The Hillary Watch: Issue #1

IN DEMOCRATIC RACE, IRAQ FRAMES DEBATE

Presidential hopefuls show their antiwar stripes, but differ on how to extricate the US from Iraq.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorWASHINGTON -

In speech after speech, Democratic presidential candidates agreed on the issues of the day: Global warming must be stopped, universal healthcare is imperative, the crumbling American education system must be fixed.

And on the biggest issue – Iraq – all the prospective and declared Democratic hopefuls speaking to party activists last weekend were also in basic agreement: that the US must extricate itself from the Iraq war.

Where they differed was over one question: How?As the Senate begins debate Monday on competing resolutions on Iraq, the Democrats are fresh out of their own debate on a way forward in Iraq at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York demonstrated the challenge inherent in being the early front-runner: As she seeks to win over enough of the party faithful to win the nomination, she is also looking ahead to the general election campaign, when a position too far to the left could hurt her chances among moderates.

"There are many people who wish we could do more," Senator Clinton told the crowd, as a handful of hecklers cried out. "But let me say that if we can get a large bipartisan vote to disapprove this president's plan for escalation, that will be the first time that we will have said, 'No!' to President Bush and begin to reverse his policies."

Clinton also stated that she "wants to go further," arguing that the US needs to "threaten" Iraq's government with reduced funding for Iraqi troops if it does not start fulfilling its promises. And "if we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will!" she asserted.

But to many Democratic candidates, a nonbinding resolution rejecting Mr. Bush's plan to send more US troops to Iraq isn't enough, even as a starting point.

Clinton and another top challenger for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D) of Illinois, face pressure from many of the other contenders to take a more forceful stand.

Some of these other candidates have the luxury of not having to cast votes in Congress – most notably, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has carved out an Iraq position to the left of Clinton and Senator Obama. The North Carolinian says senators should not support the bipartisan resolution rejecting Bush's surge, but rather cut off funding for the war. Mr. Edwards, who supported the war as a senator in 2002 and later repudiated his vote, is the most antiwar of the leading Democratic contenders – and commands a considerable following among Democrats affiliated with organized labor.

He is also well-organized in Iowa, the first nominating state, and has the potential to stun the field next January."We cannot be satisfied with passing non-binding resolutions that we know this president will ignore," Edwards said. "We have the power to stop the escalation of this war."

Another candidate who still has a vote in the Senate, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, has also aligned himself with antiwar liberals by saying he will not support the nonbinding resolution. But his presidential aspirations are seen as a long shot. The question is whether his presence in the race, and ability to gain media attention for his views, will put pressure on Clinton and Obama to move leftward.Obama took perhaps the most unusual approach in his speech to the DNC.

Instead of going through the usual list of policy positions, he focused instead on the nature of public discourse – and about the need to overcome the cynicism he says has become a staple of modern politics.

"The campaigns shouldn't be about making each other look bad, they should be about figuring out how we can all do some good for this precious country of ours," Obama said. "That's our mission. And in this mission, our rivals won't be one another, and I would assert it won't even be the other party.

It's going to be cynicism that we're fighting against."Obama asserted that everyone in the race has a responsibility to put forth a plan for ending the war, but did not discuss his own proposal, released last week. Obama's legislation would begin redeployment of US forces out of Iraq by May 1, 2007, and calls for the removal of all combat brigades by March 31, 2008, a date he says is consistent with the expectation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

One candidate who did discuss his Iraq plan at length, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, first came up against the axiom, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."Last Wednesday, on the day he announced his presidential campaign, he faced a maelstrom of controversy over his attempt to compliment Obama.

In calling him "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden inadvertently insulted all the black presidential candidates of the past, and spent the rest of the week apologizing.

During his cattle call appearance on Saturday, Biden began with a quip: "So, how was your week?" Then he apologized again. By then, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was ready to rip into what he called "the very deep hole" the Bush administration has dug the nation into in Iraq.

THE CLINTON WATCH: (POWERFUL TEAM BEING CREATED BUT THERE ARE SERIOUS ISSUES WITHIN THE PARTY LEADERSHIP AND STRESSES WITHIN THE EMERGING TEAM)

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DOES NOT NEED TO TEAR ITSELF APART ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008. LAST NIGHT PROVED WE CAN’T EVEN PASS A MEANINGLESS RESOLUTION IN THE SENATE!

THE BUSH WALL HELD AND HIS BUDGET SHOULD CONVINCE EVERYONE THAT THINGS ARE OUT OF CONTROL!

HILLARY CLINTON TARGETS WOMEN'S VOTE

In her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she plans to stress healthcare and education.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science

MonitorWASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton has a not-so-secret weapon working for her as she seeks the presidency: women.Just 12 days into her campaign, the New York senator and former first lady has made it clear that appealing to female voters will be central to her message, and not the afterthought it has been in past presidential campaigns. Already, her campaign says, young women in particular are drawn to her candidacy and the prospect of electing America's first woman president.

Officials with the Clinton campaign cite anecdotal evidence from supporters and from the turnout of women at early campaign events.Single women, now 51 percent of the female adult population, also represent a key demographic to the Clinton campaign. Her campaign plans appeals aimed directly at their concerns – including healthcare, retirement, and education – to boost turnout among a demographic that has been less likely to vote than other groups.

Overall, "54 percent of the electorate in 2004 were women; I think potentially that could go up in 2008," says Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign.Already, polls show higher percentages of women supporting Senator Clinton than the male candidates in both the race for the Democratic nomination and in general election matchups. But history has shown that women's votes alone, long key to Democrats' electoral chances, cannot win elections for Democrats.

So the question is whether, in running a campaign highly attuned to women, Clinton can avoid alienating men."She has to balance it out," says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Part of the balancing act involves efforts by her campaign to warm up her image, which some voters find cold and calculating.

The setting for the Jan. 20 Web video announcement of her exploratory committee was a living room, not an office. She calls her campaign a "conversation," she has "chats," she "listens." She used the same approach in her 2000 Senate campaign, successfully, but the challenge now is to carry that out on a national scale – with an electorate that has seen her in action for 15 years and feels it already knows her.

Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" served up a string of jokes this week around Clinton's campaign slogan, "Let the Conversation Begin." "Look, this might not be the most politically correct thing to say, but I don't think that slogan's gonna help you with men," he began, to big studio-audience laughter.Another part of the calculus for Clinton is that she is running to become commander in chief during wartime.

So not only does she face stereotypes about women and military matters, but she also faces her party's generation-old image as being weak on defense. During her time in the Senate, she has cultivated an expertise on defense and foreign policy, and taken high-profile trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if she wins the nomination, it remains an open question whether she can overcome those hurdles.Though it is early in the nomination race, she looks to be in good shape against the other Democrats.

In a Gallup poll released Wednesday, among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, 47 percent said she would do the best job on Iraq, compared with 26 percent for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and 19 percent for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

On terrorism, she won with 49 percent. But on domestic issues, she had more support: 57 percent on the economy, 67 percent on healthcare, and 63 percent on education.

One of the great unknowns for Clinton, if she wins the nomination, is what percentage of voters really is willing to vote for a qualified woman for president. Recent polls show the number in the 80s. But when asked if they believe their neighbors would be willing to vote for a qualified woman as president, the number drops into the low 60s.

