It’s been a while since Bleeding Heartland dedicated a thread to the potential 2016 presidential candidates. Please share any comments related to the next Iowa caucus campaign in this thread. Lots of links on various Democratic and Republican contenders are after the jump.

DEMOCRATS

The Democratic presidential field is frozen until former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes up her mind. She didn’t tip her hand during an appearance on The Daily Show last week to promote her new book. Speaking on CNN today, former President Bill Clinton said his wife needs more time to consider another presidential bid.

“We’ve reached a point in our life when we think you really shouldn’t run for office if you don’t have a clear idea of what you can do and a unique contribution you can make and you can outline that,” Clinton added. “Now that the book is done, she wants time to think about that and work through it. I think so much of politics is background noise, and we don’t need the background noise anymore.”

It’s worth noting that none of the Democrats who ran for president in 2008 officially announced their candidacies before the 2006 midterm elections.

If Clinton runs, I don’t expect any serious competition on the Democratic side, but at least one Clinton insider disagrees.

The top adviser to the super PAC Ready for Hillary believes the former secretary of state needs to campaign hard in Iowa if she runs in 2016 – but sees a defeat there, unlikely as that appears now, as potentially less damaging than it was six years ago. […]

“I think she should compete everywhere,” [longtime Clinton friend Craig] Smith said during the interview at a diner in Midtown Manhattan, when asked whether Clinton should handle the Hawkeye State differently this time. “There are delegates everywhere – we need them all.”

And what would a loss there mean this time around?

“I don’t think it would be as damaging as it was in 2008, just because I think in 2008 they hadn’t prepared for what comes next,” he said, referring to the lack of caucus organizing in other states.

But he added, “I still think she should [campaign] hard and heavy there.” His comments echo the sentiment among a number of Democrats who believe she needs to campaign as if she’s the challenger as opposed to the runaway front-runner. […]

Still, Smith rejects the idea that there’s a coronation at work.

“Anybody who thinks there’s inevitability in our party forgot 2008 very quickly,” he said. “There’s going to be a primary. Lord knows how many people are going to be in it. But you know, I think voters want to see somebody who’s going to work for it.”

Ready for Hillary has been busy compiling a detailed list of supporters that it intends to sell to an eventual Clinton campaign. That’s been the group’s goal for the past 18 months, a period during which it survived early questions about its work and went on to earn support from a number of top Clinton advisers.

Anyone associated with “Ready for Hillary” (a total waste of time in my opinion) has reason to assert that the Democratic primaries won’t be a cake walk. Doing so adds value to the database Ready for Hillary will sell in a year or two.

Assuming Clinton runs and wins the Democratic nomination, Republicans have a new angle from which to attack: her comments last month about being “dead broke” and in debt when Bill Clinton’s presidency ended. Conservatives will paint Hillary as being out of touch with the reality facing millions of Americans who really are broke, or live paycheck to paycheck. That argument may not have legs, since the Republican candidates for president will all support economic and fiscal policies that are bad for working-class people. Still, she should avoid speaking in those terms again. On paper, the Clintons may have been in debt in 2000 and 2001, but they never needed to worry about a roof over their heads or where the next meal was coming from.

I agree completely with Bill Scher that it’s “fantasy” to imagine Senator Elizabeth Warren would run for president against Clinton.

Ditto for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who made headlines last week by getting to the left of the Obama administration on the unaccompanied immigrant children who have entered the U.S. from Mexico. It makes perfect sense for O’Malley to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign, in case Clinton doesn’t run. That doesn’t mean this loyal Clinton surrogate from 2008 (even after Barack Obama won the Maryland primary) would campaign against Hillary.

O’Malley is young enough to wait another cycle or two to run for president. The same can’t be said for Vice President Joe Biden. Numerous polls have shown him way behind Clinton among Democratic voters, but if he wants another shot at the presidency, it’s now or never. The latest issue of The New Yorker magazine includes a long piece by Evan Osnos on “The Biden Agenda.” For what it’s worth, President Barack Obama thinks Biden would be a “superb” president.

REPUBLICANS

Two likely Republican presidential candidates in 2016 were in Iowa during the past few days. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie headlined a fundraiser for Governor Terry Branstad in Davenport. C-SPAN posted video of Christie’s speech at the event. I’m a skeptic that Christie can do well in the Iowa caucuses. He’s on the wrong side of too many issues for social conservatives, and I don’t feel he can dominate among establishment Republicans anymore. New Jersey journalist Charles Stile noted that prominent Iowa GOP donor Gary Kirke is no longer high on Christie. In 2011, Kirke and several other Iowa Republicans from the party’s “business” wing flew to New Jersey to urge Christie to run for president.

Christie can do all the pandering he wants in Iowa (for instance, telling voters he supported the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling). But that won’t make up for his past statements about climate change, reappointing a liberal state Supreme Court judge, his failure to go to the mat defending a same-sex marriage ban, or his decision to sign a “DREAM Act” for some undocumented immigrants in New Jersey and a bill banning so-called “gay conversion” therapy for teenagers.

