Mediaboss Marketing

By Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - Democrats' support is softening for Hillary Clinton, their party's presumed 2016 presidential front-runner, with many favoring an independent review of her personal email use when she was secretary of state.

Support for Clinton's candidacy has dropped about 15 percentage points since mid-February among Democrats, with as few as 45 percent saying they would support her in the last week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll. Support from Democrats likely to vote in the party nominating contests has dropped only slightly less, to a low in the mid-50s over the same period.

Even Democrats who said they were not personally swayed one way or another by the email flap said that Clinton could fare worse because of it, if and when she launches her presidential campaign, a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

The polling showed that nearly half of Democratic respondents - 46 percent - agreed there should be an independent review of all of Clinton's emails to ensure she turned over everything that is work-related.

There was also sizable support among Democrats for the Republican-controlled congressional committee's effort to require Clinton to testify about the emails. Forty-one percent said they backed its efforts to force Clinton's testimony.

"Bottom line is if she didn't do anything wrong, she's fine," said North Carolina resident Renetia Lowery, 48, a Democrat and survey respondent.

The online poll of 2,128 adults from March 10 to March 17 showed that Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, were aware of the controversy surrounding Clinton's decision to use her personal email rather than a government account, along with a personal server, when she was the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013.

Clinton has tried to tamp down accusations that she used her personal email account to keep her records from public review, which would support an old political narrative that Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are secretive and seek to play by a different set of rules.

More here:
Many Democrats Want Independent Hillary Clinton Email ...

Story Highlights Women quite positive toward Clinton, men are divided Women have long rated Clinton better than men have Clinton top-rated potential 2016 candidate among women

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Women continue to have a much more positive opinion of Hillary Clinton than men do. Fifty-six percent of women have a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 32% view her unfavorably. Men are evenly divided in their opinions of Clinton.

The results are based on a March 2-4 Gallup poll, conducted as revelations about her use of a private email account to conduct government business were emerging, but before she publicly addressed the issue. Clinton is expected to officially announce her presidential candidacy for the 2016 election next month. Her combination of high familiarity among the general public and more positive than negative favorable ratings puts her in a more advantageous early position regarding her image than any of her potential 2016 rivals.

Clinton owes much of her strong early position among possible 2016 candidates to her appeal to women. This gender difference in her image ratings is not new; Gallup has previously documented wide gender gaps in views of Clinton while she was first lady, U.S. senator, a presidential candidate in 2008, and most recently, secretary of state.

Not only is there a gender gap in Clinton's overall favorable rating, but all major female demographic groups view Clinton more positively than do their male counterparts, including by age, education, race, marital status and partisanship. In nearly every comparison, Clinton's favorable rating is 10 percentage points higher for women than men in the same subgroup. Her net favorable rating -- the percentage who views her positively minus the percentage who views her negatively -- is typically 20 points higher for women than for men who share the same characteristic.

Aside from Republican women, each of these groups of women views Clinton more positively than negatively. But her image is more positive among younger women than older women, among unmarried women than married women, and among nonwhite women than white women, largely reflecting broad partisan differences by subgroup in the U.S. There is only a modest difference in how female college graduates and non-graduates view Clinton.

Women Most Positive Toward Clinton in Potential 2016 Field

Among all major potential 2016 presidential candidates from either party that Gallup tested in the recent poll, Clinton has the highest favorable rating by far (56%) among U.S. women. Joe Biden ranks a distant second among women in overall favorability (41%), followed by Jeb Bush with 32%. Her +24 net favorable rating also is substantially better than any other possible candidate's rating.

The rest is here:
Hillary Clinton Retains Strong Appeal to American Women

Hillary Clinton has described the State Departments handling of the case of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as an important achievement during her time at Foggy Bottom a reminder that our defense of universal human rights is one of Americas greatest sources of strength.

But Chen himself was not so impressed.

Story Continued Below

In his new memoir, the so-called barefoot lawyer, who managed against all odds to flee house arrest and seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2012, writes about feeling extreme pressure from Clinton aides to quickly accept a deal with the Chinese one that he feared would expose him and his family to more abuse. He suggests that at times he felt as if U.S. diplomats had misled him, and he undercuts Clintons assertion in her recent memoir that U.S. officials had done what Chen said he wanted every step of the way.

At least one of the aides involved is disputing Chens recollections, but the memoir could nonetheless put another dent in Clintons armor as she prepares for a 2016 presidential run. The presumptive Democratic frontrunner, already under fire over her use of a private email server during her time at State and her family foundations ties to foreign countries, is expected to make her tenure as Americas top diplomat a key part of her appeal to voters. On Thursday, the Republican National Committee sent out an email drawing attention to Chens claims.

The negotiations over what to do with Chen were happening at a sensitive time Clinton and other U.S. officials were in Beijing for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, a major pillar of the Obama administrations engagement strategy. Although Chen avoids directly criticizing Clinton, he writes that he felt as if her staffers were willing to bend way too far to accommodate Chinese demands.

