Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal
Greenpeace says internal documents show US attempts to lower or circumvent EU protection for environment and public health
By Arthur Neslen
Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts.
The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection.
President Obama said last week he was confident a deal could be reached. But the leaked negotiating drafts and internal positions, which were obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian, paint a very different picture.
“Discussions on cosmetics remain very difficult and the scope of common objectives fairly limited,” says one internal note by EU trade negotiators. Because of a European ban on animal testing, “the EU and US approaches remain irreconcilable and EU market access problems will therefore remain,” the note says.
Talks on engineering were also “characterised by continuous reluctance on the part of the US to engage in this sector,” the confidential briefing says.
These problems are not mentioned in a separate report on the state of the talks, also leaked, which the European commission has prepared for scrutiny by the European parliament.
These outline the positions exchanged between EU and US negotiators between the 12th and the 13th round of TTIP talks, which took place in New York last week.
The public document offers a robust defence of the EU’s right to regulate and create a court-like system for disputes, unlike the internal note, which does not mention them.
Jorgo Riss, the director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents give us an unparalleled look at the scope of US demands to lower or circumvent EU protections for environment and public health as part of TTIP. The EU position is very bad, and the US position is terrible. The prospect of a TTIP compromising within that range is an awful one. The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environmental, consumer protection and public health standards.”
US proposals include an obligation on the EU to inform its industries of any planned regulations in advance, and to allow them the same input into EU regulatory processes as European firms.
American firms could influence the content of EU laws at several points along the regulatory line, including through a plethora of proposed technical working groups and committees.
“Before the EU could even pass a regulation, it would have to go through a gruelling impact assessment process in which the bloc would have to show interested US parties that no voluntary measures, or less exacting regulatory ones, were possible,” Riss said.
The US is also proposing new articles on “science and risk” to give firms greater regulatory say. Disputes over pesticides residues and food safety would be dealt with by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Codex Alimentarius system.
Environmentalists say the body has loose rules on corporate influence, allowing employees of companies such as BASF, Nestle and Coca Cola to sit on – and sometimes lead – national delegations. Some 44% of its decisions on pesticides residues have been less stringent than EU ones, with 40% of rough equivalence and 16% being more demanding, according to Greenpeace.
GM foods could also find a widening window into Europe, with the US pushing for a working group to adopt a “low level presence initiative”. This would allow the import of cargo containing traces of unauthorised GM strains. The EU currently blocks these because of food safety and cross-pollination concerns.
The EU has not yet accepted the US demands, but they are uncontested in the negotiators’ note, and no counter-proposals have been made in these areas.
In January, the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said [pdf] the precautionary principle, obliging regulatory caution where there is scientific doubt, was a core and non-negotiable EU principle. She said: “We will defend the precautionary approach to regulation in Europe, in TTIP and in all our other agreements.” But the principle is not mentioned in the 248 pages of TTIP negotiating texts.
The European commission has also promised to safeguard environmental laws, defend international standards and protect the EU’s right to set high green benchmarks in future.
But the new leak will not placate critics of the deal, who have pointed to attempts by fossil fuel firms and others to influence its outcome, as a sign of things to come.
The EU negotiators internal note says “the US expressed that it would have to consult with its chemical industry on how to position itself” on issues of market access for non-agricultural goods.
Where industry lobbying in regulatory processes is concerned, the US also “insisted” that the EU be “required” to involve US experts in its development of electrotechnical standards.
May 02, 2016
Contested convention
Sanders: 'It will be a contested convention'
By Daniel Strauss
Bernie Sanders predicted Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not win enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and he delivered his most forceful call yet for superdelegates in states he's won to consider throwing their support to him.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Vermont senator argued that Clinton "will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention."
Sanders said that in the states where he handily defeated Clinton, superdelegates who aren't supporting him should reconsider aligning themselves with the will of voters of those states.
"In the state of Washington, we won that caucus with almost 73 percent of the vote there — 73 percent of the vote. In anybody's opinion, that is a massive landslide. But at this point Secretary Clinton has 10 superdelegates from the state of Washington, we have zero," Sanders said, offering an example of a state where he won the popular vote but did not collect any superdelegates. "I would ask the superdelegates from the state of Washington to respect the wishes from the people in their state and the votes they have cast."
Sanders' comments came just ahead of Tuesday’s Indiana primary, as his path to the nomination has become even more narrow due to recent defeats. The campaign recently laid off a large number of staff members in states that have voted.
Clinton currently has 1,645 delegates and 520 superdelegates, while Sanders has 1,318 delegates and 39 superdelegates. In total, 2,383 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination.
Sanders conceded that it wouldn't be easy for him to close the margin, but he said he would continue fighting.
"For us to win the majority of pledged delegates, we need to win 710 out of the remaining 1083," Sanders said. "That is 65 percent. That is, admittedly, a tough road to climb, but not an impossible one. And we intend to fight for every vote and delegate remaining."
By Daniel Strauss
Bernie Sanders predicted Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not win enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and he delivered his most forceful call yet for superdelegates in states he's won to consider throwing their support to him.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Vermont senator argued that Clinton "will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention."
Sanders said that in the states where he handily defeated Clinton, superdelegates who aren't supporting him should reconsider aligning themselves with the will of voters of those states.
"In the state of Washington, we won that caucus with almost 73 percent of the vote there — 73 percent of the vote. In anybody's opinion, that is a massive landslide. But at this point Secretary Clinton has 10 superdelegates from the state of Washington, we have zero," Sanders said, offering an example of a state where he won the popular vote but did not collect any superdelegates. "I would ask the superdelegates from the state of Washington to respect the wishes from the people in their state and the votes they have cast."
Sanders' comments came just ahead of Tuesday’s Indiana primary, as his path to the nomination has become even more narrow due to recent defeats. The campaign recently laid off a large number of staff members in states that have voted.
Clinton currently has 1,645 delegates and 520 superdelegates, while Sanders has 1,318 delegates and 39 superdelegates. In total, 2,383 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination.
Sanders conceded that it wouldn't be easy for him to close the margin, but he said he would continue fighting.
"For us to win the majority of pledged delegates, we need to win 710 out of the remaining 1083," Sanders said. "That is 65 percent. That is, admittedly, a tough road to climb, but not an impossible one. And we intend to fight for every vote and delegate remaining."
Giant Al Qaeda Defeat
The Giant Al Qaeda Defeat That No One’s Talking About
With little notice, the Saudis and UAE knocked out a key Al Qaeda stronghold in Yemen.
By Michael Morell
Something significant and positive just happened in the Middle East, and most Americans are not aware of it. The United Arab Emirates, under the banner of a Saudi-led coalition, late last month delivered a major blow to the most lethal Al Qaeda group on the planet—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the primary Islamic extremist group operating in Yemen.
The Sunni Gulf states are often painted in the Western media as shying away from a fight, not being capable of a fight and not willing to deal with terrorists and extremists in their midst. The UAE operation in Yemen proved that none of these characterizations are true of Abu Dhabi.