"I think someplace between 86 and 61 percent may be where the reality is," says Ms. Walsh, referring to polling data from last year. "I also think it's very hard now to ask this question generically. You're getting two things at the same time – you've got the theoretical question, and then you've got Hillary in there, so it's no longer abstract.

It's a real person with a real record."Another element of attitudes about Clinton is that portion of the population that viscerally dislikes her. Many are people who would never vote for a Democrat anyway, but this phenomenon could affect her ability to win independent voters – a segment of the electorate essential to any winning campaign. Some analysts question whether Clinton's gender will really inspire an outpouring of women to support her.

"I don't think Hillary can count on women coming out for her out of a sense of sisterhood," says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum. "She'll have to earn women's votes just as other Democratic candidates have really tried to court women."

ADVISER TO SENATOR CLINTON STAYS IN SHADOWS

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

As Bill Clinton embarked on his 1992 presidential run, he relied on the counsel of high-octane advisers like James Carville and Paul Begala, who embraced the spotlight and were given to hyperbole in what was a gutsy, if somewhat undisciplined and freewheeling, campaign.

Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton lays the groundwork for a similar bid, the person she is relying on to run things is a reclusive adviser who is intolerant of leaks, who demands strict loyalty from her staff and who, on those rare occasions that she speaks publicly, measures each word.

Her name is Patti Solis Doyle, and the job of mapping out the senator’s national political strategy falls to her. Indeed, as the news media buzz grows around Mrs. Clinton’s political ambitions, Ms. Solis Doyle has worked in the shadows wooing prominent donors over dinners, meeting with some of the Democratic Party’s top talent for potential campaign openings, and conferring with Mrs. Clinton on an almost daily basis.

Officially, Ms. Solis Doyle, 41, is the executive director of Hillpac, known widely as Hillary Inc., a vast political operation that has employed as many as 50 press assistants, opposition researchers, media specialists and fund-raisers at any one time. But Ms. Solis Doyle’s title does not begin to convey the singular role she has played for Mrs. Clinton since the two women crossed paths about 16 years ago.

The close association between Ms. Solis Doyle and Mrs. Clinton provides an insight into how things work in Mrs. Clinton’s tight circle of confidantes and advisers — and reflects the degree to which Mrs. Clinton prizes strict allegiance and devotion. The senator’s political operation is impermeable, highly disciplined and, as some supporters acknowledge, at times scripted to a fault.

It is Ms. Solis Doyle who keeps it running smoothly, but some Democrats outside her organization say Mrs. Clinton’s reliance on an insular cadre of loyal assistants chokes off the spontaneity needed to succeed in a national campaign.

Ms. Solis Doyle solidified her leadership in Team Clinton in 2000, when she was dispatched to New York from the White House to restore order to Mrs. Clinton’s first campaign for the Senate after it became top-heavy with strong-willed consultants with different ideas about the direction of the campaign.

(Some Clinton associates have come to refer to two distinct periods in that race: “B.P. and A.P.,” or “Before Patti” and “After Patti.”)

Over the past six years, Ms. Solis Doyle has been the architect of an expensive and potentially risky strategy to build a list of hundreds of thousands of small donors who the campaign hopes would quickly provide contributions if Mrs. Clinton announced plans to run for president.

Some of her closest advisers have likened it to flicking a switch that will lead to a torrent of donations. But, skeptics say, the strategy, employing a process known as prospecting that involves mailing out millions of solicitations, has been a drain on Mrs. Clinton’s campaign treasury and may not bear fruit — though the donor list proved bountiful for her 2006 re-election effort.

Ms. Solis Doyle shuns publicity to such an extent that a search on Google for her image is futile, reflecting an aversion to attention that stands apart in the attention-grabbing world of political consultants.

In fact, people who know her say it has often been a source of frustration to her when members of Mr. Clinton’s notably garrulous inner circle in the White House have mused publicly in the news media about Mrs. Clinton’s career plans.

But in recent weeks, the focus on “Hillaryland” — the phrase Ms. Solis Doyle coined to describe the senator’s close network of advisers — has intensified with Mrs. Clinton’s discussions about a possible presidential run.

In her first in-depth interview about herself and the operation, Ms. Solis Doyle was visibly uncomfortable with the attention. “I hate this,” she said this week, after having relented to the entreaties of her staff that she grant an extended interview. “I’ve always been behind the scenes.”

Turning her attention to the 2008 presidential race, she said Mrs. Clinton would not be pressured into hastily announcing her decision about a presidential run, despite the intensifying jockeying among the other Democratic presidential contenders, most notably Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“She has her own timetable,” she said. “We won’t be rushed by the media, and we won’t be rushed by any other candidate.”

Mrs. Clinton was an obscure first lady of a small state when she met Ms. Solis Doyle, then a recent Northwestern University graduate who had considered becoming an elementary school teacher. Ms. Solis Doyle became Mrs. Clinton’s chief scheduler in Arkansas and held the same job in the White House.

She has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side through times of triumph (Mr. Clinton’s first presidential victory in 1992 and Mrs. Clinton’s Senate victory in 2000) as well as adversity (Whitewater, the universal health care debacle and the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal).

A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Ms. Solis Doyle has a playful manner that masks what associates say is her brutally competitive nature. It is her wont to cackle and then exclaim “Poor little thing!” when misfortune befalls a rival (the gaffe-prone Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester County district attorney, comes to mind, for example).

As it turns out, that rough-and-tumble streak runs in her family. Her eldest brother, Daniel Solis, is the president of the notoriously unruly City Council in Chicago, where Ms. Solis Doyle grew up on the city’s mostly poor South Side.

The relationship between Ms. Solis Doyle and Mrs. Clinton transcends the office. Mrs. Clinton gave a reading at Ms. Solis Doyle’s wedding.

A few years back, Ms. Solis Doyle took a lucrative job at a prominent Washington media relations firm, only to return to the Clinton fold after a few months. Ms. Solis Doyle privately said that she did not find the work as fulfilling as working for her old boss.

“Here’s the bottom line: She is loyal,” said Peter Ragone, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a member of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

But some say that insularity closes out other voices.

“The people around Hillary are controlled, disciplined people, but all of that control can choke off the spontaneity and emotion that a winning national candidate needs to show voters,” said one New York Democratic supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s who has talked to her about her presidential aspirations, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he was not authorized to speak about the campaign apparatus.

But Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, said Mrs. Clinton has to keep a tight rein on her organization.

“If you are a person who has the exposure and the profile that Senator Clinton has, you have to control your message because there are so many people out there who want to embarrass you,” he said. “But she has a mind and a personality that is strong enough to reach out to other people.”

In a profession built on personal relationships, Ms. Solis Doyle has used her clout to help her amass plenty of I.O.U.’S — something that may help Mrs. Clinton in any national campaign.

Mr. Ragone, who later worked for Gov. Gray Davis of California, recalled that Ms. Solis Doyle was always receptive during the governor’s 2003 recall election when the Davis campaign needed Mrs. Clinton to make a personal appearance on the governor’s behalf or needed help contacting prominent fund-raisers.

“She returns phone calls and makes things happen,” Mr. Ragone recalled.Clinton associates say that the source of Ms. Solis Doyle’s power is plain. “Patti and Hillary know and trust each other implicitly,” said Rahm Emanuel, a representative from Illinois who was Bill Clinton’s political adviser in the White House.

But Ms. Solis Doyle’s job is a grueling one, routinely forcing her to work well past midnight, as the late-night e-mail and instant messages that she sends attest. “She’s my friend,” Ms. Solis Doyle said, offering an explanation for her devotion to Mrs. Clinton. “You think I would do this for anybody else?”

CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN TEAM IS THE ENVY OF MANY IN THE POLITICAL WORLD

By GLENN BLAIN THE JOURNAL NEWS

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her plans only yesterday, but she already has a campaign team that is the envy of many in the political world.Fiercely loyal and disciplined, Clinton's operation is stocked with savvy political veterans, many of whom trace their ties to the senator back to her tumultuous days in the White House.

It's a team that has already seen Clinton through two statewide elections in New York and made her one of the Senate's most successful fundraisers."They are very talented and very tight and the most important thing is that they are loyal to her," said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist. "They have been through a lot with her."Among those at the core of Team Clinton are:

Patti Solis-Doyle, a veteran political organizer whose relationship with Clinton dates to her days as first lady of Arkansas; Mandy Grunwald, a communications consultant and veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign; Mark Penn, a veteran pollster who last month co-authored a Washington Post op-ed article with James Carville that sought to debunk the theory that Clinton is too polarizing to be elected president; and Yonkers native Howard Wolfson, who served as the ever-present spokesman for Clinton's 2000 and 2006 Senate campaigns.

And, of course, Clinton has easy access to advice from one of the nation's most sought-after political figures: her husband."She won by 69 percent," said Westchester Democratic Chairman Reginald LaFayette, referring to Clinton's re-election victory in November. "You can't criticize a team that wins by 69 percent. ... It does set her up well."The ready-made nature of Clinton's campaign infrastructure will likely be a huge advantage for her as she competes for the Democratic nomination and, if she is successful, the presidency itself.

By contrast, the candidate most widely portrayed as her top rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barak Obama, has only recently begun to put together a presidential campaign organization.

"These are more battle-tested people," Sheinkopf said. "Remember, Barak Obama has not won a seriously contested election. On the other side, Hillary's team is battle-tested and been through serious campaigns all the way back to the White House."Clinton's organization also stands in contrast to that of the other New York figure widely expected to seek the presidency: former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

While Giuliani has recently bolstered his team with national political strategists - including Mike DuHaime, former political director for the Republican National Committee -his inner circle is still filled with City Hall associates, including former Deputy Mayor Peter Powers and senior adviser Anthony Carbonetti.

While details about the exact makeup of Clinton's presidential campaign remained somewhat murky yesterday, it is likely to be led by Solis-Doyle. The 41-year-old was in charge of Clinton's 2006 re-election campaign and is the executive director of Hillpac, the senator's political action committee.

The most visible member of the campaign team, though, is likely to be Wolfson, who joined Clinton's operation in the early days of her 2000 Senate campaign. Wolfson, who was a member of Rep. Nita Lowey's staff during the mid-1990s, is known for his clever, often biting responses to opponents' attacks.

During Clinton's re-election battle last year, Wolfson took aim at GOP candidate and former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer's reputation for angry outbursts."

Given John Spencer's history, he probably doesn't consider a campaign negative until he threatens to murder his opponent," Wolfson said at one point in the race. He was referring to an instance during Spencer's tenure as mayor when he jokingly threatened to kill the governor and a federal judge."Howard Wolfson is a talented strategist," said Lowey, D-Harrison.

"He combines political savvy and communications know-how with a deep commitment to making government work."

Others likely to play key roles in a Clinton-for-president campaign include Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House who has remained a key adviser to Hillary Clinton; and Ann Lewis, who also worked in Bill Clinton's White House and became a spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton's Washington-based campaign operations.

One recent appointment was Phil Singer, a former spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer and John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. He will assist with the communications effort.

"These are serious people and they are very smart," Sheinkopf said. "They are very deliberative and they have been through battles."This Clinton machine is a tighter ship

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent much of the last month behind closed doors, putting the final touches on a presidential campaign-in-waiting.Her hectic schedule has been crammed with private lunches and phone conversations with elected officials and political operatives.

She has sounded out Democratic Party officials from New York to Des Moines about her chances and hired a cadre of new campaign aides. And she has made time for television interviews, re-releases of her books and delicately timed appearances with her high-wattage husband.It is all part of a political organization that has been under construction since the turbulent Clinton White House years and was bolstered by two successful Senate campaigns.

Awaiting only her go-ahead - with a decision expected in January - the machine that Hillary built has the heft and advance billing of an election-year juggernaut. It is a high-stakes fusion of her political world and her husband's, two camps with markedly different styles and, at times, competing agendas and egos.

The test, should she decide to run, will be getting the two cultures to work together.

"Her organization is much different than the old Clinton organization," said New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked on President Clinton's 1996 reelection effort. "She has a whole loyal national network of her own. They're all hard, tough people.

The trick she'll have is to find a way to blend them in and keep them together."Bill Clinton ran a loose and leaky ship during his two White House terms, and many in his old brain trust who are expected to return to the fold for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign now have careers to tend and outside interests to promote.

By contrast, "Hillaryland" is a disciplined structure of her own design, a tight-knit realm populated by discreet, fiercely devoted aides who have been with the former first lady since her East Wing days, along with newer additions who serve on her Senate staff.

Some wonder if her circle is too buffered."The danger she faces," one longtime Clinton intimate said, "is the problem of insularity. You saw that at times in the Clinton White House. She tends to filter a lot through her most trusted people. That's an advantage when things are going well. But you can get closed off when things are falling apart."Her machine would nonetheless be tested early.

Recent polls in New Hampshire and Iowa show Clinton would have stiff competition from two potential Democratic rivals, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

"The challenge she'll have in the primaries is building something that's lean and supple, an operation that can turn on a dime," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey D. Garin.Clinton's closest aide is, of course, her husband - "the best strategist of his generation," Sheinkopf says. But their dynamic would make for a unique campaign with its own risks and opportunities.

The former president will have to restrain the urge to grab the spotlight. "It's her campaign, not his," Sheinkopf said.During recent appearances together, intimates say, the former president has had to work to rein in his impulse to play to the crowd. "You can see him champing at the bit," one said.

Hillary Clinton has warmed on the stump, but party leaders still worry that Bill Clinton's mastery of the stage muffles her presence by comparison.

And a recent spate of news accounts of the Clintons' marriage and reversed political roles have dredged up unwelcome memories of the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and the impeachment crisis.

In her Senate run this year, the Clintons often deployed separately across New York, operating like complementary vaudeville troupers. While the senator concentrated on working-class communities upstate, pushing economic hardship issues to win over independents and suburban Republicans, the former president secured the Democratic base in New York, hobnobbing with East Side donors and barnstorming in Harlem and elsewhere in Manhattan.

She easily won reelection, taking 67% of the vote.

Most Clinton loyalists insist the couple would be a magnetic duo. "He's the best campaign weapon any Democrat can have - and that includes his wife, who's superb in her own right," said John Catsimatidis, an influential New York supermarket chain owner who is a longtime Clinton donor.After her husband, the senator depends most on her core staff.

These aides dubbed their close-knit enclave Hillaryland after whimsical signs that sprouted inside the Little Rock transition office in 1992 to identify the camps working for Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their spouses (the others were Clintonville, Goreville and Tipper Town). The self-mocking tag remained after the first lady's protectors circled the wagons during Whitewater, Travelgate and the impeachment.

