Free Republic

The early days of American political campaigns are always marked by a certain pantomime absurdity, but one could be forgiven nevertheless for wondering whether Hillary Clinton’s confused, staccato launch has been especially daffy. For an event that has been at least six years in the making, last Sunday’s confirmation was unusually schizophrenic and almost entirely inchoate. In the morning, we were told that Clinton would be demonstrating her tech savvy by announcing with a video and a tweet. Instead, we got an insipid e-mail from an aide. In the evening, we were informed that Clinton would be driving across the...

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee said Thursday on CNN that he's running for the Democratic nomination for president, just a week after announcing he formed an exploratory committee, his most definitive statement he's made toward formalizing a 2016 campaign. "Yes, that's why I'm running. Because I feel strong about where we're going as a country," Chafee told CNN's "New Day" on Thursday, when asked why he's been so critical of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Chafee was asked by CNN's John Berman in the context of having not formally declared his presidential campaign. Chafee spokeswoman Debbie Rich said Chafee did...

A source with knowledge of Hillary Clinton's plans has confirmed that she will officially announce her 2016 presidential bid on Saturday or Sunday. This will be imminently followed by campaign travel. A spokesperson for Clinton's campaign team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Clinton has long been expected to enter the 2016 race. Polls show her well ahead of all her likely Democratic and Republican rivals. She has been ramping up her presidential preparations including leasing office space for a headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and hiring key staffers. On Tuesday, CNN reported Clinton's...

George Stephanopoulos was one of the leading members of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign and worked in the Clinton administration before turning "journalist." In 2012, he injected the birth-control-pill issue into the 2012 presidential election debate to create the illusion of a GOP "War on Women." The objective may have been to help create camaraderie among women to benefit Hillary. Now, it seems that he is doing it again. Out of the clear blue, he pounded Mike Pence on signing a bill that many states have. The issue this time is LGBT. Is it possible that Hillary is going to...

(Reuters) - Hillaryclinton.org bears the likely Democratic presidential candidate's name, but she would not want supporters to go there: some cyber security experts said this week the site contains malicious software. The site is registered, not to Clinton, but to an administrator in the Cayman Islands. Its existence underscores the challenge 2016 U.S. presidential hopefuls will face in trying to control their digital brands, more important than ever before as voters increasingly turn to the Internet to learn more about candidates. An examination by Reuters of domains including the full names of eight Republican and four Democratic hopefuls, ending in...

There doesn't appear to be anything Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) can say to stop the questions about her presidential ambitions. "You didn't think you'd get away with this interview without me asking point-blank: Are you going to run for president?" the "Today" show's Savannah Guthrie asked Warren on Tuesday morning. "No. I'm not running and I'm not going to run," Warren said. Guthrie pressed Warren. "I'm not running. I'm not running," the senator insisted. Her initial reply is almost identical to what she said the day before, according to The New York Observer. Warren visited a Manhattan bookstore to promote...

Taxpayers abandoned his state in droves during his tenure as governor, but that’s not dampening the presidential aspirations of Martin O’Malley. In 2014, his final year in office as governor, Maryland had the second-highest foreclosure rate in the nation. Now he wants to ride this embarrassing record to the White House. At the Brookings Institution in March, O’Malley test-drove some campaign rhetoric: “Behind all of our data, there are people, living their lives, shouldering their struggles. They deserve a government that works.” Unfortunately, in the state O’Malley governed for eight years, he gave deserving Marylanders anything but a state government...

Incensed that Republicans want to abolish Obamacare and that the “billionaire class wants more and more for themselves and less for working families,”  socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont barnstormed the Bay Area with a spate of speeches and interviews signaling a possible 2016 presidential run. “If you go to almost any state in this country, including the most conservative, and you ask them if it makes sense to give tax breaks to billionaires while making cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and education, they will say ‘no,'” Sanders said on Monday in San Francisco.

Elizabeth Warren Gives Presidential Podium a Test Run BY DANIEL HALPER Today in Massachusetts, at a ceremony for the the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, Senator Elizabeth Warren borrowed President Obama's lectern for a bit. Behind the lectern, Warren looked almost presidential: Many have called for Warren to enter the presidential race. This image, of her speaking behind the presidential lectern, may increase calls for her to challenge Hillary Clinton. In her remarks, Warren shared a story about how she told Kennedy to show some leadership, not just vote. Watch here:

Hillary Clinton needs to make a speech. No, not another in her long string of paid appearances where she has been pulling down some $200,000 to $300,000 a whack to flog away at the phony war on women, income inequality or the minimum wage. She needs go on television and level with the American people about the email scandal during her tenure as secretary of state that is eating away at her character and her candidacy.