AQAP has long been, and still is, a threat to the American homeland. The past three attempted terrorist attacks in the United States by an outside group were conducted by AQAP—the 2009 attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Detroit by the so-called underwear bomber, the 2010 attempt to bring down U.S.-flagged cargo planes flying from the Middle East to the United States by hiding bombs in printer cartridges, and the 2011 plot to bring down a civilian airliner flying to the United States with a sophisticated suicide vest containing no metallic parts.
These plots resulted from the extensive safe haven that AQAP then enjoyed in Yemen. In 2012 and 2013, military operations by the Yemeni government, supported by U.S. counterterrorism operations, eliminated that safe haven and removed numerous AQAP leaders from the battlefield. But a civil war in Yemen that began in 2014 created a power vacuum that gave AQAP new life. Early last year, the group seized a large amount of territory, garnered thousands of new recruits, acquired caches of weapons and raised new revenues.
In the civil war, the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting on the side of the internationally recognized government of Yemen and its president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The coalition is fighting against an Iranian-backed Yemeni militant group called the Houthis that had swept across the country in 2014, capturing the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. The focus of the coalition has been fighting the Houthis, but over the past five months it has quietly turned its attention to the growing threat of AQAP, culminating in last month’s major operation.
On the weekend of April 23-24, the Emirati military, with the support of the Yemeni military and local Yemeni tribes, seized from AQAP the strategically important city of Mukalla and the surrounding area. Mukalla, Yemen’s fifth-largest city, hosts the country’s second largest port—from which AQAP was earning substantial revenues by taxing the shipment of goods there. The city was to be the center of AQAP’s Islamic emirate in Yemen. Its loss is a major blow to AQAP. It is the equivalent of the Islamic State losing Mosul or Raqqa.
The military operation was well planned and executed. The Emiratis worked with local Yemeni tribes to secure their support for the operation, and the Emiratis trained a cadre of Yemeni soldiers to assist in the operation. The attack itself involved choreographed air, naval and ground operations. The operation, which some thought would take weeks, took only days. And now the coalition is shifting to operations to ensure that AQAP cannot return—to include the establishment of good governance in the area. It is a textbook solution of dealing with terrorist groups that hold territory.
Degrading AQAP was in the interests of the Saudis and the Emiratis. The two countries are the primary targets of AQAP in the region. But the degradation of the group is also in the national security interests of the United States since the homeland remains target No. 1 for AQAP outside the region.
Thus, the implications of the Emirati operation are significant. It is the kind of military capability and willingness to act against terrorists that should become a model for other countries in the region. It is the kind of action that the United States should support—both with tangible assistance and public statements. And, it is the approach to dealing with terrorists holding territory that will work against other extremist groups, including the Islamic State, winning the support of local tribes, training local Sunni forces to take the fight to the enemy, and fighting ourselves where necessary.
With little notice, the Saudis and UAE knocked out a key Al Qaeda stronghold in Yemen.
By Michael Morell
Something significant and positive just happened in the Middle East, and most Americans are not aware of it. The United Arab Emirates, under the banner of a Saudi-led coalition, late last month delivered a major blow to the most lethal Al Qaeda group on the planet—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the primary Islamic extremist group operating in Yemen.
The Sunni Gulf states are often painted in the Western media as shying away from a fight, not being capable of a fight and not willing to deal with terrorists and extremists in their midst. The UAE operation in Yemen proved that none of these characterizations are true of Abu Dhabi.
AQAP has long been, and still is, a threat to the American homeland. The past three attempted terrorist attacks in the United States by an outside group were conducted by AQAP—the 2009 attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Detroit by the so-called underwear bomber, the 2010 attempt to bring down U.S.-flagged cargo planes flying from the Middle East to the United States by hiding bombs in printer cartridges, and the 2011 plot to bring down a civilian airliner flying to the United States with a sophisticated suicide vest containing no metallic parts.
These plots resulted from the extensive safe haven that AQAP then enjoyed in Yemen. In 2012 and 2013, military operations by the Yemeni government, supported by U.S. counterterrorism operations, eliminated that safe haven and removed numerous AQAP leaders from the battlefield. But a civil war in Yemen that began in 2014 created a power vacuum that gave AQAP new life. Early last year, the group seized a large amount of territory, garnered thousands of new recruits, acquired caches of weapons and raised new revenues.
In the civil war, the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting on the side of the internationally recognized government of Yemen and its president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The coalition is fighting against an Iranian-backed Yemeni militant group called the Houthis that had swept across the country in 2014, capturing the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. The focus of the coalition has been fighting the Houthis, but over the past five months it has quietly turned its attention to the growing threat of AQAP, culminating in last month’s major operation.
On the weekend of April 23-24, the Emirati military, with the support of the Yemeni military and local Yemeni tribes, seized from AQAP the strategically important city of Mukalla and the surrounding area. Mukalla, Yemen’s fifth-largest city, hosts the country’s second largest port—from which AQAP was earning substantial revenues by taxing the shipment of goods there. The city was to be the center of AQAP’s Islamic emirate in Yemen. Its loss is a major blow to AQAP. It is the equivalent of the Islamic State losing Mosul or Raqqa.
The military operation was well planned and executed. The Emiratis worked with local Yemeni tribes to secure their support for the operation, and the Emiratis trained a cadre of Yemeni soldiers to assist in the operation. The attack itself involved choreographed air, naval and ground operations. The operation, which some thought would take weeks, took only days. And now the coalition is shifting to operations to ensure that AQAP cannot return—to include the establishment of good governance in the area. It is a textbook solution of dealing with terrorist groups that hold territory.
Degrading AQAP was in the interests of the Saudis and the Emiratis. The two countries are the primary targets of AQAP in the region. But the degradation of the group is also in the national security interests of the United States since the homeland remains target No. 1 for AQAP outside the region.
Thus, the implications of the Emirati operation are significant. It is the kind of military capability and willingness to act against terrorists that should become a model for other countries in the region. It is the kind of action that the United States should support—both with tangible assistance and public statements. And, it is the approach to dealing with terrorists holding territory that will work against other extremist groups, including the Islamic State, winning the support of local tribes, training local Sunni forces to take the fight to the enemy, and fighting ourselves where necessary.
Win and Lose...
How Hillary Could Win the Election—and Lose the Country
She’d be a status-quo president at a time when both left and right are desperate for change.
By Todd S. Purdum
Hillary Clinton’s all-but-insurmountable delegate lead in the Democratic race, and her strong numbers against any probable Republican opponent in the fall, now pose a paradox: She might win the presidency but lose the country.
The reason is that Clinton lacks a big, new animating idea in a year when voters in both parties are so discontented they have embraced some pretty bad ones. Like them or loathe them, Donald Trump's and Bernie Sanders’ messages are crystal clear and call for dramatic change, while Clinton’s remains spread softly all over the map. And her agenda promises less change than continuation—of the centrist Democratic Party policies that her husband pursued and which Barack Obama has largely followed. It’s no surprise that one of Clinton’s biggest campaign themes is to praise both her predecessor Democratic presidents—the one she married and the one she went to work for—effusively.
