Donald Trump painted a picture of a dystopian America -- and sold himself as the only one who can fix it.
As he accepted the Republican nomination here Thursday night, Trump delivered tough talk, promising to eradicate crime, build a border wall, defeat ISIS, rejuvenate the economy and prod U.S. allies to step it up or else.
Not quite Ronald Reagan's 'Morning in America'. Most of the analogies I'm reading mention Nixon. I'd be more inclined to go with Mussolini.
Trump channeled Americans' grievances at home and abroad, pinning blame for spikes in violence and drugs on undocumented immigrants, casting the battle on terrorism as one being lost and demanding a return to law and order.
This is what presidential means to Trump. To his critics, it will come off as vacant and dictatorial. But to his backers, it's the very embodiment of they've been thinking, but not feeling welcome by society to say.
[...]
Channeling Richard Nixon, Trump insisted that he'd preside over "a country of law and order." He pledged -- without explaining how he'd fulfill the promise -- that crime would drop as soon as he took office.
There was some masterful psychological manipulation -- if you're weak of mind, that is.
The billionaire proceeded to lay out a dark vision of America: "Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life."
"Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities," he continued. "Many have witnessed this violence personally. Some have even been its victims."
But he positioned himself as the country's singular savior.
"I have a message for all of you," he said. "The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon -- and I mean very soon -- come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored."
A lot of conservatives buy straight into this nebulous scare talk, and far too many Democrats, too. They're the ones who are so terrified that they think Trump can actually get elected this way. In a sense, they're no more intelligent than the angry apes in Cleveland. Here's Frank Luntz to spook them a little more.
"Mark my words," Luntz tweeted, "This speech will put Trump even or ahead of Hillary in polls by Monday, when the Democratic convention begins."
This isn't very bold of Frank despite his nationwide reputation; I predicted the same thing over a week ago. Later today, in a move to blunt this bounce, Hillary Clinton will name her running mate. I'm expecting her to pick Tim Kaine, but she could just as easily go with another milquetoast, Tom Vilsack. Tom Perez still has an outside shot but he's just too far to the left for her. Expect the predictable reaction from the Berners if it's one of the first two, as they gear up for their own doomed-from-the-start insurgency in Philadelphia next week.
In the same week that Roger Ailes was removed at Fox, Il Douche asserts himself as the country's leading merchant of bigotry. Karma, I guess.
More coming; a collection of binary thinkers on both sides of Election 2016.
In the most dramatic, off-script moment in a Republican convention that’s been full of them, the second-place finisher in the party’s contest didn’t endorse the man who bested him—effectively launching his own 2020 presidential bid in the midst of Donald Trump’s effort this year.
He refused to endorse the Republican Party’s nominee, merely congratulating him on winning the nomination and not so much as mentioning Trump’s name thereafter. “We’re fighting,” Cruz told the crowd, “not for one particular candidate or one campaign.”
In November, the Tea Party senator said, “vote your conscience… vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
He did not say that Trump was this man—and the crowd noticed, loudly booing him at various points during the speech. “I appreciate the passion of the New York delegation,” Cruz responded at one point.
Trump himself seemed to notice as well, as he entered the convention hall and took a seat with his family a few minutes before Cruz finished his speech.
The entrance drew raucous applause, as many delegates turned their backs on Cruz to face Trump and cheer him. Trump sat there, stone-faced, as Cruz continued his remarks. Not once during the address did Trump or his family clap.
The Intercept breaks it down with a handful of videos recording the uprising. This is going to cost Ted something dearly at some point, whether in four years as he consolidates his bid for the White House again, or in some circumstance that comes sooner in the Congress. Even Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan played along with the charade of the convention. Ted's going to be on an island somewhere ... with a small gaggle of supporters.
Though his last rally was months ago, there was a familiar feeling in the air Wednesday afternoon at a riverside Cleveland restaurant as the senator held a thank-you event for his supporters. There were familiar faces and familiar, campaign-trail-rhetoric.
Cruz fired up his crowd—and seemed to revel when the restaurant crowd erupted into boos at the mention of Trump. The timing was perfect. “Our party now has a nominee...” the senator began.
Just as Cruz brought up Trump for the first time, the mogul’s private jet—with “TRUMP” emblazoned on its side, clearly visible from the ground—flew into view over the nearby Cuyahoga River.
At the sight of the plane, the crowd started booing so loudly that Cruz nearly had to shout as he cracked a joke about the outburst of disdain toward his party’s presidential nominee.
“That was pretty well orchestrated,” Cruz quipped. He called out to his former campaign manager, Jeff Roe: “Jeff, did you email them to fly the plane right when I said that?”
The afternoon gathering brought the old Cruz crew back together; a number of long-time Cruz staffers were there, including John Drogin, Tyler Norris, Catherine Frazier, and Roe. Other Cruz boosters attended as well, including Wisconsin state Senator Duey Stroebel, Virginia state Senator Dick Black, Rep. Louie Gohmert, and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
[...]
“I don’t know what the future holds,” Cruz began at one point, lingering for a moment on the thought.
His supporters filled the silence.
“2020! 2020!” they shouted.
