When Trump finally took the stage, it was clear that he was worked up about something as he quickly rushed through his usual talking points. He read the first sentence of the prepared statement: “A new audio tape that has surfaced — just yesterday — from another one of Hillary’s high-roller fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders and all of his supporters.”
Rather than continuing, Trump demeaned and mocked Sanders himself, saying that he has “a much bigger movement than Bernie Sanders ever had” and that he has “much bigger crowds than Bernie Sanders ever had.”
.. He told the crowd to get a group of friends together on Election Day, vote and then go to “certain areas” and “watch” the voters there. “I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about,” Trump said. “So, go and vote and then go check out areas because a lot of bad things happen, and we don’t want to lose for that reason.”
.. “Did anybody like Lester Holt?” Trump said, naming the debate moderator as his crowd booed.
.. Our country is becoming a third-world country.”
.. Trump read the final sentence of the statement but by that point, he had overshadowed his campaign’s planned headline with numerous other ones. And he kept adding to the list.
Hillary Clinton has an anger problem
Hillary Clinton has an anger problem — she’s not angry enough at a time when 70 percent of voters think the country is on the wrong track.
.. “Bernie thinks about it backwards — what is the outcome that he wants, right?” he said. “So if it was free tuition of public colleges and universities, that becomes the starting point and then you work backwards from there in terms of how you design the policy to fit the outcome that you want, as opposed to noodling around policy and then seeing what the outcome is.”
.. The best political operatives — even the ones who project buttoned-up efficiency — tend to be a little eccentric, combining aggressiveness and creativity in equal measure.
.. “OK … I’m sure to be standing there in front of the Democratic Convention with a sea of people with Bernie signs, really sort of validated what he has been talking about for the last 15 months in this campaign, but the last 40 years of his life, 50 years.”
.. History is as important to Weaver as it is to Sanders. And his beef, he told me, is less with Hillary Clinton, who has proved to be a progressive and accommodating partner, than with her husband. If anything, he’s committed to ensuring that the wife take a sledgehammer to her husband’s moth-eaten Clintonism, the centrist Third Way vision that spawned NAFTA, welfare reform and the dismantling of Hillary Clinton’s health-care crusade.
“I think we’re back now more into the historic trajectory of the Democratic Party, more towards sort of the social Democratic Party, and I think it’s heading in that direction,” Weaver added, before leaving to watch Clinton’s nomination speech.
“I think the ’90s were really an aberration.”
Thanks, Obama
The Clintons, infuriated by the raft of Democrats who deserted them during the 2008 campaign, sneered at Obama’s hope and change message. Hillary protested, “We don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country.” Bill groused, “This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”
.. But in this election, Bernie Sanders’s idealistic young people were cast as unrealistic dreamers who wanted free stuff or, according to Gloria Steinem, dates.
.. The same Obama who sparked a revolution has now made it his mission to preserve the establishment for Hillary. He told Rutgers’s school paper in May that Sanders supporters needed to stop searching for silver bullets and recognize “we have to make incremental changes where we can, and every once in a while you’ll get a breakthrough and make the kind of big changes that are necessary.”
.. Yes we can — incrementally!
.. Showing his icy pragmatism, the president passed over his loyal vice president because he thought Joe Biden would not be as strong a candidate, given his tendency for gab and gaffes. (That was before Donald Trump made Biden seem exquisitely bridled.) When Biden didn’t take the hint, Obama sent his former strategist David Plouffe to break the bad news.
.. Emanuel, who was hosting a party at the convention that night, was rightfully upset. It was his job to warn the president of the political consequences, and after Obama decided, it was Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi who had to arm-twist the bill through with no Republican votes.
Bernie Sander’s Fulsome Endorsement of Hillary Clinton
Toward the end of his speech, Sanders did briefly acknowledge that he and Clinton still disagree on some issues. But then he pointed to the Democratic Party platform that the two sides have agreed upon, describing it as “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” He continued, “Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratically controlled Senate, a Democratically controlled House, and a Hillary Presidency—and I intend to be in every corner of this country, to make certain that happens.”
.. Perhaps nobody had informed Clinton that “Stronger Together” echoes the slogan of the Remain side, which lost the recent Brexit referendum in the U.K.