In her New York primary victory speech recently, Clinton delivered a laundry list worthy of a State of the Union address, declaring her support for “civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and rights for people with disabilities,” and pledging to fight for “places that have been left out and left behind, from inner cities to coal country to Indian country.”
The twist is that Clinton almost certainly has the best chance in the field to deliver such a speech as president, yet she might still face a hellish four or eight years in office without a crisper organizing theme that pledges fundamental change, because so many voters in the opposition party—and her own—will be nursing bitter disappointments from Day One. She’s already in danger of pre-alienating the Democratic base, with many Sanders supporters vowing never to support her.
Some agenda items of a second Clinton presidency would be obvious enough. Dogged preservation of Obama’s legacy (and her husband’s), including health care reform. Continuance of the Democrats’ agenda on immigration, including by executive actions where possible. Support for early childhood programs, affordable child care and debt-free college education. Pragmatically hawkish foreign policy around the world.
But such initiatives seem out of scale with the size of the problems the country faces, and the depth of the anger and distress that is driving the movements behind Sanders on the left and Trump on the right. Clinton contends that Trump’s and Sanders’ various protectionist prescriptions for rescuing the middle class range from unrealistic to unAmerican. But she has not made a compelling case for how she herself would address the dislocations and anxiety that are partially the byproduct of the economic globalization that Bill Clinton and Obama both embraced wholeheartedly.
“It is a real challenge, particularly on the economy,” says veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “In many places, her more pragmatic approach is very appealing, especially on national security and homeland security, where new ideas can be very dangerous. But on the economy, people—particularly blue-collar workers of all races—are looking for a more fundamental change. She’s going to have to articulate a bigger economic policy.”
Not surprisingly, the longtime Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway is blunter. “Her commanding rationale is what it’s always been: ‘It’s my time and the country is ready for a female president, and it ought to be me,’” Conway says. “And a combination of running for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s third terms. That in itself gives you a messaging headache, because those were two different presidencies and two different Democratic parties, but she can’t afford to alienate either one, because both of those presidencies were beloved by the Democratic base and acceptable to general election voters.”
Running to fill the third term that Ronald Reagan was barred from seeking was enough to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, but not enough to sustain him when his lack of the “vision thing” left him vulnerable to Bill Clinton four years later. Hillary Clinton now faces a similar challenge.
But Clinton's advisers contend that her pragmatic message is bearing fruit, in repeated victories over Sanders in big, diverse states. "Hillary Clinton is winning because she’s offering real solutions to big challenges that will make a real difference in people’s lives so everyone can share in the promise of America," says her chief strategist, Joel Benenson. "And there’s so much cynicism about politics and Washington today, that the vast majority of voters know there aren’t easy or simple answers to our challenges. That’s why Hillary is connecting with people when she talks about breaking down all the barriers holding people back, from corporate greed to racism or sexism..."
At the very moment she’s come close to an insurmountable delegate advantage over Sanders, and is posting a steady 10-point average edge over Trump in general election polls, Clinton could be forgiven for wondering why such a significant slice of the pundit class and members of her own party view her the way her unforgiving father Hugh Rodham did more than 50 years ago, when she’d come home with a single B on her report card and he’d want to know why she hadn’t earned straight A’s.
True, she has the worst unfavorable ratings of any would-be Democratic nominee in modern times, hovering steadily around 55 percent. But Ted Cruz’s are just as bad—and Trump’s 10 or 15 percentage points worse. True, she has blown through millions of dollars and uncounted hours fending off Sanders’ primary challenge in states that she should have been able to ignore, so safe would they normally be for a Democrat in November. But she’ll still be able to count on the core support of Democratic donors and activists determined to hold on to the White House at almost any price.
“Somebody is going to get elected,” says Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked for Marco Rubio this cycle. “You could have pretty negative ratings, but if your opponent has more negative ratings, relatively, you’re the winner.”
But it is entirely possible to be the winner and still not get much of a mandate—to enter office as a kind of default president who gets in because no other candidate is electable but who doesn’t have the faith and loyalty of a large portion of the nation. Clinton is selling “realism” to a electorate that is, judging from the polls, deeply unhappy with its current reality. Her steady-as-she-goes brand of politics, and her “one from column A and two from column B” ideas are out of sync with the mood of the electorate in this three-sheets-to-the-wind age. To invert the columnist Murray Kempton’s famous maxim about Mayor John Lindsay of New York, she is tired and everyone else is fresh.
And Clinton’s all-things-to-all-people campaign message makes it harder to argue that she’d have a clear-cut agenda that would serve her and her party well in office. As George Washington advises the impatient Alexander Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical “Hamilton,” “Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.”
That is basically Clinton’s contention as well. She has taken to arguing that her demonstrated deficiencies as a candidate pale beside her competence as an executive and administrator in office, and she did, in fact, win generally high approval ratings and praise for her effectiveness as secretary of state and as senator from New York.
But a president’s greatest power is persuasion—and successful persuasion first requires an inspirational vision. John Kennedy pledged to “begin anew,” saying “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” of which he was the exemplar. Ronald Reagan declared it was “morning in America” after the twilight years of the 1970s, a period of big government spending, stagflation and a draining hostage crisis, saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Bill Clinton vowed to embrace “change versus more of the same.” Barack Obama promised “change we can believe in,” and pledged to create an army of devotees to carry it out.
Nothing in what pollster Conway calls Clinton’s “knitting together of scattershot sound-bites” comes close to distilling her worldview so succinctly. Indeed, in her victory speech in Brooklyn, she even resorted to borrowing one of her husband’s less than compelling generalities, “There’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what’s right with America.” Like Obama, she is calling for unity, "breaking down barriers" and compassion—but that seems less like her own personal vision than a stock, stump response to Trump.
“There is something going on out there, and nobody’s quite sure what it is, and what a principled leader can do about it,” says Jeff Shesol, who was a White House speechwriter for Bill Clinton. “What do you do to address it, because it’s something that needs to be addressed, and the next president ought to have something to say about it. The answers of Sanders I think are all too pat; they’re just sort of impulses. And I think Hillary Clinton holds herself to a higher standard. But when you do that, when you acknowledge the answers aren’t that easy, then what do you say? I don’t think she knows yet.”
Sanders’ liberal insurgency—and Trump’s nativist challenge from the right—have posed challenges for Clinton because at a time when two-thirds of voters are dissatisfied with the economy, both candidates have “an economic narrative,” as Celinda Lake puts it. “They have an origins story. They tell us how we got here, and who’s to blame—in Sanders’ case, Wall Street; in Trump’s, immigrants. If you can’t tell us how we got here, and who the villains are, how are we going to get out of it?”
Lake says she believes Clinton resists pat answers both because she’s wary of making false promises, and also because she “has a mixed economic view—she doesn’t see things in black and white.”
That may well be an admirable trait in a president, but more than seven years of Obama’s resolutely rationalist leadership may have also shown the limits of its political effectiveness—which is why the electorate seems in the mood for such a different approach today.