I have never been able to discern the differences between Cruz and Trump, save for the fact that Trump's people early on in the campaign said that because of his wealth, Hair Furor couldn't be bought off like all the rest of the DC crowd. They appear to be wrong about Trump's income bracket, which is probably why he's been so secretive about his tax bracket, but once again, truth and facts don't deter them. And the conservative Christian bloc fell in line behind Drumpf as well, a demographic Cruz was surely counting on.
The GOP lesson for us this cycle is there is no discounting the motivation of bigotry. And the louder and more strident the hate, the farther it resonates.
So four years away and with a myriad of Clinton failures yet to come, I don't see a Ted Cruz 2020 campaign making up much electoral ground on a Hillary re-election bid. Maybe W Bush is right.
In 203 pages of opinions,
the 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, issued an opinion holding that
Texas’s voter identification law, one of the strictest in the country,
violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
[...]
The bottom line is that the majority of the 5th Circuit has done what
the panel opinion had originally held: there is a remand on the
question whether Texas acted with a discriminatory purpose, but there is
enough evidence of a discriminatory effect so as to render the Texas id
law a Voting Rights Act violation.
BUT, and this is a big but, the remedy is NOT going to be to strike
the Texas voter ID law as a whole, but instead to fashion some kind of
relief that give people who have a reasonable impediment to getting an
id the chance to get one. This might be like the affidavit requirement
just approved yesterday in the Wisconsin case, or something else (like
an indigency exception affidavit). Further, given the timing of the
election, the trial court has to craft some kind of interim relief and
then can figure out a more comprehensive solution after the next
election.
BUT, BUT there is a very strong dissent from the 5th Circuit’s most
conservative members, and that might give Texas a reason to go to the
Supreme Court to try to get this emergency interim relief stayed.
BUT, BUT BUT: the Supreme Court has now lost Justice Scalia, and at
best Texas could hope for only 4 votes to reverse what the 5th Circuit
has done. Indeed, I’m not sure that even Justice Kennedy/Chief Justice
Roberts would be on board. If the court ties, the 5th circuit en banc
decision stands. (There’s also the possibility of an argument that the
interim relief ordered for this election comes too late under the
Purcell Principle, but given that the 5th Circuit acted just within the
soft July 20th deadline the Supreme Court set, I think the plaintiffs
will be safe in this regard).
FINALLY, these kinds of softening devices are not all they are
cracked up to be, and there’s lots of evidence they are not used by lots
of voters who need it. (I discuss this disjunction between theory and
practice in Softening Voter ID Laws Through Litigation: Is it Enough?, Wisconsin Law Review Forward (forthcoming 2016; draft available).
One of the 5th Circuit judges, Judge Higgonson, concurring, has a
footnote reading: “I also disagree with the opposite criticism that this
interbranch engagement ameliorates too little, though that argument is
contributory. See Richard L. Hasen, Softening Voter ID Laws Through Litigation: Is it Enough? ...
This is a win for the plaintiffs, no doubt, but not nearly as good as getting the law thrown out for everyone.
Hasen cautions that attorneys are still pouring over the ruling, and more interpretations/potential 'relief' possibilities are forthcoming from him and others. So we'll update here when that happens.
The Texas Tribune timelines the long and winding legal road to this point.
It's understandable that some of those in attendance at Quicken Loans Arena Tuesday evening were on the edge of their seats; they might very well have had to rush to the toilet at any moment.
A gastrointestinal outbreak that could be norovirus has spread to almost a dozen GOP staffers from California at the Republican National Convention.
The show must go on.
The second night of the 2016 Republican National Convention centered on the GOP disdain for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
While Tuesday’s theme was billed as “Make America Work Again,” almost everyone who appeared on stage offered criticism for Clinton, bashing everything from her email scandal to her accent. A video called “Hil-LIAR-y” played early in the evening, and there was vigorous fault-finding with her resume.
There was far more focus on the contempt for Clinton than on any admiration for Donald Trump, who was formally named the Republican nominee for president earlier in the evening and briefly appeared via video, thanking supporters.
Several of the night’s big-name speakers barely acknowledged Trump, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said Trump would sign Republican-backed bills and fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but little else about the business mogul.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) mentioned Trump only twice during his 10-minute speech, while House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) mentioned the newly minted nominee once.
This was expected. Ryan and McConnell are putting on a brave face, having desensitized their own nausea at the prospect of their majorities in Congress going down with the Trump-tanic in November. And Chris Christie reminded us again that he was once a federal prosecutor, livening up a morose crowd with a mock trial of the Democratic nominee.
“We’re going to present the facts to you, as a jury of her peers, both in this hall and in living rooms around our nation,” the former 2016 presidential candidate said in opening his address to the Cleveland convention Tuesday night.
“I’m going to render a case on the facts against Hillary Rodham Clinton,” he continued.
Christie made the case that Clinton’s character and her record as secretary of state disqualify her for the nation’s top job, specifically accusing her of “ruining Libya,” being a terrorist apologist for not naming an al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria a terrorist group for two years and linking that to the “Missing Girls,” and turning previous words of praise for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against her.
“She fights for the wrong people, she never fights for us,” he said.
As Christie made his "case," delegates on the convention floor periodically broke into chants of “Lock her up, lock her up!”
But it was Ben Carson who went off script and delivered the most searing and Biblical condemnation, pulling out the old "she's the devil in disguise" routine.
