Hillary Clinton has been telling friends she has not totally closed the door on a 2020 campaign, CNN reports.
“As recently as this week, she was telling people that look, given all this news from the indictments, particularly the Roger Stone indictment, she talked to several people, saying ‘look, I’m not closing the doors to this.'”
However, another close Clinton friend said that “it would surprise me greatly if she actually did it.”
Maureen Dowd: “I’m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it’s a depressing sight. It’s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits.”
“I get reassigned to another section as the Clintons’ audience space shrinks. But even with all the herding, I’m still looking at large swaths of empty seats — and I cringe at the thought that the Clintons will look out and see that, too.”
“President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James Comey,” the New York Times reports.
“The lawyer, Donald McGahn, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power.”
“Hillary Clinton appeared to leave the door open to another presidential bid during comments made during a podcast taped over the weekend,” the Washington Post reports.
“Asked by Recode’s Kara Swisher about a 2020 bid, Clinton initially said ‘no’ and then paused, before saying ‘no’ again. But after Swisher noted the pause, Clinton didn’t sound so sure.”
Said Clinton: “Well, I’d like to be president. I think, hopefully, when we have a Democrat in the Oval Office in January of 2021, there’s going to be so much work to be done.”
Former Clinton aide Philippe Reines told Politico that he thinks it is “unlikely” that Hillary Clinton would mount a 2020 bid, but cautioned that it was not an impossibility.
Said Reines: “It’s somewhere between highly unlikely and zero, but it’s not zero.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hit back at Hillary Clinton after she said that Democrats “cannot be civil” with Republicans until they retake control, USA Today reports.
Said McConnell: “The far-left mob is not letting up. Earlier today, former Secretary of State Clinton sent this signal as clear as day. She told CNN exactly how she views millions of Americans who hold different political views from her own.”
“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.”
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview with CNN.
As part of an effort to “streamline” the social studies curriculum in public schools, the Texas Board of Education “voted Friday to adjust what students in every grade are required to learn in the classroom. Among the changes, board members approved the removal of several historical figures, including Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller, from the curriculum,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“The board also voted to keep in the curriculum a reference to the ‘heroism’ of the defenders of the Alamo, which had been recommended for elimination, as well as Moses’ influence on the writing of the nation’s founding documents, multiple references to ‘Judeo-Christian’ values and a requirement that students explain how the ‘Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict’ in the Middle East.”
“President Trump asserted early Wednesday, without citing evidence, that Hillary Clinton’s emails were hacked by China, and he said the Justice Department and FBI risked losing their credibility if they did not look into the matter,” the Washington Post reports.
“A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.”
“Hillary Clinton is stepping back into the limelight ahead of the November midterm elections, helping to raise money for the Democratic National Committee in a series of fundraisers,” NBC News reports.
“The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee will headline three events — in San Francisco, Chicago and New York — for the DNC this fall to boost the party’s chances to seize control of the U.S. House and Senate.”
This speech by Hillary Clinton the week before the 2016 presidential election is prescient.
Jennifer Palmieri: “I am not sure there is a word in the English language to describe how I felt when I read that Comey had occasionally used his personal Gmail account to conduct official business. I’d felt the same sense of outrage and helplessness when I heard members of the press lament the outsized attention Clinton’s emails got during the campaign.”
“I won’t re-litigate the coverage of Clinton’s emails here (and how I believe suspicion of the motivations of a woman seeking power is at the root of the email controversy), but I can’t help but wonder we don’t now distrust Comey’s the way people distrusted Clinton. (Hint: It has more to do with his gender and her ambitions than his email.)”
The Justice Department’s inspector general found that former FBI Director James Comey “deviated” from FBI and Justice Department procedures in handling the probe into Hillary Clinton, damaging the law enforcement agencies’ image of impartiality even though he wasn’t motivated by political bias, Bloomberg reports.
From the report: “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.”
“I have never met Hillary Clinton, although I tried. When I became the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in January 2002, I asked my assistant to arrange an introduction to the state’s junior senator. After a number of attempts and multiple messages with Clinton’s office, we gave up. It wasn’t a big deal at the time, but I found it odd. To this day, I don’t know why the meeting never happened.”
— Former FBI Director James Comey, writing in A Higher Loyalty.
Jennifer Palmieri, former Hillary Clinton communications director and author of Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World, joins Chris Riback for a great discussion of what the first woman president needs to know.
Rather than dwell on the results of the 2016 election, Palmieri turns the experience into something very empowering for future female leaders.
Subscribe via iTunes or Google Play to get new episodes automatically downloaded to your phone.
Thanks to the Cook Political Report for sponsoring this podcast.
“I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product… So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by CNN, speaking in India over the weekend.
Washington Post: “In the first electoral season since the stunning loss that extinguished her years-long drive for the presidency, Clinton, 70, has begun a discreet and low-profile reentry into the political fray.”
“Her emerging 2018 strategy, according to more than a dozen friends and advisers familiar with her plans, is to leverage the star power she retains in some Democratic circles on behalf of select candidates while remaining sufficiently below the radar to avoid becoming a useful target for Republicans seeking to rile up their base.”
“Most likely, they said, Clinton will attempt to help Democratic candidates who have a history of supporting her and her family, and expending her political capital in a number of the 23 congressional districts she won in 2016 but are now held by a Republican. Lending a hand to Democrats organizing at a grass-roots level is a priority, they added.”
“A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request,” the New York Times reports.
“Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. But Mrs. Clinton did not. Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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