Patti Solis Doyle, a Hillaryland stalwart who was Hillary Clinton's first hire as scheduler in 1992, is expected to be tapped as campaign manager.

Doyle, 41, had key roles in both Senate campaigns, and most recently headed up Hillpac, the well-oiled fundraising arm that drummed up more than $50 million in donations for 2006.Doyle has long been considered the senator's most reliable aide and confidant. She is among the few, one Hillarylander said, "who can talk tough to Hillary and get away with it."

A selfless wunderkind from Chicago's hard-boiled political terrain who shuns publicity, Doyle won Clinton's lasting admiration by helping rejuvenate her flagging first election effort in 2000.

"Patti's there because she has the best working knowledge of Mrs. Clinton's history, her needs and her desires," said G. Neel Lattimore, a Children's Defense Fund communications strategist who was the first lady's press secretary.

"She can get people in a room who are warring with each other to calm down and make the tough decisions."Those skills might prove critical in blunting the sharp elbows sometimes thrown by the senator's troika of senior political strategists. Mark J. Penn, Mandy Grunwald and Harold M. Ickes all had integral stints during the Clinton administration and have since worked at close quarters in both of Hillary Clinton's Senate triumphs.

Directing overall strategy would fall to Penn, the centrist pollster who was a key player in Bill Clinton' 1996 reelection and now works as chief executive of the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm.

Advertising decisions would be handled by Grunwald, who had a pivotal role shaping ads in Bill Clinton's first presidential run.

Ickes, the acerbic son of Franklin Roosevelt's Interior secretary and a Clinton White House deputy chief of staff, would probably oversee the campaign's budget and relations with party officials and affiliated "527" committees, groups that can spend money on behalf of candidates or issues but cannot give it to their campaigns.

Ickes also would delve into voter profiling, an interest he developed while running Catalist, a private database targeting firm.

Communications strategy in Clinton's Senate campaigns has been overseen by Howard Wolfson, a New York public relations veteran who is already handling campaign-related media for Clinton.

During Hillary Clinton's campaigns, these four aides have dominated a daily 7:30 a.m. conference call in which her political strategy was hammered out and her daily message crafted.

"It's not for the faint of heart," one participant said. "Some of these guys hate each other's guts. But the principal finds it useful as long as it doesn't get too vicious.

"There are dangers to blood-letting. Chaos within the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry toppled campaign managers and left internal scars.

"That won't happen with Patti because Hillary depends on her too much," one former trusted campaign aide said.

"If there are casualties, they'd be lower down the food chain."A slew of other Clinton familiars are expected to help out. High-profile Democratic consultant James Carville, who lauded the "power of Hillary" in a widely circulated article he and Penn wrote earlier this year, is expected to provide strategic advice.

Howard G. Paster, who was Bill Clinton's chief congressional lobbyist and works with Penn as chairman of Burson-Marsteller's executive board, is said to be primed for a senior advisory role.

Former Democratic National Committee chief and Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe is slated to line up top donors along with a new hire, campaign finance director Jonathan Mantz, a Democratic Party financial expert.

Hillary Clinton's heavy spending in the 2006 campaign - too heavy, some said - left her with a less-than-bountiful $14 million in the bank. But Ann Lewis, communications director for Hillpac, noted that more than $11 million of the $37 million outlay was used to build a massive national database - essential to mining millions more in small donations and profiling likely volunteers."The money we spent was well worth it," Lewis said.

Catsimatidis said he and other big donors on both coasts were already being approached to replenish the coffers.

In New York, the effort revolves around venture capitalist Alan J. Patricof, Sen. Clinton's campaign chair and a longtime fundraiser for the couple.

In California, key money players will probably be Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, billionaire Ron Burkle and entertainment chief Haim Saban, who recently hosted the Clintons at an annual Mideast policy forum he sponsors in Washington."She can raise whatever she needs," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

For policy advice, Clinton would turn to John Podesta, who was her husband's White House chief of staff and now heads the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank with strong connections to his former employers. "I talk to her from time to time on policy and issues," Podesta said. "There's no formal structure at this point."Despite the center's "nonaligned" status, Sen. Clinton played a "formative" role in discussions that led to its creation, Podesta acknowledged recently.

New hires from Democratic party ranks also have been brought in, depriving rivals of some of the party's top talent.

Phil Singer, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, would run Clinton's war room.

Blogging whiz and former Kerry Internet aide Peter Daou would tackle Web-based opposition research.

Karen Hicks, who was Howard Dean's New Hampshire primary field director, is set to run Clinton's early primaries.

Burns Strider, who spearheaded religious outreach for the House Democratic caucus, has been hired to tap into the evangelical Christian movement.

Along with the professionals, Clinton aides expect a groundswell of women - political operatives, donors, volunteers - would flock to Hillary Clinton because she is a female presidential candidate.

"She wants people who work for her to want to be there out of a sense of mission, not just simply as professionals," said Lorraine Voles, Clinton's Senate communications director.

The mission, Voles said, "would be electing the first woman president. It's not the only thing that brings people in the door, but it's what would be on everyone's minds over the long run."Hillary Rodham Clinton's political organization, begun in the Bill Clinton White House, has been bolstered during her two successful Senate campaigns.

THE INNER CIRCLE Old-line Bill Clinton players

TERRY McAULIFFE "First friend" of the Clintons; key fundraiser and party conduit

JOHN PODESTA Chief executive at Center for American Progress and former White House chief of staff

JAMES CARVILLE Democratic campaign consultant; promoted Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential candidacy

HOWARD G. PASTER Chairman of Burson-Marsteller; former chief White House lobbyist Hillaryland

The senator's core staff, who gave the name to their close-knit enclave during the 1992 transition period

MARGARET "MAGGIE" WILLIAMS Former East Wing aide; post-White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton

NEERA TANDEN Longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton; senior vice president of Center for American Progress

TAMERA LUZZATTO ADVERTISEMENT Senate chief of staff

LORRAINE VOLES Senate communications directorDemocratic Party veterans

ANN LEWIS Former Democratic National Committee politicaldirector; now communications chief at Hillpac

PHIL SINGER Former Democratic Senate spokesman; would head "rapid response"

JONATHAN MANTZ Former Democratic finance official; would benational finance director

KAREN HICKS Former Howard Dean presidential campaign aide; would head primary organizing

PETER DAOU Internet and blogging specialist; worked on John F. Kerry presidential campaign

THE POWER OF HILLARY By James Carville and Mark J. Penn"Hillary

Clinton really is one of the weakest . . . nominees with whom the Democrats could be saddled."

"Democrats are worried sick about her chances."

"Just give someone else a chance, so we in the Democratic Party can elect a Democrat."

"She cannot possibly, possibly win."Yada, yada, yada.

We've heard all this "Hillary can't win stuff" before. In fact, the quotes above aren't from recent weeks but from six years ago, when many pundits -- and Democrats -- said there was no way that Hillary could get elected to the Senate. She won by 12 percentage points.

We don't know if Hillary is going to run for president, but as advisers who have worked on the only two successful Democratic presidential campaigns in the past couple of decades, we know that if she does run, she can win that race, too.

Why? First, because strength matters. Our problems as a party are less ideological than anatomical: Our candidates have been made to look like they have no backbone. But the latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 68 percent of Americans describe Hillary Clinton as a strong leader. That comes after years of her being in the national crossfire. People know that Hillary has strong convictions, even if they don't always agree with her. They also know that she's tough enough to handle the viciousness of a national campaign and the challenges of the presidency itself.