In a bizarre, meandering departure from his prepared remarks, Dr. Ben Carson suggested that electing Hillary Clinton would be the same as endorsing the devil himself.
Speaking near the end of Day Two at the Republican National Convention former rival of nominee Donald Trump, Carson brought up Saul Alinksy, the community organizer whose work Hillary Clinton wrote about while at college in Wellesley.
“Her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky,” said Carson. “This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently. Now interestingly enough, let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky: He wrote a book called “Rules for Radicals.” On the dedication page, it acknowledges Lucifer, ‘the original radical who gained his own kingdom.’”
“This is a nation where our founding document the Declaration of Independence talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our creator,” Carson continued. “This is a nation where our pledge of allegiance says we are one nation under God. This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill in our wallet says ‘In God We Trust.’ So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that.”
Carson has been the conduit for evangelical Christians throughout the 2016 cycle and has managed to channel that fervent support to Trump without any examination of the Republican nominee's glaring spiritual shortcomings.
Carson’s riff on Lucifer was not part of his prepared remarks distributed to reporters earlier Tuesday night, nor did it appear on the teleprompter in the arena. But it was not the first time he has mused on a Hillary Clinton-to-Saul Alinksy-to-Satan connection. Just last month, Carson launched into a similar digression a the New York City gathering where conservative evangelicals met with Trump.
When asked by a reporter earlier Tuesday what he planned to talk about in his speech, Carson replied, “Only God knows the answer to that.”
The journalist's request for comment was referred to Carson's deity, but received no reply prior to Ben taking the stage. At least the brain surgeon didn't plagiarize anybody, which was a controversy that arose again during another Trump's speech.
For the second night in a row, a speech given by a member of Donald Trump's family is raising eyebrows for lines previously used elsewhere.
Donald Trump Jr. in his headline address at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland delivered a near-exact repetition of a small part of an American Conservative article written by F.H. Buckley, titled "Trump vs. the New Class."
"Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they're stalled on the ground floor. They're like Soviet-Era Department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers," Trump's son said in his speech Tuesday night.
The line in Buckley's article reads, "Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers."
This is why I don't think Hillary is going to name Julian Castro V-P; because of the prevailing concept of injustice that some crimes simply aren't based on the person who commits them. Castro won't be prosecuted for violating the Hatch Act, you see, just as former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius skated away from the same violation. But like hers, his political career is probably over, and certainly any shot at a promotion. "Clinton-Castro" feeds the repetitious and unfortunate narrative that certain people are above the law. The more common examples of this outrage are the white police officers who shoot or strangle black people to death every week in this country, but those who protest the killings or videotape the encounters are convicted and jailed.
So while last night's RNC spectacle was hyperbolic and overblown, it wasn't a false narrative.
Day 3 will pick it up with V-P nominee Mike Pence, more of Trump's vanquished rivals (Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio), and the speaker most likely to go over the top, Newt Gingrich. But if you decide to watch anything tonight, catch Cruz. He's busy setting himself up for 2020.
Personally I never turn on my teevee for these productions; I just follow the #RNCinCLE Twitter feed. It keeps my own gastric distress to a minimum.
I was more impressed, frankly, when Melania Rickrolled herself.
"He will never, ever give up. And most importantly he will never, ever, let you down."
I'm sure he'll never run around or "dessert" us, either.
The hashtag #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes trended on Tuesday as the world reacted to a keynote address by Donald Trump's wife that sounded almost identical to Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention speech.
My favorite? "It was a little cocker spaniel dog... and our little girl -- Tricia, the 6-year-old -- named it Checkers."
Outside the Q, please meet the West Ohio Minutemen.
As they walked the streets of Cleveland, the militiamen chatted with cops who simply told them to be safe. Texas delegates fresh from the convention cheered them on. And they told (VICE photographer Peter) Larson about their mission, which they said had nothing to do with Donald Trump or even the Republican Party. Instead, the group told him they were dedicated to protecting and supporting their community and did not discriminate against race, sex, gender, or anything else.
Day 2 features Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, a couple of Trump's children, UFC fight club prez Dana White, and LPGA-er Natalie Gulbis.
A U.S. Office of Special Counsel report released Monday found that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro violated the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activity of some federal employees, during an April interview with Yahoo News.
Castro's statements during the interview, according to a OSC news release, mixed his "personal political views with officials agency business despite his efforts to clarify that some answers were being given in his personal capacity." The department found he violated the act by "advocating for and against presidential candidates while giving a media interview in his official capacity on April 4, 2016," the report states.
The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, prohibits employees from using their official authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election, according to the report. The OSC submitted the report and Castro's response to President Barack Obama for "appropriate action."
Castro has the right to appeal the violation and faces disciplinary action including "removal, reduction in grade, debarment from federal employment for a period not to exceed five years, suspension or reprimand" and faces a fine up to $1,000, according to federal law.
In the April interview, the former San Antonio mayor, who is reportedly being vetted to be Hillary Clinton's vice president, tells Katie Couric, "Now, taking off my HUD hat for a second and speaking individually, it is very clear that Hillary Clinton is the most experienced, thoughtful and prepared candidate for president that we have this year."
