H4a news Clips [April 11, 2015] Summary of Today’s news


Hillary Clinton Is the Perfect Age to Be President [Dr. Julie Holland, TIME, April 3, 2015]



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Hillary Clinton Is the Perfect Age to Be President [Dr. Julie Holland, TIME, April 3, 2015]
At 67, Dr. Julie Holland argues that Hillary Clinton is the perfect age to be President.
At 67, Hillary Clinton is now a “woman of a certain age.” So much emphasis and worry are put on physical aging in women that the emotional maturity and freedom that can come at this time are given short shrift. That robs everyone of a great natural resource. For women of a certain age, it is our time to lead. The new standard for aging women should be about vitality, strength and assertiveness.
One of the largest demographics in America is women in their 40s to 60s, and by 2020 there will be nearly 60 million peri- and post-menopausal women living in the U.S. Because women’s average life expectancy is currently 81 years, we’re easily spending a third of our lives postmenopausal. That is a great opportunity for growth and change.
Estrogen is a stress hormone that helps a woman be resilient during her fertile years. Its levels rise and fall to help her meet her biological demands, which are often about giving to others: attracting a mate, bearing children and nurturing a family. When estrogen levels drop after menopause, the cyclical forces that dominated the first half of our lives have been replaced with something more consistent. Our lives revolve less around others and become more about finally taking our turn.The long phase of perimenopause is marked by seismic spikes and troughs of estrogen levels, which can last for more than a decade in many women. But afterward, there is a hormonal ebbing that creates a moment of great possibility. As a psychiatrist, I will tell you the most interesting thing about menopause is what happens after. A woman emerging from the transition of perimenopause blossoms. It is a time for redefining and refining what it is she wants to accomplish in her third act. And it happens to be excellent timing for the job Clinton is likely to seek. Biologically speaking, postmenopausal women are ideal candidates for leadership. They are primed to handle stress well, and there is, of course, no more stressful job than the presidency.
In my new book, Moody Bitches, I look at how women are taught from an early age that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. That is simply wrongheaded. Women’s moods are our body’s intelligent feedback system. If we learn to manage them properly, they are a great resource and a tremendous source of power. They show us when we are primed for certain challenges and opportunities.
And the postmenopausal emergence, if you will, coincides with the point at which most women will have a fair amount of experience under their belts. (Perhaps they’ve already served as a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, for instance.) This is often the right time to make a push, to take more of a leadership position, enter a new arena or strike out on one’s own. My mother was a great role model in her perimenopause, taking her symptoms in stride and referring to her hot flashes as “power surges.” She got another degree and switched careers; that appealed to me as a teenage girl. Now I see this rise in power as a way to channel new energy and even new anger. It’s a chance to make changes that should’ve been made decades ago. This may also be the time when children — adolescents in particular — are ready to take on more responsibility, so perhaps there is a benefit for everyone in changing that family dynamic.
“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” said a 73-year-old Ronald Reagan of 56-year-old Walter Mondale. Hillary would begin her presidency at exactly the same age Reagan did, but her life expectancy would be longer than that of any other President in recent times. And she would have all the experience and self-assurance of a postmenopausal woman, ready to take her rightful place at the table — or in the Oval Office.
Julie Holland, M.D., is a psychopharmacologist and psychiatrist, and the best-selling author of Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER and Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Crazy, out this month

Hillary to Launch Campaign This Weekend With ‘Insane’ Fundraising Push [David Freedlander, The Daily Beast, April 10, 2015]
In a few days, Clinton will at last announce the obvious—she’s running for president. And she’ll use her first week as a candidate to raise “an insane amount of money,” an insider says.
In a few days, Clinton will at last announce the obvious—she’s running for president. And she’ll use her first week as a candidate to raise “an insane amount of money,” an insider says.
After the announcement comes the deluge.
Hillary Clinton is expected to announce her presidential campaign this weekend, most likely on Sunday, sources in the Clinton operation tell The Daily Beast.
After that, the nascent campaign will embark on a fundraising push that the Clinton camp says will dwarf anything seen in the history of presidential politics.
“They are going to raise in one week what some Republican presidential candidates are going to raise the entire cycle,” said one Clinton aide.
On Saturday afternoon, Ready for Hillary, the super PAC that has been a Clinton campaign-in-waiting in the years since Clinton left the State Department, will host what is likely a final fundraising push at SouthwestNY, a sleek Tex-Mex restaurant steps from the rebuilt World Trade Center.
From then on, Ready for Hillary will encourage its 3.6 million supporters to give to Clinton’s real campaign while the super PAC quietly dissolves.
Ready for Hillary has raised close to $15 million from nearly 150,000 donors, and Clintonistas believe that those same donors alone could give as much as 10 times that amount to a Clinton campaign.
They are expected to be joined in this fundraising by Clinton allies like EMILY’s List, the organization dedicated to electing pro-choice women to office that is viewed as central to Clinton’s 2016 chances.
Regardless of when she announces, the plan, one Clinton insider told The Daily Beast, was to do a massive fundraising push through her website and with allied organizations to raise “an insane amount of money” right out of the starting gate.
A Clinton spokesman did not return a request for comment.
“They are going to raise in one week what some Republican presidential candidates are going to raise the entire cycle.”
Clinton is likely to announce her run for president on Twitter, linking the announcement through a variety of social media platforms.
Clinton has been unusually active on Twitter in recent weeks to generate an audience for her expected announcement.
Since the last week of March, she has tweeted twice: in support of the Affordable Care Act and against an Indiana law that some say would discriminate against gays. She has also weighed in on the shooting of an unarmed black man in South Carolina—“Praying for #WalterScott’s family. Heartbreaking & too familiar. We can do better—rebuild trust, reform justice system and respect all lives.”; paid tribute to retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid; and come out against “payday lenders.”
After Clinton announces her candidacy, she will likely jet off to the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire early next week. While most presidential campaigns strategize over how to get media attention, Clinton operatives are trying to figure out how to wrangle a ballooning press corps that for weeks has competed over such small-bore issues as which empty Brooklyn loft space will house her campaign headquarters and looked for meaning in every Clinton facial expression and utterance since 2012.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have always been prodigious Democratic fundraisers, but they will enter the 2016 election cycle as newcomers to the post-Citizens Unitedworld of campaign finance. Super PACs associated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for example, have raised $31 million since he announced his campaign last week. And former Florida governor Jeb Bush has embarked on a “shock and awe” fundraising blitz to overwhelm his Republican rivals.
