Tag Archives: obama

Fast Track Passes. TPP Now Nearly Certain to Pass Too.

by BirgitMcKenzie Posted on June 23, 2015

Mother Jones

Well, it looks like the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty is in business. The standalone fast-track bill just passed the Senate by a hair, 60-37. Several Republicans defected and voted no even though they had voted yes the first time around, but only one Democrat defected. So now it goes to President Obama’s desk, where he’ll sign it.

Next up is a standalone Trade Adjustment bill, which Democrats killed the first time around because it was linked to fast track, which meant that voting no killed fast track. This time around, however, Democrats will presumably go ahead and vote for it since voting no will no longer stop fast track. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have both promised to bring it up for a vote and to do their best to whip enough Republican votes for it to pass. If it doesn’t, Democrats will be furious at having been conned, and might take this out by voting no on TPP itself when it comes to the floor. This gives Boehner and McConnell plenty of motivation to get it passed, and I think they will.

This still doesn’t guarantee that TPP itself will have smooth sailing. However, it takes only a simple majority to pass, so there would have to be quite a few defections to kill it. Still, there’s time. Once the full text finally becomes public, I expect a full-court press from anti-TPP forces in both parties. I’d give it a 90 percent chance of passage at this point, but there’s still a glimmer of hope for opponents.

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Fast Track Passes. TPP Now Nearly Certain to Pass Too.

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Yep, Obama Said the N-Word. Here Are the Other Candid Things He Said.

by RenaR37tqbryn Posted on June 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Appearing on comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast on Friday, President Obama shared his views on gun violence and racism in America—two topics that have been thrust to the forefront of a national conversation following the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina last week. The interview, which was posted online today, featured a number of candid moments for the president, including a rare moment in which he said “nigger” to underscore the reality that the country’s enduring legacy of racism is far from over.

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” Obama said. “We are not cured of it and it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination.”

On the issue of gun violence, he expressed his continued frustration with how little legislative action has been taken on gun control.

“I have done this way too often,” he said. “During the course of my presidency, it feels as if a couple times a year, I end up having to speak to the country and to speak to a particular community about a devastating loss. The grieving that the country feels is real, the sympathy, the prioritizing, the comforting of the families, all that’s important. But I think part of the point that I wanted to make was that it’s not enough just to feel bad. There are actions that could be taken to make events like this less likely. And one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic, common sense gun safety laws—that by the way, the majority of gun owners support.”

In his remarks shortly after Dylann Storm, the suspected gunman who killed nine people in the Charleston church, was captured Thursday, the president said that most other advanced countries don’t see the kind of mass killings that have become all too familiar in America. He reiterated this point to Maron on Friday, telling him gun violence is “unique to our country.”

Listen to the incredible hour-long interview here.

See the original article here:

Yep, Obama Said the N-Word. Here Are the Other Candid Things He Said.

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Charleston’s Hometown Newspaper Is Putting Awful Cable News to Shame

by TiffanySimpkins Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Shrinking newsrooms, digital “churnalism,” and armies of pundits carving up increasingly divided audiences—that’s the media we’re told we must accept to live in America today.

But have hope, news consumer! There’s another, less remarked-upon media phenomenon going on: the return of the heroic local newsroom dominating breaking national coverage.

From Boston to Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston, one thing has become crystal clear: To get real reporting—and to get it fast—you’ve got to switch off cable and go local. It’s here you’ll find the scoops, the sense of place, the authentic compassion; it’s here you can avoid the predictable blather from a candidate, or pundit, or hack filling airtime. It’s here you’ll find out what’s really happening to a particular group of Americans who have just been shoved into a tragic spotlight. Turn off the TV and Google the local paper on your phone. Find their Twitter feed. Follow their journalists.