I've encountered few people in my decade of Democratic politics just concluded who have acted more cautious and self-centered about their political future and viability than the Castros. To say that this takes him out of the running for veep is an understatement. He may have ruined all of his future prospects with this fumble. Clinton is campaigning in in Florida this Friday and Saturday, and that's allegedly when she will be making her choice for running mate.
So it's going to be Tim Kaine, I now suspect. That's about as lousy as can be for progressives ... unless she picks John Lickenhooper, that is. Kaine's weak enough, but "Clinton-Hickenlooper" would be one crappy bumper sticker, not to mention ticket.
Everybody knew that the Prayin' Quarterback was a lousy football player, but this is a humiliation even he couldn't have imagined.
(Former NFL mostly-tight-end Tim) Tebow ... quickly distanced himself from the GOP proceedings in Cleveland, taking to Facebook and Instagram to post a video in which he explained that his reported appearance was a misunderstanding in the most magnanimous way possible.
“What’s up, everybody?” Tebow cheerfully greeted a video audience of around 1.1 million (and counting) on the social media platforms. “I just got back from the Philippines, and I wake up this morning to find out that I’m speaking at the Republican National Convention.
“It’s amazing how fast rumors fly, and that’s exactly what it is—a rumor.”
It's a shame he wasn't tapped VP, wasn't it? Probably coulda carried Florida. I want to know what happened to Dennis Miller? Or Jon Voight? Or Gene Simmons? Or Ted Nugent, for crine out loud? Okay, put in Chachi.
(Sitcom teevee has-been Scott) Baio, best known for his work on “Happy Days” and “Charles in Charge,” is one of Hollywood’s best-known Republicans, but he was still floored by The Donald’s offer to speak on Cleveland’s big stage.
[...]
Baio, 55, is among several unconventional convention speakers in Monday night’s lineup. He will follow a speech by Willie Robertson, star of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” reality show. ... soap opera star Antonio Sabato Jr. — a veteran of “General Hospital” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” — will also take the stage.
I won't be watching but I will be Tweeting.
Update: "Who is Scott Baio and why do baby boomers care that he's speaking for Trump?"
I wasn’t alive when Happy Days aired, but I watched reruns on Nick at Nite and I don’t remember this character.
SocraticGadfly, using a simple tool on an NPR webpage, shows that Hillary Clinton doesn't need Green votes, unless to riff on band Rush, she's today's Tom Dewey.
Egberto Willies cogently observes that supporting police officers and Black Lives Matter activists are not mutually exclusive.
The Lewisville Texan Journal reports that Army Corps of Engineers has chosen not to issue an environmental impact statement regarding the improvements being studied to the Lewisville Dam.
John Coby at Bay Area Houston laments the 19% of Latinos who have boarded the Trump Train.
Following the developments in the prosecution of Chris "Frack Master" Faulkner, Txsharon at Bluedaze posted the FBI's seizure of his Bentley and Aston Martin.
And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
The Houston Press sees Dan Patrick as the stand-in for Greg Abbott at "Trumpfest", the GOP convention opening this week.
Equality Texas advances the FairnessUSA spot that will air during the last night of the RNC depicting transgender discrimination, and has an extended version of it posted.
Grits for Breakfast examines the reasons why more Texans are being shot by police, and also dissects that Harvard study purporting to show racial bias does not exist in police shootings.
Zachery Taylor sees the media perpetuating the divisions between law enforcement officers and Black Lives Matters.
Jay Blazek Crossley notes that in 2016, transportation decision-making bodies in the state of Texas continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by older white men.
Paul Woodruff ponders the ethical implications of using a robot to kill the Dallas sniper.
Juanita Jean wades into the Donald Trump-RBG war of words.
Kyle Shelton delves into the history of taking protest to the streets.
Somervell County Salon observed that the number of Glen Rose ISD student vaccination exemptions has nearly doubled over last year.
Kiko Martinez looks at Elena of Avalor, the first Latina princess from the Disney machine.
Lone Star Ma recommends a few books for people who would like to be less ignorant on racial matters.
Doyen Oyeniyi reminds the lieutenant governor that his words matter, too.
And Pages of Victory helped out a neighbor while she was on vacation.
(Thursday night) there was chatter - half tongue-in-cheek but not totally - about whether Trump's decision to postpone his vice presidential announcement wasn't simply some gambit to gain advantage from the massacre in Nice but an effort to play for time and possibly back out of his apparent decision to place Mike Pence on the ticket. That couldn't possibly be true. Not really. But it's Trump. So who knows? Now of course we find out early this afternoon that it was true. [...]
(By Friday afternoon) there were already multiple reports from credible journalists that Trump was up late into Thursday night trying to find a way or find out if there was any way he could back out of his offer to put Pence on the ticket. Now, late in the evening there's this even more detailed version of events in the Times. Trump was some mix of miffed at the leaks, unimpressed by Pence, unable to let the other guys down easy and looking for some way out of the Pence box. He just couldn't find it. On its own terms, this turn of events perfectly captures the mix of unsteadiness, cynicism and derp that characterizes everything about the Trump campaign. But the bigger story isn't so much that it happened as that it was leaked, so quickly, and at such a devastating moment for Pence and the ticket.
Quite unpresidential. Somewhat worse than this ...