When Hillary Clinton formally announces her presidential bid–likely in the next month–some of her supporters would prefer that Bill Clinton not be by her side because his “unnecessary baggage” may overshadow her once again.According to a Politico report, “another source of disagreement among Clinton supporters is what role Bill Clinton should play on announcement day.”“Longtime Clinton supporters” reportedly “said Bill Clinton’s presence would confuse Hillary’s message.” One operative told the outlet, “everyone knows who her family is, she doesn’t have to introduce them to the public… It should just be her. It should be her moment and Bill could overshadow...

California governor Jerry Brown said, "Yes, I would" run for president if I were ten years younger. He made the remarks this morning to NBC: Video at source

Sure, he’s a bit of an eccentric. He ran for the White House as a sitting vice president and lost. His finances are complex, his cable news venture failed, and his storybook marriage ended in divorce long ago. But he’s a single-issue candidate, and it just happens to be an issue that appeals to progressives perhaps more than any other. What’s more, the Draft Al Gore movement had some influential backers in the progressive community. “Gore cares enough about what comes next that he literally titled his last book The Future,” wrote Vox.com founder Ezra Klein. “But if he is...

How's this for some political arithmetic: Take a shallower-than-usual Democratic bench for 2016, hypothetically devalue a leading candidate due to an e-mail scandal, then toss in a retro candidate who lost one of the most controversial elections in history and you have the darkest of dark horse possibilities: Al Gore for president. The former vice president and 2000 Democratic presidential nominee is headed to Iowa in May for a climate change event, and these days, that's all it takes to fuel speculation that he may be considering another presidential run. At least, according to Ezra Klein, formerly of The Washington...

On the day after Hillary Clinton went on “60 Minutes” to hide the lies of her husband — 21 years ago — I rode knee-to-knee with her in a small plane and listened to her rehearse her war strategy: “Pound the Republican attack machine and blame the press.” The events of the past week have confirmed a nagging fear: Those of us who’d hoped the controlling, deceptive, defensive Clinton of years past had grown into a more mature kind of leader are wrong. She has reacted to a series of legitimate press reports raising serious questions about her use of...

In 2013, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza posed a question: "If not Hillary Clinton in 2016, then who?" That's a question that Democrats may have to begrudgingly ask themselves in the coming weeks, as a New York Times story about Clinton's email use during her time as secretary of state—compounded with earlier reporting on the Clinton Foundation—roil Clintonland. [Snip] But Democrats with wandering eyes may find themselves in a very tough spot: The window for other Democrats to jump into the race is quickly closing.

In a sign of the growing pressure Hillary Clinton faces from the left, the Working Families Party is considering backing the movement to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for President, the Daily News has learned. One person said the effort was not so much a bid to get the Massachusetts senator to run but to “Warrenize Hillary” by pushing her to adopt more liberal policies. At a meeting of the WFP’s advisory council last week, executive committee members wanted to bring the idea to a vote, sources said. Those pushing to publicly back Warren — who has said she...

Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he has not ruled out launching a presidential bid in 2016, maintaining he's been too busy to give the prospect any thought. Asked by "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd if he'd consider another run, the 2004 Democratic nominee said he can think of "no scenario whatsoever" where he would launch another bid. "I haven't thought about it and I'm, as you can tell, pretty busy," he said, chuckling, during a trip to Germany this weekend meeting foreign leaders at the Munich Security Conference. Pressed if he'd...

Other than being an elderly, unaccomplished crone, I mean. If you are wondering who the delectable young things are that Bill Clinton has latched onto like a lamprey eel, let me introduce you to “Barbie Girl” and “Ava Adora.” What do they do for a living? Barbie Girl starred in an HBO reality series called “Cathouse,” filmed at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada where she and Ava Adora are employees. How does this matter? Britain’s Prince Andrew is embroiled in a sex scandal. He has been accused of paying to have sex with a 17 year old girl (Thank...

A new political startup has studied the potential 2016 presidential field—and those who donate to them. Researchers at Stanford University started Crowdpac, a website that not only analyzes a candidate’s voting record and statements but their history of political donations as well. The founders of Crowdpac say that combining these factors provides a more accurate picture of a candidate’s true political philosophy, especially when some potential candidates (such as Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson) never have held office and thus have no voting record to judge. They utilized an algorithm to examine the money each candidate gave and received. “Our...