Take Charleston. During the early hours of the story on Wednesday night, cable news frustrated viewers by coming late to the game, according to this breakdown by Adweek‘s cable-addict Mark Joyella. (CNN was first to report the news just after 10 p.m., and it stayed with the story, Joyella writes—though it attracted criticism on social media for simulcasting a live feed from its global operations, CNN International, instead of staying domestic.) When Fox News and MSNBC got into the story on Thursday, their programs lined up the usual suspects to engage in a cliched debate over the national narrative: Was it guns? Was it race? Was it mental illness? And the nationally televised blame game began in earnest: While Fox mused about whether pastors should pack heat, and attacked President Obama for bringing up gun control, MSNBC commentator Michael Eric Dyson criticized the president for “obscuring” race with guns: “When will this president finally see that he doesn’t have to run from his race or run from blackness?” Dyson said. I could go on.

Meanwhile, the Post and Courier, Charleston’s major daily newspaper—winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize—seized its hometown story immediately, posting an article just before 10 p.m. the night of the shooting. It hasn’t stopped pumping out sensitively reported articles from deep within the affected community since that first notice. The paper assigned somewhere between a half and two-thirds of its newsroom of 80 people to the task of covering the unfolding story, trying to patch reporters in on shifts as much as possible to keep them from burning out in the field. After covering the death of Walter Scott two months ago, the newsroom was experienced in switching into high gear, “though you’re never quite prepared for any of these things,” Mitch Pugh, the newspaper’s executive editor, told me on Friday.

For this newsroom, it’s personal, and reporters have begun to feel the strain. “A lot of our folks know people who were either in the church or close to people in the church,” Pugh said. “We’re trying to get people more into a shift mode, and get some mental health breaks, and some downtime to get some rest.”

Some reporters, he said, just “don’t want to let go of it.” That’s the nature of reporting in a city traumatized by an event of this magnitude.

Much more so than the bigger guys who parachute in, the major advantage of being the hometown paper is that this newsroom gets it. The journalists “understand deeply the complex relationship this community has had with the issue of race,” Pugh said. “I think we’re able to report on those issues in a more responsible and authoritative way than some of the outside media.”

Cable television has been on the ground in Charleston, doing reporting and making sure Lindsay Graham and other candidates answer tough questions about a Confederate flag flying near the statehouse. But not like the Post and Courier, whose coverage has sharply focused on the community—its grieving, the memorials, intensely moving profiles of the victims, and political reactions—not simply the obsessive speculation about the motivation of the alleged killer, 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

It’s a way for the paper to “focus on our community, on the victims, on the efforts to come together and heal,” Pugh told me.

Mourners cry out during a prayer vigil held for the victims of Wednesday’s shooting at Emanuel AME Church, in Charleston. Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier/AP

That intimacy with the community has led to some extra caution. With the stakes so high, getting it wrong is simply not an option. The newspaper, for example, knew the names of some victims on Wednesday night, but waited until they were confirmed through more official channels before reporting them. Any error would be magnified under the strain of shock and anger. “We weren’t interested in being first on that,” Pugh said. “We were interested in being right.”

But they could not get everything right. When newspapers hit the streets on Thursday, some were affixed with a jarring advertisement for a gun shop just above the headline: “Church attack kills 9“. The outraged reaction was immediate and the paper apologized. “I think that being forthright and honest and taking responsibility, most people will understand and accept that,” Pugh said of readers who called and wrote to complain. The paper now has policies in place “to ensure that does not happen again,” he added.

The increased profile may have also led to unwanted attention in the form of a potential hacking attack against the paper’s website, which became inaccessible on Friday for “20-to-30 minutes at a time, sporadically,” across the morning, Pugh said. The companies responsible for hosting the website investigated the possibility of an attack. “It’s starting to look like someone tried to take our site down,” Pugh told me, though it was too early to confirm.

The Post and Courier’s response to the massacre is reminiscent of other newspapers dominating the coverage when tragedy strikes in their communities: The Baltimore Sun’s relentless coverage of the protests after the death of Freddie Gray; the Boston Globe’s award-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and manhunt; the St Louis Post-Dispatch’s forensic, and visually powerful (and also award-winning) coverage of the death of Michael Brown and furious protests for justice in Ferguson. There’s little wonder there’s some camaraderie among these city papers. In April, the Boston Globe sent lunch to the Baltimore Sun’s newsroom, a way of paying forward another act of generosity when in April 2013, the Chicago Tribune bought the Globe pizzas during the bombing coverage.