Hillary Clinton intends to upstage them all.
A contest, or a coronation? [The Economist, April 10th, 2015]
Hillary Clinton will have to overcome her past in order to compete effectively in 2016.
FOR five seconds Hillary Clinton’s voice cracked and her eyes grew damp. It was in January 2008 in a coffee shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A sympathetic voter had just asked her how she coped with the hardships of running for president. “How do you do it?” asked Marianne Pernold Young, a local portrait photographer, mentioning that Mrs Clinton’s hair always looked perfectly coiffed. “How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?”
Pundits rushed to analyse the moment. Mrs Clinton was exhausted, they intoned. The former First-Lady-turned-senator knew that her younger rival, Barack Obama, was walking away with a race for the Democratic nomination that had once seemed hers to lose.
As the media juggernaut gathered speed, the strange intensity of America’s relationship with Mrs Clinton was laid bare. Supporters hailed the fleeting display of emotion as proof of their heroine’s humanity, often hidden by her discipline and caution on the campaign trail. Opponents recalled Edmund Muskie, a Democrat whose presidential bid was derailed in 1972 when he teared up in the face of harsh press attacks, and wondered if the 2008 primary was now over. Back inside the Café Espresso, suspicious journalists surrounded Mrs Pernold Young. Betraying the toxic state of Mrs Clinton’s relations with the press pack, many asked if she was a planted campaign stooge.
The candidate herself cornered a press aide and fretted that voters might think her weak, and not ready to be commander-in-chief. Mr Obama took a different view. Watching footage of his rival as he trundled across New Hampshire in a campaign bus, he thought it a worryingly touching moment. “I don’t like this. I actually think this could really help her,” David Axelrod, the political guru at Mr Obama’s side, later recalled muttering.
Seven years on, as America waits to see how Mrs Clinton will conduct a second bid for her party’s presidential nomination, that flash of vulnerability is still cited in New Hampshire, the state that next January will host the first primary elections (and the second vote, after the Iowa caucuses) of the 2016 presidential cycle. This time it inspires a consensus: Mrs Clinton needs more such moments.
New Hampshire voters expect to meet candidates in diners and veterans’ halls, and to hear them speak in a neighbour’s sitting-room. They have a record of dethroning front-runners who take the state for granted. Mrs Pernold Young still lives in Portsmouth, and jokes that “The woman who made Hillary Clinton cry” will be carved on her tombstone. Over breakfast at the Café Espresso, she says she will back Mrs Clinton this time round, after supporting Mr Obama in the 2008 primary. Appalled by the “quagmire” in Washington, and disappointed by how long it took Mr Obama to learn the ways of government, she likes the idea of electing a worldly insider like Mrs Clinton, sighing: “I don’t want another trainee.” But she does not want a coronation either. She notes that some friends roll their eyes at another Clinton presidency, especially as no serious Democratic rival has yet emerged. “I’d like to see Hillary be challenged,” she says.
Such views are widespread, and have been heard within the Clinton camp. Two close advisers, Robby Mook and Marlon Marshall, visited New Hampshire and Iowa just before Easter, meeting local Democratic power-brokers. One of these was James Demers, a strategist and lobbyist who was one of Mr Obama’s first big backers in New Hampshire. The message from Mrs Clinton’s inner circle was that the former secretary of state will run as though she faces a bitterly contested primary, Mr Demers says. She will use the race to explain to America why she wants the presidency, while building the sort of campaign machinery that propelled Mr Obama to the White House in 2008. Whether her primary involves one, two or ten candidates, Mrs Clinton “knows that she has to earn every vote”.
As one of the most famous people in the world, constantly watched by the Secret Service, it will be hard for Mrs Clinton to campaign in the traditional New Hampshire way, says Terry Shumaker, a lawyer who co-chaired both of Bill Clinton’s campaigns in the state. But he thinks she must try, using the “intimacy” of the state to communicate with the whole country. He describes his old friend as an economic centrist, who sees government as a positive force but believes that business is the engine of the economy. In 2016 she can add domestic and global experience to the mix. “There is a huge hunger for Washington to work again,” he says. And with Islamic State fanatics on the prowl, voters have a “visceral” need to feel safe.
Not all Democrats are convinced. Martha Fuller Clark, a state senator and big Obama backer in 2008, notes that New Hampshire Democrats are not “100% for Hillary”. She herself remains uncommitted, noting that a potential rival, the former governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, has been active in the state. In her telling, New Hampshire Democrats want a candidate who will fight against inequality and for the middle class. They worry about climate change, and are unhappy that so much outside money is flowing into their state, notably since the Supreme Court eased the rules on political spending. They want to hear from Mrs Clinton how to “move from a plutocracy back to a democracy”, says Mrs Fuller Clark.
Sisters are doin’ it for themselves
That echoes complaints from other Democrats, such as Gary Hart, a former presidential contender, who recently said it should “frighten every American” that the Clinton machine reportedly intends to raise $1 billion. Once the real campaigning starts, the former secretary of state needs a strategy to engage and excite the broader electorate, especially the young, Mrs Fuller Clark adds: not least because she thinks that female politicians are judged more harshly than men, which makes it hard to be accessible. “Women really want to do a good job, something that constrains them from engaging more freely with voters.”
After years worrying about the Middle East and Russia, Mrs Clinton will be grilled about health care, or the lack of full-day kindergartens in half the towns in New Hampshire, predicts Colin Van Ostern, a member of the state’s Executive Council. He thinks this will do Candidate Clinton much good: “What Hillary Clinton needs is exactly what New Hampshire demands.”
The challenges of a fresh Clinton candidacy were summed up by Bill Clinton, the man with the potential to be the campaign’s greatest asset and worst liability. No living ex-president enjoys higher approval ratings, as Americans forget the scandals of the 1990s and remember the economic growth, balanced budgets and bipartisan reforms of the welfare system that were achieved on Mr Clinton’s watch. Yet in 2008 an ill-disciplined Mr Clinton caused chaos in his wife’s campaign.
