Campaign reporter: Hillary’s Silence on ObamaCare
It’s President Obama’s signature achievement, one Hillary Clinton has championed her entire adult life — so why, Byron York asks in The Washington Examiner, has she suddenly gone almost totally silent on ObamaCare? A check of her speech transcripts shows Clinton “almost never talks about ObamaCare. She doesn’t promise to expand it. She doesn’t promise to protect it. She doesn’t extol its benefits. She just doesn’t mention it.” Yes, her Web site promises to expand the unpopular program and provide a public option, “but she hasn’t been saying that on the stump.” Asks York: “If ObamaCare is so great, why isn’t Hillary Clinton talking about it?”
Lefty watch: Sanders’ Army Won’t Forgive Clinton
Donald Trump was right when he told Hillary Clinton during the debate that “Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of by your people” at the Democratic National Committee, writes Michael Tracey in The Daily Beast. And now, “legions of Sanders devotees have refused to embrace her” — a recent poll showed only 51 percent of them plan to vote for her. This points up “long-simmering dissension” among Democrats, “and the fracture, now exposed and widened, can’t be easily fixed or papered over,” he writes. Indeed, for all the talk about GOP turmoil, “it turns out the divisions between Democrats may be far more deep-seated and electorally consequential.” Many hope a Clinton loss “will embolden the organized left wing to seize power in 2020.”
Economist: Cuomo’s Make-or-Break Moment
Gov. Cuomo’s dramatic announcement of a new plan to revamp Penn Station was designed “to show he is a can-do governor who accomplishes things his predecessors could not,” notes Greg David in Crain’s New York Business. And “never has convincing New Yorkers of that premise been more important to Cuomo,” after the indictment of top aides and friends “in a corruption scheme so far-reaching that it raises the question of what has really been going on during his six years in the governor’s office.” Indeed, says David, “it is not possible to overstate the sweeping nature” of those charges. He even sees a possible “repeat of what happened in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie has maintained for three years he knew nothing about the closing of the George Washington Bridge lanes, an untruth being exposed in federal court.”
From the right: The Courage of Colombia’s Voters
“Congratulations are in order for the people of Colombia, who, in a democratic referendum, have rejected the peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces known as FARC,” say the editors of The New York Sun. Though weary after 52 years of conflict, they rightly rejected “a compromise with a nihilistic Marxist movement whose entry into peace talks was one of the most cynical maneuvers in the history of the Americas.” And yet the now-rejected deal “was hailed by nearly every liberal paper and politician in the world (including Hillary Clinton).” Yet the Colombian people “turned out to be smarter than the elites who rule them and are “prepared to risk [more] war over a false peace.”
Historical revelation: Ike Was Reagan’s Real Mentor
A new book has unearthed the surprising ties between Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, who saw him early on as “an important part of rebuilding the GOP” after Barry Goldwater’s 1964 landslide loss. Surprisingly, writes Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard, the moderate Eisenhower “never saw Reagan as too conservative.” So, according to the book by historian Gene Kopelson, Ike “advised Reagan — and not just on foreign affairs and national security policy. His guidance also focused on the practical politics of running for office. Ike was the teacher, Reagan his pupil.” And much of what he learned was heard in his unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign. Turns out Ike — and not FDR — was Reagan’s “true role model, mentor and hero.”
— compiled by Eric Fettmann