There is also every reason to expect a President Hillary Clinton would face intransigence from congressional Republicans equal to or greater than that Obama has faced since taking office, especially if they were licking their wounds in the aftermath of a massive Trump defeat. She would be all but guaranteed to face a bruising Supreme Court confirmation battle right out of the box—whether over Obama’s centrist nominee Merrick Garland or a more reliably liberal choice her supporters might impel her to nominate. And she would face the wrath of the dead-end supporters of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who would see her as selling out Democratic values.
“Sanders is posting Kim Jong Il-like numbers among young people,” says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, “and those are people with no connection or loyalty to the Clintons whatsoever.”
Far from all Democrats are pessimistic about the prospects for success of a Clinton presidency. “It’s just one of the disjunctions of American politics that the skills required to be a great candidate are not necessarily related to the skills of a great president,” Mellman says. Presidents as different as Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush may well be cases in point.
Democratic media strategist Steve McMahon says Clinton’s campaign contention that she’s a pragmatist who can get things done “is not a very powerful message in the Democratic primary. Democrats are ideologues.” But, he adds, “In a general election, and especially in a presidency, that quality becomes very important. At the end of the day, it’s probably the case that only a pragmatist can get anything done in the current climate.”
Yet there is a reason Clinton has twice struggled to win her own party’s nomination, first against a charismatic young African-American who promised a historic breakthrough that she herself could have bid fair to match, and now against a rumpled septuagenarian who has emerged as the unlikely avatar of the millennial generation. The reason goes well beyond whether she’s a warm and cuddly campaigner, or as effective a speechmaker as her husband at his best.
At the heart of the problem is her enduring difficulty in explaining—clearly and cleanly—what she actually aspires to do as president. And that’s a problem that seems likely to get worse before it gets better.
She’d be a status-quo president at a time when both left and right are desperate for change.
By Todd S. Purdum
Hillary Clinton’s all-but-insurmountable delegate lead in the Democratic race, and her strong numbers against any probable Republican opponent in the fall, now pose a paradox: She might win the presidency but lose the country.
The reason is that Clinton lacks a big, new animating idea in a year when voters in both parties are so discontented they have embraced some pretty bad ones. Like them or loathe them, Donald Trump's and Bernie Sanders’ messages are crystal clear and call for dramatic change, while Clinton’s remains spread softly all over the map. And her agenda promises less change than continuation—of the centrist Democratic Party policies that her husband pursued and which Barack Obama has largely followed. It’s no surprise that one of Clinton’s biggest campaign themes is to praise both her predecessor Democratic presidents—the one she married and the one she went to work for—effusively.
In her New York primary victory speech recently, Clinton delivered a laundry list worthy of a State of the Union address, declaring her support for “civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and rights for people with disabilities,” and pledging to fight for “places that have been left out and left behind, from inner cities to coal country to Indian country.”
The twist is that Clinton almost certainly has the best chance in the field to deliver such a speech as president, yet she might still face a hellish four or eight years in office without a crisper organizing theme that pledges fundamental change, because so many voters in the opposition party—and her own—will be nursing bitter disappointments from Day One. She’s already in danger of pre-alienating the Democratic base, with many Sanders supporters vowing never to support her.
Some agenda items of a second Clinton presidency would be obvious enough. Dogged preservation of Obama’s legacy (and her husband’s), including health care reform. Continuance of the Democrats’ agenda on immigration, including by executive actions where possible. Support for early childhood programs, affordable child care and debt-free college education. Pragmatically hawkish foreign policy around the world.
But such initiatives seem out of scale with the size of the problems the country faces, and the depth of the anger and distress that is driving the movements behind Sanders on the left and Trump on the right. Clinton contends that Trump’s and Sanders’ various protectionist prescriptions for rescuing the middle class range from unrealistic to unAmerican. But she has not made a compelling case for how she herself would address the dislocations and anxiety that are partially the byproduct of the economic globalization that Bill Clinton and Obama both embraced wholeheartedly.
“It is a real challenge, particularly on the economy,” says veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “In many places, her more pragmatic approach is very appealing, especially on national security and homeland security, where new ideas can be very dangerous. But on the economy, people—particularly blue-collar workers of all races—are looking for a more fundamental change. She’s going to have to articulate a bigger economic policy.”
Not surprisingly, the longtime Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway is blunter. “Her commanding rationale is what it’s always been: ‘It’s my time and the country is ready for a female president, and it ought to be me,’” Conway says. “And a combination of running for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s third terms. That in itself gives you a messaging headache, because those were two different presidencies and two different Democratic parties, but she can’t afford to alienate either one, because both of those presidencies were beloved by the Democratic base and acceptable to general election voters.”
Running to fill the third term that Ronald Reagan was barred from seeking was enough to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, but not enough to sustain him when his lack of the “vision thing” left him vulnerable to Bill Clinton four years later. Hillary Clinton now faces a similar challenge.
But Clinton's advisers contend that her pragmatic message is bearing fruit, in repeated victories over Sanders in big, diverse states. "Hillary Clinton is winning because she’s offering real solutions to big challenges that will make a real difference in people’s lives so everyone can share in the promise of America," says her chief strategist, Joel Benenson. "And there’s so much cynicism about politics and Washington today, that the vast majority of voters know there aren’t easy or simple answers to our challenges. That’s why Hillary is connecting with people when she talks about breaking down all the barriers holding people back, from corporate greed to racism or sexism..."
At the very moment she’s come close to an insurmountable delegate advantage over Sanders, and is posting a steady 10-point average edge over Trump in general election polls, Clinton could be forgiven for wondering why such a significant slice of the pundit class and members of her own party view her the way her unforgiving father Hugh Rodham did more than 50 years ago, when she’d come home with a single B on her report card and he’d want to know why she hadn’t earned straight A’s.
True, she has the worst unfavorable ratings of any would-be Democratic nominee in modern times, hovering steadily around 55 percent. But Ted Cruz’s are just as bad—and Trump’s 10 or 15 percentage points worse. True, she has blown through millions of dollars and uncounted hours fending off Sanders’ primary challenge in states that she should have been able to ignore, so safe would they normally be for a Democrat in November. But she’ll still be able to count on the core support of Democratic donors and activists determined to hold on to the White House at almost any price.
“Somebody is going to get elected,” says Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked for Marco Rubio this cycle. “You could have pretty negative ratings, but if your opponent has more negative ratings, relatively, you’re the winner.”
But it is entirely possible to be the winner and still not get much of a mandate—to enter office as a kind of default president who gets in because no other candidate is electable but who doesn’t have the faith and loyalty of a large portion of the nation. Clinton is selling “realism” to a electorate that is, judging from the polls, deeply unhappy with its current reality. Her steady-as-she-goes brand of politics, and her “one from column A and two from column B” ideas are out of sync with the mood of the electorate in this three-sheets-to-the-wind age. To invert the columnist Murray Kempton’s famous maxim about Mayor John Lindsay of New York, she is tired and everyone else is fresh.
And Clinton’s all-things-to-all-people campaign message makes it harder to argue that she’d have a clear-cut agenda that would serve her and her party well in office. As George Washington advises the impatient Alexander Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical “Hamilton,” “Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.”