The former president recently told Town & Country magazine that he was not sure he was any good at campaigning any more because “I’m not mad at anybody,” citing the mellowing effects of being a grandfather. Despite that disclaimer, Mr Clinton could not resist analysing his wife’s putative campaign in some detail, noting that it is hard for any party to hold the White House for longer than two terms, and arguing that should his wife run, she should “go out there as if she’s never run for anything before and establish her connection with the voters.”
The problem is that the Clintons have run for many things before. Mrs Clinton first entered the governor’s mansion in Arkansas in 1979, and has been in the public eye ever since. This makes connecting with ordinary folk a challenge. In a speech last year to a convention of car dealers, she confided that: “The last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996.” The fact that she typically received six-figure sums for such speeches does not help either.
Republicans may be expected to paint her as part liberal-elitist, and part big-government statist. Playing on lingering public disapproval of the Obamacare health reforms, Republicans may try to revive memories of Mrs Clinton’s failed attempts at expanding health coverage during her husband’s presidency.
Republicans will also try to use her record as secretary of state from 2009-13 against her. It is common to hear them talk of a world made more dangerous by a naive, feckless “Obama-Clinton foreign policy”. Mrs Clinton is blamed on the right for her role in offering Russia a “reset” in relations, for clashing with the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, and for generally squandering her time as America’s top envoy. Of her boast of having travelled to 112 countries, one putative Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, a former boss of Hewlett-Packard, scoffs that: “Flying is an activity, not an accomplishment.”
Without a scrap of evidence, many conservatives remain convinced that Mrs Clinton chose out of political calculation not to protect an American mission in Benghazi, leading to the deaths of America’s ambassador to Libya and three aides, then sought to cover up her blunders. Such suspicions have not been allayed by the recent revelation that Mrs Clinton used a private server throughout her time at the State Department, preserving for the archives only the e-mails that she deemed relevant and deleting the rest. And she will face queries about donations from foreign governments, some less than democratic, to the Clinton Foundation, a family charity that also serves to keep her in the public eye.
The Democratic grassroots have their own gripes with the Clintons. They have not forgotten that Mrs Clinton voted for George W. Bush’s Iraq war as a senator. It took her until March 2013 to come out for gay marriage. But mostly the left of the party worries that the Clintons are too soft on capitalism. They recall Mr Clinton’s presidency as a time when the rules on Wall Street banks were loosened, in their view setting the scene for the later financial crash. It remains an article of faith among trade unions that the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Mr Clinton with Mexico and Canada sucked jobs out of the American heartland.
Standin’ on their own two feet
Though no credible Democratic challenger has emerged, many Democrats see (or want to see) a vacuum to Mrs Clinton’s left. Mr O’Malley, who as governor of Maryland was hardly a socialist banner-waver, now sides with groups who insist that America can afford to increase federal benefits for the old, breaking with years of broad consensus that Social Security is doomed to insolvency unless benefits are eventually curtailed and taxes raised.
Lots of leftists still long for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to make a populist bid for the presidency, demanding tougher regulation of Wall Street, fewer free-trade deals and more redistribution to the middle class. Mrs Warren says she is not running, but the clamour continues. It is in part an attempt to put pressure on Mrs Clinton to tack to the left.
Some critics worry that Mrs Clinton is too old (she would be 69 in January 2017, making her the second-oldest newly elected president, eight months younger than Ronald Reagan). Others fret about her health (she suffered a blood clot on her brain in 2012). She cannot do much about either charge.
She could deal with a different concern—that no one knows what she really believes—but she is in no hurry. Candidates usually take sharply ideological positions during primaries, to woo the die-hard activists who vote in them, before tacking back to the centre as the general election nears. However, if Mrs Clinton faces no real primary challenger, she may not need to do this. Instead, she will need to woo enough Democrats to build a sense of excitement and grassroots involvement, without alienating swing voters. And if she cannot achieve the same stellar levels of support among black and young voters that Mr Obama did, she will need to fill the gap some other way.
She has made her pitch to women clear. She stresses her desire to help more of them into the workforce. She solemnly declares that women should receive equal pay for the same work as men (a position with which no one disagrees). In the past she has campaigned to make it easier for women to sue over alleged discrimination.
A big test involves white voters without a college education, who make up about a third of the electorate, but have drifted from the Democrats since Bill Clinton’s day. Mr Obama only won 36% of their votes in 2012, and might have done still worse if he had not successfully painted his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, as their worst nightmare of a boss.
Should Mrs Clinton win the general election, she will also need to be ready on Day One to deal with Republicans. There is virtually no chance that Democrats will win the House of Representatives in 2016, and even if they retake the Senate they will not have a filibuster-proof majority.
Expect Mrs Clinton to run to Mr Obama’s right on foreign policy. In interviews since leaving the State Department she has said that she urged him to take a muscular approach to Russia. She has chided Europeans for failing to stand up to Vladimir Putin (she wants them to send arms to Ukraine, for example), while crediting the reset with achieving at least one arms-control agreement and securing Russian help in talks to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. She has called the latest draft deal with Iran, brokered by America and other world powers, an “important step”, whatever that means. Last year she signalled that she would be more comfortable with stricter curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme. In a rare overt criticism of Mr Obama, she said in 2014 that the failure to help non-Islamist Syrian rebels fight against Bashar Assad had left a “big vacuum” for Islamic State and other jihadists to fill.
Mrs Clinton has come close to echoing Republican grumbles that Mr Obama is too apologetic about American power. She says that her country cannot solve all problems, “but there’s not a problem that we face that can be solved without the United States.” While ruling out a return to the hubris of the George W. Bush years, she hints that the time has come for America to re-engage with the world.
In domestic forums Mrs Clinton is fluent in the language of the modern business-friendly centre-left. She is keen on public infrastructure, universal education for the youngest children, lowering the cost of college and experimenting with German-style wage-subsidies for the working poor. She likes to see church groups working alongside strong trade unions and community organisations, and uses “evidence-based” as high praise for any policy. In 2008 she sometimes sounded like a deficit hawk, with slogans like: “We’ve got to stop spending money we don’t have.” In 2008 she also called for a “time out” on new trade deals, though as secretary of state she backed new pacts. During primary debates she called herself “committed to making sure Social Security is solvent” and said that the best route to reform lay through bipartisan compromise.