For example, Chen writes that he felt pressured to go to a Chinese-run hospital to attend to his foot, which he broke as he fled his home, instead of an internationally run hospital where he would have felt safer. He was particularly incensed at Chinese demands that he have no contact with the media during his hospital stay, arguing it violated his freedom of speech. And he was appalled when U.S. officials leaned on him to agree to Chinas demands that he attend a Chinese university instead of New York Universitys campus in Shanghai, which had invited him to study and where he would have felt safer.

Chen also suggests there was an alarming disconnect between State Department diplomats on the ground and the decision-makers back in Washington.

In one passage, Chen alleges that at an April 27, 2012, meeting of the National Security Council with President Barack Obama, it was decided that his case must not hurt U.S.-China relations, and that he should be prevented from having Internet access steps I took to indicate that the White House no longer supported me and that I was to leave the embassy in short order. The NSC press office declined comment Thursday.

Chen, a largely self-taught activist who challenged the Chinese government on forced abortions and other issues, had been imprisoned for several years on trumped-up charges before being placed under a lengthy and unofficial house arrest, where he was constantly harassed and abused by local officials. Above all, Chen wanted Chinas top leaders to investigate his ordeal, punish those responsible for his poor treatment, and ensure that he and his relatives would be safe and free. He writes that he repeated these demands to U.S. officials over and over, but they kept pressing him to accept the deal with the Chinese, saying he might face charges of treason if he didnt move quickly.

Go here to read the rest:
Hillary Clinton and the case of Chen Guangcheng

(Reuters) - In 2008, Hillary Clinton promisedBarackObama, the president-elect, there would be no mystery about who was giving money to her family's globe-circling charities. She made a pledge to publish all the donors on an annual basis to ease concerns that as secretary of state she could be vulnerable to accusations of foreign influence.

At the outset, the Clinton Foundation did indeed publish what they said was a complete list of the names of more than 200,000 donors and has continued to update it. But in a breach of the pledge, the charity's flagship health program, which spends more than all of the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010, Reuters has found.

In response to questions from Reuters, officials at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and the foundation confirmed no complete list of donors to the Clintons' charities has been published since 2010. CHAI was spun off as a separate legal entity that year, but the officials acknowledged it still remains subject to the same disclosure agreement as the foundation.

The finding could renew scrutiny of Clinton's promises of transparency as she prepares to launch her widely expected bid for the White House in the coming weeks. Political opponents and transparency groups have criticized her in recent weeks for her decision first to use a private email address while she was secretary of state and then to delete thousands of emails she labeled private.

CHAI, which is best known for helping to reduce the cost of drugs for people with HIV in the developing world, published a partial donor list for the first time only this year.

CHAI should have published the names during 2010-2013, when Clinton was in office, CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley acknowledged this week. "Not doing so was an oversight which we made up for this year," she told Reuters in an email when asked why it had not published any donor lists until a few weeks ago.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment. Former President Bill Clinton, who also signed on to the agreement with the Obama administration, was traveling and could not be reached for comment, his spokesman said.

STATE DEPARTMENT REVIEW

The Reuters inquiries also raised questions about a second assurance Hillary Clinton made to the Obama administration: that the State Department would be able to review any new or increased contributions to CHAI by foreign governments while she served as the nation's top diplomat. The Clintons said the pledge was intended to defuse accusations that foreign governments might use such donations to earn favors.

See the rest here:
Despite Hillary Clinton Promise, Charity Did Not Disclose Donors: Report

Mel Evans/AP Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses around 3,000 summer camp and out of school time professionals at the American Camp Association and Tri State CAMP conference Thursday, March 19, 2015, in Atlantic City, N.J. Clinton said the nation's political class could use "camps for adults" and too many leaders get backed into partisan corners and won't work together.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. Hillary Rodham Clinton, edging closer to an expected presidential run, came to this down-at-the-heels gambling mecca Thursday to deliver a nostalgic and cheerful address on family, the outdoors and schoolyard fights.

The audience: thousands of professional camp counselors, whose trade group spent an estimated $200,000 to hear from the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

The speech to a regional gathering of the American Camp Association was the last paid appearance on Clintons public calendar, and probably the last she will give before her campaign begins.

Clinton wistfully recalled her late mother and raising her daughter, Chelsea, and cast herself as an approachable person who understood the lives of the counselors in the crowd. She also talked up her love of nature I love the outdoors and her own middle-class upbringing, where she said her mother, Dorothy Rodham, would encourage her to defend herself in schoolyard fights.

No room for cowards in this house, Clinton said of her mothers message to her.

Clinton also playfully referred to the political storm that has engulfed her outside the cavernous ballroom at the Atlantic City Convention Center, as she responds to criticism of her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state.

Referring to Chelseas time at camp decades ago as the worst week, Clinton paused and added, Well, I have had a few bad weeks to chuckles from the audience.

The appearance gave Clinton one last chance to revel in a nonpolitical, mostly adoring crowd. The many youthful attendees were dressed casually in the uniform of counselors: jeans, sneakers and hooded sweatshirts.

Still, with Clintons candidacy on the horizon, the price of Clintons speech caused chatter in the halls. Several counselors wondered if their group had paid Clintons usual fee of $200,000 or more, which would represent about 10 percent of the groups annual budget.

Read the original here:
Hillary Clinton gives likely last paid speech before a 2016 presidential run