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Jim Webb Commemorates the Vietnam War, Subtly Jabs at Hillary Clinton [Emma Roller, National Journal, April 30, 2015]



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Jim Webb Commemorates the Vietnam War, Subtly Jabs at Hillary Clinton [Emma Roller, National Journal, April 30, 2015]
On Thursday afternoon, Jim Webb spoke to Vietnamese-Americans and U.S. veterans near the Vietnam Memorial.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders was making his presidential campaign official at the other end of the National Mall Thursday afternoon, Jim Webb, who is still considering his own underdog campaign against Hillary Clinton, was speaking to Vietnamese-Americans and U.S. veterans near the Vietnam Memorial.
Webb, a former senator from Virginia, was speaking to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. Webb is a Vietnam veteran, and he voted against the Iraq War during his time in the Senate—a point he and other Democrats have used to contrast themselves with Clinton.
Webb and his wife, Hong Le Webb, stood on a small stage adorned with oranges, pineapples, flowers, and incense. Hong Le Webb, who was born in Vietnam, was 7 years old when Saigon fell. Her family fled the country on a fishing boat and after three days at sea was eventually rescued by the U.S. Navy. They lived in refugee camps in Guam and Arkansas.
"In those places, they were moving into new communities, they were learning a new language, and they were making new lives as Americans," Webb said Wednesday. "That is the story told 2 million times over by the members of the Vietnamese community in the United States."
In 2006, Hong Le Webb told The Washington Post that her husband sometimes teased her about her family's escape.
"He says that if [U.S. troops] hadn't rescued me, I'd be snaggletoothed and selling pencils on the streets of Saigon," she said at the time. "It wouldn't be too far from the truth. If I'd stayed behind in Vietnam, I wouldn't be where I am today."
After the event on Thursday, a small group of political reporters crowded Webb to ask about more domestic political news—specifically, news that was happening two miles west of where Webb stood. When asked about Sanders' announced presidential run, Webb chuckled.
"Bernie will bring a lively debate. I've known him for quite awhile," Webb told National Journal. "He'll give an interesting perspective, so he'll liven things up."
Like Sanders and Lincoln Chafee before him, Webb touted his antiwar voting record in Congress as a way to draw contrast between himself and Clinton, who voted for the Iraq War when she was a senator from New York. Webb said his experience as a combat soldier, as a military planner for the Pentagon, as a journalist, and as a U.S. senator gives him ample perspective on foreign policy.
"All of these experiences helped shape my view of American foreign policy, and I think that I have a long history in terms of pretty accurate predictions, whether it was the Iraq War or issues like the Shitang Islands in the South China Sea," Webb said. "I think when people look at what we've said over many years, it gives people a comfort zone in terms of what they would see in presidential leadership."
A Vietnamese reporter covering the event referred to the White House, asking Webb, "Do you have a plan to run for the house on the other side?" Webb demurred on the presidential question, but paused and quietly said something to the reporter in Vietnamese (which Webb speaks). He added, "We care about the same issues, and I think I have a long record of working with them toward better solutions."
When asked what Webb had said to him in Vietnamese, the reporter replied that he couldn't understand what Webb was saying.
Left-of-Hillary hopeful rips her on foreign policy [Matthew J. Belvedere, CNBC, April 30, 2015]
Chafee criticizes Clinton on foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton's "no real accomplishments" legacy as secretary of state and new allegations about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation put the Democrat's presumptive lock on the presidential nomination in jeopardy, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee said Thursday.
"This is all about judgment calls and credibility. I'm not convinced she's going to be the nominee," said Chafee, who's exploring a challenge to Clinton for the 2016 party nod.
If the ex-governor chooses to run, he would be joining Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent from Vermont, who's expected Thursday to announce a bid for president as a Democrat.
"Elections should be about choices," Chafee said. "There are a lot of candidates on the Republican side [and] now we're getting more on the Democrat side."
But Chafee started out as a Republican, serving as a U.S. senator from Rhode Island from 1999 to 2007. In 2010, as an Independent, he was elected governor. Two years into his term, he became a Democrat. He did not seek re-election.
He told CNBC's "Squawk Box" that he'd consider himself left of former senator Clinton on foreign policy.
"We served at the same time in the Senate when we voted on the Iraq War resolution back in 2002. Of course, I voted against it. She voted for it," he said. "The ramifications we live with today are so significant … in the Middle East and North Africa."
Chafee calls the choice to invade Iraq in 2003 "one of the worst decisions in American history."
The Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Democrat said that even though he's switched parties over the years his domestic voting record remained consistent.
Considering himself socially liberal and fiscally conservative, he contended he never changed his principles. "The Republican Party become more about the social issues … and less about balancing the books." That's why he said he left the GOP.
An unlikely contender, Sanders takes on ‘billionaire class’ in 2016 bid [Paul Kane and Philip Rucker, WaPo, April 30, 2015]
Sen. Bernie Sanders represents a challenge to the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she fights to win over the kind of left-leaning Democrats inclined to heed Sanders’s fiery call to action.
He seems an unlikely presidential candidate — an ex-hippie, septuagenarian socialist from the liberal reaches of Vermont who rails, in his thick Brooklyn accent, rumpled suit and frizzy pile of white hair, against the “billionaire class” taking over the country.
But there was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday launching his campaign for the White House — and representing a challenge to the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she fights to win over the kind of left-leaning Democrats inclined to heed Sanders’s fiery call to action.
Sanders lifted off his long-shot bid with a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday by declaring war on corporate America and billionaire campaign donors. He also landed subtle jabs at Clinton, whose political ties to Wall Street and hawkish worldview have left some liberals yearning for an alternative.
“The major issue is: How do we create an economy that works for all of our people, rather than a small number of billionaires?” Sanders said. Disavowing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that disrupted the campaign finance system, he added: “We now have a political situation where billionaires are literally able to buy elections and candidates. Let’s not kid ourselves: That is the reality right now.”
As he faces off with Clinton, who is as commanding a favorite for the nomination as any non-incumbent in recent history, Sanders threatens to remind base Democrats why they may be suspicious of her.
The contrast between the two candidates is stark: his authenticity and unvarnished rhetoric to her careful script; his unabashedly liberal agenda to her years of triangulation; his grass-roots campaign to her paid army of staffers and super PAC allies.
Another danger for Clinton: Because of her dominance at the outset, any surge by Sanders or another challenger could be interpreted as a sign of her weakness and erase her aura of inevitability.
Officially, Clinton accepts the challenge. Her allies have long said a competitive primary would make her a stronger nominee in the general election, and her campaign team has been preparing for a real race — against Sanders as well as other likely candidates, including former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.
Clinton took to Twitter to write: “I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America’s middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a Clinton supporter, told reporters that she is pleased Sanders is running because “it’s healthy for a party to have an exchange of ideas.” She said more candidates would “enliven the debate, and that will be wholesome.”
Sanders, 73, enters the contest after eight years in the Senate and 16 years in the House. A son of a paint salesman who immigrated from Poland, Sanders has been active in leftist politics since his student days at the University of Chicago. He also served as mayor of Burlington, Vt., in the 1980s.
On Thursday, Sanders touted his vote opposing the Iraq war in 2002, when he was a House member and Clinton, then a senator from New York, voted to authorize the war. He also highlighted his opposition to an emerging trade deal with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, the initial phases of which Clinton negotiated as secretary of state.
Sanders trained most of his rhetorical fire on David and Charles Koch, the industrialist billionaire brothers whose vast political spending on behalf of Republicans and conservative causes has made them political bogeymen for the left.
But Sanders also suggested that it was valid to raise questions about the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropy that has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations.
Thursday’s event was as unusual as Sanders himself, who evokes an image more in line with a New England professor than a presidential contender. Technically, Sanders had announced his candidacy in an e-mail to supporters earlier in the day, so the news conference was just a chance for him to lay out an agenda.
In a five-minute speech, Sanders neither said that he was running for president nor asked people for their votes. He began his remarks with a “whoa” as the microphone signaled slight feedback, and he took a few questions from reporters.
In Sanders’s recent visits to early caucus and primary states, he has impressed liberal activists. However, he is under no illusions about the challenges ahead.
“We all understand that Hillary Clinton is an incredibly formidable opponent, and beating her in the Democratic nomination process is going to be extremely difficult,” Sanders adviser Tad Devine said. “But I do think there’s a path forward for Bernie.”
That path begins in Iowa, home to the nation’s first presidential caucuses. History is replete with liberal challengers who upset establishment favorites in Iowa, most recently Barack Obama in 2008.
Sanders’s advisers see similarities between Iowa and Vermont: Both are relatively rural states with long traditions of grass-roots organizing. Democrats there also have a populist streak, motivated by issues such as economic fairness and war and peace.
Sanders hopes to do well in New Hampshire, which borders Vermont and hosts the first presidential primary, and in the Nevada caucuses to follow.