One thing we know about Clinton campaigns: Nobody gets Swift Boated.The woman who gave the War Room its name knows how tough politics at the presidential level can be. Adversaries spent $60 million against her in 2000, and she endured press scrutiny that would have wilted most candidates.

She gave as good as she got, and she triumphed.

For those who think that the politics of personal destruction might be rekindled against Hillary or her husband, we can only remind people how consistently that approach has backfired in the past. Bill Clinton would certainly be a huge asset if Hillary decided to run.

In fact, Hillary is the only nationally known Democrat (other than her husband) who has weathered the Republican assaults and emerged with a favorable rating above 50 percent (54 percent positive in the latest Post-ABC poll).

Yes, she has a 42 percent negative rating, as do other nationally known Democrats. All the nationally un known Democrats would likely wind up with high negative ratings, too, once they'd been through the Republican attack machine.

The difference with Hillary is the intensity of her support.Pundits and fundraisers and activists may be unsure of whether Hillary can get elected president, but Democratic voters, particularly Democratic women and even independent women, are thrilled with the idea.

The X factor for 2008 -- and we do mean X -- is the power of women in the electorate. Fifty-four percent of voters are female. George Bush increased his vote with only two groups between 2000 and 2004: women and Hispanics. Bush got 49 percent of white female voters in 2000 and 55 percent in 2004. Of his 3.5-percentage-point margin over John Kerry, Bush's increase with women accounted for 2.5 percentage points.

The rest came from a nine-point increase among Hispanic voters: from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004. We believe that Hillary is uniquely capable of getting those swing voters back to the Democratic column.Hillary's candidacy has the potential to reshape the electoral map for Democrats. Others argue they can add to John Kerry's 20 states and 252 electoral votes by adding Southern states, or Western or Midwestern, depending on their background. Hillary has the potential to mobilize people in every region of the country.

Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did. But with the pathbreaking possibility of this country's first female president, we could see an explosion of women voting -- and voting Democratic. States that were close in the past, from Arkansas to Colorado to Florida to Ohio, could well move to the Democratic column. It takes only one more state to win.

Finally, for those who believe that Hillary's electoral chances are tied to ideology, not leadership qualities, we believe that she is squarely in the mainstream of America.

Some people say she is too liberal, some that she is too conservative. We think her 35 years of advocacy for children and families and her tenacious work in the Senate to help ensure our security after Sept. 11 and to help middle-class families will serve her well. We think she represents the kind of change the country is yearning for: a smart, strong leader.

She would take the country in a fundamentally different direction: closing deficits, not widening them; expanding health care coverage, not shrinking it. Fighting terrorism without isolating us from the rest of the world.

We don't know whether Hillary will run. But we do know that if she runs, she can win. (THE FIRST QUESTION IS NOW ANSWERED)

James Carville, a Democratic political consultant and commentator, was chief strategist in Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Mark J. Penn was a key strategist in Clinton's 1996 bid for re-election and in Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.

Her Camp Says Carville On His Own In Coup Bid

BY KENNETH R. BAZINET DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -

James Carville's attempt to topple Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee failed after state party officials and even a vocal critic of Dean crushed the coup, officials said. Insiders from the Clinton camp winced at Carville's untimely remarks last week calling for Dean's ouster in favor of unsuccessful Senate candidate Harold Ford of Tennessee.

"It was not coming from [Sen. Hillary Clinton] and they made a real effort to distance themselves from James' comments," said a source close to the Clintons.

The Clintonistas don't want an undeserved backlash from the activist wing of the party that overwhelmingly supports Dean, especially because some anti-Clinton Democrats have blamed Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for the attack by Carville, a longtime Clinton insider. Those forces claimed Carville's motive was to topple Dean in favor of a chairman more favorable to Sen. Clinton's bid for President.

Carville's remarks last week came as House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bungled the race for Democratic majority leader. Party operatives acknowledged the Carville and Pelosi sideshows were detracting from their election victories.

"We applaud Chairman Dean for his commitment to ensuring Democratic candidates and state Democratic parties have the resources and tools needed to compete and win, and we remain committed to the hard work of rebuilding our party for the future," said Mark Brewer, president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

Brewer's organization endorsed Dean's $30 million effort that helped win six new Democratic governorships and control of 10 more state legislatures. Dean is credited with launching a "50 state program" to rebuild the party at the grass roots, as the GOP so successfully has done for the past 25 years.

"No question Dean can survive because this is a mathematical equation: He has the votes on the DNC because he has been investing in the state parties," said party activist David Sirota.

Carville did not respond to attempts to contact him.

Even Dean-basher Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and an exadviser to former President Bill Clinton, called Dean last week to say Carville was acting alone, and one-time DNC Chairman Don Fowler referred to Carville as an "ill-advised" voice.

"Why do the Washington people think that they have a special prerogative to dictate what the Democratic Party needs?" Fowler wrote in an e-mail to the party faithful. "Why should anyone want to mess with the team that won these remarkable [election] results?"

McAuliffe to join Clinton By Alexander Bolton

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has told business associates and Democratic donors that he will chair Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign next year, according to several Democratic sources.

Together, Clinton, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and McAuliffe, the top money man in Democratic politics, have a good chance of raising $100 million before the first official contest, the Iowa caucuses in January 2008.

While Clinton and her staff insist she is focused solely on winning reelection in New York this November, the decision over who will be in charge of getting her elected to the White House is already settled.

McAuliffe told The Hill yesterday that Clinton has not made a decision on running for president and will not do so until after Nov. 7.
McAuliffe also denied telling friends that he will serve as chairman, although sources contradict him.

He acknowledged that he would play a "huge role" in her presidential campaign if it materializes and that he has recruited donors for a possible White House run.

"I would just say that I hope she runs," said McAuliffe. "She's focused on the Senate and I'm focused on helping Democrats.

"Would I have a huge role on the campaign? Of course, that's not real news. People know that I have has been around lining up people if she decides to run."

Clinton referred questions to her Senate campaign, where spokeswoman Ann Lewis said, "There is no decision, there is no [presidential] campaign; if there is no campaign there are no titles."

Clinton's camp is not the only one among presidential hopefuls lining up donors for 2008. Allies of each of the Democratic contenders are aggressively seeking commitments because of the huge amount of money that will be needed next year.

McAuliffe, who became DNC chairman in 2001, said he has had no conversations with Clinton about titles and that Democrats are merely speculating about the role he would serve in the campaign.

Since he stepped down as DNC chairman after the 2004 election, he has been involved with about a dozen private companies by his own estimate. He said he has raised money for investment funds and real estate deals, and even dabbled in the energy sector. He has also served on the advisory board of Carret Asset Management, an investment firm in New York.But McAuliffe said he would quickly drop these commitments to help Clinton if she ran for president.

"I would take off time and go full time," he said of his expected level of commitment.

Early next year, around the time Clinton is expected to launch an exploratory campaign committee, McAuliffe's new book " What a Party!: My Life Among Democrats" is expected to be in stores. It will span McAuliffe's 25 years in politics and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of his party, including the successes of the Clinton presidency.

Although McAuliffe's specialty is raising money, he would probably not be satisfied serving only as Clinton's presidential finance chairman."To be finance chair would be beneath him," said one Democratic donor close to Clinton, who added that McAuliffe is "trying to make his presence felt" in moneyed Democratic circles.