If Christie makes a real effort to win the Iowa caucuses, prominent social conservatives will declare all-out war. Syndicated talk radio host Steve Deace tweeted last week, “Just to be clear, I’m not voting for someone like @GovChristie who criminalizes Christianity for dog catcher, let alone POTUS. Thanks!” Later, Deace added, “Talking to conservatives in IA, NYC, and DC this week, I’ve never seen more hostility to a potential GOP POTUS candidate than @GovChristie.” These people don’t care if national polls indicate that Christie is more electable than some other Republicans. They see him as a traitor.

As for Christie’s potential economic message, he told some big Republican donors last week that he’s for entitlement reform and a more business-friendly tax code that would encourage companies to bring money back to the U.S. We’ve heard all that before, and it’s not the most crowd-pleasing set of ideas.

Texas Governor Rick Perry was back in Iowa over the weekend. You can watch part of his speech to the North Iowa Conservative Dinner in Algona here. Several people who attended spoke highly of the remarks. At a separate event, Perry promised that his state would mobilize the National Guard to secure the southern border if the federal government fails to do so. By early 2016, we’ll know whether that was just cheap talk.

Earlier this month, Perry got the national press talking by picking a fight with U.S. Senator Rand Paul over foreign policy. Excerpt:

As a veteran, and as a governor who has supported Texas National Guard deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can understand the emotions behind isolationism. Many people are tired of war, and the urge to pull back is a natural, human reaction. Unfortunately, we live in a world where isolationist policies would only endanger our national security even further.

That’s why it’s disheartening to hear fellow Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), suggest that our nation should ignore what’s happening in Iraq. The main problem with this argument is that it means ignoring the profound threat that the group now calling itself the Islamic State poses to the United States and the world. […]

Reagan identified Soviet communism as an existential threat to our national security and Western values, and he confronted this threat in every theater. Today, we count his many actions as critical to the ultimate defeat of the Soviet Union and the freeing of hundreds of millions from tyranny.

At the time, though, there were those who said that Reagan’s policies would push the Soviets to war. These voices instead promoted accommodation and timidity in the face of Soviet advancement as the surest path to peace. This, sadly, is the same policy of inaction that Paul advocates today.

In the face of the advancement of the Islamic State, Paul and others suggest the best approach to this 21st-century threat is to do next to nothing. I personally don’t believe in a wait-and-see foreign policy for the United States. Neither would Reagan.

Reagan led proudly from the front, not from behind, and when he drew a “red line,” the world knew exactly what that meant.

Paul is drawing his own red line along the water’s edge, creating a giant moat where superpowers can retire from the world.

Three days later, Paul shot back with his own op-ed declaring Perry to be “dead wrong.”

There are many things I like about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, including his stance on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. But apparently his new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.

There are obviously many important events going on in the world right now, but with 60,000 foreign children streaming across the Texas border, I am surprised Governor Perry has apparently still found time to mischaracterize and attack my foreign policy. […]

Unlike Perry, I oppose sending American troops back into Iraq. After a decade of the United States training the Iraq’s military, when confronted by the enemy, the Iraqis dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms and hid. Our soldiers’ hard work and sacrifice should be worth more than that. Our military is too good for that.

I ask Governor Perry: How many Americans should send their sons or daughters to die for a foreign country-a nation the Iraqis won’t defend for themselves? How many Texan mothers and fathers will Governor Perry ask to send their children to fight in Iraq? […]

The let’s-intervene-and-consider-the-consequences-later crowd left us with more than 4,000 Americans dead, over 2 million refugees and trillions of dollars in debt. Anytime someone advocates sending our sons and daughters to war, questions about precise objectives, effective methods and an exit strategy must be thoughtfully answered. America deserves this. Our military certainly deserves this.

Tough talk like Perry’s might inspire some for the moment, but when bombast becomes policy it can have long and disastrous consequences. It is vitally important that we remember past mistakes so that we learn from them. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News tells Dick Cheney that “history has proven that you got it wrong” on Iraq, it is a very important lesson-we must remember that history so we don’t repeat it.

Perry seems entirely comfortable repeating the history, the rhetoric and presumably, the mistakes.

Paul’s next trip to Iowa is scheduled for early August, when he will raise money for Representative Steve King.

The latest Iowa poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register found no one clearly leading the GOP pack.

The Republicans with the highest favorability ratings were Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (56 percent), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (50 percent), then Perry (49 percent), according to the May 27-30 survey of 400 likely primarygoers. Next were U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (46 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (44 percent), U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida (43 percent), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (42 percent), former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (41 percent), U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (38 percent), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (37 percent) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (35 percent).

Since the May survey, Rubio, Jindal, Santorum, Paul and Christie have been in Iowa, working on bolstering their image while campaigning for Iowa candidates and giving speeches.

Final note: my early guess on the 2016 Iowa Republican caucus-winner is still Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Rand Paul’s 2016 Senate re-election committee has been running extensive web ads recently focusing on his pro-life stand. The ads are two minutes long and feature excerpts from various speeches by Paul with visuals of babies and ultrasound images as well as of the candidate.

SECOND UPDATE: While he’s in Iowa, Paul will headline a fundraiser in Iowa City for Mariannette Miller-Meeks, GOP nominee in Iowa’s second Congressional district.