Politics

If you can't defeat them, entreat them

During her first bid for president, Hillary Clinton was attacked for supporting the Iraq War and being too cozy with Wall Street. She flew in a helicopter between events in Iowa and mostly appeared at massive rallies, where her distance from voters was in plain sight.

And in June 2008, the nomination went to then-Sen. Barack Obama, a candidate viewed by many Democrats as more liberal and populist.

As she began her second campaign for the Democratic nomination, there are signs that Clinton will not let the same mistake happen twice. Rather than beginning with a big speech, Clinton embarked on a low-key road trip to Iowa, where she met voters in intimate groups and hit all the notes in the populist songbook.

She criticized Wall Street and called for reducing the influence of money in politics. She endorsed expanded pre-kindergarten programs, expansive immigration reform and gay rights, and she decried income inequality and economic barriers to everyday Americans.

“There is something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses, or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here,” Clinton said in Monticello, Iowa, on Tuesday. “We have to figure out in this country how to get back on the right track.”

Clinton’s rhetoric signals a leftward turn for the 67-year-old candidate. Rather than run her campaign as an experienced moderate, as she did eight years ago, Clinton is flexing her liberal credentials and reaching out to the Democratic Party’s restive progressive base.

She is also protecting her left flank. Clinton is already being questioned by potential opponents and progressive groups who hope Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren would run for president. By appealing to progressives, she hopes to snuff out a spark of opposition before it can catch fire.

“If she doesn’t move to the left and really convince us she’s going to be a little more progressive, she cannot win the caucus in Iowa,” Democratic Party chair of Cedar County, Larry Hodgden said last week before Clinton’s inaugural campaign tour.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has emerged as one of the most vocal likely opponents to Clinton, traveling extensively in Iowa and New Hampshire with a not-so-subtle message for Democrats in those states: I’m the true progressive.

MORE: Hillary Clinton begins Campaign Her Way in Iowa

O’Malley criticized Clinton’s recent shifts on immigration and gay marriage at an appearance Thursday at Harvard University.

“I’m glad Secretary Clinton’s come around to the right positions on these issues,” said O’Malley. “I believe that we are best as a party when we lead with our principles and not according to the polls.”

Meanwhile, Clinton plans to hire a former federal financial regulatory with a record of strong oversight, Gary Gensler, as the chief financial officer of her campaign, Bloomberg reported yesterday. And this week she brought on three policy advisors this week, including Maya Harris of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

She said week she supports a proposal by President Obama for free community college tuition, and said she would be in favor of a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform.

If Clinton’s aim in her first week was win over liberal groups, she appears to have a good start.

“In the first 100 hours of her campaign, we’ve seen many positive steps in an economic populist direction from Hillary Clinton,” said the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a supporter of Sen. Warren, in a statement. “We hope these rhetorical steps are soon backed up by big, bold, populist policy specifics.”

Small Iowa groups that will be important in the caucus are taking Clinton seriously as well. Sue Dinsdale, director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network, a progressive political group based in Des Moines, said she appreciated Clinton’s progressive approach.

“It’s a juxtaposition with her past, but we all have a past,” Dinsdale said. “I think she is genuine.”

“I’m glad to see her taking progressive views on things,” she said.

Clinton has yet to announce firm positions on a number of platforms, something she plans to do in the coming months as her campaign gathers momentum. Her likely challengers, including O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have already articulated their views on several progressive issues.

MORE: Could This Man Beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa?

On Thursday, O’Malley reiterated his platform: reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banks; regulate Wall Street; and implement campaign finance reform.

He also aligned himself with labor groups in denouncing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and voiced support for a $15-minimum wage.

“Free markets, by themselves, do not create the generational wealth of great nations,” O’Malley said. “Rational, hard-working, patriotic and caring human beings do.”

Clinton has staked out some positions already. Last year, she said in an interview with NPR she supports gay marriage activism on a “state-by-state” basis; this week, her campaign said that Clinton hopes the Supreme Court will grant same-sex couples a constitutional right to marry — a decision that would play out at the federal level.

And in 2007, Clinton said she opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to own drivers licenses; this week, her campaign announced she supports it.