That is basically Clinton’s contention as well. She has taken to arguing that her demonstrated deficiencies as a candidate pale beside her competence as an executive and administrator in office, and she did, in fact, win generally high approval ratings and praise for her effectiveness as secretary of state and as senator from New York.
But a president’s greatest power is persuasion—and successful persuasion first requires an inspirational vision. John Kennedy pledged to “begin anew,” saying “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” of which he was the exemplar. Ronald Reagan declared it was “morning in America” after the twilight years of the 1970s, a period of big government spending, stagflation and a draining hostage crisis, saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Bill Clinton vowed to embrace “change versus more of the same.” Barack Obama promised “change we can believe in,” and pledged to create an army of devotees to carry it out.
Nothing in what pollster Conway calls Clinton’s “knitting together of scattershot sound-bites” comes close to distilling her worldview so succinctly. Indeed, in her victory speech in Brooklyn, she even resorted to borrowing one of her husband’s less than compelling generalities, “There’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what’s right with America.” Like Obama, she is calling for unity, "breaking down barriers" and compassion—but that seems less like her own personal vision than a stock, stump response to Trump.
“There is something going on out there, and nobody’s quite sure what it is, and what a principled leader can do about it,” says Jeff Shesol, who was a White House speechwriter for Bill Clinton. “What do you do to address it, because it’s something that needs to be addressed, and the next president ought to have something to say about it. The answers of Sanders I think are all too pat; they’re just sort of impulses. And I think Hillary Clinton holds herself to a higher standard. But when you do that, when you acknowledge the answers aren’t that easy, then what do you say? I don’t think she knows yet.”
Sanders’ liberal insurgency—and Trump’s nativist challenge from the right—have posed challenges for Clinton because at a time when two-thirds of voters are dissatisfied with the economy, both candidates have “an economic narrative,” as Celinda Lake puts it. “They have an origins story. They tell us how we got here, and who’s to blame—in Sanders’ case, Wall Street; in Trump’s, immigrants. If you can’t tell us how we got here, and who the villains are, how are we going to get out of it?”
Lake says she believes Clinton resists pat answers both because she’s wary of making false promises, and also because she “has a mixed economic view—she doesn’t see things in black and white.”
That may well be an admirable trait in a president, but more than seven years of Obama’s resolutely rationalist leadership may have also shown the limits of its political effectiveness—which is why the electorate seems in the mood for such a different approach today.
There is also every reason to expect a President Hillary Clinton would face intransigence from congressional Republicans equal to or greater than that Obama has faced since taking office, especially if they were licking their wounds in the aftermath of a massive Trump defeat. She would be all but guaranteed to face a bruising Supreme Court confirmation battle right out of the box—whether over Obama’s centrist nominee Merrick Garland or a more reliably liberal choice her supporters might impel her to nominate. And she would face the wrath of the dead-end supporters of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who would see her as selling out Democratic values.
“Sanders is posting Kim Jong Il-like numbers among young people,” says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, “and those are people with no connection or loyalty to the Clintons whatsoever.”
Far from all Democrats are pessimistic about the prospects for success of a Clinton presidency. “It’s just one of the disjunctions of American politics that the skills required to be a great candidate are not necessarily related to the skills of a great president,” Mellman says. Presidents as different as Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush may well be cases in point.
Democratic media strategist Steve McMahon says Clinton’s campaign contention that she’s a pragmatist who can get things done “is not a very powerful message in the Democratic primary. Democrats are ideologues.” But, he adds, “In a general election, and especially in a presidency, that quality becomes very important. At the end of the day, it’s probably the case that only a pragmatist can get anything done in the current climate.”
Yet there is a reason Clinton has twice struggled to win her own party’s nomination, first against a charismatic young African-American who promised a historic breakthrough that she herself could have bid fair to match, and now against a rumpled septuagenarian who has emerged as the unlikely avatar of the millennial generation. The reason goes well beyond whether she’s a warm and cuddly campaigner, or as effective a speechmaker as her husband at his best.
At the heart of the problem is her enduring difficulty in explaining—clearly and cleanly—what she actually aspires to do as president. And that’s a problem that seems likely to get worse before it gets better.
Trump remarks...
Trump: 'Indians have gone wild' over Clinton's 'off the reservation' remark
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump fired back at Hillary Clinton on Monday, responding to a dig the Democratic front-runner took at him in an interview late last week in which she remarked that she has "a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak."
"Crooked Hillary Clinton said she is used to 'dealing with men who get off the reservation.' Actually, she has done poorly with such men!" Trump tweeted Monday morning, minutes before his first interview of the day on CNN as he begins his final full day of campaigning in Indiana before the state votes Tuesday.
Calling into CNN's "New Day," Trump said Clinton has been "taking a lot of heat" for the comment, calling it a "very harsh statement."
"She talks about, I can handle men who get off the reservation, a very demeaning statement. I won't bring up the fact the Indians have gone wild on that statement. You know that? The Indians said that that statement is a disastrous statement, and they want a retraction. I'm not going to get into that, but," Trump said, as CNN's Chris Cuomo interjected, "You just did get into it. I had not really heard that."
Clinton's team did go into damage control mode after the candidate made the comment in her interview last Friday, drawing the ire of Native American groups and beyond for the use of the term "off the reservation."
"About the use of an expression today that has some very offensive roots ... Divisive language has no place in our politics," Amanda Renteria, Clinton's national political director, tweeted Friday as Twitter users employed the hashtag #OffTheReservation to show their disdain.
Renteria followed up, writing that Clinton "meant no disrespect to Native Americans. She wants this election to be about lifting people up, not tearing them down."
Clinton did not elaborate on which men she was referring to in her interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump fired back at Hillary Clinton on Monday, responding to a dig the Democratic front-runner took at him in an interview late last week in which she remarked that she has "a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak."
"Crooked Hillary Clinton said she is used to 'dealing with men who get off the reservation.' Actually, she has done poorly with such men!" Trump tweeted Monday morning, minutes before his first interview of the day on CNN as he begins his final full day of campaigning in Indiana before the state votes Tuesday.
Calling into CNN's "New Day," Trump said Clinton has been "taking a lot of heat" for the comment, calling it a "very harsh statement."
"She talks about, I can handle men who get off the reservation, a very demeaning statement. I won't bring up the fact the Indians have gone wild on that statement. You know that? The Indians said that that statement is a disastrous statement, and they want a retraction. I'm not going to get into that, but," Trump said, as CNN's Chris Cuomo interjected, "You just did get into it. I had not really heard that."
Clinton's team did go into damage control mode after the candidate made the comment in her interview last Friday, drawing the ire of Native American groups and beyond for the use of the term "off the reservation."
"About the use of an expression today that has some very offensive roots ... Divisive language has no place in our politics," Amanda Renteria, Clinton's national political director, tweeted Friday as Twitter users employed the hashtag #OffTheReservation to show their disdain.
Renteria followed up, writing that Clinton "meant no disrespect to Native Americans. She wants this election to be about lifting people up, not tearing them down."
