Clinton, Trump, Insider, Outsider

The New York Times reports:

In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.

The tone and language of the excerpts clash with the fiery liberal approach she used later in her bitter primary battle with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and could have undermined her candidacy had they become public.

Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country’s economic health.

In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues. Reflecting in 2014 on the rage against political and economic elites that swept the country after the 2008 financial crash, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her family’s rising wealth had made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class.

Gold for Trump, right?  Not exactly.

In 2013, Trump wrote:

I think we've all become aware of the fact that our cultures and economics are intertwined. It's a complex mosaic that cannot be approached with a simple formula for the correct pattern to emerge. In many ways, we are in unchartered waters.

The good news, in one respect, is that what is done affects us all. There won't be any winners or losers as this is not a competition. It's a time for working together for the best of all involved. Never before has the phrase "we're all in this together" had more resonance or relevance.

My concern is that the negligence of a few will adversely affect the majority. I've long been a believer in the "look at the solution, not the problem" theory. In this case, the solution is clear. We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability.

The Rollout

At Time, Mark Halperin lists 20 ways in which the Ryan rollout demonstrated technical skill by Team Romney.  Here are the first five:

1. The choice and the timing of its announcement was a kept a secret up until the last minute, allowing the campaign to control the rollout.
2. The announcement event was well staged.
3. The optics of the Romneys and Ryans together are very good.
4. The talking points intended to smooth over rough spots (such as policy disagreements between the top and bottom of the ticket) were carefully written in advance.
5. Boston had a thought-out pushback on the Medicare issue – raising ObamaCare’s Medicare cuts – and made sure all surrogates were ready to make the same case.

The Des Moines Register reports that not everything went smoothly at the Iowa State Fair:

Frank Cordaro, a member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a liberal advocacy group, stood near the platform as Ryan spoke and repeatedly shouted, “Stop the war on the common good.”

Cordaro, a retired Catholic priest, has been arrested many times over the years at anti-war demonstrations. Cordaro has most recently been detained during Occupy Wall Street protests.
After the speech, his arm was bleeding from a cut he said he sustained as the crowd jostled him. Some people who filed by him as they left accused him of being rude.

“When Jesus went to the temple, he was rude, too,” he said.

A police officer later shoved Ross Grooters, 38, a CCI member from Pleasant Hill, down the sidewalk and away from the stage.

Grooters’ exit came shortly after another CCI member was escorted out of the area shouting, “Stop the war on the poor,” after she had tried to climb the stage.

Crossroads GPS Hits Obama, Warren ... and OWS

Crossroads GPS has been going after Democratic senators. Now, Sean Sullivan writes at National Journal:

The GOP-aligned super PAC [sic, it's a 501(c)(4)] Crossroads GPS is launching a wave of new television ads against three of this cycle's most vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbents and two of the party's strongest recruits.

In total, $1.8 million dollars is being spent over two weeks on the ads, which attack Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., as well as former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine and consumer advocate and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren.

...

The ads against McCaskill, Tester, Nelson and Kaine use the same formula: tie the incumbents to President Obama. While each spot is different, the message is the same: a vote for them is a vote for the president.

The most interesting spot is the one running in Massachusetts against Warren. That ad seeks to paint Warren as an extremist, tying her to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which the ad portrays in a violent and otherwise negative light.

Warren has embraced the movement, and the state Republican Party has been hitting her over it, releasing daily "incident reports" about negative news related to the protests.

Occupy Wall Street is still in its nascent stage, so it's not yet clear who the movement will ultimately be received by the public. But the results of a recent Quinnipiac poll illustrate some of the perils of aligning oneself too closely with the movement: 30 percent of voters view the movement favorably, a 39 percent plurality view it unfavorably, and an additional 30 percent said they have not heard enough to form an opinion.

Also at National Journal, Reid Wilson writes:

Here's what they're spending in two of those states, Virginia and Massachusetts, according to several Democratic sources tracking the buys:

Massachusetts
Springfield: $21,325, or approximately 159 gross ratings points
Boston: $165,200, 207 points
Providence: $50,499, 212 points
Albany: $1,106, 7 points.

Virginia
Richmond: $33,375, 303 points
Roanoke: $32,950, 397 points
Washington: $180,875, 213 points
Norfolk: $49,345, 366 points

So, not the world's largest ad buys, and nowhere close to the most significant expenditures we're likely to see before Election Day next year. But these are hardly the tiny pittances some outside groups purchase in order to generate a lot of earned media. Voters will see these ads an average of two or three times each, and for a blank canvass, that's significant.

Why OWS is not The Tea Party

Insiders have a tough time tapping into outsiderism. Jonah Goldberg explains why President Obama cannot go far in co-opting the Occupy Wall Street movement:

If Occupy Wall Street is a sincere, organic, grassroots movement for radical change and overturning the status quo, it can't be 100 percent behind the guy who's been running the country for the last three years.

Moreover, Democrats had near total control of the government for Obama's first two years. Together, Obama and congressional Democrats already got their Wall Street and student-loan reforms, their health-care overhaul, and a huge stimulus. And yet Occupy Wall Street is still furious with the political status quo. Does anyone believe Obama can both run on his record and co-opt the Occupy Wall Streeters?

A "political hip-hop artist" who goes by the name "Immortal Technique" summarizes the view of many OWSers. "We're willing to put [Obama's] second term on the altar of democracy and sacrifice it if we need to," I.T. told Rawstory.com, "to send a message to the rest of the world saying, 'If you promise us change, and then you deliver nothing but the same, if you do these little superficial changes to pacify the people, to placate people, then you expose yourself.'"

...

The tea parties had an easy time of it in 2009 because there was no one in power to defend and no compromises required. If the financial crisis had hit in 2006, the emergence of anything like the tea party would have torn the GOP apart. But in 2009, with Bush gone, Democrats running the show, and Obama championing a program that made George W. Bush look like Calvin Coolidge (praise be upon him), there was nothing holding back the tea parties.

For Occupy Wall Street to enjoy similar freedom, it can't be hobbled by having to defend the most powerful and important politician in America. You can't declare war with the status quo and support the chief author of the status quo at the same time. Similarly, you can't run for re-election and be joined at the hip with fringe revolutionaries.

If it were possible to buy stock in Occupy Wall Street, shareholders would be doing everything they could for a Republican victory in 2012. Only then will you see Democratic leaders and Immortal Technique fans alike, locked arm in arm, in united opposition to the Powers that Be.