O’Malley, who touts his support for gay marriage and immigration reform as governor, criticized Clinton for changing her views. He’s also criticized the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that President Obama and congressional Republicans support but labor unions oppose.

“We must stop entering into bad trade deals—bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership—that hurt middle class wages and ship middle class jobs overseas,” he said.

On Friday, the Clinton campaign said in a statement to the New York Times she would not reject a trade deal that would “raise wages and create more good jobs at home.”

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"It's gone too far," Obama said Friday. "Enough."

President Obama got impatient as he expressed his disappointment with Senate Republicans’ delay of Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch’s confirmation.

“It’s gone too far,” Obama said during a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. “Enough. Enough.”

Obama blasted the Senate’s “dysfunction” in failing to confirm Lynch, who is set to become the first black female Attorney General in the nation’s history. A career prosecutor from New York, Lynch has now waited twice as long for her confirmation as the last seven attorney general nominees combined.

Though Lynch received bipartisan support following her confirmation hearings earlier this year, the Senate has failed to bring a vote on her new position. In recent weeks, Senate Republicans have delayed a vote over an unrelated fight on abortion provisions in a bill aimed at providing aid to survivors of human trafficking.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid threatened to force a vote on the Lynch nomination.

On Friday, the President said he was outraged. “Call Loretta Lynch for a vote. Get her confirmed. Let her do her job,” Obama said. “This is embarrassing, a process like this.”

"I don’t think I would have changed anything."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday he had no regrets about fighting to keep Terri Schiavo alive, addressing the mid-2000s controversy on his second trip to New Hampshire this year.

“I don’t think I would have changed anything,” he told New Hampshire business leaders at St. Anselm College’s Politics and Eggs breakfast in response to a question about whether he would have handled things differently with the benefit of hindsight.

As governor, Bush signed into law a state measure that gave him the authority to intervene to keep Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state, alive. Her parents fought for more than a decade to keep her feeding tube in place, while her husband, Michael Schindler fought to remove it arguing she would not have wanted to remain on life support.

That law, known as Terri’s law, was found unconstitutional, as was a federal effort by then-President George W. Bush.

“It was one of the most difficult things I had to go through,” Bush said. “It broke my heart that we weren’t successful in sustaining Terri’s life.”
Bush said there was one thing he would have changed—wishing that Schiavo had a living will that would have made government intervention unnecessary.

“In hindsight, the one thing that I would have loved to have seen was an advance directive—that the family would have sorted this out,” Bush said.

He added, that he was potentially favor of a federal requirement that Medicare beneficiaries complete a living will to address end-of-life issues.

“I think if we’re going to mandate anything for government, it might be that if you’re going to take Medicare, that you also sign up for an advanced directive where you talk about this before you’re so disabled,” he said.

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Former Florida governor Jeb Bush weighed in Thursday on the delayed confirmation of Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s nominee to be Attorney General, urging the Senate to move along with its consideration.

Answering questions at a town hall with New Hampshire primary voters at the Snowshoe Club, Bush, an all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate, stopped short of explicitly calling for Lynch’s confirmation. Her nomination to replace Attorney General Eric Holder has been stalled for an unusually long 160 days over a Senate showdown on an unrelated sex-trafficking bill that includes a controversial abortion provision.

“I think that Presidents have the right to pick their team,” Bush told a crowd of about 95 voters and a horde of media.

Bush said he had reservations about Lynch’s positions on gun control, but said presidential nominees deserve swift consideration.

“The longer it takes to confirm her, the longer Eric Holder stays as Attorney General,” Bush added, sending a signal to Republicans to lift their opposition to Lynch was only elongating the tenure of someone they like even less. “Look at it that way.”

Bush criticized Holder for having “politicized” his office, adding, “there should be some humbleness inside the Department of Justice.”

During the 60-minute Politics and Pie event, Bush was questioned about Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba and was challenged over his support of comprehensive immigration reform, telling one vocal critic, “I respect your view, but I don’t have to agree with it.”

He also addressed the dynasty question, joking that he’s not running for President to try to “break the tie between the Adams family and the Bush family,” referencing the second and sixth, and the 41st the 43rd Presidents, respectively.

