Last Call For Kaine Do Attitude

So I read way too much into the Tim Kaine as a smokescreen theory, turns out he really is Clinton's VP pick and I should have taken the stories at face value.

Kaine, from Virginia, would give Clinton a running mate with wide governing experience but picking the self-described "boring" senator could anger progressive groups hoping for a more liberal choice.

Kaine had a clear edge over two other candidates among the final contenders: Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democratic source with knowledge of the discussions said.

Clinton's campaign declined to comment.

Clinton is expected to announce her running mate through a text message or Twitter, possibly as early as Friday when she has two afternoon events scheduled in Florida. NBC News said she would make the announcement on Friday.

That text message came out around 8:15 PM this evening confirming Kaine as the pick and on social media.

I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, @TimKaine, a man who's devoted his life to fighting for others. -H pic.twitter.com/lTVyfztE5Z

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 23, 2016

So, no surprises, no guesswork, Kaine was always the choice apparently and had been the top contender for weeks.  

Well, here we go.

Bailing Out Of The Zeppelin

In blue state areas where The Party Of Trump might not be able to win without more than just "working class" white voters, at least some Republicans see the writing on the wall when it comes to what Trump will do to the GOP brand in November and well beyond.

The vice chairman of the Washington, D.C., GOP party plans to resign from his post and vote for libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in November, the longtime Republican operative told The Daily Beast. Gary Teal, a delegate at the Republican convention, said he had already told fellow delegates that he will resign. 

“If I’m not going to vote for the nominee, then I have to resign my position,” Teal said. “I’m prepared to do that.” Three additional delegates from Washington, D.C., joined Teal to announce their support for the libertarian candidate. Justin Dillon, Kris Hammond, and Peter Lee—who were wearing #NeverTrump buttons—spoke to The Daily Beast in the hallway of Quicken Loans Arena, just minutes after Donald Trump finished his keynote speech on Thursday night. 

“The RNC has bungled this nomination process by having bad rules,” Teal said, referring to a controversy over nominating rules that caused chaos on the convention floor Monday. “And now at this convention, they’ve sacrificed integrity in favor of unity.” 

In a CNN poll released last week, Johnson polled at 13 percent against the field of Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Republicans jumping ship for the Libertarians?  The more the merrier.  It's nice to see that people who really do see their party as coming apart are willing to leave.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump's acceptance speech was one for the history books, under "Prime examples of American infamy".  It was a terrifying speech in the clinical sense of the word, it was meant to terrify people into voting for him lest they suffer the consequences of not doing so, and it was meant to terrify those voting against him and reminding them, as Steve M says, that Donald Trump can very well win this thing in November.

It isn't just that Trump's speech successfully tapped into the anxieties of many Americans -- it's that the entire convention did, in between all the things that were so fascinating to political insiders. And while the four days of speeches, up to and including Trump's own, didn't provide solutions beyond "Donald Trump will magically fix everything because he's all-powerful," they did offer up a scapegoat for all the world's ills: Hillary Clinton, the worst person in the world.

I'm not supposed to worry about this because the presidential electoral is supposedly etched in stone: Yes, older whites always vote Republican, and whites are a majority, but they're a dwindling majority; Barack Obama built a coalition that can't lose a presidential election anymore. But Obama's coalition never stopped liking him; his approval/disapproval numbers always hovered within a few points of 50-50, and those who approved of him really admired him. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has a 40%/58% favorable/unfavorable rating right now, according to the average at Huffington Post's Pollster. To win in November, she needs the votes of a lot of people who simply don't like her and don't trust her. So why are we so certain the Obama coalition will turn out for her?

In the Obama years, we've seen dogma-driven Republicans expand their near-monopoly on white people's votes from the South to supposedly blue parts of the North -- see the governors' mansions in Maine, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. I know -- they won because the Democrats' presidential electorate doen't show up in off years. But which electorate will show up for Hillary Clinton if she doesn't get her disapproval ratings down?

The answer to those questions was provided by Trump himself in one of his ad-libbed parts of his speech when he promised to end Muslim immigration into the United States:

"We don't want them in our country!"

He was speaking about Muslims.  But you can apply that to any group of Americans not sufficiently Trump-approved.  That phrase doesn't just describe the Trump campaign, but the entire Republican party.  Every single person planning to vote for Donald Trump in November (and that's going to be at least sixty million of your friends, neighbors and co-workers, guys) has a "them" that they want out of "our" country.

Put that on a bumper sticker.  Hell, I'm sure people will.  But that's what Donald Trump represents, and that's what the people voting for him want.  It doesn't matter that some of the people supporting Trump are the very people other Trump supporters want America to be rid of permanently.

It's to stop this man that the Obama coalition will turn out.

If we don't, well, we end up the "them" in this equation, now don't we?

StupidiNews!

• FOX News head Roger Ailes has left the network after sexual harassment claims by multiple women, chairman Rupert Murdoch will serve as the network's acting CEO.
• Philadelphia's largest police union is blasting Hillary Clinton for allowing Black Lives Matter activists to speak at the Democratic Convention next week, but no police officers.
• Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is appealing his conviction on genocide charges by an international tribunal, saying the court was biased against Serbs.
• The United States wastes 50 million tons of food worth $160 billion each year, but a new survey finds few Americans are willing to change their behavior.
• A Dutch company wants No Man's Sky creator Hello Games to pay up for using a patented "superformula" that designs the game's many planets and moons.