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Today we begin with Hillary’s statement remembering the 51st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act on Saturday.
Fifty-one years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, Americans are now facing the most systematic effort to curtail those rights since the era of Jim Crow. Make no mistake, new voter restriction laws in seventeen states have replaced poll taxes and literacy tests as a thinly veiled attempt to achieve an old objective: disenfranchising African Americans, Latinos, low-income people, young people, and people with disabilities….
This November, the notion that every American has a voice in shaping our future is at stake. Donald Trump supports discriminatory voting restrictions – and actually claims that without them in place, the results of American elections should be questioned. It’s a dangerous attempt to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy.
I have a very different view. I believe America is stronger when we expand access to the ballot box, not restrict it. That’s why I’ll fight to repair the Voting Rights Act, expand early voting, and introduce universal, automatic voter registration.
Donna Brazile wrote a moving personal essay on the anniversary that is also well worth reading. She serves temporarily as Interim Chair of the DNC.
Suddenly, our federal government began protecting the rights of all citizens to vote. Suddenly, millions of formerly disenfranchised voters had a voice. And slowly, the face of politics and power in the United States began to change. Southern office holders, state legislatures and congressional delegations became more representative, more responsive. With new leaders came new laws, moving us all toward that more perfect union the Constitution describes.
It was a profound victory for families like mine — for the working poor and for those living on the outskirts of hope. It meant new opportunities in education and in the workplace, and for upward economic mobility. That’s why I celebrate the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act every year, but more importantly, it’s why I continue to fight alongside the Democratic Party against efforts to erect new barriers, and to protect the right to vote.
Tim Kaine was interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet The Press and explained how he feels comfortable bragging about Hillary’s accomplishments where sometimes she herself is perhaps too modest. Here is the Video and the Transcript.
The convention, as you know, started off with some churn on the Democratic side on Monday. But by Thursday night, we were together and pulling the same direction.
Hillary Clinton did a great job telling her story. And others talked about how she had helped them. And I think the reason that we're doing better in polling since last week is folks are getting reintroduced to that story in a positive way.
The other thing that I have the ability to do as her running mate, I can brag about Hillary in a way that she's not going to brag about herself. We're both Midwesterners who are a little reticent to talk about ourselves. But I love talking about other people. And I love talking about Hillary Clinton's life of service, especially her work to empower families and children, which has been a consistent theme throughout her life.
Mr. Todd devoted much interview time to trustworthiness, emails, Iran, and other bugaboos (more about this phenomenon lower down) and Tim Kaine received praise for his handling of the questions. Politico covers it this way.
Kaine also defended Clinton’s response last week to questions about her email controversy.
“She said it was a mistake,” Kaine said. “I am not presumptuous enough to start thinking about how I'm going to do things after November. But I know that this is something that she's learned from, and we're going to be real transparent, absolutely.”
Several brief, heartening messages in support of Hillary emerged over the weekend. The first I have to share is a Letter to the Editor in the Galesburg Register-Mail.
Here are three things I learned:
1. Knowing that her mother had been an abused, abandoned child, Hillary took responsibility to help as many women and children as possible, even as a teenager, and she’s never stopped.
2. Her mother soaked it into her soul: Don’t run away when you’re bullied. Go back and work it out. Hillary learned, as a child, to find the strength to face bullies, and she’s never stopped.
3. Hillary’s Methodist faith taught her this motto: “Do all the good we can, by all the means and ways we can, in all the times and places we can, for all the people we can, as long as ever we can.” Hillary has spent a lifetime trying to do all the good she can; the list is long.
Another thoughtful reflection appeared as a guest column in the Las Vegas Sun.
After doing some research and looking hard at systemic misogyny, I have had to confront myself with the truth that I bought into a narrative about Clinton that has been produced, packaged and perpetuated mostly by the GOP, with the help of many Democrats and independents.
