https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KalquJby0uU
Dear Commons Community,
Hillary Clinton made it official yesterday. She is in the running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016. Her announcement has been long awaited and now the presidential nomination politics for both parties will ratchet up their rhetoric as candidates begin to focus on potential rivals. As reported in the Associated Press:
“Her message will focus on strengthening economic security for the middle class and expanding opportunities for working families. The campaign is portraying her as a “tenacious fighter” who can get results and work with Congress, business and world leaders.
“Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion,” she said in the video.
“So you can do more than just get by. You can get ahead and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong.”
Clinton’s strategy, described ahead of the announcement by two senior advisers who requested anonymity to discuss her plans, has parallels to Obama’s approach in 2012. He framed his re-election as a choice between Democrats focused on the middle class and Republicans who sought to protect the wealthy and return to policies that led the country into recession.
Clinton will face pressure from the progressive wing of her party to adopt a more populist economic message focused on income inequality. Some liberals remain skeptical of Clinton’s close ties to Wall Street donors and the centrist economic policies of her husband’s administration. They have urged her to back tougher financial regulations and tax increases on the wealthy.
“It would do her well electorally to be firmly on the side of average working people who are working harder than ever and still not getting ahead,” said economist Robert Reich, a former labor secretary during the Clinton administration who has known Hillary Clinton for nearly five decades.
The GOP did not wait for her announcement to begin their campaign against her. The party’s chairman, Reince Priebus, has outlined plans for a broad effort to try to undermine her record as secretary of state while arguing that her election would be like giving Obama a “third term.”
Republicans have jumped on Clinton’s use of a personal email account and server while she was secretary of state, as well as her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in his own online video, said Sunday: “We must do better than the Obama-Clinton foreign policy that has damaged relationships with our allies and emboldened our enemies.”
The Republicans will have to do better than email accounts and Benghazi if they want to appeal to the voters beyond the Fox News crowd. And Jeb Bush will have a terrible credibility problem attacking her about foreign policy given his brother’s disastrous legacy.
Good luck, Hillary!
Tony
“Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times” Unfortunately little could be further from the truth … All that has happened since about 2007 was the bail-out of a few banks while at the same time Fannie Mae etc. are still on the brink of collapse and instead of housing we now have an even bigger student loan bubble and an imploding oil/gas fracking industry on our hands. All the while, not the least through Clinton’s role as Secretary of State, the Middle East lies in ruins, failed states are hiding places of growing numbers of terrorists and quantitative easing has so undermined the US currency that it might already have collapsed, had not the European union/ECB done the same, thus letting the two currencies plunge in tandem. All the while, not the least thanks to Clinton, China is making headway politically and militarily. These are all ill omens, but maybe she should preside over the collapse she helped prepare?!