The last-minute plea for $6 million from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson to rescue the Republican convention has erupted in controversy, as four of the five signatories to the letter from party organizers never saw it before it was sent and major donors flagged serious errors that forced the convention hosts to apologize to one of the GOP’s most influential financiers.
The episode has opened a window into a host committee that is scrambling and still millions shy of its fundraising target, only days before tens of thousands of Republicans arrive in Cleveland, as it acknowledges for the first time that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has put a damper on donations.
The letter, obtained by POLITICO on Thursday, outlined two dozen major corporations — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Duke Energy and Apple, among them — that it claimed had backed out a combined more than $8.1 million in pledged donations in recent months.
But on Friday, Emily Lauer, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland 2016 host committee, acknowledged to POLITICO that the list of lost donors in the letter to Adelson was inaccurate — and that the committee has now reached out to Adelson’s aides to apologize.
I just don't understand why people think Trump is going to pull off an Electoral College upset ... unless they know Hillary Clinton better than me, and believe she is capable of screwing herself worse than this. Which is certainly possible but increasingly unlikely.
In a true 'lesser of two evils' matchup tomorrow morning at the CWA hall, I must confess that I'll be slightly less unhappy if Miz T prevails, but I don't think she will. Unless there is a backlash against him that has flown under my radar, I expect to be calling my statehouse representative, Borris Miles, Senator.
Miles has been an extremely frustrating guy to support based on his -- 'erratic' is the kindest word I can use -- behavior since being elected to the Texas House. He's hard to dislike personally, however. Thompson has been, as the Chronic board noted in their fulsome endorsement, top-shelf as a legislator and a representative for her House district, but more of the people voting in this election live in Miles'. And they love the guy, warts and all.
By the way, the Chron overlooked or ignored this unflattering NYT article from 2011 about Senfronia's skill at playing both sides, even when it comes to morally ambiguous issues.
My main question about this race centers around a projected whip count: the numbers of precinct chairs in HD 146 (Borris') versus HD 141 (Senfronia's) that are within SD-13's boundary lines. I pulled the list from each House district's website and compared them to the Senate district's and counted 41 of Miles' and 18 of Thompson's. Accounting for the fact that these chairs aren't necessarily sure things for their respective reps, that there are vacancies among the precincts, and that somebody's numbers -- mine or the state of Texas' -- might be off, Miles still likely has a 2-1 base vote lead over Thompson going into Saturday morning's election.
With 95 precinct chairs (or so) doing the electing -- and let's just say ten fewer than the 58 votes Miles is claiming -- he has enough to declare victory on the first ballot. I do not think he'll win on a first ballot with four or five names on it, but he should prevail on the second.
That's my prediction; let's see how right or wrong I am.
These elephants and clowns are going to be some kind of entertaining.
A night highlighting the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. An appearance by onetime football star Tim Tebow. A presentation detailing former President Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.
Donald J. Trump, the presumptive nominee, has been promising a different kind of Republican National Convention, and plans obtained by The New York Times show that he is eager to put his showbiz stamp on the party’s gathering, even as he struggles to attract A-list talent.
If there's not enough room on their TiVO to record the whole thing, maybe they'll offer a DVD for five hundred bucks or so, a contribution perk like PBS does. Saul Relative to how much the rubes can get fleeced for.
Monday, July 18: A Benghazi focus, followed by border patrol agents and Jamiel Shaw Sr. (who became an outspoken advocate for tougher immigration laws after his son was killed in 2008 by an undocumented immigrant). Sen. Tom Cotton, Rudy Giuliani, Melania Trump, Sen. Joni Ernst and others.
Tuesday, July 19: A focus on the economy: Dana White, president of U.F.C., the professional fighting league; Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas; Michael Mukasey, the former United States attorney general; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a vice-presidential possibility; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell; Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr.; and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
Wednesday, July 20: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (who tangled on television with the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub massacre); Eileen Collins (the first woman to command a space shuttle mission); Newt Gingrich; Sen. Ted Cruz; Eric Trump; professional golfer Natalie Gulbis; and the nominee for vice president.
Thursday, July 21: Tebow; Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma; Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman; Gov. Rick Scott of Florida; Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel; Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a private-equity real estate investor; Ivanka Trump; and lastly the presidential nominee himself.
These are the prime-timers; the full list includes Speaker Paul Ryan, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, more senators and Congress critters, and B-list conservative celebrities such as Marcus Luttrell.
There is some news to be gleaned here.
(W)hat is striking, as much as who is on the list, is who is not. Several figures Mr. Trump had said he would invite to speak, like the boxing promoter Don King and Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, were not included. Neither was Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, a hugely popular figure in the key state of New Hampshire.
And this.
Even as they finalized the list this week, Mr. Trump’s campaign aides and party officials were also working behind the scenes to stave off any challenges to his nomination on the convention floor next week.
Yeah, that. Stands as much chance of happening as Bernie Sanders being nominated by the Democrats. The delusions really bloom in this heat, don't they?
(T)he chance that Mr. Trump’s opponents could muster enough support to deny him the nomination is remote. The biggest hazard that Mr. Trump and the leaders of the Republican National Committee are trying to contain is how messy the process could become — and how much damage his campaign could sustain.
