This is not only major, it's no surprise.
Hillary's crashing on multiple fronts. And it's still early!
At Politico, "Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals: Campaign targets unenthusiastic donors on the party’s left":
Hillary Clinton’s allies are working to win over unenthusiastic rich liberals by pitting her against the Koch brothers and prospective GOP rivals rather than more progressive Democrats, according to a draft of a secret memo obtained by POLITICO.Heh, when leftist big-money hypocrites are worried about forking over big money to Hillary, you know something's not right in leftist la-la land.
The memo was prepared for Clinton enforcer David Brock ahead of a major donor meeting in April in San Francisco. But the concerns it reveals about liberal donors’ coolness toward her presidential candidacy — with some even holding out hope for a robust primary challenge from the left — are just as acute today, Clinton allies say.
Winning over such donors is seen as critical to Clinton’s White House prospects.
The Clinton forces are counting on a constellation of allied outside groups to raise as much as $500 million to take on a Republican big-money machine that has been raking in cash from dozens of super-rich and highly engaged partisans. By contrast, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to collect million-dollar checks.
Part of the donors’ reluctance stems from liberal queasiness about the expanding role of big money in politics since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. But there’s also some discomfort with Clinton, the former New York senator and secretary of state, who is seen as too hawkish on foreign policy and insufficiently progressive on key issues like fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of big money in politics. Additionally, Democratic finance operatives say, efforts to rustle up seven-figure checks are suffering from a lack of a single, unifying enemy on the right.
All those concerns are addressed in the Brock memo, which appears to have been drafted in preparation for his appearance at the annual spring meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a major liberal donor club — in April in San Francisco. The memo is written as a question-and-answer exchange between Brock and Democracy Alliance donors.
The memo suggests that Brock, who has built a fleet of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Clinton, is taking a conciliatory approach to assuage donors’ concerns — conceding she’s not as liberal as some donors wish but emphasizing her progressiveness in public service and minimizing the prospects of a vigorous Democratic primary.
“You say the Kochs represent all that is bad in this broken system, yet our presumptive nominee is in the pocket of big Wall Street banks,” begins one of the memo’s hypothetical donor questions. “Aren’t we going to have a hard time going after the Kochs’ big money when some could argue that Sec. Clinton is bank rolled by Wall Street and therefore there is a pox on both our houses?”
The answer Brock should give, according to the memo: “It is no secret that Sec. Clinton is fair-left and not far-left. I think it is safe to say that there will be a dramatic difference between Sec. Clinton and whoever is the Republican opponent. She has spent a lifetime advocating for women and children and fighting for the middle class and there is not one GOP candidate who has that record.”
Brock did not dispute the authenticity of the memo, which leaves a pair of questions about the internal politics of the Clinton big-money effort unanswered. But he declined to comment on the memo, or whether it reflected his fundraising approach or his presentation at the Democracy Alliance gathering, which was closed to the news media.
The three-day meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a group that includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors and various unions — took place at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel just as Clinton officially launched her campaign.
More.
PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion."
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