Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Updated — Solid reasons to give a Bush-Clinton contest the edge

The Los Angeles Times has an informative piece showing why Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have one clear edge in seeking the presidential nomination from their parties.

Because neither are currently working for any government, they’re free to pile up money using Super PACs as long they don’t say that they are running for president. For Clinton, who for the time being seems to be the only serious contender on the Democratic side, this could be a moot issue until she emerges as the nominee.

For Bush it’s a bigger deal, because as of right now the Republican field is competitive. To his advantage is that the other main contenders all have government jobs.

“Bush did declare he would impose a total cap on how much each donor could contribute, according to the Washington Post. But it wasn’t the $5,000 maximum that those in the race are limited to asking for by law. It was $1 million.”

Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are all prohibited from coordinating with Super PACs. The governors, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, might have state rules prohibiting them from raising money from organizations that do business with their states.

Bush is under no restriction, he believes. The Federal Elections Commission could argue otherwise, but critics contend it doesn’t do that often enough.

UPDATE: Turns out Ted Cruz has proven adept at raising money, at least the Super PACs supporting him have. The Washington Post reports the Super PACs supporting Cruz $31 million in a week.

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Piling On

In an entry on Sept. 4 I quoted a Sound Politics blog writer who opined of Hillary Clinton’s campaign:

Disregard their politics for a minute. They’re efficient, they know what they’re doing, they perform, and they rarely make mistakes. Republicans worrying about the challenges of facing Hillary, Inc. – even with her high negatives – are not just whistling Dixie.

I was in lockstep with Sound Politics in its assessment then. I saw the Clinton campaign getting the endorsement of King County Executive Ron Sims as a brilliant example of a machine that couldn’t lose. I didn’t know if Clinton would beat the Republican nominee, but I had a difficult time seeing what we’re seeing today.

Time’s Karen Tumulty writes how what we’re seeing today came to pass. Ironically, one of them comes because of Mark Penn, who was the subject of another post of mine on Sept. 5. Tumulty pinpoints five mistakes.

As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state’s 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. “How can it possibly be,” Ickes asked, “that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn’t understand proportional allocation?” And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don’t get it.

George Will likens Clinton’s characterization of the Democratic Party results to those who would argue that the New York Yankees should have been world champs in 1960 because they scored more runs over seven games than the Pirates.

Unfortunately, baseball’s rules — pesky nuisances, rules — say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

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