No Democratic fundraiser has as high a profile as McAuliffe. Nevertheless, he may be feeling some competition from the many Clinton allies who are positioning themselves as important financial players for her presidential campaign.

"She's got a full operation," said Wade Randlett, a prominent Democratic fundraiser based in San Francisco, of the network of Democrats who are laying the financial groundwork for Clinton in the Bay Area. "There are many, many friends who are active for her."

Randlett also said Bay Area donors have been told that Clinton will not visit there again between now and Election Day so as not to compete for campaign contributions in a Democratic fundraising hub with candidates running for the House and Senate.

Democratic fundraisers report that all politicians with an eye on the White House have been vigorously recruiting donors for primary season. That's because the Democrats have front-loaded the season even more than in 2004.

With key contests crammed into the first few weeks of 2008, giving the early front-runner the chance to eliminate rivals almost in a fell swoop, there is a premium on raising primary money next year ready to hit the early races in a winter avalanche.

"People are going to have to telescope and enormous amount of fundraising in a very short period of time," said Steve Grossman, a Democratic fundraiser who served as DNC chairman under Clinton. "In my judgment, if you can't raise the better part of $50 million, you're not going to be a first tier candidate.

Given Clinton's stature and McAuliffe's stature as a fundraiser, Republicans have little doubt that she will have close to $100 million in her presidential campaign coffers at the end of next year.
Raising that amount of money in the year before an election year would not be unprecedented. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign reported $99.1 million in its account at the end of 2003.

"There's a growing consensus that the top-tier candidates of both political parties are going to opt out of the public financing for the general election as well as the primaries, which [would be] the first time in history that has occurred," said Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner.
If candidates forego public funding for the 2008 presidential primary and general elections, they will be able to collect contributions for both elections as soon as they form exploratory committees.

Said Toner: "The higher contribution limits of [the] McCain-Feingold [campaign finance law] combined with candidates raising money for general and primary combined with a polarized electorate sets the stage for record-breaking fundraising."

HILLARY CLINTON is to be presented as America's Margaret Thatcher as she tries to become the first woman to win the White House. As she entered the 2008 presidential race yesterday, a senior adviser said that her campaign would emphasise security, defence and personal strengths reminiscent of the Iron Lady.

"Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough," said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman. "She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe."

Clinton, 59, used her website to announce that she was taking the first step of her campaign by forming a presidential exploratory committee.

"I'm in. And I'm in to win," she said.

It made the New York senator the instant frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. "She has the name recognition, the money, the glitz, she's got it all," McAuliffe said.

If she wins, she will return to the White House where she spent eight years as first lady during Bill Clinton's presidency from 1993-2001.McAuliffe predicted a rough campaign. "She is going to fight for herself and she is going to have people around her who will fight," he said.

"They are going to play mean, nasty and dirty on the other side. You don't walk into a knife fight without adequate gloves."

The Clinton campaign intends to paint the Republican nominee as President George W Bush's political heir, particularly over the war in Iraq. "George Bush is going to be on the ticket whether they like it or not," McAuliffe added.

Clinton said she would talk to voters about "how to bring the right end to the war in Iraq and restore respect for America around the world". She also hopes to appeal to women voters in their twenties and thirties.

Clinton faces strong competition from Barack Obama, the charismatic but inexperienced 45-year-old Illinois senator. The race is already being billed "the magic v the machine".

November 16, 2006 Political Memo Flush of Victory Past, Democrats Revert to Finger-Pointing By ADAM NAGOURNEY WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - One would think that after their biggest electoral triumph in about a decade, Democrats would finally break their usual post election syndrome - a November loss followed by recriminations, finger-pointing and infighting.

Well, think again. (Reference an earlier post on this matter) http://precinctmaster.blogspot.com/2006/12/carville-and-other-matters-within.html

The Democrats are celebrating their big victory of Nov. 7 with recriminations, finger-pointing and infighting, no matter that they won control of the Senate and the House for the first time since 1994.State Democratic leaders are saying Howard Dean, the party chairman, is not receiving the credit he deserves for the triumph.

Offering a rather different view, two leading party strategists rebuked Mr. Dean on Wednesday, saying the Democrats could have captured 40 House seats rather than 29 had Mr. Dean bowed to demands by Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, leader of the effort to recapture the House, to put more money into Congressional races.

"I would describe his leadership as Rumsfeldian in its incompetence," one strategist, James Carville, said of Mr. Dean.

Liberal bloggers say they are not receiving the credit they deserve and are chafing at how what they call the mainstream media has showered too much credit on Mr. Emanuel and his Senate counterpart, Charles E. Schumer of New York, for the sweep.

"Rahm won everything" was the headline on a sarcastic post on MyDD, a liberal Web site.

On Capitol Hill, soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has waded into a leadership fight that has divided her caucus, providing the public - in its first glimpse of the incoming Congress - with a reminder of just how much Democrats like to rumble. Democrats, if grimacing, sought to put the best face on the latest episode of that familiar Washington series, Democrats in Disarray.

"We are a diverse party," said Donald Fowler, a veteran South Carolina Democratic leader. "We have different people from different backgrounds, and we see things differently both in terms of style and issues."

Mr. Fowler sighed before letting out: "We're nuts! We're all nuts!"Larry Gates, the Democratic chairman in Kansas, where Democrats stunned Republicans by capturing a once very-red seat, said: "This is what we Democrats do. A little bit of success, and we start to fight."

So it was that Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, and Mr. Carville used the forum of a Monitor Breakfast, a gathering of newsmakers and reporters, to say Mr. Dean wasted an opportunity to make historic gains by refusing to take resources out of his effort to build up parties in all 50 states and put them into Congressional races.

Mr. Greenberg said that Republicans held 14 seats by a single percentage point and that a small investment by Mr. Dean could have put Democrats into a commanding position for the rest of the decade.

"There was a missed opportunity here," he said. "I've sat down with Republican pollsters to discuss this race: They believe we left 10 to 20 seats on the table."

Mr. Carville, whose close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have prompted speculation that he is attacking Mr. Dean on their behalf, said the Democratic National Committee had taken out a $10 million line of credit and used barely half of it.

"They left money on the table," he said.

Asked whether Mr. Dean should step down, he responded, loudly, in the affirmative. "He should be held accountable," Mr. Carville said.In an interview later, he asked, "Do we want to go into '08 with a C minus general at the D.N.C.?"

Aides to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Carville had not cleared his attacks on Mr. Dean with them.

The attacks set off recriminations in Mr. Dean's base, state parties that have benefited from his decision to channel millions of dollars to them."Asking Dean to step down now, after last week, is equivalent to asking Eisenhower to resign after the Normandy invasion," Mr. Fowler said. "It's just nonsense.

"Carville and Greenberg - those people are my friends - they are just dead wrong. They wanted all that money to go to Washington consultants and speechwriters and pollsters. This kind of nonsense is destructive of the party."

The Democratic chairman in Michigan, Mark Brewer, said party money had allowed Michigan to re-elect its Democratic governor and senator."This is a zero-sum game," Mr. Brewer said. "That money would have had to come from somewhere. We should be looking forward to future endeavors, and not attacking at this moment of great triumph."

Mr. Dean was traveling and not available for comment, aides said.At Democratic National Committee headquarters, the communications director, Karen Finney, insisted that Mr. Dean had spent money on House races through the final hours, notwithstanding his announcement in the campaign that his top priority was rebuilding state parties, even in longtime Republican states.

