“As the 2016 race heats up on the Republican side, with a new Super PAC, donor check or staffing announcement dropping every hour since Christmas, Hillary Clinton’s schedule has been notably empty,” CNN reports.
“The last time the presumed Democratic front-runner headlined an event — something she did with regularity throughout most of 2014 — was Dec. 15, when she joined forces with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote keeping reliable date about women and girls around the globe.”
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told BuzzFeed that Bill Clinton’s personal life would be “fair game” if Hillary Clinton runs for president.
Said Priebus: “Bill Clinton’s activities are fair game for Hillary Clinton to answer, absolutely. And if there are things that Bill Clinton has done that we don’t know about, politically or through business enterprise, that are questionable and/or illegal, then we ought to look into it and ask Hillary about it too, because the presumption is that she’s gonna benefit from the successes of Bill Clinton, so I think it’s fair game.”
He added: “I would say that the Monica Lewinsky stuff is a little stale and old, obviously. But if it turns out that there are things that are going on, and that we didn’t know about, he’s a public figure. He’s a former president. And they want to launch Hillary into the public eye. She deserves just as much scrutiny as anybody. And if Bill Clinton was up to things we find to be unscrupulous, I think that people ought to know about it.”
White House adviser John Podesta “will take on a senior advisory role in Hillary Clinton’s emerging presidential bid after he leaves the administration in February, three people familiar with the matter said. The move is one of the most definitive signs yet that Mrs. Clinton is building the apparatus to launch a 2016 campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mrs. Clinton isn’t likely to announce her decision on whether to enter the race until the spring. But her advisers are making preparations for such a campaign, as evidenced by Mr. Podesta signing on.”
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Bloomberg: “Sixteen months ago, to some fanfare, Dick Morris re-entered the anti-Clinton fray with a new PAC. He launched Dick Morris’s Just Say No to Hillary PAC… But there is a rather glaring problem with adding Morris to this narrative: No one has been giving money to his PAC. Literally, no one.”
David Axelrod jabbed at Hillary Clinton”saying that she wasn’t a very strong candidate during the first part of her campaign for the 2008 presidential nomination,” Politico reports.
Said Axelrod: “When you play not to lose, you often lose. And my perception of Secretary Clinton was that she wasn’t a very good candidate in 2007.”
Amy Walter: “When it comes to making predictions about 2016, there are lots of important numbers to follow. The unemployment rate. Consumer confidence. The president’s approval rating. The horse race polls. But, in my mind, the most important data point to follow is the one which measures Americans’ desire to stay the current course or try a different one in 2016.”
“History tells us that the odds of a Clinton presidency are long. In the modern era (well, really since Andrew Jackson in 1836), no Democrat has succeeded a 2-term Democratic president.”
“If someone wants to run a campaign about 90s nostalgia, it’s not going to be very successful.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Connecticut Post, taking a swipe at Hillary Clinton.
Obama adviser John Podesta told Reuters he’ll leave the White House soon.
Said Podesta: “I’m probably going to leave in early February. Then I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing in life.”
Figuring that out will depend largely on whether Hillary Clinton decides to run for president again, as she is expected to do. Podesta has been mentioned frequently as a likely chairman of her campaign.
“Hillary Clinton is beginning to put together the pieces for a likely campaign, tapping two top strategists — including President Obama’s pollster — to work with her in the lead-up toward an ultimate decision,” Politico reports.
“Robby Mook, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign and is widely expected to be Clinton’s campaign manager, and Joel Benenson, Obama’s pollster who had for months been eyed for a role on her team, have been working with her as she makes a final decision and begins to put together a framework for a staff.”
“Iowa Democratic leaders say they are troubled by the prospect that Hillary Clinton could win the state’s 2016 presidential caucuses without a serious challenge, a view primarily rooted in a desire for a more liberal candidate or at least a robust debate about the party’s policies and direction,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
A new Gallup poll finds Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in the world for the 13th straight year.
Clinton has also been on top for 17 of the last 18 years. Her streak was interrupted by First Lady Laura Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Wall Street Journal: “Now, as the 2016 election takes shape, some of Hillary Clinton ’s allies are trumpeting her potential as a presidential candidate to bring these voters back to the Democratic Party and to run competitively in a handful of states, including Arkansas, that have spurned President Barack Obama.”
“But even here, where Mrs. Clinton was the state’s first lady, many voters say they view her with the same leeriness they do Mr. Obama and other national Democrats. That points to a significant question should Mrs. Clinton run: whether enough such voters can separate her from the national party many have grown to dislike.”
Hillary Clinton “is working hard to shore up support among liberals in hopes of tamping down a serious challenge from the left in the battle for the 2016 nomination,” the Washington Post reports.
“Clinton has aligned herself firmly with President Obama since the November midterms on a range of liberal-friendly issues, including immigration, climate change and opening diplomatic relations with Cuba. In an impassioned human rights speech this month, she also condemned the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation tactics and decried cases of apparent police brutality against minorities.”
“The recent statements suggest a concerted effort by Clinton to appeal to the Democratic Party’s most activist, liberal voters, who have often eyed her with suspicion and who would be crucial to her securing the party’s nomination.”
Robby Mook “has emerged as a clear front-runner to manage Clinton’s expected presidential campaign after Guy Cecil, the political director for her 2008 bid, acknowledged Sunday he won’t have an official role this time around,” Bloomberg reports.
“Mook already is working on special projects for Clinton, according to two longtime Democratic strategists. One said Mook was influential in shaping her role helping Democrats during the 2014 midterm elections.”
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds Hillary Clinton is off her peak but still overwhelmingly strong in support for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Clinton leads with 61%, followed by Joe Biden at 14% and Elizabeth Warren at 13%.
“Still, Clinton’s support has slipped from 69 percent in June, down by 8 points, while support for Warren is up by 6 points – not remotely enough to make it look competitive at this stage, but movement nonetheless. Biden has held essentially steady.”
New York Times: “Little by little, Mrs. Clinton is taking steps that suggest she has learned from the mistakes, both tactical and personal, of her failed candidacy. After more than six years of pundits dissecting what went wrong in 2008, her circle of advisers is beginning to draft a blueprint for a different kind of campaign. And although Mrs. Clinton has since bolstered her public image while serving as secretary of state, her next campaign will in part be assessed by her ability to avoid the errors of the last one.”
“Some things have clearly changed: Those close to Mrs. Clinton now embrace a view that her gender can be more of an asset than a liability. But familiar hazards remain, especially the air of inevitability that seems to surround the Clinton camp, along with the lack of a broader rationale for her candidacy.”
Harry Enten: “Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House first went off course in the cornfields of Iowa, and some liberal groups are hoping to use that staging ground to derail the Democrat in 2016. MoveOn.org, a left-leaning advocacy group and political action committee, is starting Run Warren Run, an effort to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the presidential campaign. Run Warren Run will hold its first rally in Iowa on Wednesday.”
“A memo to MoveOn: 2016 is not 2008; Clinton is in far better shape now than she was then. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, would need Clinton to bleed support in Iowa to have a shot at winning, which is something that didn’t happen in 2008.”
Hillary Clinton, “after much debate within her inner circle, appears to have put off formally entering the 2016 presidential race until spring 2015,” the Washington Post reports.
“Although there are plenty of reasons that favor waiting — legal ones in terms of how she incorporates (or doesn’t) the various outside groups that have blossomed in support of her in the past few years, and political ones about looking less, well, political, for as long as possible — there’s also a big reason she should at least consider announcing sooner rather than later. And that reason is Elizabeth Warren.”
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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.