2016 Democratic tapas

The Republicans are over here.

-- Hillary Clinton spoke last year (actually about 70 days ago) to the League of Conservation Voters and exercised her considerable temerity to praise fracking.  She also said nothing about the Keystone XL pipeline.

At a speech to the League of Conservation Voters in midtown Manhattan (in December 2014), before hundreds of deep-pocketed donors, Hillary Clinton praised the environmental legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, touted the prospect of new green technologies, and had warm words for Barack Obama’s aggressive efforts to combat climate change.

Absent from the former Secretary of State’s speech? Any sense of where she stood on the controversial Keystone pipeline project, or what she would do differently as president to steer the nation towards a more sustainable future.

But that didn’t mean that Clinton wasn’t clear about where she came down on environmental matters—she praised both her husband’s record of cleaning up air and water standards, and the Obama administrations recent efforts to strike a climate deal with China and to toughen pollution standards.

[...]

(Hillary) alluded to the need to wean the nation off of fossil fuels, but noted that, “the political challenges are also unforgiving. There is no getting around the fact that the kind of ambitious response required to effectively combat climate change is going to a be a tough sell at home and around the world at a time when so many countries around the world, including our own, are grappling with slow growth and stretch budgets.”

Clinton was vague about the kind of response needed to address climate change, coming down neither in favor of the traditional Democratic carbon tax or the Republican (pre-Obama, at least) cap and trade plan.

Instead, Clinton, much as her husband has done, pushed for market-based solutions to social problems, arguing that green technologies would enable economic growth and would slow the effects of climate change. She called for “next generation” power plants, smarter grids and greener buildings, describing a “false choice between growing our economy and protecting our environment.”

This is just ridiculous and frankly embarrassing.  It's 800-pound gorilla territory.  Without a semblance of a primary challenge, she's going to keep taking everybody for granted.  Everybody, at least, except Kanye Kardashian.

But her two main competitors -- sorry, Uncle Joe; you may be polling second but you're still in fourth place -- are unpropitious for varying reasons.

-- The effort to draft Elizabeth Warren into the presidential race got a little more desperate.

In a major boost for the liberals hoping to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the 2016 presidential race, New York’s Working Families Party voted Sunday evening to join the effort to push Warren to run against likely candidate Hillary Clinton.

“Senator Warren is the nation’s most powerful voice for working families fighting against a set of rules written by and for big banks. That’s the debate we want to see, and that’s why we’re urging Senator Warren to run for President,” said New York Working Families Party Director Bill Lipton.

The party, which is based in Clinton’s home state of New York, and has been aligned with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, will join MoveOn and Democracy for America. Together, they are running a $1.25 million campaign to draft Warren. There’s also a Ready for Warren super PAC.

“This is a big deal,” said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action. “The Working Families Party played a pivotal role in building the progressive wave in New York City that swept Bill de Blasio into office, and has tremendous electoral clout.”

Nope, not that big a deal.  She's still a pretty firm "no, I'm not running", and you people are starting to look like the kid who can't buy a date to the prom.  Booman asks the right question: if you're Joan Walsh -- a progressive Democrat in search of an alternative to Hillary, but see only Warren on the horizon... what exactly are you going to do when will you finally realize 'no' is the only answer you're going to get?

Vote for the fracker?  Vote for Keystone XL?  Might cease calling yourself a progressive then.

-- Here's the one-hundredth article on Bernie Sanders I have read in the past three months, all of which seem to have been written by the same person.  He's still thinking about running if there's a groundswell of support for him, and only if he can win.  The polls all say no chance, Bernie.

Sanders' own political pragmatism in abandonment of progressivism extends to his support of an F-35 base in Vermont, which has drawn withering condemnation from Socratic Gadfly.

If the dumb asses that keep trying to draft Warren would give that up and throw their allegiance to Sanders, then the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party (sans Howard Dean, who has already endorsed Hillary) might have somebody and something they could all get behind.  But this isn't about principle; it's about political expediency in a Citizens United era.  And Bernie is also, you know, old and not female, so there's that.  I had just let myself think that liberal Democrats were smarter than they are demonstrating with these Quixotic actions.  Guess I should let go of that.  In fact I think I'll go delete all of those "Progressive Breakfast" e-mails I get every goddamned morning.

There's an obvious choice for all of these people, but a) they can't take the partisan blinders off, and b) there will be no jobs for $10,000-a-month consultants.  Consequently the media won't be talking about the only progressive option.

It's still Clinton v. Bush in November of 2016, in case you were wondering.  You can either settle for that, or do whatever you can now to change it.

2016 Republican tapas

-- Rick Perry sniped at Ted Cruz over the weekend, comparing him to Obama.  Cruz, to his credit, didn't take the bait.

Asked about his potential 2016 rival earlier this week, Perry responded, “I think [voters] are going to make a rather radical shift, away from a young, untested United States senator whose policies have really failed.”

“Listen, I like Rick Perry,” Cruz said on CNN’s State of the Union. “People occasionally throw rocks in politics. That’s his choice. I’m going say I think he did a good and effective job as governor of our state.”