Ms. Finney expressed incredulity that Democrats would be going after Democrats in this of all weeks.

"Did he not see that we won?" she said of Mr. Carville. "Did he not read the results? If James and Stan are interested in knowing what the D.N.C. is doing and has done, they can pick up the telephone and give me a call."Mr. Emanuel warred with Mr. Dean over his refusal to provide as much money as Mr. Emanuel said he needed.

He said Wednesday that a favored candidate, Tammy Duckworth, the severely injured Iraq war veteran running for an open Republican seat in Illinois, had lost because the Republicans had spent $1 million on negative advertisements against her in the final weekend and that he did not have the money to respond.

Mr. Carville and Mr. Greenberg have been close to Mr. Emanuel since they worked in the Clinton White House in 1992. Asked about the criticism of the two, Mr. Emanuel said he would offer precisely these two sentences: "More resources brings more seats into play. Full stop."

There was also some lesser blame passing. Mr. Emanuel suggested that Democrats had fallen just short of picking up the seat held by Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, because Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a registered Democrat, had sought re-election on an independent line after losing the Democratic primary. That brought out more Republican votes.

Mr. Greenberg fumbled when asked in a two-part question whether he agreed with some Democrats that a botched joke by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and the White House attack on it might have made the difference in very close races where Democrats lost, like the effort to defeat Representative Heather A. Wilson in New Mexico.

"Bah-bah-bah-bah, let me go to the first question," Mr. Greenberg said haltingly before returning, with prompting, to the original question, allowing that the Kerry episode might have "moved the needle a little bit."

1. Hillary vs. Dean, The Real Story

It's now generally accepted that open warfare has broken out between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean over control of the party.

But readers of NewsMax's Insider Report were the first to learn about the battle almost two years ago – soon after Dean lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in 2004.

As our loyal readers know, this is a much larger battle than Dean vs. Hillary. But the battle lines for control of the Democratic Party – and possible the White House in '08 – are becoming much clearer after the recent midterm elections.

Some insiders note that the Clinton camp has orchestrated media reports crediting Clintonista Rahm Emmanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for the Democrats' success, at the expense of Dean.

Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville went so far as to say Dean should be fired from his chairman job for not sufficiently funding competitive House races, calling his leadership "Rumsfeldian in its incompetence" – as in Donald Rumsfeld.

But way back in June 2005, the Insider Report first disclosed that Clinton was squared off against not only Dean, but also John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Al Gore – the so-called "Gang of Four" – as potential candidates jockeyed to stop Hillary in her quest for the White House.
The Clintons "control the Democratic money machine – and they absolutely despise Dean," we reported.

A few weeks later, the Insider Report divulged: "Each member of the Gang has his own motives. Kennedy is disgusted by the Clintons' moderate politics and he has already endorsed Kerry for 2008. Kerry has his own presidential ambitions. Gore blames his 2000 loss on Hillary, who he says siphoned off key resources to her Senate race. And Dean blames the Clintons for his 2004 campaign woes." And now where does this all lead with Kerry out? Look for Kennedy and Kerry to lean toward Obama and Edwards.

That same issue of the Insider Report told that Edward Klein, author of the book "The Truth About Hillary," had disclosed how Hillary undermined John Kerry, publicly promising to go all out to support his 2004 campaign, but then doing as little as possible.

An October edition of the Insider Report took the story a step further, noting that Kennedy was signaling Democratic activists and donors: Hillary is not the only candidate, so don't throw your support to her yet.

And this past July, the Insider noted that other media outlets were beginning to catch up and had begun reporting that Dean and Clinton were locked in a battle for supremacy within their party.

"Dean supporters are unhappy with Clinton's stand on Iraq and her cautious shift to the center, while at the same time they fear she is too polarizing to win a general election," we reported at the time.

"Clinton supporters question Dean's competence in managing the DNC and believe his left-wing positions will turn off middle- and working-class voters."

The stakes are high: Dean still controls the Democratic Party apparatus – and Hillary wants to wrest control in anticipation of a White House run.The battle continues.

But once again, NewsMax's Insider Report was ahead of the media crowd – and has shown that it will cover what no one else wants to talk about.Will Women Sweep Hillary Into the White House?Hillary Rodham Clinton sure got it right when she announced her candidacy for president while sitting on her living room couch. Her success may very well turn on the decisions of millions of women sitting on their living room couches.

Clinton advisers James Carville and Mark Penn have said they're counting on a women's vote --the "X factor"-- to catapult their client into the White House. They're obviously hoping that a female candidate will get much more support from women and are banking on the "gender gap," the idea, trumpeted by the media and women's organizations, that women believe in liberal policies and will therefore, as rational political actors, support the Democratic Party.

But I have news for Messrs. Carville and Penn: All the gender gap talk notwithstanding, there's no guarantee that Clinton would receive enough votes from women to be elected. I've studied women and women's politics for 20 years, and if there's one thing I know, it's that, except for possibly once in 1996, female voters have not by themselves put anyone in the White House.

If Clinton is going to attract the women she needs, she's probably going to have to do something more than simply have a pair of X chromosomes herself. And much as it pains a feminist like me to say it, a lot of her campaign will have to involve putting her on the couch and analyzing her character and motivation. Again.

In every election, there's a chance that women will be the decisive force that will elect someone who embraces their views. Yet they seem never to have done so, and I've never seen a satisfactory answer as to why. My own theory is that women don't decide elections because they're not rational political actors -- they don't make firm policy commitments and back the candidates who will move society in the direction they want it to go.

Instead, they vote on impulse, and on elusive factors such as personality.With Clinton's candidacy on the horizon, I decided to test my theory by asking a few white, married women -- the key demographic -- what they are up to this time.

If any women were going to be politically aware, I figured, it would be those in the Washington area. So I contacted half a dozen members of the Wednesday Morning Group, a D.C. area organization that provides speakers and programs mostly for stay-at-home moms. (One even told me I had caught her sitting on her living room couch.)

All the women voted in the midterm elections last year and intend to vote in 2008. But how do they decide which lever to pull? My small sampling is admittedly unscientific, but what they told me reveals a lot about why campaigning to women is so tricky.

A 49-year-old former public relations executive in suburban Maryland told me she votes the political agenda she learned from her lefty father. She reads The Washington Post, but there are no books on her bedside table. She counts on her husband to tell her what's in the Nation magazine and on the Web.

A 36-year-old former financial sales executive considers herself an independent, reads only the Style and Weekend sections of The Post and the Marketplace and Personal Journal sections of the Wall Street Journal, and also counts on her husband, a Republican, to tell her what's interesting in the rest of the paper.

A former human rights activist told me that she still reads the New York Times, skims the Economist, and gathers political information from PBS's "News Hour," a local broadcast from the BBC and from her church. Neither the former teacher nor the retired television reporter read any newspapers at all.

There are some constants. Most of the women read People and Real Simple magazines. They all listen to news on the car radio, mostly National Public Radio. And almost all their full-time working husbands consume immeasurably more political information than they do ("He reads 10 times what I do," one told me), reading news magazines and political Web sites and bringing home political information from their jobs. The women gather little information from their almost exclusively female society of other stay-at-home moms.

They all said that after Clinton announced, they were "really excited." "She's been in politics a long time," a woman coincidentally named Hillary said. "She's tough as nails," added another gleefully. Jennifer, meanwhile, was won by Clinton's "combination of soft edges, as a mother and a nurturer and a strong person."