Clinton did not elaborate on which men she was referring to in her interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
Trump, China and the Universe...
Trump: 'We can't continue to allow China to rape our country'
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump ratcheted up his language toward China on Sunday, remarking at one point in a rally that the country is committing "rape" against the United States when it comes to the trade imbalance between the two nations.
"Don't forget. We're like the piggybank that's being robbed. We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China," Trump told an audience in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "When China doesn't want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, 'Sorry, folks, you gotta fix the problem.' Because we can't continue to allow China to rape our country. And that's what they're doing. It's the greatest theft in the history of the world."
But even though China, in Trump's words, is committing "rape" against the U.S., he isn't mad at the Chinese. On the contrary, he said, he is angry with U.S. leaders for allowing it to do so.
"What China has done — and I like China — I've made a lot of money with China," Trump said. "The Bank of America building in San Francisco, a building in New York, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, one of the biggest floor plates in the whole city of New York. I do great with China, I sell them condos, I have the largest bank in the world from China, the largest in the world by far. They're a tenant of mine in a building I own in Manhattan."
"I mean, China's great. No problem. I'm not angry with China," he continued. "And I'm not angry at Japan. And I'm not angry at Mexico. I'm not angry at anybody. I'm angry at our leaders, because they are grossly incompetent and they shouldn't have ever been elected to do this job. Terrible."
Railing against trade deals has long been a staple of Trump's stump speech, though he tends to emphasize the topic more often in blue-collar areas that have been hit hard by foreign competition.
Trump has often spoken about in particular about Carrier, the appliance manufacturer that recently announced it would lay off some 1,400 workers in Indianapolis as it moved operations to Mexico.
In February, a secretly filmed video showing employees shouting obscenities at a manager as he announces the layoffs went viral.
"Carrier will not leave Indiana if I'm president," Trump has said.
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump ratcheted up his language toward China on Sunday, remarking at one point in a rally that the country is committing "rape" against the United States when it comes to the trade imbalance between the two nations.
"Don't forget. We're like the piggybank that's being robbed. We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China," Trump told an audience in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "When China doesn't want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, 'Sorry, folks, you gotta fix the problem.' Because we can't continue to allow China to rape our country. And that's what they're doing. It's the greatest theft in the history of the world."
But even though China, in Trump's words, is committing "rape" against the U.S., he isn't mad at the Chinese. On the contrary, he said, he is angry with U.S. leaders for allowing it to do so.
"What China has done — and I like China — I've made a lot of money with China," Trump said. "The Bank of America building in San Francisco, a building in New York, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, one of the biggest floor plates in the whole city of New York. I do great with China, I sell them condos, I have the largest bank in the world from China, the largest in the world by far. They're a tenant of mine in a building I own in Manhattan."
"I mean, China's great. No problem. I'm not angry with China," he continued. "And I'm not angry at Japan. And I'm not angry at Mexico. I'm not angry at anybody. I'm angry at our leaders, because they are grossly incompetent and they shouldn't have ever been elected to do this job. Terrible."
Railing against trade deals has long been a staple of Trump's stump speech, though he tends to emphasize the topic more often in blue-collar areas that have been hit hard by foreign competition.
Trump has often spoken about in particular about Carrier, the appliance manufacturer that recently announced it would lay off some 1,400 workers in Indianapolis as it moved operations to Mexico.
In February, a secretly filmed video showing employees shouting obscenities at a manager as he announces the layoffs went viral.
"Carrier will not leave Indiana if I'm president," Trump has said.
Cruz heckled...
Cruz to young heckler: You'd get spanked in my house
By Nick Gass
A youthful protester who interrupted his rally late Sunday evening should get a spanking, Ted Cruz suggested to his audience in La Porte, Indiana. Such a punishment, he added, would have gone a long way in changing the behavior of Donald Trump.
“All right, apparently there’s a young man who’s having some problems," Cruz said, as the young heckler shouted, "You suck!"
Cruz responded, "Thank you, son."
“Children should actually speak with respect," he continued. "Imagine what a different world it would be if someone told Donald Trump that years ago.”
Sunday night was not the first time Cruz has referred to the way he punishes his children for wrongdoing.
“You know, in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking," the Texas senator remarked, echoing similar comments he made in January in reference to Hillary Clinton, suggesting then to voters that they should "spank" the former secretary of state at the ballot box for her handling of the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
By Nick Gass
A youthful protester who interrupted his rally late Sunday evening should get a spanking, Ted Cruz suggested to his audience in La Porte, Indiana. Such a punishment, he added, would have gone a long way in changing the behavior of Donald Trump.
“All right, apparently there’s a young man who’s having some problems," Cruz said, as the young heckler shouted, "You suck!"
Cruz responded, "Thank you, son."
“Children should actually speak with respect," he continued. "Imagine what a different world it would be if someone told Donald Trump that years ago.”
Sunday night was not the first time Cruz has referred to the way he punishes his children for wrongdoing.
“You know, in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking," the Texas senator remarked, echoing similar comments he made in January in reference to Hillary Clinton, suggesting then to voters that they should "spank" the former secretary of state at the ballot box for her handling of the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
Hasn't endorsed...
Why Rubio hasn't endorsed Cruz
The Florida senator hopes to thwart Trump while protecting his own political future.
By Marc Caputo
Marco Rubio won’t be endorsing Ted Cruz during the Republican presidential primary, but he’s likely to back the Texas senator at a contested convention — if it gets that far.
The de facto plan, Rubio’s backers say, is designed to help Cruz. It also, however, protects Rubio's political future, including if he decides to make another run for the White House.
Immediately after Rubio dropped out of the presidential contest following his home state March 15 loss, the Florida senator told supporters he would endorse Cruz under two conditions: if the Texas senator wanted the endorsement and if it would make a difference. But Rubio came to believe that neither Cruz nor he would really gain from an endorsement so far.
“At this point, No. 1, it’s not a year where endorsements matter very much,” Rubio told POLITICO. “And No. 2: I’ll just let it play itself out and work through it. I really want to come back and focus 100 percent on my work in the senate.”
Rubio has already helped Cruz by renting him his fundraising list, calling him “the only conservative left in the race,” withdrawing his name from the primary ballot in select states so as not to siphon votes from Cruz and petitioning to hang on to some of the 171 delegates he won to keep them from going to Donald Trump.
Just as those maneuvers helped Cruz or weakened Trump’s prospects, Rubio is likely waiting for a contested Republican National Convention to make his next big move.
“Marco has significant political capital: his delegates, the delegates he won and those delegates who would show up at the convention and, when unbound from another candidate, would listen to what Rubio would say,” said one Rubio insider.
“Marco wants Donald to lose. If he thought his endorsement would help in California or in Indiana, which it won’t, then he would probably do it,” the source said. “But what Marco isn’t going to do is just endorse Ted, watch Trump win anyway and then, in four years, watch Cruz use Marco’s endorsement against him if they both run for president again,” the source said.
Asked about swinging delegates at a contested convention to Cruz, Rubio said he’ll discuss it later.