Afterward, Bush, who brought a pair of key lime pies of south Florida’s famed Joe’s Stone Crab, sampled a blueberry pie, breaking his months-long paleo diet to sample some blueberry pie. “To hell with the diet … where are the french fries,” he quipped.

He touted his own credentials on immigration and same-sex marriage

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley had some sharp words Thursday evening for Hillary Clinton, who in the first week of her campaign has taken a more liberal stance on same-sex marriage and immigration.

“I’m glad Secretary Clinton’s come around to the right positions on these issues,” said O’Malley, who will likely challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President. “I believe that we are best as a party when we lead with our principles and not according to the polls.”

“Leadership is about making the right decision, and the best decision before sometimes it becomes entirely popular,” he continued.

Clinton has adopted a more populist tone than she has in the past during her recent tour this week to Iowa, where she made her first stops on the 2016 campaign trail.

Last year, Clinton said in an interview with NPR that she supports gay-marriage activism on a “state by state” basis; this week, her campaign announced Clinton supports a Supreme Court ruling that would grant same-sex couples a constitutional right to marry — a decision that would play out at the federal level.

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And in 2007, Clinton said she opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to own driver’s licenses. This week her campaign announced she supports it.

O’Malley has trumpeted his past support for both those issues as governor of Maryland. He sponsored a same-sex-marriage bill in the state that passed in 2012 — among the first in the nation to be approved by voters — and signed a law in 2013 that allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

The former governor would run his campaign to the left of Clinton as a more progressive challenger. He currently registers as a blip in the polls but has greeted receptive audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire, where caucus-goers are eager for a more competitive race.

The likely candidate has begun criticizing Clinton as he begins laying the groundwork for his own likely campaign. In an interview late last month on ABC, O’Malley swiped at Clinton, saying that the “presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families.”

O’Malley said he will make a final decision about running for President by the end of May.

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She worked her way up from a White House internship

The White House has a new social secretary, or the person whose job it is to make sure events at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue go off without a hitch. Deesha Dyer, 37, was named the new head of the East Wing office on Thursday, and becomes the second black woman to hold the position. She takes the reins from Jeremy Bernard, the office’s first male and openly gay social secretary, who announced he would step down at the end of the month.

Dyer currently serves as the second-in-command in the Social Office, having worked her way up from an internship when she joined the White House staff in 2009. In a statement, First Lady Michelle Obama said she’s been impressed by Dyer’s “passion, creativity, public-mindedness, and relentless competence.”

“Whether helping flawlessly execute state dinners, or going the extra mile to open the White House to people who never dreamed they would walk through these doors, Deesha has worked tirelessly to truly make the White House the ‘People’s House,’” Obama said. “I am thrilled that she has agreed to continue her service as our Social Secretary.”

Dyer’s path to the White House is a bit atypical. According to the statement, she didn’t go to college immediately after high school, opting instead to work as a freelance hip-hop writer and at several companies in her hometown, Philadelphia. At 29, Dyer went back to school to obtain an associates degree from the Community College of Philadelphia, around the same time Barack Obama, then an Illinois Senator, announced he was running for President. In an interview with Refinery 29, Dyer said she hung a picture of Obama on her desk, telling herself that one day she would end up working for him, even though she didn’t quite know how she’d make it work.

But at 31, she did. She applied for an internship at the White House and was hired to work in the Office of Scheduling and Advance. In 2010, she was brought onboard for a full-time position in the scheduling office and later became the Deputy Director and Hotel Program Director. Two years ago, she was promoted again to become the Social Office’s deputy director.

Dyer said in a statement that she is “honored” to serve in the new role.

“I am constantly inspired by the openness, diversity, and traditions of this Administration,” she said, “and I look forward to leading the talented Social Office team as we further the goals and priorities of the President and First Lady throughout these last two exciting years in office.”

Sen. Marco Rubio is rarely on the same side as President Obama. But the Florida Republican, who is running for president in 2016, recently drafted a letter to the White House in support of Obama’s signature free-trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress is expected to vote on this term.

This odd-bedfellows moment backs Hillary Clinton, who announced this week that she is running for President, into a particularly uncomfortable corner — sandwiched between Republicans and centrist Democrats on one side, and the Democrats’ liberal, activist base on the other.

