There have been a number of analysis saying that by selecting Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton is looking past the election; that Kaine was picked not for what he brings to the ticket, but for what he can do in the White House.
Larry Sabato says that’s only partly true.
Vice-presidential candidates can be divided into two categories: political choices selected for what they can deliver on Election Day and governing picks who can do some heavy lifting in the White House.
By choosing Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton will get both. ...
Kaine’s critics on the liberal side have called him boring, prompting Kaine to acknowledge this “flaw.” Actually, that’s true only if you consider a keen mind and intellectual rigor to be dreary. Kaine can slice and dice policy like the Harvard Law School grad he is. Plus, if there’s ever been a year when we’ve needed less excitement, it’s this one. ...
Looking at Pence’s and Kaine’s lengthy records, the contrast is sharp. To the extent that Kaine focuses on Pence rather than Trump, he will be certain to make an issue of the religious freedom law Pence signed as governor, which was widely viewed as an attack on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Kaine has a lengthy record of backing gay rights. The debate about climate change, where Kaine and Pence take opposite sides, is another sharp difference. The Pence-Kaine disagreements even extend to smoking. One of Kaine’s proudest achievements as governor was a smoking ban in bars and restaurants; by comparison, Pence has questioned whether smoking actually causes cancer.
Let me be the eight-millionth guy to say that, now that I’ve seen Kaine speak with Clinton and had more chance to learn about something other than his support for bank deregulation, I’m warming up to the guy. I’ll be fully defrosted … when he stops pushing for bank deregulation.
Kathleen Parker is shaken by what she heard last week.
It is not for nothing that many have compared Trump’s brand of rhetoric to the words of some of humankind’s worst, including, unavoidably, Adolf Hitler.
Observing the convention, I was taken back to my uncommon childhood, when I was exposed to Hitler’s speeches. My father, a World War II Army Air Corps pilot, was also a kitchen historian who, postwar, studied Hitler in an effort to better understand him. This involved listening to his recorded speeches, which, in the dark, B.A. (Before Apple) era, meant we all listened to them. They made a lasting impression. …
“Lock her up” sounds a lot like “To the stockades.”
This is who he is. Donald Trump is a fascist. He’s offering the country fascism. He’s not being coy about it. He’s not pretending anything less. And already a majority of Republicans have jumped at the chance to cast off two centuries of democracy and human rights.
Michael Gerson hits much the same theme.
The notions that Donald Trump would make a typical presidential pivot, and that his divisive form of politics was merely a pose, lie dead on the convention floor in Cleveland. And it is now necessary to confront his unmasked contempt for American institutions.
Far from being confused or opportunistic, Trump has a consistent, well-developed view of the universe and his (prominent) place within it. The world is in chaos. Our country is being infiltrated by child-murdering illegal immigrants and “massive . . . flows” of disloyal, unscreened refugees. American communities are overwhelmed by violence, impoverished by unfair trade and betrayed by politicians who refuse to “put America first.” The institutions that are supposed to defend us are dominated by special interests and rigged by elites. …
If Trump is elected president, he can justly claim a mandate to pursue the enemies of the people, foreign and domestic. If he tests the limits of executive power to punish rivals and intimidate opponents, he has hidden none of his intentions.
They won’t call them concentration camps. At least not at first.
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson provide another review of the RNC.
Political conventions used to be celebratory affairs. But in Cleveland this week, the most reliable source of good cheer has been Republicans’ collective fantasy of putting Hillary Clinton behind bars.
... in far too many ways, what we saw in Cleveland was an amplification of a disturbing 25-year trend. It is less a departure than a painful reminder of the way in which American politics — and the Republican Party — have changed. The endpoint isn’t easily predicted. But when we grasp the deeper forces at play, it becomes clear the ugliness is likely to get worse before it gets better, even if Donald Trump is decisively defeated.
After all, GOP attacks on the legitimacy of Democratic candidates and presidents are hardly new. “Lock her up” is part of a thread that runs from conspiracy theories about Vince Foster’s death to Bill Clinton’s impeachment to Sarah Palin’s “real America” to the Birtherism that Trump espoused so fervently. Each involved fundamental challenges to not just the policies and judgment but the very legitimacy of Democrats seeking or occupying the White House.
All those Republican big wigs would sat at home last week tsking at Trump? They built the platform he won on.
Frank Bruni on how Don Trump likes to stand in front of the flag, but doesn’t give a damn what it stands for.
In his bid for the White House, Donald Trump is playing many roles: law-and-order strongman, sky’s-the-limit builder, dealmaker extraordinaire. But perhaps none is more emphatic than all-American patriot. ...