A letter from the Tribune to the Globe read: “We can’t buy you lost sleep, so at least let us pick up lunch.”

In each of these papers: heart-breaking, personal stories, rendered powerfully whether a national audience was watching or not.

We were.

The Post and Courier’s approach can be felt in the op-ed pages, too. A Thursday editorial read: “A shared revulsion for the killer’s inhumanity—and for the persisting poison of racism that apparently sparked his barbaric deed—unites us. A shared commitment for a better, more understanding future drives us.”

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Charleston’s Hometown Newspaper Is Putting Awful Cable News to Shame

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Rick Perry: Don’t Blame Guns for Charleston Attack. But Maybe Blame Drugs.

by AshliHartq Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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The killing of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston Wednesday night has reignited the conversation about access to guns in the US, drawing the predictable refrain that this wouldn’t have happened had the people at the Bible study been armed. A board member of the National Rifle Association went so far as to blame one of the victims for the shooting because of his political position on concealed-carry laws. So when President Obama talked about Charleston and how easy it was for someone like 21-year-old Dylann Roof to get a gun, the critics pushed back.

One of them was former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who told Newsmax that the massacre, which he called an “accident,” might have had more to do with drugs than with guns. Watch:

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Rick Perry: Don’t Blame Guns for Charleston Attack. But Maybe Blame Drugs.

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NRA Leader Blames Slain Charleston Pastor for Slaughter of His Congregants

by Kristia70N Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gun rights activists have been out in force since the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, once again blaming the slaughter on so-called gun-free zones, and claiming that an armed citizen could have otherwise stopped the attack. It’s an argument that the gun lobby has used for many years, but on Thursday afternoon it was marked by a brazen new low with comments from Charles Cotton, a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association. Cotton wrote on a Texas gun-rights forum that slain pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney was responsible for the murders of his congregants because of his opposition to looser concealed-carry laws.

“Eight of his church members, who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church, are dead,” Cotton said. “Innocent people died because of his political position on the issue.”

Screen shot: TexasCHLforum.com

It’s unsurprising that debate over gun laws flared up in the aftermath of Charleston, on both sides of the issue. Speaking from the White House on Thursday, President Obama said, “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries…with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

Yet, Obama also spoke of the “dark part of our history” evoked by an attack on a historic black church in the South. No one who has watched the horror unfold in Charleston doubts that the killer’s motivation was infused with racial hatred. And to suggest that gun restrictions were the root cause of the bloodbath isn’t just callous—it’s also plain wrong.

As Mother Jones has previously reported, there has never been any evidence that mass shooters picked their targets based on gun regulations; to the contrary, data from scores of cases shows perpetrators had other specific motivations for where they attacked, including racial hatred. The idea that armed citizens stop crimes in the United States has also been wildly exaggerated by the gun lobby, as a new study based on federal data reaffirms.

Cotton has long led pro-gun lobbying efforts in Texas: He was at Gov. Greg Abbott’s side last weekend when Abbott signed a new open-carry bill at a Texas gun range.

Cotton’s comments have since been deleted from TexasCHLforum.com, where he is listed as a site administrator. He did not reply to a request for further comment. In a statement on Friday to Politico, the NRA distanced itself from Cotton’s rhetoric, saying individual board members “do not have the authority to speak for the NRA.”

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NRA Leader Blames Slain Charleston Pastor for Slaughter of His Congregants

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Jeb Bush Has Announced the Perfect Republican Economic Plan

by Micki0192q Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rand Paul says his secret to success is that his tax cut plan will supercharge economic growth. Jeb Bush says his secret to success is that merely by being president he will supercharge economic growth.

I guess I have to give this round to Paul. He at least tried to come up with some math salad to justify his belief that a Rand Paul presidency will bring about economic nirvana. Bush simply declared ex cathedra that he’d make the economy grow at an astonishing 4 percent per year. Why? “It’s a nice round number. It’s double the growth that we are growing at. It’s not just an aspiration. It’s doable.”