Sanders knows he will need to defeat Clinton, at least in a smaller contest, to establish himself as a credible challenger. His strategy is to play aggressively in caucus states, where Clinton performed poorly in 2008, including Colorado and Minnesota. He also sees Massachusetts as a larger primary state that’s winnable, advisers say.
The Sanders campaign, which will be based in Burlington, hopes to raise about $50 million in the primaries to pay for television ads in the early states. Much of that money is expected to come online from the deep network of small-dollar donors Sanders has built over the years. As he has joked, “I do not have millionaire or billionaire friends.”
As of now, there is no official pro-Sanders super PAC. But Sanders hopes to use that absence to his advantage, making super PAC spending a centerpiece of his populist message. This could be potent, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters may grow exhausted by the onslaught of political television advertising over the next year.
Sanders is most comfortable campaigning in town-hall settings, as opposed to reading speeches from teleprompters, which his advisers cite as a strength in early states.
“He’s very real; he’s very good just interacting and talking and being himself,” Devine said. “In this age, when voters are really into authenticity, it’s just a better way to present a candidate.”
Addressing a scrum of television cameras from a grassy spot outside the Capitol known as “The Swamp,” Sanders remarked that the nation was “looking at a guy indisputably who has the most unusual political history of anybody in the United States Congress.”
He is the longest-serving independent in Congress, first winning a House seat in 1990, and has refused to formally join the Democratic Party, although he has caucused with Democrats in both chambers.
Even now, as he seeks the party’s highest calling, its presidential nomination, Sanders rejected any suggestion that he register as a Democrat.
“No,” he said, stepping away from the news conference, “I’m an independent.”
Can Sanders fill the Warren void? [Dan Merica, CNN, May 1, 2015]
Bernie Sanders is unlikely to fill the Elizabeth Warren electoral void.
Bernie Sanders has a problem: He isn't Elizabeth Warren.
Liberal Democrats have been trying to get Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, to run for president for the better part of a year. Those vocal activists want a liberal option to push Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite for the nomination but seen by some liberals as too politically moderate for their support.
Sanders, who is heading to New Hampshire for his first official campaign appearances on Saturday, wants to be that liberal option. His core positions -- breaking up Wall Street banks, making public college free, investing billions on infrastructure and guaranteeing health care for all -- are the same issues liberal groups have been championing for years. And his early campaign is starting to court organizers in key presidential states.
But as he settles into the Democratic presidential race, the response from some liberal groups and organizers has been markedly more focused on Warren, the middle-class champion and former Harvard professor, not Sanders, the Brooklyn-born, independent lawmaker with a gruff personality and an affinity for the moniker "democratic socialist."
Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, welcomed Sanders into the race and touted his record on Wednesday before noting that the Vermont-based Move On and their allies would "continue to call on Sen. Elizabeth Warren to also bring her tireless advocacy for middle-class and working Americans to the race."
Democracy for Action, another liberal group whose views track closely with Sanders, had a similar reaction.
Our "members are excited to have progressive champion Senator Bernie Sanders join the 2016 presidential race," said Charles Chamberlain, the group's executive director, before adding, "We continue to encourage Senator Elizabeth Warren to join the race for president."
Both Move On and Democracy for America have dumped millions into a campaign urging Warren to run. But with every interview the Warren does, that goal looks less likely.
"I am not running and I am not going to run," Warren bluntly said in March.
The dynamic of liberal groups lining up behind a candidate who says she isn't running quietly bothers some Sanders' aides. They look at the money groups are spending to draft Warren and can't help but think about what that money could do for them.
"Obviously, one would hope one would have as much support as possible from all walks of life," Sanders said earlier this year when asked why he thinks groups like Move On aren't rallying around him. "I am a great fan of Elizabeth, and as for what people do and why they don't do it, I am not going to speculate."
Tad Devine, one of Sanders' top campaign advisers, said Thursday that he isn't particularly bothered by the clamoring for Warren because "she isn't going to run for president."
Who is Bernie Sanders? 01:32
"There are a lot of people out there who are looking for someone like Elizabeth Warren and are really interested in those issues," Devine said. "I think when Bernie starts talking about those issues in his own way, it is going to be a lot easier for someone like him to get their support, than someone like Clinton, O'Malley, Webb or Link Chaffee."
Devine added: "I view those people as tremendous targets of opportunities for a candidate like Bernie Sanders."
Although liberal organizations aren't backing Sanders, he does have a small but devout following in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, critical states in the presidential nomination process. Sanders regularly draws well at small house parties and town halls across both states, bringing out people who see him as their Clinton alternative.
