sunday, February 16, found that cable news devoted 94 segments on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who currently holds no office and has not announced a candidacy for one—for a whopping total of 410 minutes worth of coverage.

Le charts:

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Krauthammer: Hillary Achieved Nothing As Sec. of State, US Went Backwards (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeAppearing on on Tuesday’s Hugh Hewitt Radio Show Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer declared that Hillary Clinton did not have one achievement in her four years running the State Department, and further, the U.S. position in the world actually went backwards during her tenure…

Hewitt: That’s very true. Let me finish up there on Hillary. With these fiascoes underway in Kiev, a massacre, and in Venezuela, the arrest of opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez today, Hillary’s foreign policy trifecta is complete. She’s lost South America, she’s lost the Middle East, and she’s lot Eastern Europe. How does anyone recover from that and run for the presidency?

Krauthammer: By losing the Pacific Rim.Then you get a straight flush. You get a royal flush. Look, you know, when people talk about Hillary being a superb Secretary of State, I just ask one question. Name me one thing, just one, not three, give me one thing she achieved in her four years as Secretary of State. I have yet to hear an answer.

Hewitt: You’re right.

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Former Clinton Aid: Hillary Conducted ‘War On Women’ Sexually Harassed by Her Husband (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WNDKathleen Willey, the former volunteer aide to Bill Clinton who says she was sexually harassed by the president in the 1990s, is now sounding the alarm about the potential danger of Hillary Clinton becoming president.

“Hillary Clinton is the war on women, and that’s what needs to be exposed here,” Willey said Sunday night on Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show.

“The point is what this woman is capable of doing to other women while she’s running a campaign basically on women’s issues. It just doesn’t make any sense. She singlehandedly orchestrated every one of the investigations of all these women [who accused her husband of sexual crimes]. They’re the people reminding us of how sordid this all is.”

Click below to listen to Part 1 of Klein’s interview with Kathleen Willey:

Willey continued to rail against both Bill and Hillary Clinton, saying, “They take up all the oxygen in the room, and everybody is depressed. We’re gonna go back to all the sordid details [if Hillary runs for president]. They need to just go away because they’re forcing themselves on us is the way I feel. Just pack your bags. You’ve had your 15 minutes. … Stop forcing us to have to look at this stuff again. We’re sick of it!”

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House GOP Report: Hillary Was ‘Aware’ of Benghazi Security Lapses

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Photo Credit: APHouse Republicans Friday released a blistering new report saying former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “was certainly aware” of security problems in Libya before the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, blasting her and successor John Kerry for failing to hold anyone accountable.

The report written by staff members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s GOP majority cited problems with the State Department’s Accountability Review Board examination of the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, The Washington Times reported.

And despite the Obama administration’s assertion that review board examination shows the blame for the attack lies with lower-level employees, the House report says Clinton should have been held accountable – and both she and Kerry failed to fire anyone for security breaches that led to the deaths of Stevens, State Department staffer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, the Times reported.

“Systemic failures at the State Department during Secretary Clinton’s tenure resulted in a grossly inadequate security posture in Benghazi,” the report states, according to the Times.

“These vulnerabilities contributed to the deaths of four Americans, including the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979.”

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