Starting on Thursday morning, delegates will begin to debate a series of proposals to change the party’s rules. Those proposed changes could include a provision that would allow delegates to vote their consciences in selecting the Republican presidential nominee, instead of voting in accordance with the outcomes of the primaries and caucuses in their states, as most state party rules require.
If you're not too busy playing Pokemon Go, you might check your Twitter feed late morning and see if anything develops along these lines. News might break, after all.
The conventions used to be crucially significant news events, so the news media covers them extensively. A couple of hours’ worth of primetime speeches are on network television, and several hours more are shown on cable news channels.
Because the convention will be televised, lots of important politicians from around the country want to come speak at it. Because lots of important politicians will be there, lots of lobbyists and interest group leaders are there to stage events too. That further increases the convention’s appeal to the media, which find it to be a target-rich environment for interviews, and the extensive national media attention gives further incentives to political influencers, stars, and wannabes to show up.
The extensive media attention itself makes the conventions significant campaign events. In their book The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do (and Do Not) Matter, Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson show that polling leads are considerably more predictive after conventions than before. Usually the party that holds its convention first gets a "bounce," and then the party that goes second gets its own "bounce." The net effect of those two convention bounces is a significant political event that meaningfully drives the outcome in November.
This is why you don't fret polling until the kids go back to school, folks. Two things you should do in mid-to late August: slow down in school zones and start to give the polls more credibility. Also see this; trust Nate Silver to let you know when it's time to freak out.
All that said, the upshot of turning conventions into a week-long display of party unity is that they are pretty boring. Any one speech can be quite interesting on its own terms. But the vast majority of them simply blend together, recitations of the same key beats over and over and over again in slightly different tones of voice.
This is what makes the idea of a Donald Trump convention so exciting.
For one thing, many of the key party luminaries whom you’d normally expect to be featured speakers aren’t supporting him. Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush won’t be speaking. Neither Ted Cruz nor John Kasich has endorsed Trump yet, so we won’t have that party unity display either. A huge raft of GOP elected officials are skipping the convention, and it’s not entirely obvious that a young up-and-coming Republican politician really wants to keynote this event.
At the same time, while Trump has no real knowledge of or interest in American public policy, he does have extensive experience in the field of reality television.
Normally parties nominate a presidential candidate with the opposite portfolio of skills (Ronald Reagan had demonstrated proficiency in both policy and Hollywood), which is probably wise from a governing standpoint but has led us to a dreary dead end in terms of conventions. By the same token, while Trump would likely be a disastrous president he could be an excellent convention organizer.
Since modern conventions are essentially just long television shows with no real political content, it seems natural that politicians would stage boring ones while the star of NBC’s The Apprentice could stage an amazing one.
If he pulls it off, the Dems will once again clutch their pearls and faint. For the price of that entertainment value, I'm counting on it.
We received 375 responses on readers’ plans for their November vote. And despite the show of solidarity with Clinton on Tuesday, Sanders’ fans aren’t all convinced the presumptive Democratic nominee is who they will now support: Green party nominee Jill Stein was the most popular among reader respondents, with 171 new supporters, more than double the number who said they would move their support to Clinton.
A write-in vote for Sanders was also a popular option, with just 20 respondents opting for Trump. These results aren’t necessarily a representative sample, and they differ significantly from a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday, which found that 85% of Sanders supporters intended to vote for Clinton.
How Bernie Sanders supporters plan to vote in November
Source: Guardian | Graphic: Jan Diehm/The Guardian
==================
171/375 = 45.6%, so this anecdotal survey indeed produces a wildly different result from Pew's recent scientific poll, also referenced yesterday in an update and linked via The Guardian in the third graf above. What to make of such a vast discrepancy? What you like. For now, it's just another data point.
Since Tuesday morning, the Green Party has received over $80,000 in contributions, over half of which comes from first-time donors, and half of which comes in the form of contributions under $50. Tellingly, about 615 of those contributions totalled $27, the exact number commonly trumpeted and solicited by the Sanders campaign during his revolutionary grassroots funding movement.
“There’s been an explosion of Berners coming in through every portal of the campaign, and it’s really exciting,” Stein told US Uncut in a phone interview. “There is so much courage out there to stand up to the marching orders handed down by the usual suspects.”
Stein’s social media accounts have also seen tremendous growth and engagement in the past 24 hours. A recent livestream posted to the Stein campaign’s Facebook page has been viewed over 300,000 times in less than a day. Her page itself has added approximately 44,000 new likes in the past week. Her Twitter account has over 145,000 followers as of this writing, increasing by the tens of thousands just this week, with 5.6 million impressions on July 12-13 alone. There have also been 10,000 new signups for her email list since yesterday.
And according to web traffic ranking site Alexa, Jill2016.com has been climbing steadily in popularity since January, with rapid monthly growth since March. The search term “Jill Stein” has also seen a hockey-stick increase on Google Trends since the endorsement:
Duopolists will scoff at the $80K figure, but will probably be swallowing a little harder the next time they look at a quarterly campaign finance report. The ultimate goal for the next 60 days or so remains; 15% in the national polling, leading to Stein's inclusion in the presidential debates, the schedule for which was announced this week (the first is slated for September 26). In order to be in the debates, her name needs to be included in the polls. Time is short. You may petition the Commission on Presidential Debates for redress of this grievance at this site.