“We’ll see if it gets to that point. Indiana will vote Tuesday and a handful of states after that, and if Donald Trump has 1,237 delegates or more, he’s going to be the nominee. And if he doesn’t, then I’ll see,” Rubio said. “We’ll talk about it at that time, but that’s neither something at this point I can influence, really.”
Trump’s prospect for winning the 1,237 delegates needed look relatively good. He so far has 996 to Cruz’s 565. Trump is the only candidate not mathematically eliminated from amassing enough delegates before the convention.
“It’s going to play itself out. Voters are deciding,” Rubio continued. “If Donald Trump continues to win by the margins he won in the last couple of Tuesdays, he’s going to be the nominee. And if he can’t, than something different might happen.”
At a contested convention, Rubio would likely win a prime speaking slot as well, reinforcing his importance as a political player in national GOP politics.
Officials for Cruz’s campaign would not comment for this story.
Rubio donors also worry about an endorsement that could have negative consequences for Rubio if he and Cruz run against each other in 2020.
“A lot of our donors haven’t done much for Cruz because they don’t really see him winning anyway. Many of them don’t really like him. And they think like, with Marco’s endorsement, it really won’t do much. And some of them have told him that Cruz would just use the endorsement as a cudgel against him,” another Rubio insider said. “There’s no gain.”
Rubio donors haven’t been too keen on contributing to Cruz. According to BuzzFeed, only 120 of the Florida senator’s former presidential donors gave to Cruz since the Florida primary, offering a total of about $126,650.
But it’s not as if Rubio and his supporters want Cruz to lose this year; quite the opposite.
“Trust me, for us, the best scenario is for Ted Cruz to be the nominee this year,” another top supporter said. “It would knock Trump out. Then Cruz would run against Hillary and get slaughtered and he won’t be our problem in four years if Marco runs again. And I think he’ll run again.”
Rubio wouldn’t discuss those scenarios. He said 2020 is so far away and “I don’t even know what I’ll be doing in January 2017” when he leaves the senate.
Some die-hard Rubio backers don’t want to wait four more years. They hope he could emerge as a consensus candidate at a contested convention, but Rubio said that’s not how the process will work. The nominee will likely be Trump or Cruz, people who have won a significant number of states, not someone who barely competed in the contest or didn’t compete at all.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a white knight,” Rubio said when asked if he’d be interested in getting the nomination. “I’ve spent zero time thinking about that, were not working on anything like that. It’s not going to happen.”
Asked if that’s a “no” to being a “white knight,” Rubio quickly answered in the affirmative: “Yeah.”
The Florida senator hopes to thwart Trump while protecting his own political future.
By Marc Caputo
Marco Rubio won’t be endorsing Ted Cruz during the Republican presidential primary, but he’s likely to back the Texas senator at a contested convention — if it gets that far.
The de facto plan, Rubio’s backers say, is designed to help Cruz. It also, however, protects Rubio's political future, including if he decides to make another run for the White House.
Immediately after Rubio dropped out of the presidential contest following his home state March 15 loss, the Florida senator told supporters he would endorse Cruz under two conditions: if the Texas senator wanted the endorsement and if it would make a difference. But Rubio came to believe that neither Cruz nor he would really gain from an endorsement so far.
“At this point, No. 1, it’s not a year where endorsements matter very much,” Rubio told POLITICO. “And No. 2: I’ll just let it play itself out and work through it. I really want to come back and focus 100 percent on my work in the senate.”
Rubio has already helped Cruz by renting him his fundraising list, calling him “the only conservative left in the race,” withdrawing his name from the primary ballot in select states so as not to siphon votes from Cruz and petitioning to hang on to some of the 171 delegates he won to keep them from going to Donald Trump.
Just as those maneuvers helped Cruz or weakened Trump’s prospects, Rubio is likely waiting for a contested Republican National Convention to make his next big move.
“Marco has significant political capital: his delegates, the delegates he won and those delegates who would show up at the convention and, when unbound from another candidate, would listen to what Rubio would say,” said one Rubio insider.
“Marco wants Donald to lose. If he thought his endorsement would help in California or in Indiana, which it won’t, then he would probably do it,” the source said. “But what Marco isn’t going to do is just endorse Ted, watch Trump win anyway and then, in four years, watch Cruz use Marco’s endorsement against him if they both run for president again,” the source said.
Asked about swinging delegates at a contested convention to Cruz, Rubio said he’ll discuss it later.
“We’ll see if it gets to that point. Indiana will vote Tuesday and a handful of states after that, and if Donald Trump has 1,237 delegates or more, he’s going to be the nominee. And if he doesn’t, then I’ll see,” Rubio said. “We’ll talk about it at that time, but that’s neither something at this point I can influence, really.”
Trump’s prospect for winning the 1,237 delegates needed look relatively good. He so far has 996 to Cruz’s 565. Trump is the only candidate not mathematically eliminated from amassing enough delegates before the convention.
“It’s going to play itself out. Voters are deciding,” Rubio continued. “If Donald Trump continues to win by the margins he won in the last couple of Tuesdays, he’s going to be the nominee. And if he can’t, than something different might happen.”
At a contested convention, Rubio would likely win a prime speaking slot as well, reinforcing his importance as a political player in national GOP politics.
Officials for Cruz’s campaign would not comment for this story.
Rubio donors also worry about an endorsement that could have negative consequences for Rubio if he and Cruz run against each other in 2020.
“A lot of our donors haven’t done much for Cruz because they don’t really see him winning anyway. Many of them don’t really like him. And they think like, with Marco’s endorsement, it really won’t do much. And some of them have told him that Cruz would just use the endorsement as a cudgel against him,” another Rubio insider said. “There’s no gain.”
Rubio donors haven’t been too keen on contributing to Cruz. According to BuzzFeed, only 120 of the Florida senator’s former presidential donors gave to Cruz since the Florida primary, offering a total of about $126,650.
But it’s not as if Rubio and his supporters want Cruz to lose this year; quite the opposite.
“Trust me, for us, the best scenario is for Ted Cruz to be the nominee this year,” another top supporter said. “It would knock Trump out. Then Cruz would run against Hillary and get slaughtered and he won’t be our problem in four years if Marco runs again. And I think he’ll run again.”
Rubio wouldn’t discuss those scenarios. He said 2020 is so far away and “I don’t even know what I’ll be doing in January 2017” when he leaves the senate.
Some die-hard Rubio backers don’t want to wait four more years. They hope he could emerge as a consensus candidate at a contested convention, but Rubio said that’s not how the process will work. The nominee will likely be Trump or Cruz, people who have won a significant number of states, not someone who barely competed in the contest or didn’t compete at all.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a white knight,” Rubio said when asked if he’d be interested in getting the nomination. “I’ve spent zero time thinking about that, were not working on anything like that. It’s not going to happen.”
Asked if that’s a “no” to being a “white knight,” Rubio quickly answered in the affirmative: “Yeah.”
Sanders Can't Drop Out
This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can't Tell Bernie Sanders to Drop Out
Her choices in 2008 dictate what she can say now.
