Frank Rich On Lara Logan's Benghazi Hoax, 2016 Presidential Race and More

I was originally going to share this just for the Benghazi hoax analysis, but the excerpt below caught my eye and it's absolutely correct. We need to make sure it's the Democratic Party that takes the populist route.  The Rubinite faction could sink the entire party if they control the messaging.

Frank Rich on the National Circus: CBS's Benghazi Report Was a Hoax, Not a Mistake

"I don't accept some of the premises here, and like all speculation about 2016, it's so hypothetical that we will only look back and laugh at all of it in a few years. If we assume that Hillary Clinton is indeed running in 2016 — itself not certain — we can't have a horse-race narrative in 2013 unless there's some Democrat who could oppose her as Obama did in 2008. But who? No one believes it will be Joe Biden. Andrew Cuomo can't challenge her. Who does that leave on the Democratic bench to make this a contest? Well, why not draft Elizabeth Warren to thicken the plot? She's an enormously appealing, whip-smart champion of populist ideas, from serious banking-financial-regulatory reform to the full spectrum of issues pertaining to economic inequality, that have been slighted (or worse) by the Lawrence Summers–Robert Rubin–Wall Street culture that has dominated policy-making in both the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations. But does Warren show any signs of (or even passing interest in) running for president? No. Could a Massachusetts liberal be an effective national candidate? Probably not. Still, let's hope she does run if only, as everyone says, to galvanize an overdue economic debate. But in truth, that debate is going to come whether Warren runs or not: Populism is just as hot a force, albeit with different parameters, in the GOP base as it is among Democrats. The bigger story of American politics to come has less to do with the presidential horse race than with a pattern that has emerged steadily since the 2008 financial meltdown: The economic grievances that fueled Occupy Wall Street and the tea party are two sides of the same coin, and someone in one party or the other is going to figure out how to harness that crossover political constituency."

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