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Good morning! violining247 back at the helm here for the Friday HNV roundup. Today we have two big stories: the final round of VP speculation, as today is rumored to be the day Hillary announces, and Hillary & Co’s response to the Donald’s speech last night at the RNCinCLE (pronounced in my head to roughly rhyme with “debacle”...fitting, wouldn’t you say).
Rumor has it that today is VP Day. Who’s going to be checking their phone like a manic squirrel for that text from the campaign?! *raises hand unabashedly* Per Hillary’s schedule, she is in Florida today and tomorrow, where the announcement is theoretically happening. Speculation in the media seems to center on Kaine and Vilsack. Per the Wall Street Journal in an article last night:
Hillary Clinton is on the verge of announcing her vice-presidential pick, with Democrats familiar with her search believing she will settle on a Spanish-speaking ally from a battleground state: Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Two other candidates also were under consideration until the end—Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, people familiar with the process said. The Clinton campaign declined to comment.
Mrs. Clinton is likely to announce her selection Friday in the form of a text message to supporters. On Saturday, she is set to campaign in Florida, a potential stage for a joint appearance with her newly minted running mate.
On Vilsack, from the Des Moines Register:
If Hillary Clinton chooses her vice president based on the criteria she set, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack may be the obvious choice.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has said repeatedly that the No. 1 qualification for her running mate will be his or her readiness to be president, while her aides add that she wants someone she knows, likes and respects.
“She’s looking for someone who she believes, at the drop of a dime, could be the next president of the United States,” Marlon Marshall, the Clinton campaign's director of states, said last week, “someone who she trusts and will get along with.”
Vilsack has 16 years of executive government experience, unmatched by anyone else thought to be under consideration. And he has history with Bill and Hillary Clinton dating to the Watergate era.
But, could this all be an elaborate fake? An intriguing moment on The Late Show leaves us to wonder...
FWIW, Al Giordano, organizer extraordinaire whom many of us follow on Twitter, reads The Late Show bit as “the tell.” (!)
Also worth mentioning is that Warren is scheduled to be in Florida this weekend. Kaine is still currently scheduled for a series of fundraisers in Massachusetts...hmm...could these logistics also be a sign? Who knows! As always, I leave it to you to hash it out in the comments. Won’t you be glad after today when we don’t have to play this game anymore?
Then there was the Donald’s speech at the RNCinCLE/DEBaCLE last night. I don’t think I need to give the speech itself that much airtime (heaven knows it doesn’t deserve it!). Suffice it to say Donald went the route of appealing to fear, painting a dark picture of America in decline. But as Hillary tweeted during his speech:
Check out Hillary’s official Twitter for her team’s rapid response during the speech. Here are a few highlights.
There was also the official campaign statement, released by John Podesta.
Yesterday, Hillary’s campaign also launched an insult generator called Trump Yourself, where users can get a personal Trump insult for their Facebook profile. Traffic to the site was so heavy that it ended up crashing. If you want to have a little fun, check it out.
On a more serious note, though, I know there is a lot of fear in the air on our side right now. While a legitimate reaction, we cannot let blind panic paralyze us. If we all take a deep breath, harness the horror we are all (rightly) feeling, and channel it into action, we can absolutely win in November...handily. What can we do?
First and foremost, donate!
If you don’t have money but you have some time, go to the Events page on Hillary’s official website and put in your city or zip code to find volunteer opportunities (or even just community-building opportunities) near you. I used this tool to find a voter registration event when I was in Pennsylvania...it’s a great way to get involved!
Lastly, I am a big proponent of the virtual phone bank, which allows you to make calls from home. I ran some hypothetical numbers the other day on this for my Facebook universe, based on statistics that have been cited to me by operatives from several campaigns now and are more or less borne out by my experience. Here is what I wrote:
Let's say for sake of argument that all of my FB friends (513 of you) made 10 calls a week from now til November 8 (15 weeks, give or take). That's 76,950 calls. You'll get about a 14% response rate, so that's 10,773 people that we would actually talk to. Of those, roughly 1/10 weren't going to vote, but because you called, now they will. My theoretical FB Phone Banking Army, by making "only" 10 calls a week, would have pulled in 1,773 additional voters. Lest you think that is nothing, may I remind you Florida was decided by 537 votes in 2000.
Yes, these calls can absolutely make a difference, so if you have any time at all, get a Google Voice number (or generate a number for yourself on the Burner app), and start dialing! We have the power to stop Trump and elect a good, progressive fighter in Hillary Clinton. So let’s all chip in and do our parts, clear-eyed and confident, and “Stronger Together.”
Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States. If you want to support this work, consider a donation through GoFundMe.