AFL-CIO's Trumka: Hillary Clinton Must Take Position on Trade, Possible We Won't Endorse in 2016

Sen. Bernie Sanders says it's important for rival Hillary Clinton to have an opinion on a proposed trade agreement backed by President Obama.

“I don’t want to be just the party that takes away from Hillary – I want to kick her butt,” said Ms. Aldrich, a longtime Democrat who owns a produce and livestock farm.

“Why can’t we ask Hillary to give up her spot and give it to you?” she added to sustained applause from the room of about 125 people at New England College.

Mr. Sanders barely suppressed a grin.

“I could be wrong, but I suspect she would disagree with you,” he said.

“Hillary Clinton can be for the trade agreement — the president is. She can be against the trade agreement — I am, Elizabeth Warren is, many of us are. I just don’t know how you don’t have an opinion on this enormously important issue, which is her view.”

“Sanders could be 2016’s Eugene McCarthy,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who in the past has advised Bill Clinton. “He is the populist symbol well-known to his supporters. Clinton is the establishment candidate. Sanders is the insurgent. And O’Malley needs money and has to run a traditional campaign and create a constituency. Sanders’ constituency is just waiting to be told the game is on.”

Sanders’ liberal stances make him well-positioned to inherit the Ready for Warren constituency that O’Malley has also tried to court, through off-the-record meetings with enthusiasts of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sanders this week hired Kurt Ehrenberg, who ran the New Hampshire effort to draft Warren into the race, to be his top operative in the Granite State.

Both of Clinton’s challengers are considered bit players, so far, in the drama of the 2016 election. In a recent Iowa poll, Sanders got 15 percent, O’Malley got 3 percent and each trailed Clinton by close to 50 points.

But the moments of contrast and friction between Clinton and her Democratic opponents will be what help to define her as a candidate. Sanders — a clearly defined politician who can tap into a vein of anger in the Democratic Party over hedge funds and big banks in the wake of the financial crisis — is more likely to push her on policy than O’Malley, who so far has played it safe, strategists said.

Insiders familiar with the Clinton campaign’s thinking described it as “frightened” of Sanders — not that he would win the nomination, but that he could damage her with the activist base by challenging her on core progressive positions in debates and make her look like a centrist or corporatist. The source described the campaign as “pleased,” at least, that O’Malley and Sanders will split the anti-Clinton vote. A Clinton spokesman declined to comment.


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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-2016-fearful-bernie-sanders-118346.html?hp=l1_3

“Jim Bob explained to me that Josh inappropriately touched [a victim] while she was asleep,” Hutchens told the magazine. “He said it only happened one time.”

“I did what I thought was right, and obviously it wasn’t,” Hutchens said. “If I had to do it over again, I would have told him immediately I am going to call the hotline and contacted the trooper that worked those cases and have a full report made. I thought I could handle it myself.”

Josh Duggar @joshduggar

Good to catch up with @govjebbush this morning in DC.

9:18 AM - 21 Jan 2015

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Thom Hartmann shares some of bad things we can expect as a result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“The conversation should be about transforming black underclass subculture behavior,” said Clarke, who frequently appears on Fox News. “The discussion must start with addressing the behavior of people who have no respect for authority, who fight with and try to disarm the police, who flee the police, and who engage in other flawed lifestyle choices.”

“Bashing the police is the low-hanging fruit,” the sheriff added. “It is easier to talk about the rare killing of a black male by police because emotion can be exploited for political advantage.”

“It was mentioned that there was a cooperation issue in the black-on-black violence context – but I don’t think I’ve heard the phrase mentioned, ‘blue wall of silence,’” Jeffries said.

“If we’re going to have a conversation about cooperation when someone crosses the line, seems to me to make sense that we also have to deal with what may be another elephant in the room, to use your term,” the lawmaker added.

“First of all, he wasn’t choked to death, not from the report that I had seen out of the grand jury testimony,” Clarke claimed. “Even from the medical examiner’s report, he wasn’t choked to death.”