So far, Clinton has kept quiet about whether she supports the deal.

Most Republicans, the Obama administration and a powerful coalition of business interests, some of whom have donated to Clinton’s campaign, would like to see the former Secretary of State champion the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They argue that the sweeping, 12-nation free trade pact, the largest-ever for the United States, would been a boon for the U.S. economy.

“We stand ready to work with you to ensure quick consideration and approval of legislation to renew TPA,” Rubio wrote in the draft letter to Obama, which was obtained by TIME, in reference to the Trade Promotion Authority, the so-called fast track bill designed to facilitate the passage of the trade deal. “We must work together to ensure that goods and services created by U.S. workers are able to enter and effectively compete in overseas markets.” Rubio’s office declined to comment on the letter.

Meantime, an increasingly vociferous coalition of liberal lawmakers, labor leaders and grassroots populists, whose support Clinton will need during the primary campaign, have warned Clinton that they deeply oppose the pact, which they describe as a job-killing sweetheart deal for global corporations.

“People feel a lot of urgency and tension around this moment,” said George Goehl, the executive director the the National People’s Action, a network of progressive, grassroots organizations nationwide, in a press call Thursday morning.

“This is not a theoretical question for [Clinton] to answer,” he added. “It’s real-life right now and people want to know where she stands.”

On Wednesday night, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a potential Democratic presidential candidate who has been one of the loudest voices in Congress in opposition to the deal, rallied members of the progressive organization, Democracy For America, against the bill during a conference call. “The only way a member pays the price [for supporting TPP] is if the poeple are educated and organized,” he said, adding later that “What we have got to do is rally the American people and educate them and put pressure on vulnerable members.

“Keep the emails coming, put the pressure on,” he urged.

Clinton’s silence about the Trans-Pacific Partnership has sent both supporters and critics into spirals of speculation.

In her most recent memoir, Hard Choices, published last year, Clinton expressed limited support for the deal. “It’s safe to say that the TPP won’t be perfect,” she wrote. “No deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be — but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers.”

But during her 2007 run for the White House, she explicitly distanced herself from the last big free trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement which her husband signed in 1994, and said she would not pursue any new trade deals for a while.

After supporting NAFTA as first lady and in her 2003 memoir, Living History, Clinton said in an interview with CNN in 2007 that it “was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would, and that’s why I call for a trade timeout.”

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat who has been outspoken about his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, refused to speculate on Clinton’s position on trade. “I’m not going to go there. Hillary’s got a history. I’m pretty sure she was against fast track, against CAFTA. [She] spoke out in ’08 that we should renegotiate NAFTA,” he said Thursday. “So you make an assumption that Hillary is bad on trade but you would be wrong, I’d think.”

The Senate Finance Committee proposed a fast-track bill on Thursday afternoon that would give Obama the power to submit the trade pact to Congress for a simple up-or-down vote with no amendments. Supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership say such legislation is crucial as it assures other countries that Congress won’t significantly change the deal during debate.

Opponents, including Sens. Brown and Elizabeth Warren, have called the fast track undemocratic, in part because it makes it easier for negotiators and lobbyists to insert provisions into the trade deal that Congress would not approve individually.

The populist base has also railed against the non-transparent, and sometimes downright secretive, process surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation process. As of last fall, a network of 566 stakeholders, 85% of whom represented industry and trade groups, were given limited access to the draft trade agreement, according to the Washington Post. Although more stakeholders have since been invited to access the document through a secure website, the details of the agreement, which will include twelve nations in the Asia-Pacific region, have not been made public or provided to the press. Even lawmakers have not been given copies of the draft plan.

In the coming weeks, Clinton will be asked, probably repeatedly, to take a strong position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If she opposes it, she risks alienating a slew of powerful, corporate interests. But if she doesn’t, she risks the rage of the populist left. And if she does nothing, she’ll lose points with both sides and be criticized by pundits for ducking a major issue.

“It’s a choice between a corporate vision of a world economy and a vision in which … workers’ rights and sustainable development is allowed by the legal system,” Roger Hickey, the co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, said on a press call Thursday morning. “It’s a big issue.”