POLITICO: …1. The Democratic Party is moving left fast, and she knows she needs to move with it. Clinton’s spiel was slight on specifics (she’ll unveil a series of new economic initiatives in a series of speeches from July to August), but her economic-inequality rhetoric could have been comfortably uttered by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Joseph Stiglitz, Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley…
In 2008, Clinton didn’t want to be cast as a class warrior or a tax-and-spender – and those fears still linger in terms of the general election. But she has embraced the language of grievance, if not the specific policies of the pitchfork left. Here’s why: The numbers of voters identifying themselves as “liberal” is rising fast, up three percentage points from 23 to 26 percent in the last year alone. That’s still smaller than the percentage who self-identify as conservative – but that percentage has plunged five points in the last year, according to an NBC/Wall St. Journal poll released earlier this month…
2. She’s doesn’t really mind that “Obama’s Third Term” talk after all. Clinton has tried to distance herself from President Obama on certain policies (her campaign manager, for example, said Friday that her plan to slow deportations would go even further than the president’s), but Clinton spent a fair amount of time touting the 44th president as a friend and portraying him as a fighter – just like her…(more)
