Ben Adler at Grist writes—The Democratic Party has made a big shift toward climate action in the last four years:
Can you imagine a Democratic nominee for president who boasts about increasing American oil and gas production and tries to take credit for it? It sounds like a picture from a distant past. But in 2012, during his reelection campaign, President Obama was bragging about the fracking boom, and the Democratic Party platform touted his all-of-the-above energy policy.
This election cycle is very different. The Democratic primary candidates competed over who would be the toughest on fossil fuels and climate change. Hillary Clinton has called for banning offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic, phasing out fossil fuel production on public land, and imposing stricter fracking regulations. She did not get there on her own: Both Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders challenged her from the left on climate change with even more ambitious proposals. The Sanders’ camp also pushed the Democratic platform committee with a number of climate-related demands, resulting in a document that calls for carbon pricing and rejecting future infrastructure projects that would increase U.S. carbon emissions.
The party that gathers in Philadelphia for its national convention this week has been transformed on climate change and energy policy since 2012. The shift is not about Obama versus Clinton as individuals. Obama himself has moved toward stronger climate action in his second term. No one would have predicted in 2011 that he would reject Keystone XL and start reforming coal leasing on federal land.
Rather, as cautious, mainstream Democrats, Clinton and Obama are being pulled by the grassroots climate movement, which is more assertive and effective than ever before.
David Ferguson at The Guardian writes—Dear Jon Stewart – this year's been hard without you:
I can’t tell you how good it was to see you again on Thursday night, especially after four days of the World’s Worst Party. After dealing with all those horrible people, and their terrible, hateful, angry ideas, running into my ex-TV boyfriend of 20 years felt like a kind of miracle.
[...]
I have so missed our evenings together on the sofa, you telling me about the latest evil or stupid or hilarious thing Fox News or the Republicans did, pulling those faces, somehow making it all make sense and making it funny on top of that.
I have to admit I haven’t really been seeing Trevor that much. He’s a perfectly nice guy, charming and handsome, but I kind of feel like that’s part of his problem. He’s a perfectly nice guy.
Behind your humor, the giggle, the muppet facial expressions, I could always sense the glinting edge of your razor-sharp anger. It’s one of the things that always made being with you so satisfying. You get it. You’re not just my funny TV boyfriend, you’re a righteous warrior dressed as a jester – a clown with a knife in his teeth.
Honestly, since you’ve been gone, I haven’t even felt like hanging out with Stephen Colbert. It just makes me sad and reminds me of how things used to be.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Can hope trump fear in Philadelphia?
Democrats will be battling what they see as a false equivalence in the media that casts both major-party candidates in the same light because of surveys giving each of them historically high negative scores. Clinton’s campaign wants Democrats (who will form a large part of the television audience) to come away with new enthusiasm for their candidate, and swing voters to see Clinton as far more ready than Trump, by experience and temperament, to be president.
Accentuating the positive will also be important because Trump has bet his candidacy on his ability to persuade a sufficient share of the electorate that the nation really is in the midst of a catastrophic crisis.
Here is where the minority of Americans who pay close attention to both conventions will suffer from an acute case of whiplash: Democrats will not only be arguing that Clinton offers a better future; they will be vigorously defending President Obama’s legacy.
Republicans may come to regret their decision to harness Clinton and Obama together as twin authors of a national apocalypse.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—More Damned Emails:
Trump is a horrible candidate who shouldn’t have a shot, but in this race he does. Although Clinton remains the favorite to win in November, the race is too close for comfort. There are paths to victory — uphill though they may be — for Trump to win.
(Just typing that sent shivers down my spine. The idea that a man who used a racist attack on a judge in one of his own cases might get to pick the next one — or even two or three — Supreme Court justices is in itself unfathomable. The fact that he’s even competitive makes me question the electoral competency of America.)
Too many voters find themselves in the worst possible position: They have a choice between a Republican of whom they are frightened and disgusted and a Democrat of whom they are leery and unenthused.
Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post writes—How Trump attacks the media, and why that distorts reality:
In 1964, Barry Goldwater got the Republican presidential nomination in California’s Cow Palace, where, longtime TV journalist Ted Koppel recalled, signs proclaimed “Don’t Trust the Liberal Media.” He said he saw similar words projected on huge screens on the streets of Cleveland. “It’s a 52-year-old meme,” Koppel told me.
But perhaps no candidate has attacked the media as relentlessly as Trump — or with as little regard for reality. [...]
If these same pilloried news outlets hadn’t revealed and then written article after article about Clinton’s email practices, Republicans would have been deprived of their most powerful talking point. The press gave blanket coverage to FBI Director James B. Comey’s blistering criticism, which in turn led to a packed Cleveland arena thundering with cries of “Lock her up!”
What makes this candidate different from those in the past in attacking the press, Koppel told me, “is that Trump has no shame — he’ll say anything,” no matter how demonstrably untrue.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes—Delusions of Chaos:
Last year there were 352 murders in New York City. This was a bit higher than the number in 2014, but far below the 2245 murders that took place in1990, the city’s worst year. In fact, as measured by the murder rate, New York is now basically as safe as it has ever been, going all the way back to the 19th century.
National crime statistics, and numbers for all violent crimes, paint an only slightly less cheerful picture. [...]
How, then, was it even possible for Donald Trump to give a speech accepting the Republican nomination whose central premise was that crime is running rampant, and that “I alone” can bring the chaos under control?
Of course, nobody should be surprised to see Mr. Trump confidently asserting things that are flatly untrue, since he does that all the time — and never corrects his falsehoods.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine writes—The Case for Tim Kaine:
Eight years ago, Barack Obama was impressed enough with Tim Kaine to give the young governor serious consideration for the vice-presidency. Perusing the media coverage at the time, I could not find a single example of progressive dismay at Kaine (though it’s quite possible I simply missed it). While most coverage focused on Kaine’s youth, which was seen as compounding Obama’s greatest liability, I did find some evidence that liberals saw Kaine as an especially enticing choice. “The Virginia governor has emerged as the ‘change’-oriented veep choice for Obama,” wrote the New Republic’s Eve Fairbanks (who proceeded to make the contrarian case for Kathleen Sebelius). Former Jesse Jackson campaign manager Ron Walters endorsed Kaine in an interview with left-wing "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman.
Kaine’s selection Friday was met with a very different reception than it would have been two Democratic presidential terms ago. The liberal mood has ranged from solemn acceptance to outright dismay. In These Times, a socialist newspaper, had published a dramatic column headlined, “Is Hillary Clinton a Progressive? Not If She Chooses Tim Kaine.” An unnamed progressive Democrat told Politico, “This portends Clinton is going to surround herself generally with cautious centrists who don't like ruffling feathers with big corporations.” Samantha Bee captured the disappointment among many feminist liberals in particular:
Greg Grandin at The Nation writes—There’s Nothing Un-American About Donald Trump:
When pundits today say that Trump represents something new in American politics, they aren’t necessarily denying that his racism, misogyny, and threats of violence are foreign to American history. Rather, claims that Trump is unique mostly have to do with his refusal to leaven his nastiness with appeals to universalism. After all, Reagan could mock the 1964 killing of civil-rights activists by launching his 1980 campaign at the spot where they were murdered, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, talking about “states’ rights”; Bill Clinton could, just before Super Tuesday 1992, campaign in front of Georgia’s notorious Stone Mountain Correctional Institution, “where he stood next to conservative Southern Democrats Sam Nunn and Zell Miller, as well as Dukes of Hazzard star Ben Jones (recently heard prominently defending the Confederate flag), posing for photographers in front of a group of black inmates.” George H.W. Bush ran ads with Willie Horton and Republicans rebuilt their party around the Southern strategy and “welfare queens.” Yet even as they dog-whistled racism, they still, apparently, appealed to the better angels of our nature, a balancing act that somehow makes those politicians more organically rooted in the history of America.
What rankles about Trump, what seems to upset our Vox–cracy, is that Trump doesn’t mix his darkness with kitschy light. “Very very dark,” Chris Hayes said in a tweet, based, I think, on a preview of Trump’s acceptance speech: “Straight up nationalism no chaser.”