And ringin’ on their own bells
Yet even policy experts invited to private sessions with Mrs Clinton in recent months are not sure where she stands. One centrist policy adviser says that, after being quizzed by her about paths to restoring middle-class prosperity, he thinks (and certainly hopes) that she will say that it is a false choice to argue that fairness and economic growth must be in opposition to each other.
Such centrists would like to hear her thank Mr Obama for saving the economy from disaster after the financial crash in 2008 and praise him for expanding health care. Then she could change the subject, turning the country’s attention to the task of building an economy for the 21st century, harnessing growth to boost middle-class wages. If it sounds to voters more like a third term of Bill Clinton than four more years of Mr Obama, that would suit many Hillary-backers just fine.
Hillary Clinton Can't Coast on Her Belief in Climate Science [Rebecca Leber, TNR, April 10, 2015]
Hillary Clinton will be the only legitimate contender for the White House—declared or presumptive—who embraces the scientific reality of climate change.
This weekend, Hillary Clinton reportedly will announce her candidacy for president. In doing so, she will be the only legitimate contender for the White House—declared or presumptive—who embraces the scientific reality of climate change.
Clinton could coast through the primary with an environmental platform that rests entirely on this fact, and remain vague on her plans for climate action. But she would be blowing a tremendous opportunity.
Environmentalists aren't sure where Clinton stands these days, though she did work to boost her climate credentials in two high-profile speeches months before the official launch of her campaign. At September's National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Clinton called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.” And two months later, in a speech to the League of Conservation Voters, she said, "The science of climate change is unforgiving, no matter what the deniers may say, sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc."
But those speeches only signal that she's not, say, Ted Cruz. Little is known about her specific policies on the environment. She’s never tweeted about climate change, and she’s steered clear of debates over the Keystone XL pipeline. "You won't get me to talk about Keystone because I have steadily made clear that I'm not going to express an opinion," Clinton said in Canada the same week the Senate debated a Keystone bill. So far, the most promising sign that her campaign will be aggressive on the environment is her hiring former White House senior adviser John Podesta, who led the Obama administration's recent strategy on climate.
Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica hopes Clinton uses her high profile to elevate the climate debate in America, much like President Barack Obama has.
“I think the real difficulty is whether or not it’s a proactive debate where Clinton is proactively pushing her vision and what it means for the United States and globe if she will be responding in a defensive manner to Obama’s climate plan,” Pica said. “She should model what the president is doing right now. He has the bully pulpit of the presidency and he is trying to steer proactively the climate debate."
Some environmentalists worry she will dodge difficult policy issue, including methane emissions from fracking, leasing public lands to energy companies, and offshore drilling.
“The question isn’t whether or not Hillary Clinton’s talking points are better than those of Ted Cruz, or if she’ll say nice things about renewable energy," 350 Action spokesperson Karthik Ganapathy said. "Rising above climate denial isn’t the bar here; the real question is how her policies stack up against the science, and whether or not they’ll actually keep fossil fuels in the ground to avert the worst impacts of global warming."
Realistically, Clinton will get support from national green groups regardless of what she does. She'll support clean energy and Obama's major climate policies. That's good enough for most supporters.
A few groups, like Friends of the Earth and 350.org, have called out the Clinton Foundation's ties to the oil and gas industry and criticized her past comments about Keystone. In 2010, Clinton hinted she was “inclined” to approve the Keystone pipeline when she was secretary of state. She also aggressively promoted natural gas as “the cleanest fossil fuel available” and hired a former oil industry representative to push the fossil fuel abroad. Environmentalists want to see Clinton temper her support for fracking by acknowledging its problems—that it leaks greenhouse gas emissions, causes minor earthquakes, and contaminates groundwater.
Taking specific stances on environmental issues carries its own risk, but there might be a bigger payoff. After all, Clinton will have to energize the Democratic base in order to win her general-election campaign. “Presidential candidates who propose to aggressively invest in clean energy jobs and reduce climate pollution would enhance their appeal to young and Latino voters, as well as other groups," LCV Senior Vice President for Campaigns Dan Weiss said. It could even help in swing states. "Iowa farmers, for instance, strongly support investments in wind energy. Small business owners in southern Florida would benefit from such policies that reduce the potential of floods from sea level rise," he said.
For too long, Democratic candidates have been content to mock Republican climate-deniers while proudly proclaiming their belief in the science of climate change. In 2016, that will no longer suffice. Obama's recent controversial executive actions ensure that climate change will be an election issue. If an international deal to cut emissions is successful by the end of 2015, then the ensuing debate could dominate the early primaries in 2016. Clinton will have to answer questions about where she stands. She shouldn't wait until then to give us her answer.
Review: ‘Clinton the Musical’ Proves Unimpeachably Amusing [Laura Collins-Hughes, NYT, April 10, 2015]
‘Clinton the Musical’ portrays Hillary Clinton well and is an entertaining show for all.
First came the gnashing of teeth over Hillary Clinton’s private email account, and her soon-to-be announced presidential campaign. Then, with a TED talk, Monica Lewinsky signaled her return to the spotlight. Now a show called “Clinton the Musical” has opened Off Broadway.
A person could be forgiven for wanting to hide under the bed until the 1990s stopped making a comeback.
But cowering would be a mistake. Far better to crawl out from behind that dust ruffle, head over to New World Stages and let “Clinton the Musical” quell your fears.
Smartly silly, hilariously impudent and sneakily compassionate, it is nearly guaranteed to leave you humming a bouncy, exuberant tune called “Monica’s Song” — the lyrics are unprintable — and thinking far more fondly of the eight scandal-plagued years this country spent with a president from a place called Hope. In this frothily satirical political history — which has a book by the Australian brothers Paul and Michael Hodge, and music and lyrics by Paul Hodge — No. 42 is actually two presidents: the urbane, silver-haired WJ Clinton (Tom Galantich) and the louche, rutting Billy Clinton (Duke Lafoon).
“In my whole life I have only ever loved two men,” Hillary (Kerry Butler) says. “And they happen to be the same man.”
So the famous Bill-and-Hillary package deal the country got in the 1992 election is a three-for-one bargain here, with WJ, Billy and brainy, resilient Hillary tussling for dominance in a White House designed by Beowulf Boritt, where the portraits on the walls show past presidents and their amours.
