Let the games begin

Now that we’ve made it out of the off-year doldrums of 2013, things can get a bit more interesting in the next 24 months. Of course, the 2014 midterm elections will be the political story this year with the 2016 race hovering just beneath it.

On the 2016 note, it appears Hillary Clinton is now moving her team into place and setting up the infrastructure to support her eventual run. Report on Hillary from Politico:

Publicly, Clinton insists she’s many months away from a decision about her political future. But a shadow campaign on her behalf has nevertheless been steadily building for the better part of a year — a quiet, intensifying, improvisational effort to lay the groundwork for another White House bid.

Some of the activity has the former first lady’s tacit approval. Some involves outside groups that are operating independently, and at times in competition with one another, to prepare a final career act for the former senator and secretary of state, whose legacy as the most powerful woman in the history of American politics is already secure.

More than two dozen people in her orbit interviewed for this article described a virtual campaign in waiting — a term that itself makes some of Clinton’s supporters bristle — consisting of longtime Clinton loyalists as well as people who worked doggedly to elect her onetime rival Obama.

On the 2014 midterm front, it appears Liz Cheney has abandoned her race to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi. Report from CNN:

Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, she said in a prepared statement Monday morning.

“Serious health issues have recently arisen in our family, and under the circumstances, I have decided to discontinue my campaign,” she said.

Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend, CNN reported late Sunday night.

“Though this campaign stops today, my commitment to keep fighting with you and your families for the fundamental values that have made this nation and Wyoming great will never stop,” she added.

Always more to the story than we know.