By Pema Levy
Hillary Clinton's lead in delegates over rival Bernie Sanders is now almost insurmountable as they move toward the conclusion of the Democratic presidential primary contest. But Clinton has not called on him to drop out of the race, for one simple reason: the example her own campaign set in 2008.
Eight years ago this month, Clinton was trailing hopelessly behind then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. On May 1, 2008, Clinton loaned her bankrupt campaign $1 million (following at least $10 million in earlier loans). Before the end of that week, pundits were calling the contest for Obama, whose May 6 win in the North Carolina primary, by 14 points, had made his delegate lead essentially insurmountable. "We now know who the Democratic nominee will be," Tim Russert said on MSNBC after the results came in. Less than a week later, Obama surpassed Clinton in the super-delegate count, signaling that the party establishment was shifting behind the presumptive nominee.
But Clinton was determined to fight until the last votes had been cast. She would go on to win contests in West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota before the primary ended on June 3, even though there was no way for her to make up her deficit in the delegate count.
Along the way, the Clinton campaign put forward every conceivable argument to justify staying in the race. It used wins in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky to claim that Obama was losing support among white working-class voters and that she would be the stronger general election candidate. On May 5, it began to argue about the delegate math, making the case that the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination was actually 2,209, not 2,025, the figure that had been cited up until then—and that if neither campaign reached that new number, Clinton was prepared for a floor fight at the party's convention. On May 23, Clinton justified her continued White House bid by noting that in 1968, Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, after winning the California primary. And lurking in the background in these final weeks was the rumor that Republican operatives had gotten hold of a tape of Michelle Obama disparaging "whitey."
Eight years later, Clinton knows she cannot turn around and tell Sanders it's time to leave the race, even though her current lead over Sanders, at about 300 delegates, is larger than the nearly 160-delegate lead Obama had over her after the North Carolina primary in 2008. The Sanders campaign had $17 million on hand as of the latest public filings at the end of March, giving it far more fighting power than the broke Clinton effort had at the same point in 2008.
So the Clinton team has been careful not to say Sanders should drop out. After her victory in New York, Clinton's communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, told reporters that the campaign expected Clinton to be the nominee but that Sanders had a right to continue to fight. Instead of focusing on Clinton's refusal to bow out in 2008, her campaign is talking up her unequivocal support of Obama after the primary was over—suggesting that that is the example Sanders should follow. In late May 2008, she said she and Obama "do see eye-to-eye when it comes to uniting our party to elect a Democratic president in the fall." And when she announced her withdrawal from the race on June 7, she forcefully threw her support behind Obama and urged her fans to do the same.
"I think she set a gold standard for how people who don't end up with the nomination, who lose in that effort, should come together and help the party," Palmieri said on the night of the New York primary last month.
What Clinton isn't mentioning is that before she tried to unify the party, she was questioning Obama's appeal to white voters, hoping that a bombshell video would surface and help take down her rival, and entertaining a convention floor fight. Despite her team's claims of magnanimity, at this point eight years ago, Clinton was five weeks and a few attacks shy of giving into the inevitable and uniting the party.
Her choices in 2008 dictate what she can say now.
By Pema Levy
Hillary Clinton's lead in delegates over rival Bernie Sanders is now almost insurmountable as they move toward the conclusion of the Democratic presidential primary contest. But Clinton has not called on him to drop out of the race, for one simple reason: the example her own campaign set in 2008.
Eight years ago this month, Clinton was trailing hopelessly behind then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. On May 1, 2008, Clinton loaned her bankrupt campaign $1 million (following at least $10 million in earlier loans). Before the end of that week, pundits were calling the contest for Obama, whose May 6 win in the North Carolina primary, by 14 points, had made his delegate lead essentially insurmountable. "We now know who the Democratic nominee will be," Tim Russert said on MSNBC after the results came in. Less than a week later, Obama surpassed Clinton in the super-delegate count, signaling that the party establishment was shifting behind the presumptive nominee.
But Clinton was determined to fight until the last votes had been cast. She would go on to win contests in West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota before the primary ended on June 3, even though there was no way for her to make up her deficit in the delegate count.
Along the way, the Clinton campaign put forward every conceivable argument to justify staying in the race. It used wins in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky to claim that Obama was losing support among white working-class voters and that she would be the stronger general election candidate. On May 5, it began to argue about the delegate math, making the case that the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination was actually 2,209, not 2,025, the figure that had been cited up until then—and that if neither campaign reached that new number, Clinton was prepared for a floor fight at the party's convention. On May 23, Clinton justified her continued White House bid by noting that in 1968, Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, after winning the California primary. And lurking in the background in these final weeks was the rumor that Republican operatives had gotten hold of a tape of Michelle Obama disparaging "whitey."
Eight years later, Clinton knows she cannot turn around and tell Sanders it's time to leave the race, even though her current lead over Sanders, at about 300 delegates, is larger than the nearly 160-delegate lead Obama had over her after the North Carolina primary in 2008. The Sanders campaign had $17 million on hand as of the latest public filings at the end of March, giving it far more fighting power than the broke Clinton effort had at the same point in 2008.
So the Clinton team has been careful not to say Sanders should drop out. After her victory in New York, Clinton's communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, told reporters that the campaign expected Clinton to be the nominee but that Sanders had a right to continue to fight. Instead of focusing on Clinton's refusal to bow out in 2008, her campaign is talking up her unequivocal support of Obama after the primary was over—suggesting that that is the example Sanders should follow. In late May 2008, she said she and Obama "do see eye-to-eye when it comes to uniting our party to elect a Democratic president in the fall." And when she announced her withdrawal from the race on June 7, she forcefully threw her support behind Obama and urged her fans to do the same.
"I think she set a gold standard for how people who don't end up with the nomination, who lose in that effort, should come together and help the party," Palmieri said on the night of the New York primary last month.
What Clinton isn't mentioning is that before she tried to unify the party, she was questioning Obama's appeal to white voters, hoping that a bombshell video would surface and help take down her rival, and entertaining a convention floor fight. Despite her team's claims of magnanimity, at this point eight years ago, Clinton was five weeks and a few attacks shy of giving into the inevitable and uniting the party.
Curiosity on Mars
Where is NASA's rover Curiosity going on Mars? Its geographical goals are on the slopes of Mount Sharp, whose peak is seen in the background on the right. A key scientific goal, however, remains to better assess when and where conditions on Mars were once suitable for life, in particular microbial life. To further this goal, Curiosity was directed to cross the rugged terrain of Nautkluft Plateau, visible in the featured image on the foreground left. Curiosity is crossing toward smoother uphill sites with rocks containing hematite and sulfates, sites that could give the rolling rover new clues on how long this part of Mars was wet -- and hence more favorable for life -- before drying out. Of recent concern, however, is Curiosity's aluminum wheels, which are showing increasing signs of wear. Although already fulfilling the goals of its two year study, Curiosity's mission has been extended as it continues to uncover valuable information about the extraordinary past of Mars, the next planet out from the Sun from Earth.
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