Chief among the enemies waiting to pounce is the deliciously sex-crazed special prosecutor Kenneth Starr (Kevin Zak), who gets his chance when Billy takes up with Monica (Veronica J. Kuehn). The prosecutor and Linda Tripp (Judy Gold), Monica’s predatory confidante, are the show’s only real villains. Newt Gingrich(John Treacy Egan) is more of a buffoon.
Reworked and largely recast since its run last July at the New York Musical Theater Festival, “Clinton” is now directed and choreographed by Dan Knechtges, and its tone is affectionately lampooning. Chelsea Clinton is mentioned by name only once, not cruelly. An occasional appearance by Socks the cat is enough to remind us that a family, not just a presidency, was at stake amid the Lewinsky scandal.
And Hillary? She tells us at the start that this is the story of her first presidency, and she comes off awfully well. In a flattering blue pantsuit by David C. Woolard, with hair designed by Tom Watson that looks consistently great, Ms. Butler makes a peppy, very funny Hillary whose ambitions are huge but whose capability is never in question.
The show’s poster art notwithstanding, “Clinton” doesn’t pit Hillary and Monica against each other. It’s sympathetic to both of them, painting Monica as naïve and terribly young. That lack of meanspiritedness is crucial to its success.
“Clinton the Musical” isn’t the sort of show that the real-life subjects are likely to find entertaining, but for the rest of us, it’s 95 minutes of healthy catharsis.
Bloomberg Politics Poll: Democrats and Independents Don’t Want a Hillary Coronation [John McCormick, Bloomberg Politics, April 10, 2015]
If Hillary Clinton is to become her party's 2016 presidential nominee, independents and even Democrats overwhelmingly want to see her earn the title, according to a Bloomberg Politics national poll that also shows increasing headwinds for her candidacy.
If Hillary Clinton is to become her party's 2016 presidential nominee, independents and even Democrats overwhelmingly want to see her earn the title, according to a Bloomberg Politics national poll that also shows increasing headwinds for her candidacy.
As Clinton prepared to formally announce her candidacy on Sunday, nearly three-quarters of Democrats and independents in the survey said it would be a good thing for the Democratic Party if she were to face a "serious" challenger for the nomination. Democrats and independents hold the same view, with 72 percent of both groups saying her party would be best served by a robust primary.
That presents a potential opening for other Democrats considering bids, including former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and possibly Vice President Joe Biden.
“She’s not a naive person. She knows the law and has been in government and knows records retention issues.”
Leave Little
Facing a serious challenge "would prepare her for debates and things like that against the Republican nominee," said poll respondent Marc Witte, 66, a Democrat and clinical counselor from Poland, Ohio. Yet Witte, who supports Clinton, isn't quite sure he wants Clinton to face an overly combative challenger. "That could be a bad thing," he said.
The poll, taken April 6-8, also indicates that Clinton will confront continued skepticism about whether she has been truthful in saying that she's turned over all e-mails relevant to her time as secretary of state. Fifty-three percent of Americans say they think she purposely withheld or deleted some relevant e-mails from a private account and home server she used while in office. Just 29 percent of respondents said they thought she was being truthful.
Even 26 percent of Democrats believe she has purposefully withheld e-mails or deleted them. That number jumps to 60 percent for independents and 81 percent for Republicans.
Clinton's office said March 10 she gave 30,490 work-related e-mails to the State Department, which is reviewing them for public release. An additional 32,830 e-mails, which Clinton said involved personal matters such as wedding planning or yoga routines, were deleted.
"She's not a naive person," said poll respondent Leake Little, 54, a Democrat who works as a services consultant from San Francisco. "She knows the law and has been in government and knows records retention issues."
Little said the e-mail controversy is the top issue concerning him about Clinton's candidacy, in part because it's the most recent. "It raises a huge character issue for me. It goes to whether I can literally trust her," said Little, a services consultant from San Francisco. "Her actions just don't add up."
The e-mail controversy may be one of the factors depressing Clinton's overall standing. Just 48 percent view her favorably, down four points since December and marking the first time her standing has fallen below 50 percent in Bloomberg polls dating to September 2009. Her high was 70 percent in December, 2012.
More than a quarter of those who view her favorably also say she hasn't been truthful about her e-mails.
And the percentage of Democrats who say they will definitely vote for her if she is the Democratic nominee has dropped a full 10 points, to 42 percent from 52 percent in a Bloomberg poll in June, 2013.  Just 18 percent of poll respondents say they definitely will vote for her for president, compared to 23 percent two years ago.
One thing is clear: The historic possibility of a woman becoming president isn't a major influence on attitudes. The vast majority of poll respondents–83 percent–say they wouldn't be more or less inclined to vote for Clinton because she would be the first female president.
"Clinton’s strong performance in 2008 seems to have addressed any question of whether a woman could be a capable president.  It’s a non-issue now," said J. Ann Selzer, president of West Des Moines-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. "At the end of the nomination fight, it was clear she had paved the way for other women with her '18 million cracks' in the glass ceiling. It turns out she may have paved the way for herself."
Women and liberals are more likely than others to say they'd be more inclined to vote for Clinton because of her gender. Seventeen percent of women say the idea of electing the first female president makes them more inclined to vote for Clinton, more than double the percentage of men who say that. Among those who consider themselves liberals, a quarter said Clinton's gender makes them more likely to back her.
"I just think it is time," said Jennifer LaDuca, 43, a full-time human resources management student and part-time thrift shop worker from Ahwahnee, Calif.  "I would vote for almost any woman candidate over a male, as long as they weren't too out of line with my political thinking."
LaDuca, who considers herself a Democrat, said she's leaning toward supporting Clinton if she runs. She said her grandmother, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 98, voted for Clinton in the 2008 primary. "I would have loved for her to see Hillary Clinton get elected in her lifetime," she said.
As is typical for Clinton, more women view her favorably than men, 54 percent to 42 percent. Still, her standing with women has dropped 9 points from two years ago.
Her ratings have suffered among independent women, with 44 percent viewing her favorably and 48 percent unfavorably. That’s a profound drop since June 2013, when that group viewed her favorably by almost a 2-1 ratio, 60 percent to 33 percent. Clinton's standing among Democrats remains strong at 82 percent, although that number has dropped six points since June 2013.
