President Obama and Secretary Clinton: The Complete 60 Minutes Interview (VIDEO)

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Part 2:



For all of you speculating what this means for 2016...do us all a favor, don't.

Look, it's pretty simple if you think about it. The President and Secretary Clinton went through a bruising Primary process that...ironically left the party stronger as a result, going into the 2008 elections. Neither wants things to get quite that nasty again, so the President is going to great lengths to make sure his top Lieutenants, the one's who might run in 2016, get some time in the sun, complete with a very public pat on the back.

Look at Vice President Biden: he cut the Debt Ceiling Deal (though only temporary), he led the commission on guns, he even dropped the hint on the President's position on Marriage Equality (albeit a bit too early). He made sure the world saw him as the "Happy warrior" running back and forth during the Inaugural Parade.

Dude's running. He's totally running.

And all of that time in the spotlight came courtesy of President Obama.

Now, to balance out the ledger, President Obama has to make sure that his other top Lieutenant got a Grade A going away gift, aka a Prime Time lovefest on 60 Minutes. Not a lot of policy discussed there, but right now...if you really look at it, now both Biden and Clinton can both claim the mantle of the inheritor of Barack Obama's legacy, with Barack Obama's blessing. Let the 2016 contest begin...

...but let it begin closer to 2015, okay? We've still got @#$% to do.

Man, someone's really running for President in 2016

A two-fer from Martin O'Malley:

The ratings agency Moody's is threatening to reduce the rating of five states with AAA credit (along with the rating of the federal government) if Congress fails to raise the debt limit in early August. Now the governor of one of those states -- Maryland's Martin O'Malley -- is publicly singling out the Republicans in Congress who are preventing swift action on the debt limit.

"All of this brinksmanship and these threats of the dinosaur wing of the Republican party led by Eric Cantor to drive us needlessly into a default have impacted confidence I think throughout the country," O'Malley told me in a Tuesday interview. "It's impacted consumer confidence, it's impacted investor confidence, it's impacted the confidence of small businesses who are the backbone of this economy and who need to hire again. In that respect it's already had an effect. The closer we get to this deadline, and the more immediate ramifications that has for those of us that are going out into the bond market."

Remember, he also took a big step out of Andrew Cuomo's shadow for 2016.

Someone's running for President in 2016...

At some point I'm going to make a blogpost featuring names of people to know, what their current job is, and where they've got their eye.

One of my entries as going to be: Martin O'Malley, currently Governor of Maryland, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Today's announcement kinda sealed that deal.  After all, another entry would have to be Andrew Cuomo, currently Governor of New York, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.