A majority of Democratic voters, though, don't feel this way. In a March CNN/ORC poll, Sanders garnered 3% of the vote compared to Warren's 10%. When you remove Warren from the poll, Sanders jumps by 2 points to 5%, but Clinton jumps by 5 points to 67%.
"I like his views, I like him a lot," said Timothy Horrigan, a liberal New Hampshire representative, before listing all the ways Bernie isn't Elizabeth.
"She is more plausible as a president," Horrigan said. "They have similar messages but they have different styles, and her style appeals to a lot of people. She is sort of like Hillary without all the baggage and just a stronger progressive message."
Many in the progressive movement are uncomfortable with questions about why they are supporting Warren over Sanders.
Alternatives to Hillary Clinton 2016 10 photos
"We don't have more to say beyond the statement I sent earlier," a spokesman for Move On said after CNN asked a number of questions on the issue.
There is some hope in the liberal movement that the focus on Warren and the issues she represents will help Sanders, too.
Adam Green, founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Wednesday that Warren "has been a galvanizing force for economic populism" and is someone who is "symbolic of the rising economic populist tides in America."
"That is just the facts," the liberal organizer added.
By implication, though, Sanders is not that. Though Green said the independent senator is "very much in line with the goal that many progressives have," he acknowledged that Sanders' 2016 campaign would need to ride the "economic populist tide" that Warren symbolizes for many liberals.
"The rising economic populist tide can be ridden by many people," he said. "And I think that any politician who is smart will try to ride that tide."
Bernie Sanders's ideas are so popular that Hillary Clinton is running on them [Jonathan Allen, Vox, April 30, 2015]
The issues Sanders identified as his causes in this campaign — economic justice, climate change, and reining in the influence of big spenders in politics and government — are all now standard fare for the much better funded, much better known, and much more big-D "Democratic" Clinton.
Wearing a charcoal suit as disordered as the white hair encircling his head, and flanked by just two aides as he walked to the podium, Vermont independent Bernie Sanders laid out his motivation for seeking the Democratic Party's nomination Thursday before an audience of about 100 reporters, camera operators, aides, and onlookers (including one man who wore a hemp ballcap).
Workers are toiling more hours for low wages, while 99 percent of new income goes to the top 1 percent, he said.
"That type of economy is not only immoral, it is not only wrong," Sanders said, speaking without notes. "It is unsustainable."
He sounded passionate, progressive, and populist. He also sounded a lot like Hillary Clinton. And therein lies the rub for the long shot of all long shots: a senator who takes his business in Washington seriously but is unwilling to wear the label of a party he hopes to represent in the 2016 general election.
I'm an independent, he insisted when asked whether he was a Democrat.
That's why Sanders is the only politician who could get away with announcing an outsider's campaign for president from the shadow of the Capitol Dome on a grassy plain called the "Senate swamp."
His fans hope that he can pull off the unlikeliest of upsets. And Sanders said he's undaunted by the odds, having won 71 percent of the vote in his last reelection after once losing a statewide race with 1 percent of the vote.
But Clinton's move to the left has the effect of crowding out longtime liberal stalwarts who occupy space similar to Sanders's on the political spectrum. Most, like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have passed on running against her, knowing they can hold her feet to the fire from the sidelines and that they stand little chance of defeating her juggernaut.
To the left, to the left
The issues Sanders identified as his causes in this campaign — economic justice, climate change, and reining in the influence of big spenders in politics and government — are all now standard fare for the much better funded, much better known, and much more big-D "Democratic" Clinton.
She noted as much on Twitter Thursday, and Sanders responded in kind:
Thanks @HillaryClinton. Looking forward to debating the big issues: income inequality, climate change & getting big money out of politics.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 30, 2015

Clinton spoke of cycles of poverty and inequality just yesterday in a speech on criminal justice reform at Columbia University.


"Our goal must truly be inclusive and lasting prosperity that’s measured by how many families get ahead and stay ahead, how many children climb out of poverty and stay out of prison, how many young people can go to college without breaking the bank, how many new immigrants can start small businesses, how many parents can get good jobs that allow them to balance the demands of work and family," she said.
Like Sanders, Clinton has mocked climate-science deniers and has made campaign finance reform a pillar of her agenda in this campaign — even as she solicits money from megadonors such as Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, a longtime ally who was scheduled to host one of three fundraisers for Clinton in Washington on Thursday.