Like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton posts stronger numbers among younger Americans, who may not as well remember the controversies of the Clinton White House. Among those 34 or younger, 52 percent view her positively, compared to 46 percent of those 55 and older. Four in 10 independents view her favorably.
Among Democrats, 42 percent said they would definitely vote for her in a general election, down 10 points since June 2013. For Democratic women, the number isn't much higher, 46 percent. That's down 8 points since June 2013.
Bill Clinton's standing in the poll has dropped only slightly, with 60 percent viewing him favorably compared to 64 percent in a September 2012 Bloomberg poll. That's well above his wife's number. Properly harnessed–and kept on message–he could prove to be a significant asset on the campaign trail.
The poll, which included interviews with 1,008 adults, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points on the full sample.
What losing in 2008 taught Hillary about how to win in 2016 [Jonathan Allen, Vox, April 10, 2015]
When Hillary Clinton launches her campaign Sunday, she’ll do something no other plausible presidential candidate – including Clinton herself – has done before: she’ll run like a woman.

When Hillary Clinton launches her campaign Sunday, she’ll do something no other plausible presidential candidate – including Clinton herself – has done before: she’ll run like a woman.


If she plays it right, it will be a feature, not a bug, of Hillary for President (2016 remix). The feminine motif will be fully integrated into her persona, her rhetoric, and her platform, according to interviews with a half-dozen sources close to Clinton.
That’s a hell of a pivot from her 2008 campaign, when she all but refused to acknowledge what some of her advisers failingly insisted was intrinsic to her story. The new approach also owes to a shift in political atmospherics that favors attention to lower- and middle-class economic concerns, such as early-childhood education and paid time off, that motivate women voters, as well as many of their husbands, fathers, and sons.
"The culture has changed on these issues," said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress and a former Clinton policy aide. "Hillary has not changed on these issues."
There’s an obvious gap, a window of opportunity, separating women’s participation in elections and their power in government. Women made up 53 percent of the electorate in the 2012 presidential election, and yet only 104 of the 535 full voting seats in the House and Senate are held by women. The historic dominance of men in elective office, from the presidency to Congress and the statehouses, has led to a chronic tilt away from the perspectives and priorities of women.
Clinton’s strategy weaves together the immutably unique and historic aspect of her candidacy — her gender — with a domestic and foreign policy worldview that emphasizes the ways in which the full participation of women in society leads to greater stability and economic growth. In a similar vein, the cultural shift that Tanden points to can be seen in the Republican field’s quick adoption of President Barack Obama’s rhetoric – if not his policy choices – on economic inequality.
Ann O’Leary, a former Clinton adviser who has worked with her on the Clinton Foundation’s early childhood education program over the past couple of years, says that pattern will repeat itself on family issues of particular importance to women that have become hot topics for men, too.
"Any candidate, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or someone on the other side of the aisle, is going to have to take positions on these issues, because there’s more demand for it," she says.
Clinton's transformation begins
Clinton’s shift began with her concession speech in June 2008: She agreed to talk about herself and her place in the women's movement only after intense pressure from a set of her advisers who had lost out during the campaign. Ultimately, she spoke of the "18 million cracks" her supporters had put in the glass ceiling of the White House with their votes. She echoed Sojourner Truth’s famous "Ain’t I a woman" speech in weaving together the hopes of women and African Americans that day, and used Harriet Tubman to accomplish the same rhetorical union in her Democratic National Convention speech that same year.
At the State Department, Clinton created the post of ambassador for global women’s issues, directed American diplomats to push their foreign counterparts on the rights of women and girls, and established programs such as the "Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves" a partnership of governments, businesses and nonprofits that is designed to protect women from the deadly fumes of open-fire cooking.
Now she has concluded that running as a woman — and emphasizing issues that bolster the security of women and their families — is a strength that melds her political and policy identities and addresses some of her biggest problems as a candidate.
Still, it’s a strategy that even allies acknowledge comes with the risk that Clinton could turn off voters by overplaying the gender card.
"You don’t want to get so pigeonholed," one veteran Clinton adviser said. "I don’t think she wants to run as the woman candidate just for women."
It's about you and me, not just me
Clinton’s at her best when she’s the champion of a cause — particularly an underdog constituency — that is larger than herself. The clearest examples come from her equation of women's rights and gay rights with human rights.
But she's been knocked, and fairly, for too often making her political story about herself, like when she kicked off her last campaign by declaring, "I’m in, and I’m in to win." This time, she's determined to connect herself with others first as an advocate and then as a presidential aspirant.
"She needs to explain to people why she wants to do this that is not about her," the veteran adviser said.
That’s why she’ll start with a listening tour. That’s nothing new: Clinton conducted listening tours on proposed changes to Medicare when she was first lady and before her 2000 Senate campaign in New York. When she launched her first presidential campaign in 2007, she did "more talking than listening," the Associated Press observed.
Now she wants to show that her platform is, at least in part, a reaction to public demand. That is, don’t expect thick policy briefs to appear online anytime soon.
"She’s very much going to be in listening mode before she starts rolling out policies," said O'Leary, the former Clinton aide who worked with her on early-childhood education.
Will the real Hillary Clinton please stand up?
After years of high-profile battles — with Republicans, the press, and even members of her own party — Clinton retreated into a defensive posture in public. That was evident during her book tour and at an uncomfortable press conference after it was revealed that she prevented the State Department from having access to her email.
A byproduct of that defensiveness, bordering at times on paranoia, has been that she has struggled to come off as genuine in the eyes of her detractors and even some of her loyal allies.
Again, running as a woman begins to address that deficiency as a candidate. There’s no storyline in Clinton’s career that is as consistent as her efforts to advance the causes of women and girls.
From her early work at the Children’s Defense Fund through her roles as first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, secretary of state, and philanthropist, Clinton’s rhetoric and areas of policy focus — from expanding health insurance to securing human rights for women — have been inextricably tied to a desire to strengthen women’s standing in society.
Republicans know both parts of that: that she’s been consistent on women’s rights, and that she is perceived as less than honest. That’s why they made hayof donations to the Clinton Foundation from countries with bad records on women’s rights and why Rand Paul, who launched his candidacy on Tuesday, told Politico, "There’s a lot of stuff there that is, I think, going to shake the confidence of Americans in her ability to lead in an honest fashion."
