Greg Sargent:
Early this morning, before Bernie Sanders made his big speech endorsing Hillary Clinton today in New Hampshire, Sanders’s top policy adviser, Warren Gunnels, sent an email to a few dozen fellow Sanders supporters.
“The Senator made the difficult decision not to file minority reports,” Gunnels wrote in the email, which was sent to all of Sanders’s representatives on the Democratic convention Platform Committee and forwarded to this blog. “You should be receiving an e-mail soon from the Senator about the next steps in the political revolution.” [see delphine’s diary for content]
This dry language actually amounts to a very significant declaration: What it means is that the Sanders campaign will not further contest the makeup of the Democratic platform at the convention, even though Sanders did not get all the changes to the platform he had hoped for. Previously, the Sanders campaign had intimated that — even after he endorsed Clinton — it would file minority reports indicating his disagreement with various aspects of the Dem platform, which could have perhaps led to continuing disillusionment among his 13 million voters, whom Clinton very much wants to win over starting now.
Charles P. Pierce:
Fifty years ago, a senator from Vermont gave Lyndon B. Johnson the best advice that LBJ ever ignored. The country was just then getting waist deep in the Mekong and the gentleman from Vermont had a suggestion. "Just declare victory," Senator George Aiken told the president, "and then get the hell out."
If you want to know what happened on Tuesday in a high school gymnasium here, when another smart senator from Vermont endorsed the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, keep Aiken's advice in mind. Because what Bernie Sanders did was to declare victory and then get the hell out of the race…
And it says more than a little about HRC that she allowed Sanders to take this extended victory lap in his speech prior to endorsing her formally, and that she and her campaign allowed a vigorous debate to take place over the platform. It was both personally classy and politically shrewd—especially since she had to know that the various phrenologists and seers in the campaign press corps were going to divine every blink of an eye on the podium for some hidden conflict or deeper meaning. She was also very gracious in her remarks toward his supporters, some of whom walked out in protest before she began.
John Judis:
By endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, Bernie Sanders will finally and officially end his campaign for the presidency – and fittingly so. Was it all worth it? Political history is littered with dissident campaigns that made a splash but didn’t have much impact after they were over – Brown in ’92, McCain in 2000, and Huckabee and Edwards in 2008 – as well as those that did – Reagan in 1976, Hart in 1984, and Dean in 2004. It’s too early to tell about Sanders’ campaign, but here are several aspects in which Sanders either reinforced a trend or, perhaps, began one.
Jamelle Bouie:
Is America Falling Apart or Finally Waking Up?
Lessons from a Week of Violence
This isn’t 1968, when wars, assassinations, and riots brought our society to its knees in a way that’s still hard to fathom. This isn’t 1992, when another case of police brutality sparked one of the worst conflagrations ever to strike an American city.
For as little political movement as we’ve seen on questions of police violence and racial bias, there are signs that the broad public—the white public—is waking up to the problem. Conservative writers like Matt Lewis in the Daily Caller or Leon Wolf inRedState are conceding the pervasiveness of police brutality. Prominent Republicans such as Paul Ryan did the same, praising President Obama’s remarks and hailing peaceful protests. Even Newt Gingrich—who once called Obama a “food stamp president”—agreed. “It’s more dangerous to be black in America,” he said. “You’re substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don’t respect you.”
Dallas is what a ‘2nd Amendment remedy’ would look like
No, the Second Amendment is NOT about people being able to “defend themselves from an overly aggressive government,” as Carson puts it. No federal court has ever interpreted it that way, which is why it is perfectly constitutional for the government to ban or heavily regulate ownership of fully automatic weapons, bombs, tanks, mines, bazookas, missiles or other military-quality devices that would be required to overthrow the government of the United States of America. You do NOT have a Second Amendment right to violently overthrow the government, nor do you have the right to kill government employees in the pursuit of that overthrow. Any suggestion otherwise is irresponsible.
Christopher Hooks:
All commentary to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing particularly surprising about Thursday's attack in Dallas. It was inevitable. Eventually, someone was going to get it "right." Micah Xavier Johnson, thanks to his military training, knew what he was doing, targeting and dispatching police officers with ruthless efficiency. Footage from the attack showing Johnson weaving in and out of pillars and shooting one officer from behind is a brutal testament to what powerful weaponry in skilled hands can do in the right environment, against even well-trained and armed opponents. It was also, in its own way, a powerful rebuke to the strange logic that governs gun politics, and gun culture, in Texas.