According to Stein’s website, her campaign has secured ballot access in 23 states and Washington, DC, and petition signatures are currently being collected for ballot access in 27 others. Stein said her campaign has “many irons in the fire” and will be on “90 to 95 percent” of ballots after petitions are delivered to various Secretaries of State.
In the end, despite being labeled as a “spoiler” candidate by Clinton supporters and staunch Democrats in a winner-take-all political system, Stein is optimistic about her chances if she’s able to communicate her message to a national TV audience at the general election debates.
[...]
“If that word gets out, that can be a very powerful motivator for those people to vote for my campaign, and that’s a plurality of votes.” Stein continued. “In the words of Alice Walker, ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.'”
I can't say I'm overjoyed about HA Goodman's conversion, but here it is (apply the blind hogs and acorns rationale).
Fear is the ultimate weapon of establishment Democrats and people who want nothing more than for you to “fall in line.”
I’ll admire and respect Bernie Sanders forever, but I’ll never “fall in line” and vote for anyone advised by Henry Kissinger, or Bush’s neoconservatives. As Robert Kagan stated regarding Clinton’s foreign policy, “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue…it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
Sorry, not voting for a Democrat with a “neocon” foreign policy.
Give Jill Stein a look, and give her platform serious consideration. Around half of Bernie voters according to Bloomberg in late June will never vote for Hillary; a far more accurate assessment in my view than recent claims of the majority flocking to Clinton.
Whatever the percentage of conversions happens to be, there's some serious momentum now for Stein, and one of many Berning Questions is how far can she take it.
-- My timing was a few days off on Trump and Pence teaming up -- Il Douche whiffed by missing the chance to steal the news cycle yesterday from Hillary and Bernie -- but it looks as if I'll be right by Friday. Pence, fresh from the tanning bed, delivered the line that will be repeated on an endless loop from now until the leaves fall off the trees.
"I think it would be extremely careless to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States."
Let's observe that the Sheldon Primary has elected Newt Gingrich the vice-presidential nominee, so I'll surmise that's the last obstacle for the Orange-utan to overcome, thus the delay.
Some donors are pressuring Trump to pick
Gingrich. A source close to Sheldon Adelson tells CNN that the casino
magnate spoke to Trump and mentioned that "he liked Newt."
"Favoring is a more appropriate term," the source said of Adelson's conversation with Trump.
I do like my oligarchy with a skosh of plutocracy.
Update: This impulsive, unfortunate, regrettable insertion of herself into the election has me shaking my head at Justice RBG. The crack about moving to New Zealand reveals her own unfounded fears of a Trump presidency. Of all the people in the United States who are capable of relocating across the planet who will never actually do so (she's got one of the best jobs there is, and it's for life), Ruth Bader Ginsberg is signaling that she needs a Xanax and a glass of wine. And somebody who can persuade her to stay away from picking fights with Drumpf.
With respect to recent polling, the swing states are closing up but there's no reason for worry. This is predictable erosion from last week's non-indictment. Trump is about to pick his running mate, the RNC is coming up, he's going to get some more bounces, maybe even move ahead of Clinton in the polling next week and almost certainly the week after. That's how the presidential cycle goes; it happened in '08 right after McCain picked Palin. He pulled into the lead. Briefly.
I'll be blogging about the pants-crapping Democrats making themselves physically ill with worry about President Trump in the third and fourth weeks of this month, in-between conventions. I'll link and mock every one.
There's nothing here to be concerned with, Nellies. Yet.
-- The New Yorker's John Cassidy called Bernie's endorsement of Hillary 'fulsome'. We're not actually as strong together as Mrs. Clinton's campaign is projecting.
There was that phrase again. Perhaps nobody had informed Clinton that “Stronger Together” echoes the slogan of the Remain side, which lost the recent Brexit referendum in the U.K. Or perhaps she didn’t care. With Sanders behind her and on message, one of the big challenges facing her campaign had been overcome. Now the task was to make sure that Sanders’s supporters received the message, even if that meant laying it on thick.
Berners showed up at the New Hampshire rally and left amid shouts of 'No!" and tears as Bernie choked the life out of his own political revolution. It's going to be some time before these believers can reconcile their grief. Today I would posit that of the choices left to them, not voting at all might be in the lead. But then there's this, which suggests that most of the sheep are already herding themselves onto the bandwagon.
The financial markets, on the other hand, were much more enthusiastic. They've been quickly shaking off Brexit -- that's another one I missed -- and rose to all-time highs in the days preceding yesterday, rising higher as the two Democrats spoke effusively of each other. Oil is still losing ground on oversupply reports, however, so Houston's economy and conservatives will remain fearful about the future.
And speaking of ham-handed sales jobs, Barack Obama is also mistaken if he thinks we're not as divided as it seems. We are in fact more so. Be reminded that Obama lives in the same White House bubble that a clearly and publicly intoxicated George W. Bush (embarrassing himself once more) used to live in.
As for the outgoing chief executive, I seem to be immune to his silver-tongued entreaties at these final stages of his public service. For the incoming one, it's a matter of not getting it and not caring to, and her husband -- his rapidly deteriorating political dexterity failing him -- seems too feeble to give her an assist. In fact, he looks like that guy in the park with early-onset dementia, feeding the pigeons and trying to decide whether he should fill up his Always or wind his wristwatch.