But this lavishly professed love is a largely semantic affair. It’s fickle. It’s reckless. Under its guise, he’s apparently prepared to jettison values that really do make America great and alliances that really do keep America safer. His patriotism brims with grievances.
It’s part and parcel with the “Make America Great Again” theme. It pre-supposes that America—America right now, right here, today—is not great. To be great, America has to be something other.
His patriotism doesn’t add up. On one hand, it leads him to echo conservatives’ longstanding charge that President Obama belittles our country by apologizing too much for it. On the other, Trump told Sanger and Haberman that he’d refrain from reprimanding allies with poor records on civil liberties because the United States is no paragon.
But on that point, Trump is in alignment with conservatives. Neither is looking for a country that’s truly honorable. Neither wants a country that lives up to its highest ideals. They just want to grind out a cigarette anywhere they want, and make the world live with it.
Ross Douthat has his own review of Cleveland’s Midnight in America parade.
The Donald Trump National Convention in Cleveland (technically the Republican National Convention, but let’s be real) wasn’t really much for storytelling. Its messages were muddled, its shared agenda boiled down to hating Hillary Clinton, many of its speakers didn’t want to talk about the candidate and one declined even to endorse him.
But if the convention didn’t tell, it definitely showed: It was less an advertisement for Donald Trump than a perfect synecdoche for his entire ascent, with every element of the Trump phenomenon distilled into four strange days of drama.
Douthat got to use synecdoche, so you know he’s happy (he used it incorrectly, still, he’s happy).
Trump also used the convention week to offer a case study in the damage a reckless president can do, by giving an extended interview with this newspaper in which he casually undercut America’s commitment to our NATO allies in the event of Russian aggression in the Baltics.
One need not be any kind of Russia hawk to recognize that this is the kind of thing that encourages brinksmanship, aggression, war. (It also dovetails, rather creepily, with Trumpworld’s conspicuous Russian ties, Vladimir Putin’s history of backing right-wing European parties, and Russian television’s conspicuous pro-Trump propaganda.)
Honestly I don’t know enough yet to tell if Trump is pro-Russia. But he’s pro-Putin. And pro-Assad. And pro-Saddam. And pro-anyone else he thinks kicks ass, takes names, and loves torture. If ISIS could keep a leader around long enough for Trump to remember his name, Trump would be pro-that guy too.
Gary Kasparov should know a bit about Putin.
Donald Trump’s dark and frightening speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday had pundits and historians making comparisons ranging from George Wallace in the 1960s to Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. As suitable as those comparisons may be, the chill that ran down my spine was not because of Trump’s echoes of old newsreel footage. Instead, I saw an Americanized version of the brutally effective propaganda of fear and hatred that Vladimir Putin blankets Russia with today. …
In both cases, the intent of the speaker is to elicit the visceral emotions of fear and disgust before relieving them with a cleansing anger that overwhelms everything else. Only the leader can make the fear and disgust go away. The leader will channel your hatred and frustration and make everything better. How, exactly? Well, that’s not important right now.
We know that Trump doesn’t read. But I could easily believe he takes some time to watch Putin speeches.
Gail Collins has a lengthy bit on Hillary Clinton’s campaign for Senate, and her attitude when off camera.
When Clinton is nominated for president later this week in Philadelphia, we’ll be talking about her as the first woman to get a crack at running the country. But she’d also be one of the most famous people ever to get the honor. In America, she’s been part of the backdrop of our lives for nearly a quarter of a century. We’re watching a very familiar face making a brand-new mark on history. …
Whatever her defects, she is a candidate with a very long and event-filled history of toughing things out, who finds solace in stupendously hard work and in doing her homework. She’s one of the best-known people on the planet, but she can happily spend a day listening to complaints about watershed pollution or flying halfway around the world to sit through a conference on sustainable development.
There’s some interesting moments in this. Give it a read.
Nicholas Kristof asks what I have to assume is a rhetorical question.
Has the party of Lincoln just nominated a racist to be president? We shouldn’t toss around such accusations lightly, so I’ve looked back over more than 40 years of Donald Trump’s career to see what the record says.
One early red flag arose in 1973, when President Richard Nixon’s Justice Department — not exactly the radicals of the day — sued Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals.
I’ve waded through 1,021 pages of documents from that legal battle, and they are devastating.
I’ve looked at that case, as well. The pattern of discrimination was absolute and the evidence of leading based on race was icon-clad. The case also demonstrated Trump’s willingness to attack judges and officials and to launch frivolous counter-suits. It also showcased his willingness to settle, despite how often he says he never settles.