But Trump is quintessentially American. By that, I don’t mean his hucksterism, or that his wealth somehow confirms America’s belief in theprosperity gospel. Nor do I want to reduce the American experience to Trump’s white supremacy and sexism. Rather, I mean that even as Winthrop was describing a City on a Hill, he and other Puritans were already lamenting its ruin, perfecting the jeremiad as a uniquely American genre: self-condemnation as a “vehicle of cultural cohesion.”
Katha Pollitt at The Nation writes—Kaine is out of step with the pro-choice movement, but Hillary Clinton is not:
It’s Tim Kaine. Sigh. Like Mario Cuomo, Kaine is one of those Catholic politicians who says he is personally opposed to abortion but supports women’s right to choose. This is a popular position among ordinary Americans, but it’s out of step with the more assertive tenor of the pro-choice movement in recent years. Over at Rewire, Jodi Jacobson had harsh words: “The very last thing we need is another person in the White House who further stigmatizes abortion, though it must be said Clinton herself seems chronically unable to speak about abortion without euphemism.”
That seems a bit severe, considering that Hillary has made a banner issue of getting rid of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal Medicaid funding for abortion. That’s a first for a presidential campaign and represents a triumph for the reproductive justice movement and its emphasis on real-life reproductive options for poor women. But Jacobson has a point when she notes that as governor of Virginia (2006–10) Kaine was not our friend. He supported parental notification and consent. He favored a “partial-birth abortion” ban. He pushed for “informed consent” procedures that, besides trying to persuade the woman to continue the pregnancy when really it is none of the state’s business, had the practical effect of making abortion access more cumbersome for both patient and clinic. NARAL did not endorse his gubernatorial bid, and no wonder.
Kaine’s positions were not lofty compromises: They made life harder for women at a difficult time.
Rick Perlstein at The New Republic writes—Mr. Trump, You’re No Richard Nixon:
I never thought I would say this, but: poor Richard Nixon. Last week, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, raised eyebrows when he promised last night’s acceptance speech would be based on Nixon’s in 1968: no “happy talk” about unity, just a Nixon-like response to the “angst” abroad in the land over the Nixonian issue of law-and-order. “If you go back and read,” Manafort said, “that speech is pretty much on line with a lot of the issues that are going on today.”
Well, last night I sat in person through the whole damned 77-minute hot mess, and I’m here to say: Mr. Trump, I’ve studied Richard Nixon. And you’re no Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s little finger, of course, was more interesting and complex than Trump’s entire being.
Chris Lehman at In These Times writes—Ted Cruz’s Speech Was the Final Sign of the GOPocalypse:
Until the great Ted Cruz schism opened up on Wednesday night, it was hard to distinguish Donald Trump’s weeklong coronation at Cleveland’s oh-so-aptly named Quicken Loans Arena from a late-night infomercial. [...]
Cruz, of course, swaggered into the limelight dragging a rich trove of grievances against Trump—who had attacked Heidi Cruz’s appearance and bizarrely insinuated that Cruz’s father played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But Cruz opened with a grudging note of congratulation to his primary-season tormentor and then delivered a litany of approved convention talking points. He decried the alleged perfidy of Barack Obama, stealth jihadist (“He wants to export jobs andimport terrorists”) and the crimes of the odious, Constitution-defiling Hillary Clinton. It was only when he was winding up his peroration with an anodyne plea for his listeners not to stay home in November that the restive Trump-besotted crowd turned on him, with a vicious chorus of boos and “We want Trump!” chants.
And that’s when things got truly disturbing. For they got Trump. The shape-shifting bigot-mogul stepped out of his VIP box to offer some pro forma waves to friends, a tightly clenched smile to the audience—and in the general direction of Cruz, one of the most wilting death glares ever caught on camera. Cruz’s oration, meanwhile, sank into the beer-hall chaos engulfing the arena. The chants and boos, which originally started in Trump’s home delegation of New York, built and spread throughout the hall, and offered the firmest possible rebuke to Cruz’s closing appeal to jump-start and revive his preferred vision of American conservatism: “We will unite this country by standing together for shared values,” he implored from the stage, “by standing together for liberty.” To which thousands of Republican delegates replied, in essence, Fat chance and fuck you!
Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—Hillary Clinton's choice of Tim Kaine shows she's the grown-up in this contest:
Don’t be fooled by appearances. Mike Pence and Tim Kaine may both look like mild-mannered establishment types who came straight out of central casting. And they may well be headed for the most tedious vice-presidential debate in recent history.
But there the similarities end.
Kaine has a crossover appeal that has placed him at the forefront of the Democrats’ gains through what used to be conservative territory. First as Virginia governor and now as senator, Kaine has demonstrated how Democrats can win in the southern states that have changed most rapidly in the last decade. [...]
Pence, on the other hand, offers no such complexities that might allow him to reach across the aisle. The Indiana governor is a movement conservative who signed into law a religious freedom bill, wants to see the end of abortion rights under Roe v Wade, and is backed by the Koch brothers’ conservative network.
Trump needed Pence to appease the base of his party with someone who spoke their own conservative language.
Roger Bybee at The Progressive writes—Clinton's VP Pick Fails to Inspire Progressives:
For a candidate who must persuade American voters that she is fully committed to addressing the precarious economic position of tens of millions of Americans, Hillary Clinton’s “safe” choice of the pro-corporate centrist Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine may prove to be anything but sound judgment to counter the phony populism of Donald Trump.
It's hard to see how Kaine will strengthen Hillary Clinton’s aura of authenticity as a hard-charging fighter for significant reforms. Kaine will help Clinton’s chance to win the key state of Virginia with its thirteen electoral votes, but what appeal will he hold for key demographic groups where Clinton has fared poorly, including alienated blue-collar voters and the young?
Clinton clearly needs to inspire confidence that she thoroughly understands these voters' worries about falling wages, job insecurity, rising tuition and student loan debt, and disappearing pensions. But listening to Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign, it sometimes seemed like she was only faintly aware that 90 percent have been shut out of the economic “recovery.” She suffered significant defeats in Rust Belt states including Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin which have been devastated by the forces of corporate globalization and deindustrialization.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon writes—Unity through racism: Trump makes his big play to make the GOP a white nationalist party:
Trump was aiming for another message entirely: That white people — gay or straight, male or female — should come together, hold hands, and agree that the scary dark-skinned people are a bunch of murdering rapists who are coming to kill us all.
“Make America One Again” was the theme, and it was immediately made clear that “one” was defined in white nationalist terms. His speech painted a dark picture of “massive refugee flows” and “violence spilling across our borders”and that this brown-skinned menace “will overwhelm your schools and hospitals”. The “unity” theme of the night was one of white people unifying in a shared hatred and fear of the dark-skinned other, who supposedly preys on and means to destroy white people.
It’s frightfully easy to see how his strategy can work. The religious right is in decline and it’s harder than ever to build conservative coalitions around the notion that gay people or women don’t deserve equal rights. Many conservative people have out gay friends and relatives. Women like Ivanka Trump — professional, successful, and beautiful — are becoming just as much a conservative ideal as the happy homemaker of yore.
Sonali Kolhatkar at TruthDig writes—Donald Trump’s Strategy for Victory Is Clear, but Are Democrats Able to See It?
There is an adage, based on Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”: “Know your enemy.” After watching Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, I wonder just how well Democrats really know Trump and his strategy.
It is easy to paint the businessman-turned-politician as a “racist” and “misogynist.” He is all those things and more. In fact, those descriptors are part of his political strategy. Pointing them out without seeing the larger picture of how he is planning on winning the November election is a recipe for failure.
I knew that if I watched Trump give his speech, I would be so enraged by his loathsome manner and disgusting rhetoric that it might blind me to his bigger plan. When I read the transcript later, I still felt rage, but the topics appeared to be a confusing mess, with Trump jumping from domestic to foreign policy with no apparent coherence. But then a pattern emerged.