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For more coverage of Hillary Clinton at Daily Kos, visit the Hillary Writers Circle.
For breaking news, follow First Amendment.
Look for Hillary-friendly open threads and hangouts throughout the day.
Hey everybody! My first HNV today. Lysis asked me to take over the Saturday edition, so here it is.
Let’s start with Hillary’s latest online ad, and it is about drug addiction, and what drug addiction does to our communities.
This is a very good ad because it is cutting and honest about the huge drug and substance abuse problem we are facing as a nation, and it needs to be solved.
“We can’t walk away from these stories. These are our children. These are our young people.”
Hillary ended her California swing yesterday. On Monday she will attend a fundraiser in Washington, DC and on Tuesday she is back on the campaign trail for a rally in Louisville, KY.
For more upcoming scheduled events you can view this site.
Yesterday Hillary attended the opening of her Oakland, CA headquarters with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, and gave a 30 minute speech to 100 enthusiastic volunteers. Later she spoke in front of packed houses at two events, both times introduced by Barbara Boxer and featuring special guests Elizabeth Banks and Cheryl Strayed.
The SF Gate reports:
Clinton draws enthusiastic crowd, slams Trump in Oakland
Hillary Clinton, looking more and more like the Democrats’ nominee for president, brought out enthusiastic crowds Friday in a pair of Oakland campaign events.
The highlight was an afternoon rally at La Escuelita Elementary School, where supporters began lining up early in the morning for a chance to get inside the auditorium for the 4 p.m. appearance.
By the time Clinton hit the stage, about 800 people were in the house, with an additional 500 kept outside by the Oakland fire marshal.
The former secretary of state gave the partisan crowd a full-out fall campaign speech, virtually ignoring her primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and focusing her fire on Donald Trump, who is just about guaranteed the Republican nomination.
“I will do everything I can to make sure the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party never gets near the White House,” Clinton told the crowd.
She slammed Trump for what she said was his suggestion that American wages are too high and for his comments on women’s issues.
“He doesn’t think much of equal pay for women, because he doesn’t think much of women,” she said.
It was a made-for-Oakland event, with Mayor Libby Schaaf and Democratic Assemblymen Rob Bonta of Alameda and Tony Thurmond of Richmond welcoming the crowd and Oakland Raiders punter Marquette King leading the crowd in a loud chant of “Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry.”
Retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced Clinton, promising that the two-term senator from New York would win big in Oakland.
Republicans “are going to have to search hard for any votes for what’s his name,” she said.
“Can you imagine the military and police action in our country,” knocking on doors and pulling undocumented immigrants from their beds? she asked, referring to Trump’s stated plan to find and deport an estimated 11 million immigrants. “He needs to be repudiated,” Clinton said, adding in Spanish, “Basta! Basta!” (“Enough! Enough!”)
Enough, indeed.
Hillary’s “flunky” Elizabeth Warren engaged in Twitter battle with Donald Trump
The high profile Twitter storm between Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump continues, with Trump calling Elizabeth “Goofy Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton’s flunky”.
Politico is on that story:
Elizabeth Warren tweetstorms after Donald Trump labels her "Hillary's flunky" and 'goofy'
Donald Trump on Friday retaliated against Elizabeth Warren on Twitter, sparking a social-media brawl between the pair.
The presumptive Republican nominee fired off a series of tweets three days after the Democratic Massachusetts senator called Trump narcissistic and racist on her own Twitter account.
Later Friday, Warren hit back on Twitter, calling Trumps response "lame."
Fascinating fireworks. Stay tuned for more about this ongoing feud on Twitter. Elizabeth Warren is not “Hillary’s flunky”. Hillary and Elizabeth are great partners, now and after the November election.
Hillary is going after disgusted Republicans ready to bolt from Trump
Hillary’s team has started a concerted effort to go after Republicans who can’t stomach Donald Trump on different fronts.
The NY Times reports:
Hillary Clinton Targets Republicans Turned Off by Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is trying to seize on the turmoil Donald J. Trump’s ascent has caused within the Republican Party, hoping to gain the support of Republican voters and party leaders including former elected officials and retired generals disillusioned by their party’s standard-bearer.
The efforts come after the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, on Thursday said he was “just not ready” to back Mr. Trump, comments the Clinton campaign giddily blasted out in an email and on social media. At the same time, Priorities USA Action, a “super PAC” supporting Mrs. Clinton, intends to reach out to Republican megadonors disillusioned by their party’s presumptive nominee.
Ryan as the House speaker not able to voice that he is backing Trump as the nominee was a big blow to Trump. Ryan is probably the most popular Republican alive today, and for Ryan to refuse to back Trump means that the GOP establishment, with a face to go with it, is not with Trump for the moment.
The campaign expects to assemble a “Republicans for Hillary” group, and Mrs. Clinton has, from her days in the Senate and as secretary of state, cultivated strong relationships with prominent Republicans and their top staff members. Mark Salter, a top adviser to Senator John McCain, this week expressed his support for Mrs. Clinton on Twitter minutes after Mr. Trump clinched his party’s nomination. Mrs. Clinton has also enjoyed a strong relationship with former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a Republican, who described her as “a superb representative of the United States all over the world.”
Trump is toxic to many Republicans who aren’t on the far right but more in the moderate spectrum of the party.
Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who is supporting Mrs. Clinton, said while campaigning with her at a diner in Athens, Ohio, on Tuesday that the suburban women in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati could ultimately decide the November election. “I think educated suburban white women, to be sure, are going to be turned off en masse and there will be more of that,” he said, referring to their opinion of Mr. Trump.
On Friday, President Obama helped in Mrs. Clinton’s effort. “Republican women, voters, are going to have to decide, ‘Is that the guy I feel comfortable with representing me, and what I care about?’” he said of Mr. Trump at a news conference.
The Washington Post has an article that opines that Hillary will be fully exonerated on the email server issue.
Hillary Clinton is going to be exonerated on the email controversy. It won’t matter.
The latest news on the Hillary Clinton email controversy reinforces everything we’ve heard so far on this subject:
Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
...
She would have had to intentionally given classified information to someone without authorization to have it, like David Petraeus did when he showed classified documents to his mistress (and then lied to the FBI about it, by the way). Despite the enormous manpower and time the Justice Department has devoted to this case, there has never been even a suggestion, let alone any evidence, that Clinton did any such thing.
Nothing criminal, nothing even that will have found to break the rules on classified emails. Of course, to Trump and Republicans the upcoming exoneration won’t matter.
But when it comes to the presidential campaign, that isn’t going to matter. Republicans already know what they think: Hillary Clinton is a criminal whose every thought and action is vile and despicable, so of course she broke the law. If the investigation doesn’t show that, it could only be because the investigation was a sham. So they’ll just keep saying that this is a scandal, over and over and over.
Of course they will. But, as they tried so many times before with Whitewater, Vince Foster, Rose Law Firm, and more recently with Benghazi, nothing ever works. This email nothingburger will be more of the same.
Just to be clear: I’m not defending Clinton’s decision to use her own email for work, and house it on a private server. That was a mistake. It violated State Department policy. She shouldn’t have done it. But acknowledging that is very different from saying she broke the law or jeopardized national security. As of now there is zero evidence that she did either.
One of the right-leaning Washington Post writers, Jennifer Rubin, just came out with an article that looks to be giving the November election to Hillary already. Those who know Jennifer Rubin’s writings know that she is anything but Hillary-friendly, but she points out valid reasons why this election is looking very good for Hillary, from the conservative perspective:
This week alone: 10 reasons Hillary Clinton will win
This week, we saw examples of no less than 10 reasons that Hillary Clinton is going to sweep to victory in November:
Rubin first lists a “good enough” economy as a major factor, then goes on
2. Donald Trump is so reckless and scary on economic issues that he scares even Republicans. He bizarrely suggested he would negotiate the sovereign debt of the United States. That is a default and has never been attempted in U.S. history. His recklessness on this is likely a preview of things to come.
3. The GOP is badly divided, if not on the verge of a split. After yesterday, the GOP is hanging together by a thread. It is Politics 101 that the party in turmoil (Democrats in 1980, for example) loses. Already, donors are closing their wallets, and Republicans, including two past presidents and both halves of the 2012 ticket, are refusing to endorse Trump.
Trump has made Republicans scramble for cover. He will be the albatross around the necks of many Democratic candidates, and he’ll continue to make himself look like a buffoon. He can’t help himself.
Trump’s and his team’s tone deafness to the split in the GOP and Trump’s lack of a money operation are listed next, then this:
6. Trump cannot possibly learn in six months how not to appear racist or sexist. When RNC Chairman Reince Priebus lamely says of Trump’s “burrito bowl” gambit that Trump is “trying,” one realizes how far beyond Trump’s capabilities this may be. He has shown no ability to rein in insults and slurs; with Clinton willing to bait him, we can only imagine the insulting comments he will make about her and all women.
Trump is a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic fool, and he’ll continue to offend as many people as he can. It is in his nature.
8. The ads write themselves. Clinton is already using the accusations and claims made by Republicans to attack and ridicule Trump.
9. Clinton knows how to reach out to Republicans. In the Senate she worked well with many Republicans, and her team is reportedly beginning to make introductions to Bush donors. Trump will need to spend a good deal of time and effort merely mending fences with his own party.
10. The media will finally get tough on Trump. Somewhat chastened by the free media time given to Trump and some outlets’ lack of tough questioning, the media is anxious to score points. Conservatives will claim this is liberal bias, but since many of Trump’s critics are themselves very conservative, there may be a newfound appreciation on the right for the MSM’s journalistic skills. Politics does in fact make strange bedfellows.
The ads write themselves for sure. All you use are Trump’s own words, and you have a great ad. Here is Hillary’s latest Trump ad:
Finally, the big Politics headline of the morning over at CNN is that Bernie Sanders leaves the door open to being Hillary’s VP.
Sanders leaves door open to being Clinton's VP
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday he plans to keep fighting for the Democratic nomination all the way to the convention in Philadelphia, but did not slam the door shut on possibly joining Hillary Clinton's ticket.
Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if he would accept a hypothetical offer to be Clinton's running mate, Sanders said he would talk about it with her after the convention.
"Right now, we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination. If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure that we have a progressive platform that the American people will support," Sanders said on "The Situation Room." "Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can talk and see where we go from there."
Uh, yeah, NO. Nothing against the Senator from Vermont here, but VP for Hillary? Let’s get real.
Have a great Saturday, folks. And an awesome weekend.