Cruz also made another consultant hire, an old Gingrich hand.

Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s longtime spokesman who served as a top strategist to a super PAC that supported Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign, will join Cruz’s campaign-in-waiting to serve as a senior communications adviser.

The best news here is that Newt's not running again.  Cruz is also still testing out Occupy themes.  What an amazing triangulator this guy is.

-- Look up "Bush, Jeb" in the dictionary, there's a picture of the 2012 GOP nominee.

Mitt Romney opposed the government's rescue of U.S. automakers. So did Jeb Bush.

Both worked in finance and backed the Wall Street bailout. Both are advocates of tax cuts that Democrats contend only benefit the wealthy and big business.

[...]

"We don't need to try to show that Jeb is like Romney. He pretty much is Romney," said Eddie Vale, vice president of American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal group set up to conduct opposition research on Republicans. "When it comes to any ideas or policies, he's the same as Romney."

If they spend any time thinking about it -- especially if they spend much time thinking about the money they spent four years ago and are about to spend in the next couple -- that comparison might make a lot of one-percenters sad.  It's a good thing they have more money than sense, isn't it?

Obama's team successfully used that bailout as a wedge against Romney in Michigan and Ohio, repeatedly referring to a 2008 Romney op-ed with the headline, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Although Romney did not write the headline and advocated a managed bankruptcy for the industry, it created the impression that he was willing to forgo thousands of U.S. auto jobs.

Bush's early approach to his potential campaign signals a desire to avoid such pitfalls, as well as Romney's most notable gaffe — his behind-closed-door dismissal of the "47 percent" of Americans who, he said, don't pay income taxes.

Lisa Wagner, Romney's 2012 Midwest fundraising director, said that once voters meet Bush, "they see his head and his heart are connected" and they are "very, very taken" with his "sincerity."

"His head and his heart are connected".  Can you believe people get paid tens of thousands of dollars to spout horseshit like that?

Vox claims polls that show Bush leading the field actually demonstrate Bush's weaknesses.  I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

--  There's no shame in Scott Walker's game, though.  If you wondered why he's the early darling, look no further than here.

Gov. Scott Walker's election history isn’t like anyone else’s in the emerging field of Republican presidential candidates. If he runs, it will be his 14th campaign in 25 years, and his eighth campaign in 13 years.

He is the proverbial perennial candidate, though unlike many who pick up that label, he almost always wins.

The 47-year-old Republican began running at an earlier age and has run more often and won more elections than any of his potential presidential rivals. He has campaigned for office in every even-numbered year since 1994.

Walker’s total of 13 races is padded by his time in the state Assembly, where lawmakers run every two years. And it’s boosted by one election (the 2012 recall) that was forced by his opponents.

Republicans also think he's got some kind of mojo because he wins in 'blue state' Wisconsin.  This is his primary appeal, his top selling point.  It's what he means when he says "I wouldn't bet against me".  Despite his glaring flaws, you can bet easy money that he and Huckabee (whose entire campaign continues to be exclusively focused on hating gays) will be the top contenders for the Iowa prize.  Bush will re-surge in New Hampshire.  And then it's on to South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham is the favorite son.  We're in for another grueling Republican primary season next year, and hopefully lots of those wonderful debates.

-- Rand Paul is extending last week (bad, very bad) into this one.

(Last) August, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Iowa Republican state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann drove for an hour together between political events in Davenport and Iowa City, jawing about property rights and eminent domain.

In October, Paul headlined a Kaufmann campaign fundraiser, where nearly 400 attendees chowed on barbecued pork, beans and cheesy potatoes in Kaufmann’s eastern Iowa hometown of Wilton, population 2,800.

And that same month, Paul’s political action committee sent Kaufmann’s campaign a $1,000 check.

Paul’s courting of a 29-year-old chairman of the Iowa House’s government oversight committee who has no national stature is hardly accidental: Should the Kentucky Republican run for president, he’ll desperately need support from local leaders like Kaufmann.

Kaufman, however, hasn’t committed to Paul, who was again visiting Iowa last weekend, or any other potential candidate.

“I’m not endorsing anyone yet,” Kaufmann told the Center for Public Integrity.

You can read more at CPI about how the PAC money in early primary states is corrosive to everything decent about our politics.  Paul still has his daddy/vaccine issues, remains busy pissing off the media, and isn't winning any friends among the investor class.  Egberto Willies thinks he's got to be a front-runner at some point, but I just don't see it.

The funniest thing I read this week (so far) was that the sole purpose for Peter King and John Bolton's so-called presidential campaigns was to short-circuit Rand Paul's.  These guys -- including Miss Lindsey -- are all about being a hawk to Paul's dovish, non-interventionist, neo-isolationist foreign policy.

Chris Christie simply isn't worth mentioning any longer.  Bobby Jindal, laughably, is trying to run as a white guy.  This is going to end quickly and badly for both.  There's just no scenario where either one of them is competitive in the early going.

Enough of these conservatives.  Let's look at the Democrats in the next post.