This narrative is a 30-year-old vilification of a woman who is bright, independent, wealthy and powerful — a woman who asks for what she wants and needs. How dare you, Ms. Clinton. How dare you have a mind of your own….
My research indicates that the facts (I realize facts are immaterial when talking to many Donald Trump supporters) are that Clinton is one of the most honest politicians tracked by the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking project Politifact. I also would call attention to Jill Abramson’s piece in the Guardian. She writes: “As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”
The news media, in its misguided attempt to be “balanced,” loves to point out that we face a presidential contest between the two least-popular candidates ever. It fails to analyze its own complicity in blindly adhering to the cartoon version of Clinton. Trump is unpopular — even among many Republicans who weakly support him — because of his stated positions. Clinton is unpopular largely because of an aggressive campaign of fiction and slander.
And I saw that Buffy star Sarah Michelle Geller also made an endorsement of Hillary.
I am incredibly honored that my daughter lives in a time where she sees that a woman can possibly be President. I think that’s really important for daughters to understand that. Look it’s hard, both parties buy my products, you know what I mean? That being said, I’m with her. I have known that family for a very long time. I believe that, you know, that there’s a lot of change that can be made and like I said, I’m incredibly proud to be able to look at my 7-year-old daughter and when she says, ‘Mommy, one day can I be president?’ I can honestly say to her, ‘Yeah, there’s a chance that you could,’ which is not something that my mother could say to me when I was that age.
Over the weekend the New York Times political desk put out a piece on Hillary’s hand gestures that was so preposterous, it instantly gathered heaps of scorn from commentators lowly and high. Barbara Morrill mocked the NYT piece suitably on Daily Kos. Some commentators searched old video and images to show that the suspect pose has in fact been a sincere gesture over and over for decades.
The whole ludicrous episode prompted Melissa McEwan to write an essay deploring the truly awful coverage that Hillary has so long been subject to in even our highbrow mainstream media.
The media have spent decades building up a caricature of Hillary, dehumanizing her into a cold, robotic monster whose ambition has annihilated all traces of any authentic humanity, leaving her unlikable and untrustworthy. They’ve created a false narrative, then shove a microphone in her face and demand that she account for why it is that voters see her that way.
It’s a trap. A sickening, cruel trap. She knows exactly why – but if she speaks the truth, if she says, “Because your profession has carefully cultivated a funhouse mirror version of who I am and told people that’s the real me for 40 years,” then she will be excoriated for playing the victim, for shirking accountability for her own flaws, for whining, for complaining, for being weak.
So she says, over and over, “I take responsibility for these perceptions of me,” conceding the only frame the purveyors of this malice will tolerate, because it’s the only thing she can do, in order to avoid days of manufactured outrage at her “arrogance” and “misdirection” if she placed the blame, rightly, at their feet.
With the NYT’s latest contribution to the phenomenon as a straw to break the camel’s back, Twitter filled the #HillaryCoverageIsCrap hashtag with many examples. Ms. McEwan storified her own continuation of the theme on Twitter.
Coming up later today, Hillary will campaign in Florida.
Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton will be in St. Petersburg Monday. The former secretary of state will tour 3 Daughters Brewery….
Clinton will then host a rally that is open to the public. That event is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Monday at The Coliseum, 535 4th Ave. N. in St. Petersburg. Doors open at 1:30 p.m.
On Thursday, she will give an economic speech.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will push this week to gain further ground against Republican nominee Donald Trump on the economy, countering a speech he is set to deliver Monday with her own on Thursday, her campaign said.
Clinton plans to cap two weeks of campaigning focused on jobs and the economy -- including a post-Democratic National Convention bus tour with running mate Tim Kaine -- with a speech in Detroit that campaign officials say will highlight the stark contrast between her views and those of Trump.
And on Friday, Bill Clinton will speak in Las Vegas at a conference organized by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
Bonus Tweets:
Have a terrific day, everyone!
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.