Um, OK. He gets points for copping to a sort of amiable idiocy, I suppose. But in case you’re interested, here’s economic growth since the Reagan administration:

Reagan managed 4 percent growth four times in eight years. George H. W. Bush managed it zero times. Bill Clinton did it five times in eight years. George W. Bush did it zero times. Barack Obama has (so far) done it zero times. And no president in history has averaged 4 percent growth over the course of his presidency. No one.1

If you want all the gory details, Matt Yglesias has much more here about just how unlikely this kind of growth is. But politically speaking, the details aren’t what’s interesting. What’s interesting is that Bush’s comment is an unusually clear peek behind the curtain, one that demonstrates how unseriously Republicans take the economy. It’s all just cotton candy for the gullible. Cut taxes on the rich and this will—somehow—supercharge the economy. Slash regulations and this will—somehow—unleash business activity and supercharge the economy. Now Bush has decided to dispense with even the mumbo jumbo explanations. He’s distilled the GOP economic message down to its essence: Elect me president and—merely because I’m a Republican and I say so—I’ll supercharge the economy.

And there’s more. If you assume the economy is going to skyrocket, there’s no need to address niggling concerns about spending or budget deficits. There will be money for everything! And when it doesn’t happen? Oops. Sorry. Next time we’ll get serious for sure. Honest.

1OK, OK, it’s true that FDR did it. How? By starting at the bottom of the worst depression in history and ending with the biggest wartime boom in history. This basically makes the case for just how unlikely this is to ever happen again.

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Jeb Bush Has Announced the Perfect Republican Economic Plan

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The Pope Says Climate Change Is Real. Catholic GOP Candidates Disagree.

by INVFlorauj Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Since ascending to the Catholic Church’s top perch in March 2013, Pope Francis hasn’t shied away from taking political stances that rankle conservatives. He has said evolution and creationism aren’t mutually exclusive. Asked about gay priests, he responded, “Who am I to judge?” And he has embraced a populist approach to tackling income inequality.

Now the pope risks drawing conservative ire on climate change. In a document set to be released on Thursday—which leaked to an Italian publication and was published as an act of “sabotage against the pope,” according to a Vatican official—Francis will apparently call for a strong, multi-country push to curb global warming and the “human causes that produce and accentuate it,” according to the Guardian. The message will reportedly call out climate deniers, saying “the attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.”

There’s a growing contingent of congressional Republicans who are Catholic, and a number of the party’s leading presidential candidates (or potential candidates) are Catholic. If those candidates’ past statements on climate change are any indication, they could soon find themselves at odds with the pope over the looming encyclical. Here’s what they’ve said:

Rick Santorum: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”

Jeb Bush: Bush has said anybody who thinks the science on climate change is settled is “arrogant.”

Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor’s views might be the most in line with the pope’s: “I think global warming is real. I don’t think that’s deniable. And I do think human activity contributes to it.”

Bobby Jindal: While acknowledging that human activity has had an impact on the climate, Jindal has decried Obama’s environmental regulations as “reckless and based on a radical leftist ideology that will kill American jobs and increase energy prices,” according to the Associated Press.

Marco Rubio: “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. That’s what I do not. And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.”

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The Pope Says Climate Change Is Real. Catholic GOP Candidates Disagree.

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

by NevilleSainthil Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The House is expected to vote today on the “fast track” trade authority bill that would allow the Obama administration to finish negotiating several major trade agreements now under discussion, including the divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

While every other president from Ford onward has been granted similar powers, today’s vote has turned out to be anything but routine. Critics who oppose the TPP and other pending agreements are working to stop the bill—and thwart the anticipated trade deals.

The fast-track process was set out in 1974’s Trade Act, which empowered Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority bills—like the one slated to be voted on today—that allow presidents to negotiate and sign trade deals with less involvement from the legislative branch. Congress still gets to vote yes or no on any final agreement, but amendments are generally prohibited. In exchange, TPA bills let legislators lay out trade priorities and negotiating objectives for the president, and set requirements on how and how often the administration must check in while negotiations are underway.

This TPA, if passed, will guide presidential trade negotiations through 2021. It builds upon a bill that expired in 2007, and is likely more complex than any other in history, expanding congressional oversight and consultation while including new provisions on intellectual property, cross-border data protection, and the environment and human rights. It also increases transparency, requiring presidential administrations to make agreements public 60 days before signing them.