Hey, I just thought of something: in order to deal with the crisis of ISIS, let's join them and transform them from within. It certainly makes as much sense as Texas Democrats voting in the GOP primary, doesn't it?
-- Saving the most ignorant and deceptive for last ... Paul Ryan.
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan defended his decision to support
Donald Trump Tuesday, disagreeing with the candidate on several issues
but saying that refusing to back Trump amounts to supporting Hillary
Clinton.
"It's a binary choice," Ryan told a skeptical voter at a CNN town hall Tuesday.
"It is either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — you don't get a third
option. It's one or the other and I know where I want to go."
Fingers in the third-party dikes, fingers in his ears. The concept of a hell that burns everlasting was conceived in the minds of men who had to confront the demagoguery of charlatans like Ryan.
After a voter told Ryan he couldn't vote for Trump over what he called
racism, Ryan responded: "That basically means you're going to help elect
Hillary Clinton. And I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to support
any of the things that you stand for if you're a Republican."
Based on nearly every single post I have published for the past twelve months, it shouldn't surprise you that I can see right through the Speaker. If you're falling for this line, then you will surely get no relief from your terror if you vote for Trump because you despise Hillary. And vice versa.
No point in waking Ryan up with the smell of coffee brewing; he's not going to flinch if you threw a whole pot of it, boiling hot, in his face.
Don't be as stupid as Paul Ryan thinks you are. Please.
-- Steven Colbert isn't joking when he says that Clinton is such a bad candidate that the only person she could defeat is Donald Trump. She's one and done. Whether she cracks the top five of worst presidents ever is in her hands. She starts another war, she can probably knock out Calvin Coolidge for fifth place.
Roughly 1 in 5 Sanders supporters say they are going to vote for a third-party candidate. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein combined for 22 percent of the vote among Sanders’s supporters in a recent NBC/WSJ surveyand 21 percent in a recent Suffolk University survey. Johnson won 17 percent of Sanders backers in a Pew Research Center poll (the poll did not test Stein). The average third-party support among Sanders’s voters in the three surveys, 20 percent, is significantly higher than the 13 percent of all voters who say they’d back Johnson or Stein. (Younger voters, who voted for Sanders in overwhelming numbers in the primary, are also far more likely to say they’d choose a third-party option or “someone else,” according to these surveys and a new poll from the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.)
Keep in mind that historically, third-party candidates -- even those down the ballot in Texas -- can poll well running up to Election Day, but then fear takes hold and they leak that support back to the majors. So how this trend holds is one I'll be watching closely. Harry Enten again at 538.com.
That’s part of the reason why FiveThirtyEight is including Johnson’s chances in these projections. We aren’t explicitly projecting Stein’s vote, in part because polls include her less often than they include Johnson, and in part because she probably won’t be on the ballot in some states. You’ll notice, however, that the projected vote shares for Clinton, Trump and Johnson usually don’t add up to 100 percent. (In Missouri, for instance, they sum to 98.7 percent.) That’s because the model reserves a small share for “other” candidates, including Stein, in states where we expect at least one of them to appear on the ballot.
(This is what Charles did back here -- scroll to the bottom -- and is an acceptable rounding method among pollsters and political scientists.)
-- The 'con' argument: Trump, Johnson and Stein all took today as the start of the campaign to begin wooing Sandernistas to their side. It's downhill for Clinton from here, in two interpretations; one good and one bad. Can she ride her sled all the way down without getting upset? It's up to her now. No excuses.
The Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign announced plans for
bumper stickers and t-shirts emblazoned with their candidate’s new
slogan, “Meh.”
The slogan change comes on the heels of Ms. Clinton winning the
endorsement of her fiercest and most stalwart Democratic primary
challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Several Clinton camp staffers
have told the press the slogan is meant to capitalize on the general
feeling of apathy that they hope Sanders supporters will now feel toward
the election, and that it will inspire them to accept the status quo as
a “perfectly acceptable alternative to substantive change,” one aide
told a newspaper in New Jersey.
The campaign also considered, “She Could Be Worse” and “Frankly,
She’s Not Trump” as well as “She’ll Disappoint You Just The Same As
Obama Did.” Other slogans that could still be unveiled by Team Clinton
are, “She’s Like Bernie, For Now, Until She’s Not,” and “I Like
Triangulating, Cynical Politicians Like Hillary!” Focus groups
reportedly also tested well with the slogan, “I’ll Vote For Another
Clinton In 20 Years Because Change Is Hard!”
“We understand that familial political dynasties are kind of the
exact opposite of what the Founders probably had in mind,” Helen
Sussman, Chief Deputy Assistant Media Liaison for the Clinton campaign,
told reporters this morning, “but well, YOLO! Also, we have to just keep
reminding you, she’s not Trump. And any time you feel sad about being
force fed a milquetoast status quo sellout tool of the One Percent, just
remember — she’s not Trump.”
Don't forget to mention the words 'spoiler' or Supreme Court' a few times either, like Bernie has repeatedly. 'First woman president', 'Ralph Nader' and 'siphoning votes' also still work well on the shallowest of thinkers.
