L A Times Reports
Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech to lawyers and a planned series of town halls, looks increasingly like a presidential candidate.
SAN FRANCISCO — Hillary Rodham Clinton continued her long, slow flirtation with the 2016 presidential campaign Monday, delivering the first in a promised series of speeches on restoring faith in government and other institutions corroded by cynicism.
Speaking before a friendly audience of fellow lawyers, Clinton made voting rights her initial focus, seizing on the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the heart of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act. In writing the 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the law had outlived its usefulness at a time when minority political participation had soared.
Clinton fervently disagreed, citing a number of state efforts to tighten voting requirements that she said would disproportionately harm blacks and Latinos.
"Anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," Clinton said. "Unless the hole opened up by the Supreme Court is fixed ... citizens will be disenfranchised, victimized by the law instead of served by it."
She called on Congress to pass new legislation "preserving fairness and equality" at the ballot box and urged members of the American Bar Assn. to join a campaign to overcome Washington's stubborn gridlock. "Write an op-ed, call a congressman," the former Democratic New York senator exhorted.
Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of State in February, made no mention of the 2016 presidential race, but the contest — and the prospect of her second bid for the White House — was an unspoken subtext throughout her roughly 35-minute speech, which drew nearly 20 TV and still photographers and a small platoon of reporters from across the country.
After lamenting the public's diminished regard for a host of public institutions — among them Congress, the news media, sports heroes and the clergy — Clinton announced a series of campaign-style policy speeches to offer her restorative prescription.
A national security address, set for next month in Philadelphia, will deal with "balance and transparency" more than a decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and speak to an issue that has stirred wide controversy after revelations of the government's extensive personal surveillance. Another speech, to be delivered in the fall, will focus on global leadership and America's standing abroad.
"Trust is the thread that weaves together the social fabric that enables democracy to exist," Clinton said. "When citizens are alienated from their government, democracy suffers."
Clinton appeared in San Francisco to accept the ABA medal for her groundbreaking career in the legal profession and politics. As first lady of Arkansas — and the first female partner at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm — Clinton was chairwoman of an ABA panel on women in the legal profession.
As Clinton weighs another run for president, a small groundswell has built in anticipation. The organization Ready For Hillary, which has attracted a number of major Democratic donors and local volunteers, is working to build a campaign operation poised for instant activation nationwide.
The group Emily's List, which promotes female candidates — chiefly Democrats — is also staging a number of town hall meetings under the title "Madam President." The first was held last week in Iowa, the state that has long kicked off the presidential nominating process, and where Clinton finished a disappointing third in 2008, behind then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen.John Edwards of North Carolina. Other events are planned in the key early-voting states of New Hampshire and Nevada.
Republicans aren't waiting to attack. On Monday, the Republican National Committee released a YouTube video — the first in a series — featuring Clinton's heated testimony before Congress on the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Leaders of the party are also considering whether to bar NBC and CNN from hosting any 2016 GOP presidential primary debates; NBC is planning a Clinton miniseries, and CNN is producing a documentary film about her.
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