Though it passed the Senate by a vote of 62 to 37 in May, today’s House vote is expected to be much closer. Some Republicans have said they may vote against fast-track authority because they aren’t eager to hand over more power to the Obama administration. Many Democrats are opposing the bill, citing concerns that it doesn’t do enough to prevent overly secret deals and the expanded corporate power that could come with them.

If the House does vote to reestablish fast-track authority, it would likely ease the finalization of several notable trade agreements, including the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a new agreement with the European Union; the Trade in Services Agreement, an initiative being negotiated between 23 economies focused specifically on service industries like telecommunications and tech; and, of course, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive trade agreement involving 12 countries that together account for 40 percent of global GDP.

Unions, environmentalists, digital rights advocates, and other advocacy groups have campaigned heavily against the Pacific deal—and the TPA that would allow negotiations to move forward. Critics have suggested the trade deal could bring environmental and labor abuses, reduce internet freedom, increase the cost of certain medications, and expand “investor-state-dispute settlements”—tribunals where companies can seek damages from taxpayers when US regulations interfere with their business. Backers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership insist that the agreement will be huge boon for the economy and increase the US national income by $77 billion annually.

Despite the opposition, House Republicans are confident the bill will pass. If it fails, its possible that negotiations on the TPP could continue—but not without major complications.

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

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Climate Change Has Left the US Exposed in the Arctic, Say Military Experts

by IsabellOmn Posted on June 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Political gridlock over climate change has left the US military exposed to Russia’s superior fleets in the Arctic, flooding in its naval bases and a more unstable world, according to high-ranking former military commanders and security advisors.

The comments, published on the Weather Channel on Wednesday, echoed president Barack Obama, who recently lambasted climate skeptic politicians for jeopardizing global and national security.

Sherri Goodman, who served as Bill Clinton’s deputy undersecretary of defense and founded the security analysis firm CNA Corporation, said the US climate debate was “stuck in the past” and that climate change was “acting as a threat multiplier in the Arctic”.

The Arctic is the most rapidly warming region on Earth and its sea ice has undergone major declines in recent years and decades. Goodman said the intransigence of US politics had left a technology deficit in the far north—a place where the two increasingly tense powers are separated by just 82 kilometers.

“Right now we have a fleet, a very small fleet of ageing icebreakers. The Russians and other countries have vastly more ice-breaking capability and other capabilities to be present in the Arctic. We will need to have a greater presence in the Arctic of various types,” she said.

“We’re still having debates about whether this is happening, as opposed to what we should do about it,” she said. “We need to guard against the failure of imagination when it comes to climate change. Something is going to happen in the future years, and we’re not going to be prepared.”

“Literally, the nation’s defense is at stake,” said rear admiral David Titley, former naval oceanography operations command and a professor of meteorology.

“Unfortunately all we have to look at are the events of the day in Crimea and Ukraine and we see that the Russians are making some noises about, ‘well, you know, maybe the Arctic is another place we should compete rather than cooperate,'” he said.

Brigadier general Stephen Cheney, CEO of the American Security Project and a foreign affairs advisor to the State Department, said the security concerns extended beyond the Arctic to the very foundation of US military power—its naval bases.

“I can start here in the continental United States where we’ve got 30 naval bases both here and overseas. Naval bases by the nature of course are on the coast. Coasts are threatened as the sea level rises, and I can give you two very prominent examples, the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia, for instance. Eglin Air Force base in Florida, another one, has already flooded in this past year when they had to shut it down for the first time in its history,” he said.

But he said the concerns were not limited to the US’s ability to defend itself. Climate change was already causing wars around the world. He gave the example of Tuareg farmers in Mali, displaced by drought and radicalized by conflict, who have destabilized the west African country. “We know climate change caused this,” he said.

It was important, said Cheney, that the military recognized its own contribution as the largest polluter in the world’s second highest polluting country. Weaning the defense force off fossil fuels is an active policy that would solve a security and supply problem as well as bring down carbon emissions.

“Many conflicts throughout our history have been based on resource competition,” said General Charles Jacoby, who was the commander of the US North Command—the primary line of defense against invasion for the US mainland—until last year. He said that this competition would only intensify in the future, with energy and water supply at the top of the list.

