For the Record: Hillary vs. Mars
Happy start to the short week, everyone! It’s been a few weeks since we checked in on the overseas betting markets for the presidential election, but Hillary Clinton is still in the lead, followed by Marco Rubio and Donald Trump ... and in 11th place, tied with actual candidate Carly Fiorina, is this guy. That’s right, there’s a 1.2% chance that Andrew Basiago, the time-traveling president of Mars, will be the next leader of the free world. The rest of the field is looking pretty good right about now, eh? Before we find out what the earthling candidates have been up to, we want to remind you to follow the For the Record crew on Twitter (@jmestepa, @joannaallhands, @RGJBrettMcG), and tell your friends to sign up for For the Record in your inbox six days a week.
ANYONE GOT A CAL KING THEY’RE NOT USING?
Hillary Clinton, already locked in to general election mode, vowed Sunday to work with her arch-nemeses – congressional Republicans – to find common ground and form legislative compromises. “Compromise is not a dirty word in a democracy. If you think you have all the answers, you probably belong in some other system,” Clinton said, then she sort of coughed, but the cough sounded an awful lot like the word “socialism,” which was weird. She also unveiled a proposal for a tax credit for those caring for elderly and disabled family members, up to $6,000 annually. So wait … is this $6,000 per person, or what? If this goes through, our spare bedroom is going to look like Charlie’s house from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
THE LATEST BATTLEFRONT IN THE WAR ON THANKSGIVING
Seven GOP rivals – Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum – appeared at the Presidential Family Forum in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday night. During the Thanksgiving-themed event (or maybe it was more like a Friendsgiving … wait, is Frenemiesgiving a thing?), candidates were asked to share moments when they prayed for God’s help or cursed God for their suffering. In marked contrast to whatever your Thanksgiving dinner is going to be like, the seven political adversaries didn’t argue with one another, instead directing their disdain toward President Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, among others. ““You asked … is President Obama an armchair quarterback," Ted Cruz said at one point. "It’s worse than that. The policies he’s advancing are helping the other team." Cool, we’re gonna talk about football at our Thanksgiving, too.
ALL THE TRUMP STUFF YOUR CO-WORKERS ARE TALKING ABOUT
Border wall, check. Surveillance of mosques, check. Insulting his opponents, check. Add one more element to the regular Donald Trump speech checklist: protesters. Three members of Black Lives Matter were in attendance to protest and were escorted out as Trump complained that cameras weren’t pointed at him. “Look at those bloodsuckers back there,” Trump said. “They’re turned around and they’re following the people, right? Because you have a small group of people that made some noise and are being thrown out on their ass.” In other news, reporters competed to see who could suggest the craziest thing that Trump would actually agree with. On ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopolous got Trump to say he wanted to bring back waterboarding, but it was only good for second place for the weekend after NBC got him to say he wanted to create a database of all Muslims in the U.S. Better luck next time, George!
MORE FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
- Carson: Everyone’s stealing my foreign policy ideas. Everyone: Not enough 'nope' in the world to respond to that (The Des Moines Register)
- Trump, Kasich exchange barbs on Twitter. Late-night Trump Twitter is worth staying up for (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- Iowa farmer plows ‘Bernie’ into his field; ballplaying ghosts unimpressed (The Des Moines Register)
O-H! N-O!
Bill Clinton took his First Dude campaign to Columbus, Ohio last week, where he gave a pre-game pep talk to the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes football team. Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer said Clinton’s speech focused on social media – the potential downside (he must be reading Joyce Carol Oates’ tweets) as well as the positive aspects. You see, there were these impoverished fishermen, and then they got the Internet, and now things are good. Or something. Maybe you had to be there. After hearing Bill’s speech, Ohio State went on to lose at home, which ended their 23-game win streak and dropped them out of their top spot in the polls. For the sake of Hillary’s 2016 hopes, the Clintons are no longer on speaking terms.