The shift: is it about us?
Last but not least, the electorate has shown signs that it’s more inclined to support both women candidates and an issue set that Clinton has pushed in the past and that will be emphasized more in this campaign.
Clinton will promote those issues as essential to strengthening families, particularly in the lower and middle economic strata. While some of the specifics may have to wait, they’re likely to include moving toward equal pay for women, expanding paid leave for parents, increasing the minimum wage, cutting the costs of childcare, cutting taxes for the middle class, and providing access to pre-kindergarten education across the country.
Clinton will frame the basket of kitchen-table issues as strengthening the economic standing of families, even as many of the policy goals would disproportionately benefit women — and appeal to women voters. That could force Republican candidates into difficult choices about whether to support small-government orthodoxy in the face of increasing demand for policies that help families balance work and home life.
The Republican governors of Indiana, Texas, and New Mexico highlighted their own efforts to boost early-childhood education in their state-of-the-state addresses this year. Yet Indiana Gov. Mike Pence turned down federal funding to expand his state’s more targeted plan last year, explaining in an Indianapolis Star op-ed, "I believe Indiana must develop our own pre-K program without federal intrusion."
Ultimately, Clinton and her advisers believe they’ve found a way to marry the narrative of the nation’s cultural shift toward women with her personal story.
"Gender will be certainly more of an issue this time than last time, in part because there’s going to be a strong effort to talk about who she really is," one longtime Clinton hand said, adding, "The trailblazing doesn’t end with her inauguration."
Clinton team courts progressive economists [Alex Seitz-Wald, MSNBC, April 10, 2015]
Clinton’s team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to progressives economists and activists, and last week joined a meeting on inequality organized by economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, msnbc has learned.
Clinton’s team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to progressives economists and activists, and last week joined a meeting on inequality organized by economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, msnbc has learned.
The Washington, D.C., meeting included officials from the labor unions SEIU and AFL-CIO, congressional staffers, representatives from advocacy groups like Color of Change, American Women, and the Black Civic Engagement Fund, and others, including former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg.
The aim was “creating an agenda to combat inequality that goes further than anything we’ve seen so far and rewrites the rules of how our economy and markets are structured,” Roosevelt Institute spokesperson Marcus Mrowka told msnbc.
After the meeting, Stiglitz held a private dinner with three Clinton aides at the restaurant Poste. Clinton was represented by Jake Sullivan, a top State Department aide who is likely to join her campaign’s policy team, speechwriter Dan Schwerin, and Anne O’Leary, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who also works on a Clinton Foundation-related initiative. Roosevelt President and CEO Felicia Wong was also in attendance.
Dan Geldon, an adviser to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom some liberals are pushing to run against Clinton, attended the larger meeting, but did not attend the dinner.
Stiglitz is influential among progressives, who view him as one of the Democratic Party’s counterweights to the influence of former Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Clinton herself has earned criticism from some on the left for ties to Wall Street and fears she would follow in Rubin’s footsteps.
In an essay distributed to attendees, Stiglitz called for an alternative analytical framework to economic growth and equality, which have often been assumed to be in competition with each other. “The increase in inequality and the decrease in equality of opportunity have reached the point where minor fixes — such as modest increases in the minimum wage and continuing to strive to improve education and educational opportunity — will not suffice. A far more comprehensive approach to the problem is required, entailing redistribution and doing what one can to improve the market distribution of income and to prevent the unfair transmission of advantage across generations,” he wrote.
Clinton is expected to put inequality at the center of her campaign’s economic message, but to address is in a less confrontational manner than Warren. A recent 160-page white paper from the Center for American Progress on “Inclusive Prosperity” gives a hint about her agenda.
Mrowka said the meeting was constructive and that Clinton aides were receptive.
GOP: Clinton announcement won't blunt Benghazi probe [Lauren French, POLITICO, April 10, 2015]
House Republicans investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state said in interviews that her official entry into the presidential race won’t have any bearing on their probes.
House Republicans investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state said in interviews that her official entry into the presidential race won’t have any bearing on their probes.
But the political stakes of the Clinton congressional investigations are about to skyrocket. Both parties will be watching the committee’s work intently for ammo to use against Clinton or to call foul on the GOP for attempting to smear a presidential contender.
“Secretary Clinton’s decision to seek the presidency of the United States does not and will not impact the work of the committee,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. “The Committee needs to and expects to talk with Secretary Clinton twice, as ensuring the committee has all relevant material is a condition precedent to asking specifically about Libya and Benghazi.”
But Democrats would like nothing more than an ongoing spectacle of congressional Republicans looking like they’re tripping over themselves to go after Clinton. Avoiding such an atmosphere amid the heightened attention will be a major political challenge for Gowdy, a former U.S. attorney tapped to head the Benghazi panel and the initial investigation into Clinton’s email use.
Democrats are already accusing the South Carolina Republican of “slow-walking” his investigation to coincide with Clinton’s presidential bid.
“You knew from day one that she would appear before the committee [so it’s] interesting that they need to hear from her now that it’s the start of the 2016 election season,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.). “I knew that the select committee was not going to be about the facts and the evidence. My sneaking suspicions was that it was going to be an excuse to go after Secretary Clinton.”
The former secretary of state has always been a central figure in the House GOP’s investigation of the militants who attacked a U.S. outpost in Benghazi. But Clinton’s formal jump into the presidential race will magnify every Republican move on this front. Clinton’s campaign kickoff comes just as Gowdy — who has also been informally tapped to head up the House’s initial investigation of her email use — is asking Clinton to make her first appearance before the panel. She has been asked to testify before May 1. Gowdy said Friday the committee is still working with Clinton to schedule the hearings.
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, another member of the Benghazi panel, said Gowdy is determined not to allow the committee to become a 2016 battlefield.
“Our job has everything to do with the truth and nothing to do with who may or may not be the next president of the United States,” said Jordan. “That’s our charge, that’s our mission and that’s solely what we’re about. How that impacts the presidential, that’s not even the focus of the committee.”
Republicans on the committee said the reason Clinton is being asked testify in such close proximity to her campaign announcement is because the State Department took so long to produce documents. The committee has been given access to thousands of pages of emails and evidence but is asking for more.