You want to know why Trump became a developer of luxury apartments? At the time, he was looking to get into an area where he didn’t have to lease to blacks. Bye, Brooklyn and Queens. Hello, Manhattan.
Another revealing moment came in 1989, when New York City was convulsed by the “Central Park jogger” case, a rape and beating of a young white woman. Five black and Latino teenagers were arrested.
Trump stepped in, denounced Mayor Ed Koch’s call for peace and bought full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty. The five teenagers spent years in prison before being exonerated. In retrospect, they suffered a modern version of a lynching, and Trump played a part in whipping up the crowds.
It wasn’t even a high-tech lynching. Just a lynching. And Trump still doesn’t apologize for this.
The New York Times on the end of the “welfare queen.”
Forty years ago, voters first heard the allegation that there were “welfare queens” — throngs of impoverished mothers supposedly dedicated to bilking programs for the needy by having children. The idea gained enough political traction that California and 21 other states passed “crackdown” laws during the welfare reform era of the 1990s, denying mothers on public assistance additional aid if they had more children.
We heard it all right. We heard it straight out of the mouth of Ronald Reagan. Though, as with Trump, the media seemed so enthralled by what Reagan might say next, what dog whistle he might play tomorrow, that they never bothered to notice he was simply lying.
It took 22 years, but California finally acknowledged last month that the ban was cruel and ineffective.
Well … good.
Leonard Pitts was watching that thing in Cleveland. Whatever it was.
Well, that was sure ugly.
Last week’s Republican conclave in Cleveland came across less as a nominating convention than as a four-day nervous breakdown, a moment of fracture and bipolarity from a party that no longer has any clear idea what it stands for or what it is. Everywhere you turned, there was something that made you embarrassed for them, something so disconnected from fact, logic or decency as to suggest those things no longer have much meaning for the party faithful.
Did the convention really earn rave reviews from white supremacists, with one tweeting approvingly that the GOP “is becoming the de facto white party?” ...
Did Ben Carson really link Hillary Clinton to Satan? Did the crowd really chant, repeatedly and vociferously, for her to be jailed? Did at least two Republicans actually call for her execution?
No, you weren’t dreaming. The answer is yes on all counts.
The most amazing thing about the last three days, has been watching the national media try to pretend that what happened in Cleveland was just another political convention. That what we heard from Trump was just another acceptance speech. That calls for jailing—or executing—the opposition is just the old “rough and tumble.”
The Democrats have their gathering this week in Philadelphia. Ordinarily, you’d call on them to present a competing vision, but the GOP has set the bar so low you’d be happy to see the Democrats just present a vision, period, just appeal to something beyond our basest selves, just remind us that we can be better and our politics higher than what we saw last week.
The Washington Post is not treating this like just another election.
Donald J. Trump, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew. …
So much so that the Post is doing an un-dorsement four months out from the election.
Colbert King wants to put one more stop on Hillary’s schedule for next week.
Using a candidate’s faith or lack of religious belief as a political weapon is a disgusting tactic, made all the more repellent if used by a political party that prides itself on religious tolerance and diversity.
… on her way to Philadelphia, Clinton should stop by party headquarters to learn exactly who was looking to find someone to ask Sanders whether he believed in God or was an atheist. And if she finds out that that is what the DNC’s CFO, CEO and communications director were up to, she should tell them that she intends to stop by headquarters on her way back from Philadelphia next week and that she intends to find someone to ask if they have left their jobs. If they haven’t, she’s going to find someone to tell them they are fired. And if she can’t, she’ll tell them herself.
Sounds like a plan.
Menno Schilthuizen has a whole raft of neat little examples where evolution is on overdrive.
For a long time, biologists thought evolution was a very, very slow process, too tardy to be observed in a human lifetime. But recently, we have come to understand that evolution can happen very quickly, as long as natural selection — the relative benefit that a particular characteristic bestows on its bearer — is strong.
That’s not quite true. We’ve long known that small creatures (bacteria, inserts, etc) that reproduce quickly can react quickly to shifts in their environment—including injections of pesticides or antibioltics—but it’s quite interesting to see that even larger, slower-to-reproduce organisms can still generate new characteristics in just a few generations.
In some parks, Dr. Munshi-South found mice carrying genes for heavy metal tolerance, probably because soils there are contaminated with lead or chromium. In other parks, the animals have genes for increased immune response — maybe diseases spread more easily in some high-density populations. …
Spiders in Vienna are evolving to build their webs near moth-attracting streetlights. In some cities, moths, in turn, are developing a resistance to the lure of light bulbs. …
These types of changes are excellent subjects for dedicated amateur observers. Like, say, the folks in Daily Kos’s Backyard Science group, who would be ecstatic to have you join up.