Jacoby said climate change was a “legitimate mission that we readily embrace.” He said the military had to be pragmatic and the politicking around climate change, on which the Republican party has grown increasingly extreme, was ultimately irrelevant.

“It can be considered a politicized issue. And it can be considered something that one party is more interested in, another party less interested in. I’m a soldier. I’m a requirements guy. I’m a mission accomplishment guy. And so for me, it’s be in favor of what’s happening. And so, I deal with the facts. Whatever the cause, is less relevant to me than the effect,” he said.

On Tuesday the Guardian revealed US conservatives had directed $125 million toward groups in an effort to seed doubt over the existence of global warming and derail the Obama administration’s climate policies.

The Weather Channel also interviewed leading Republicans, who bemoaned the party’s obstructionism.

Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who governed New Jersey and served as director of the Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush, said the Republican stance on climate change was “frustrating and puzzling” citing the GOP’s history of environmental stewardship.

“It was Richard Nixon who established the Environmental Protection Agencies. I mean, it’s ours. It’s our issue. It’s conservation. It’s conservative. This is an issue we should be talking about in a rational way. Let’s not politicize it, let’s not demand that everybody be absolutely for or absolutely against climate change,” she said.

Henry Paulson, Bush’s treasury secretary, appeared to disagree with Whitman’s assessment of the Republican attitude to climate change. “I think that there are plenty of Republicans that understand that this is a huge problem and we need to deal with it. And there are plenty of Democrats that don’t want to deal with it,” he said. This is despite just five Senate Republicans voting for a measure to recognize the significant contribution of humans to climate change—the bill was defeated.

The EPA’s director under the first president Bush, William Reilly, said he was also bemused by his party’s undermining of climate action. But he said he was hopeful of change.

“Young people of all stripes including young Republicans are very supportive of both acknowledging that we have a climate problem and humans are contributing to it,” he said.

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Climate Change Has Left the US Exposed in the Arctic, Say Military Experts

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Hillary Clinton: Master Schemer or Garden Variety Pol?

by FelicitSumpter Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

Jonathan Allen recycles a familiar refrain today:

There’s a term for the way Hillary Clinton has handled policy in the early stages of her campaign: Clintonian. That is, on the issues that most divide the Democratic base from its centrist wing, she refuses to box herself into a position.

….It’s true that Clinton has rolled out a string of positions that please constituencies on the left, from support for LGBT rights and voting rights to repudiating the results of her husband’s 1994 anti-crime law and vowing to enhance President Obama’s executive action on immigration. These are important issues, perhaps more important than the exact level of a wage increase that surely won’t be $15 an hour as long as Republicans control either the House or 41 seats in the Senate. But Clinton has been very selective about how she’s courted her party’s progressive base, speaking as much to identity politics as to actual policy. On some of the more controversial policy questions, she’s taking a pass.

I’ll concede right up front that Hillary Clinton has been in the national eye for more than 20 years, and maybe that means we should expect more from her. But I gotta ask: Is there now, or has there been in the past, any other candidate who has been so routinely disparaged for not having positions on every single topic seven months before the first primary? Correct me if I’m wrong, but every candidate rolls out positions over time during presidential contests. And they all do it the same way: based on a combination of (a) their own genuine beliefs, (b) interest group pressure, (c) internal polling and focus groups, and (d) weeks or months of research and discussion among their advisors and messaging staff.

Everyone who’s serious about running for president does this, and it’s been this way for decades. This is simply not something that’s unique to either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

So….what’s up with the press corps pushing this narrative so assiduously? Are they just so stuck on the tired old “triangulation” metaphor that they can’t escape from it? Do they genuinely think Hillary is slower about taking positions than other candidates? Do they think those positions are routinely fuzzier than those from other candidates? Are they stuck in the 90s and convinced that all Clintons are connivers and liars? Or what?

I don’t understand this. In terms of campaigning and political positioning, Hillary strikes me as a pretty garden variety candidate. Am I wrong?

Original article:

Hillary Clinton: Master Schemer or Garden Variety Pol?

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