That's not to say there's less than a dime's worth of difference between Clinton and Sanders. They have had substantive differences in the past, and no amount of shading will ever make her the instinctive populist that he has been for decades.
The differences
Many years ago, Clinton was a middle-class kid in the Chicago suburbs. She has since become a jet-set multimillionaire former first lady and presidential nomination frontrunner. There has been a bubble around her for a long time, which is why her comments about leaving the White House "dead broke" were mercilessly ridiculed. Her home in Washington is on Embassy Row and would probably sell for more than $4 million.
Unlike Clinton and the vast majority of his Senate colleagues, Sanders has parlayed his career in public service into a lifestyle that is less than lavish. He makes $174,000, a salary frozen since 2009. He lives in a narrow, two-floor, one-bedroom townhouse on Capitol Hill that he bought (from me) for less than $500,000. There's a window air-conditioning unit on the second floor because the 125-year-old home doesn't have central air. It's worth the price of a mansion in Iowa or New Hampshire or Vermont, but it's modest for a walk-to-work crash pad a few blocks from the Senate.
His net worth, based on disclosed ranges, is somewhere between $110,000 and $551,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has debts of up to $65,000 or so. If he gave three or four Clinton speeches, he could retire. Not that he would do either. Sanders said Thursday that he grew up poor, that his father dropped out of high school, and that his brother introduced him to books, of which there were not a lot around the Sanders household.
Their personal finances and economic backgrounds will matter in some Democratic circles. Clinton's shift toward populism doesn't feel authentic to party progressives who have watched her and her husband buck-rake from billionaires to boost their campaigns, their foundation, and their own personal fortune.
Sanders is proud that he's never run a negative ad; Clinton made her 2008 campaign about tearing down Barack Obama as unprepared for the presidency. It's unimaginable that Sanders could beat Clinton without hammering the differences between them on substance. And he said Thursday that it is important to define those differences.
"I voted against the war in Iraq"
At first, Sanders seemed uneasy about taking on Clinton directly.
"It's too early," he started to say when asked where he differed from Clinton on policy. "We don't know what Hillary's stances are."
Then, he acceded.
"I voted against the war in Iraq," he said of the 2002 roll call that helped sink Clinton's 2008 candidacy. He spoke of his leadership against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Clinton's State Department team worked on and which she has tried to give herself wiggle room on in recent weeks. And he talked about his fervent opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, about which Clinton has always been studiously quiet — because of or despite — the lead role the State Department played in reviewing the project when she was in the State Department.
It's not at all clear that any of those issues will be dispositive in a Democratic primary. While Clinton's comfort with the use of military force is a mismatch for a Democratic Party base that abhorred both Vietnam and Iraq, the latter war is less of a political issue now than it was when a full complement of American soldiers were in the Middle East.
Democrats worry about a return to Clinton-style trade deals such as NAFTA that they believe rob American workers to the benefit of multinational corporations. But Clinton hasn't come down firmly on TPP, and NAFTA, despite hurting many other Democrats, did little damage to Bill Clinton in his 1996 run to reelection. And the most prominent opponent of the Keystone pipeline, billionaire Tom Steyer, is a longtime Clinton ally, contributor, and fundraiser.
Running to win
Before Sanders's 10-minute press conference, reporters milled around the Senate swamp and joked about how it would be the biggest crowd of journalists Sanders had ever attracted to an event. When Sanders walked up, with a rolled up piece of paper in his hand, he had to navigate around the cameras to take his place at the podium. He seemed a little surprised by the attention.
"Thank you," he said into a microphone, recoiling a bit from the electric sound of his own voice and issuing a quick "Whoa!"
Save for the unusually large audience for him, Sanders's announcement was understated as presidential kickoffs go. He might well have been announcing the introduction of a dairy amendment to the farm bill from a location so close to the Senate floor that he closed the press conference by saying he had to get back to work and then walking a couple of hundred feet to the Capitol.
There are some who believe Sanders is running to make a point, to elevate the issues he cares about. Others debate whether his entry will force Clinton to move to the left on issues in a way that hurts her in a general election or will give her a point against which to triangulate and present herself as more moderate in November 2016.
But Sanders's entry isn't likely to have much effect on Clinton because they already sound so much alike.
When she launched her 2008 campaign, Clinton famously said, "I'm in, and I'm in to win."
Asked Thursday whether he was running for the sake of the issues he cares about, rather than as a serious candidate for the nomination, Sanders, sounding a lot like Clinton, rejected that construct.
"We're in this race to win," he said.


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