The modern mass shooting was born three hours south of downtown Dallas, at the University of Texas in Austin, in 1966. Another veteran, an ex-Marine sharpshooter named Charles Whitman, climbed the university tower and started picking off students. Whitman, like Johnson, benefited from being a hell of a lot better with a gun than his opponents, and had significant tactical advantages — in Whitman's case height, and in Johnson's chaos and the presence of crowds.
Politico:
Measuring the Backlash Against the Muslim Backlash
Despite heated campaign rhetoric and the Orlando shooting, new polls show that the American public’s views of both Islam and Muslims have become more favorable. Here’s why.
AP:
Here's Grace, a sweetly smiling little girl in a wheelchair. Now here's her mother, Lauren Glaros: "When I saw Donald Trump mock a disabled person, I was just shocked," she says. Then we see Trump, his hands jerking in front of his body as he imitates a reporter who has a condition that limits his arm movement.
To the Democrats, it's a picture worthy of a thousand commercials.
That's why two versions of the advertisement called "Grace" have been on television more than almost any other at this early stage of the general election campaign. They've appeared some 7,200 times in 10 states across the country, with the heaviest concentration in the always-hard-fought presidential battlegrounds of Florida and Ohio, an analysis from Kantar Media's campaign advertising tracker shows.
Re above tweets, Donald Trump will try and exploit this, but he’s the wrong messenger to pull it off.
Bloomberg:
Hillary Clinton is crushing Donald Trump among college-educated white voters, a group Mitt Romney easily won in 2012 and one his Republican Party has carried in presidential contests for decades.
White voters with at least a college degree—a group that represented more than a third of the 2012 electorate—back Clinton over Trump 48 percent to 37 percent, the latest Purple Slice online poll for Bloomberg Politics shows. Romney won that group by 14 percentage points, according to exit polls.
Among all college-educated likely voters, including those with post-graduate degrees, Clinton leads 54 percent to 32 percent, a much bigger margin than President Barack Obama’s 2-point advantage with a group that represented 47 percent of the electorate in 2012. Among voters with just a college degree and no post-graduate degree, another subgroup Romney won in 2012, Clinton is ahead 48 percent to 37 percent.
Gallup:
So who are the "25%" who don't like either of the candidates this year? One defining feature: 54% describe themselves as politically independent. Although many of these independents actually lean to one party or the other, as a group they have less attachment to the system and are less likely to vote, raising the possibility that those who dislike both candidates also have a lower probability of actually voting.
The 25% who dislike both candidates are also disproportionately young. This could, in part, reflect the lasting allure of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for this group. Throughout June, when these data were collected, Sanders had still not formally conceded to Clinton. It's possible that this group will grow more positive about Clinton after she is officially crowned as the Democratic nominee. But, in general, young people are less valuable as voters because they have the lowest turnout rates of any age group. This, in turn, underscores a possible conclusion that the high unpopularity of the two candidates may have less impact on the election than might be initially thought -- because the joint unpopularity is centered in demographic groups who are the least likely to vote in any circumstance.
Americans who dislike both candidates are about evenly split on whether they approve of Barack Obama's job as president -- 46% approve and 50% disapprove, compared with his overall 52%/44% rating from the U.S. public in the month of June.
According to US News, politics ain’t beanbag, but sometimes it involves beans:
Bernie Fans Say 'Fart-In' Against Hillary Will Go On
Unswayed by his endorsement, progressives continue to stockpile beans for the Democratic convention.
There is a long and – well – redolent tradition here, going back to Saul Alinsky:
Another idea I had that almost came to fruition was directed at the Rochester Philharmonic, which was the establishment’s — and Kodak’s — cultural jewel. I suggested we pick a night when the music would be relatively quiet and buy 100 seats. The 100 blacks scheduled to attend the concert would then be treated to a preshow banquet in the community consisting of nothing but huge portions of baked beans. Can you imagine the inevitable consequences within the symphony hall? The concert would be over before the first movement — another Freudian slip — and Rochester would be immortalized as the site of the world’s first fart-in.
PLAYBOY: Aren’t such tactics a bit juvenile and frivolous?
ALINSKY: I’d call them absurd rather than juvenile. But isn’t much of life kind of a theater of the absurd? As far as being frivolous is concerned, I say if a tactic works, it’s not frivolous. Let’s take a closer look at this particular tactic and see what purposes it serves — apart from being fun.
Genius of a certain sort. Calvin and Hobbes would have approved.