“This, quote, perception that some may have could have been avoided if the State Department would have given us the documents a year ago,” Jordan said. “If we would of had the documents or if the State Department or Secretary Clinton would have told us months and months and months ago that she had a separate account…this could have all been avoided.”
The committee became aware that Clinton used a private email late last summer but only discovered the extent to which Clinton kept her emails from the State Department on a private server in March.
Both sides say their general tactics won’t change with Clinton about to be an official presidential candidate; her campaign launch is expected this weekend. Republicans are still expecting the former secretary of state to appear at least twice before the panel. Gowdy invited Clinton to testify in a closed-hearing on her use of a private email and server and another public hearing on the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Benghazi Committee, said he would continue to criticize Gowdy’s tactics, including holding interviews privately issuing subpoenas without consent.
“It’s been a select committee on Hillary Clinton and it will continue to be that. They ought to do what I’ve said many times, allow her to come into a public forum, a hearing, and let her testify,” the Maryland Democrat said.
Cummings added that Clinton indicated to the committee she would be willing to answer questions on her email use and the Benghazi incident during a public hearing. Clinton reportedly told Cummings last year she was prepared to testify as early as December — before her email use was made public - on the Obama administration’s response to Libya.
Gowdy has said he offered Clinton the private hearing on her emails to avoid the appearance of politicizing the committee and has repeatedly stressed that the committee is concerned only with correspondence related to Benghazi.
”Our Committee has no interest in any emails related to the Secretary’s personal, private matters nor is our Committee seeking documents unrelated to Libya and Benghazi during the relevant time periods,” Gowdy said last week. “The Committee is, however, committed to reviewing and considering every document related to the work the House of Representatives charged us with doing.”
But Sanchez said Democrats’ hands are largely tied because of the committee’s broad mandate from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio.)
“There is not a lot we can do because…the select committee pretty much has a blank check. There is unilateral power to subpoena so there is not a lot we Democrats can do,” she said.
Still, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Democrats will still be watching closely to debunk what they see as myths about Benghazi and step in if Republicans try to turn the committee into a campaign tool.
“She’s been their target all along. In that sense, nothing has changed [because of her likely announcement] about the degree that they’ve turned the select committee into an arm of the NRCC,” he said.
President Obama’s Quiet Case for Hillary Clinton in 2016 [Devin Dwyer, ABC News, April 11, 2015]
President Obama has praised Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
In her final days as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said goodbye to President Obama over a lunch of fish tacos in the dining room off the Oval Office. As a parting gift, she gave her former rival 20 pages of recommendations for what to do in his second term.
“Tearing up, I hugged the president and told him again how much our work and friendship meant to me,” Clinton writes of Obama in the new epilogue of her book “Hard Choices.” “And that I'd be on call if he ever needed me.”
As the 2016 presidential campaign kicks into gear, Obama needs Clinton more than ever before – a message he’s made increasingly clear over the past two years, without having to pick up the phone.
Obama has heaped more effusive praise on his former secretary of state than just about any other high-profile Democrat, including his own vice president, Joe Biden, who has also aspired to the nation’s top office.
Obama has declared Clinton “a world figure” and an “extraordinary talent.” He said in a joint interview with “60 Minutes” that she was “one of the most important advisers” he’s had, and a “strong friend.”
“If she’s her wonderful self, I’m sure she is going to do great” in the campaign, Obama said in an interview this week.
The accolades and encouragement are a far cry from the lukewarm “likable enough” description Obama affixed to Clinton during a 2007 primary debate. White House officials told ABC News that the president “thinks very highly” of Clinton as a candidate and that she has a “strong case to make” to become his successor.
To be sure, President Obama remains coy about an explicit primary endorsement and, officials say, will likely keep a low profile in the early stages of the campaign. He told CBS News in an April 2014 interview that Biden would also be a strong candidate as “one of the finest vice presidents in history.”
“I don’t necessarily want to jam them up,” Obama said of his potential involvement with the candidates in the early Democratic field.
'Clinton the Musical' Looks Back, Just in Time for 2016
Still, as Clinton formally launches her second presidential bid this weekend as the dominant Democratic front-runner, Obama is quietly banking on her to be the defender of his legacy.
He’s cited her discipline, stamina, thoughtfulness and “ability to project” their shared values as factors that make her “extraordinary” in his eyes.
On Twitter, Clinton has given an unabashed embrace of her former boss’s policies, defending Obamacare and his immigration executive action. She’s also defended the administration’s sweeping reforms of the financial system and the president’s economic blueprint outlined in his State of the Union.
Ties to the Obama White House already run deep. The Clinton campaign apparatus is stuffed with former top Obama administration policy makers and strategists, including former White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri, former Obama senior counselor John Podesta, and former Michelle Obama aide Kristina Schake.
Administration officials deny any planned direct coordination between the Obama White House and the Clinton campaign on messaging or legislative agenda, but do not rule it out.
“I’m confident that there will be a lot of agreement between the priorities that she articulates and the kinds of priorities this president has been fighting for the last six years,” said spokesman Josh Earnest late last month.
Rand Paul Predicts Hillary Clinton Revelations Will 'Shock People'

Page 2 of 2


Obama, Clinton Remain Allies
On a personal level, Obama and Clinton have maintained in close touch, holding occasional in-person meetings and regularly exchanging email messages,officials say. They last met together in the Oval Office in late March when they discussed their families, current events and politics, aides said.
“Are there going to be differences? Yeah. Deep differences? Of course,” Clinton told “60 Minutes” in the 2013 joint interview. How those play out on the stump will be a difficult balancing act. Obama and his policies remain highly popular among Democratic voters, but much more contentious among independents and Republicans.
Forty-seven percent of Americans approve of President Obama’s work in office, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. The same number disapprove.
For now, the soon-to-be-candidate Clinton is signaling that her focus will be on the overlap in interests and priorities with Obama – revealing less daylight than many pundits had initially expected.
Will we see President Obama and Hillary Clinton exchange another bear hug on stage? Maybe not soon – but don’t rule it out.
“As it relates to the president’s intentions to wade into a Democratic primary, that’s not something that he often does,” Earnest said. “But we’ll see. A long way until the Democratic convention.”


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