No one focused on any political agenda, policy or program. What seemed to matter to them all was character. Jennifer contrasted herself with her husband, who, while a Democrat, was not so sure he would support Clinton. "He doesn't look at character or personality," she said. "He's very much of an issue/policy person. I look at the whole picture."
Explaining why she did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000 even though she expressed concern over taxes, Hillary said: "I just could not get past the fact that I didn't like the man."

As inattentive as they were to Clinton's policy record, they were knowledgeable about her biography. They saw her as "smart" and determined not to be just another first lady. They were sorry that she had failed in her first foray into national policymaking with her health-care proposal. They understood her withdrawal into the East Wing and party-throwing as a necessary concession to her husband's career needs.

But they were clearly defensive about her decision to stay the course after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "She set herself up in her life," one explained, "to get wherever she wanted to go. That's what men do all the time. . . . When a woman does it, what's wrong with that?"

I had such mixed feelings listening to these women describe their political selves. They're clearly idealistic, want to be good citizens, make an effort to get the information they need. It was hard not to like them. Their delight in seeing a woman so close to real power was palpable. Yet I couldn't escape the fact that they took in little of politics, especially compared with their husbands, that their decision-making seemed impulsive and that their response to Clinton's candidacy was driven to an amazing extent by personality.

They unwittingly confirmed my theory about why women don't decide elections. But that theory is supported by a wealth of statistical information, too.

Women have voted more Democratic than men recently, but since the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, only once has the women's vote arguably been different enough from the men's vote to determine the outcome of a presidential election. In 1980, 1984 and 1988, more women, like men, favored the winning Republican candidate over the losing Democrat.

Geraldine Ferraro's presence on the Democratic ticket in 1984 apparently made little difference. In 1992, more women, like men, favored the winning Democrat over the losing Republican. The men's vote was so divided in 1996 that exit polls show Clinton one percentage point behind among men (a statistical tie), while winning the female vote. In 2004, more women, unlike men, favored the losing Democrat, but by such a small majority (51 percent) that they had no effect on the outcome of the male-driven election.

Since the '96 elections was so close among men, it's fair to say that only in 2000 did women clearly part company with men, voting for Democrat Al Gore in large enough numbers to offset the male votes for Bush -- but the female majorities were not distributed among enough states to carry the electoral college.

Any campaign that needs women to win would have to break the 88-year record of women failing to produce election results that men oppose.

To this day -- as even my D.C. area correspondents seemed to confirm -- women just aren't as interested in politics as men are. The Center for Civic Education recently reported that American women are less likely than men to discuss politics, contribute to campaigns, contact public officials or join a political organization.

About 42 percent of men told University of Michigan researchers last year that "they are 'very interested' in government and public affairs, compared with 34 percent of women."

Worse, women consistently score 10 to 20 percentage points lower than men on studies of political knowledge, regardless of their education or income level. Studies dating to 1997 have shown that fewer women than men can name their senator, or know one First Amendment right. They even know less about the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade than men do.

As a 2006 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press put it, American adults live in "A World of His and Hers." Two million more men than women read either Time or Newsweek; more men listen to radio news and talk radio, read the paper and get news online.

Only broadcast television news plays to more women than men, and a lot of that is TV news magazines and morning shows. Not only do fewer women read the newspaper, but almost half the women surveyed said they "sometimes do not follow international news because of excessive coverage of wars and violence."

So-called liberal women are the majority of swing voters -- those tantalizing independent late deciders -- in every election. While men remained committed to Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush throughout the campaigns, women polled heavily for Democrats Walter F. Mondale, Michael S. Dukakis and John F. Kerry as late as September before settling in to vote Republican or anemically Democratic in November.

So what does all this mean for Hillary Clinton, or any woman who would be president?

First, when it comes to women who vote, the political is the personal. The Wednesday Morning women spoke passionately about Clinton's public and private travails but seemed oddly indifferent to her position on the Iraq war. If the polls continue to reflect male aversion to her beyond the baseline male Republican tilt, Clinton may have to go personal to bring the women home. Maybe she could get a couch on casters.

Unlike the married suburban women she must attract in large numbers, Clinton didn't stay home from work. Remember the "baking cookies" remark? On the other hand, she has had the SOAP opera story of the century with that charismatic, faithless husband. This has made her suffer, something one of the Wednesday women specifically singled out as a reason to support a candidate.

Will she be willing to open that old wound to convince potential female supporters that her policies, such as universal child health care, arise out of her concern for women like them, rather than being just the usual liberal agenda? Worse, if she does play the wronged wife again, does she risk alienating the women who think she should have left her husband long ago?

The second lesson is that elections that turn on the female electorate bear an unfortunate resemblance to a popularity contest. The Republicans have succeeded with women at the polls when they've made Democrats look not just mistaken, but clownish or geeky.

Reagan in blue jeans beat Jimmy Carter in a cardigan.

George H.W. Bush looked like John Wayne next to Dukakis peering over the edge of a tank in a helmet.

And who knows what would have happened if Kerry hadn't donned a wetsuit to go wind-surfing? Even the devil wears Prada. And women know it.

If Clinton is going to stand a chance in 2008, her campaign may have to discredit the Republican nominee. As political scientist Dianne Bystrom has found, it doesn't hurt female candidates when they go negative, and if women are going to make their political decisions based on impulse, then anyone needing their votes is going to have to make sure no one wants to sit with the other guy in the cafeteria. It was illuminating how often the Wednesday women spoke of Clinton's toughness.

A suffering wife and mother whose campaign mysteriously unleashes attacks on her opponents? It's not the current game plan, no doubt. But I'm drawing on the lessons of history. I'd rather promote cheery stories of the gender gap -- but those stories are just a diversion from the hard work of bringing women into the world of governance. Mark my words: Those who do not study women's history are doomed to repeat its failures.

George Soros, the billionaire former hedge fund manager, met with a group of reporters over lunch on Saturday — he paid the check — and offered views on everything from markets to American politics to Bill Gates as a philanthropist.

His own spending on what he calls “civil society” projects is on the rise. “It peaked at $600 million in the mid-90’s,” he said. “I meant to cut back to 300, but I never quite got there.” After stabilizing at about $400 million a year, it will be between $450 million and $500 million this year, Mr. Soros said.

He said he is introducing new projects to promote a common European foreign policy and study the integration of Muslims in 11 European cities.Mr. Soros commended the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for doing good work while avoiding the hostility he had encountered with his efforts to hold governments accountable for spending. “They have chosen public health, which is like apple pie,” he said.

The United States is now recognizing the errors it had made in Iraq, he said, adding, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.” Mr. Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

As for the U.S. 2008 presidential race, Mr. Soros, who gave $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups seeking to defeat President Bush in 2004, said he supported Barack Obama. But he also said he would support Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination.

John McCain, he said, had “compromised far too much with the Bush administration” and was unlikely to win the Republican nomination. And who will win? Mr. Soros said he thinks the leading possibilities are former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

On investing, which made him rich, Mr. Soros said that “hedge funds are the market now,” which makes it much harder to beat the market than when he was a prominent hedge fund manager. He cautioned that the heavy use of debt to leverage up financial transactions — both in hedge funds and in companies bought by private equity funds — could prove damaging when and if the economy stumbles. — Floyd Norris

Posted by Ed, Dickau at 8:14 AM