Day One of the Democratic National Convention is now over, and tonight seemed designed to allow Bernie Sanders supporters to vent their frustrations, given the lineup of speakers. All the most liberal and progressive speakers were lined up for the first night, which only served to concentrate the energy for Bernie Sanders. At first it was announced that Bernie would speak tonight, but not in primetime. Later this was changed to give Bernie the final speaking slot of the night (which was entirely the right move for the convention to make), but instead of getting into all of that I'm just going to jot down my initial reactions to the spectacle of the first night.

Continue Reading »

Greetings from Philadelphia! I have just eaten a Geno's cheesesteak after a busy day getting ready for the Democratic National Convention to start, and I finally have some time to sit down and share a few preliminary thoughts.

First: there are disagreements between fellow party members, and then there are bitter knock-down drag-out family fights. Earlier today, I headed to the famous "cheesesteak corner" where two of the most famous of these establishments sit across the street from each other. As I pulled up, a magical parking space appeared in front of Geno's, so I took it as a sign from the culinary gods and pulled in and bought "two, Provolone, with." Later in the day, I saw Elizabeth Warren had tweeted a photo eating a cheesesteak across the street, at Pat's. Do I think any the less of her? No, and I hope she would return the favor. Minor differences of opinion matter little, in the long run. But the difference between Bernie supporters and those who favored Hillary Clinton go a lot deeper than which cholesterol-laden treat to enjoy. We're about to find out how deep those differences go, and whether they will be bridged this year. The Republicans struggled mightily to appear as united as possible last week, but in the end failed to do so. Will the Democrats also fail to convincingly sell the idea of party unity, even with Debbie Wasserman Schultz out as the party's head? That remains to be seen.

But before we get to all of that, a general observation is in order. Attending a national political convention and trying to report on what's going on is a little like being caught up in a whirlwind. "Now I know how Dorothy felt," in other words. The entire time, no matter what you're doing, what you're watching, or where you are; you always have a sneaking suspicion that you're missing the real story -- that something bigger or more exciting is going on where you aren't. If you're inside the convention hall, you wonder what's going on outside with the protesters. If you're outside on the streets, you're worried that big news is happening inside the arena. If you take time to type up an article, you could be missing all sorts of things. And that's even before you get to the evening parties, where (of course) you're worried that there's a better party with bigger names happening at the pub down the street.

Continue Reading »

Program Notes: Before I begin, a few quick program notes are in order. I had promised a second installment of my "Friday Talking Points" retrospective today, but I didn't have time to put it together due to having to scurry around getting ready for our trip to Philadelphia. We've got the cat-sitter/house-sitter lined up, but there's always tons of last-minute stuff, so I just decided to bail on FTP and punt. So I'm re-running a column from only about a week ago, sorry for that (but you can see why it deserves more air time, today). Oh, I also have to admit, I have no idea what I'll be doing next Friday here at CW.com, either -- I can't even promise there will be a column at all.

This brings up a larger program note -- the schedule for next week will be absolutely fluid. Posts may appear at any time, in any order. Guest bloggers will be appearing. Multiple posts per day are possible. I may kick things off with a rare weekend post, on Sunday night. There will be no schedule at all -- it'll all be dependent on what is going on, when I have time to actually type and post, and what parties we'll be invited to (heh). But I'll try to post as frequently as circumstances allow.

Originally published on July 14, 2016

Will one of the most exciting primary election seasons ultimately end in sheer boredom? That was my immediate reaction today to hearing the news that Donald Trump is all but set on selecting Mike Pence as his running mate, and that Hillary Clinton's first choice might just be Tim Kaine. After I yawned widely, of course. Pence? Kaine? Really? These are the best two choices for vice president around? Wow.

Continue Reading »

Donald Trump finally stopped talking, so I can now start writing. His speech went on for almost an hour and a half, which was a bit much for me -- especially after an exhausting week of listening to Republicans talk. But that's the end of the evening, so let's go back to the beginning and see how we got here.

A few overall thoughts (none very coherent, at this point) to begin with. First, they seemed to have a lot of musical interludes tonight that were mostly missing from earlier nights (or perhaps I just wasn't paying attention). It seemed like G. E. Smith and his band had the most time on stage of anyone tonight, other than Donald Trump. Their choice of songs was a little eclectic at times, as well.

Like last night, the scheduling was better than the first two nights. There were only a couple of snoozers, and the buildup to hearing Trump speak mostly was pretty smooth. Also, as Gwen Ifill of PBS put it: "The house is full for the first time this week." Everyone showed up to see the big night, instead of the upper decks being almost deserted. A bigger crowd meant a lot better response to almost all the speakers.

Continue Reading »

Heading into tonight's speechifying, I was convinced that Ted Cruz would emerge afterwards as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination in 2020, should Donald Trump fail to win in November. Now, I'm not so sure.

But before we get to the big story of the night, let's start at the beginning. Today, the realization finally dawned in the Trump camp that they had to do something to stop the bleeding over the plagiarism storyline. A staffer was summarily dragged out who offered to fall on her own sword, and magnanimous Donald pardoned her, saying "everyone makes mistakes." So they likely successfully prevented the story from continuing for another day. But it would have been overshadowed anyway (obviously) by the end of the night.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. John Kasich also stirred the pot a bit today, saying he was courted for Trump's veep and that, furthermore, they offered him control over both the domestic and foreign agenda, leaving Trump to... um, play golf? The Trump camp immediately denied the story, which only served to highlight the Trump/Kasich feud even further than Kasich's refusal to set foot in the arena already had.

Tonight, the scheduling finally approached professionalism, I have to say (as an overall comment). There was a slow build throughout the night from all the speakers (and their placement), the minor folks in the first hour, the more prominent in the second hour, and (excepting Callista Gingrich's bizarre appearance), the third and primetime hour was nothing but the A-list -- with no minor-leaguers left hanging at the end of the night after the excitement was over and the crowd had gone home. So there was that, at the very least. To put this another way, tonight's trainwreck did not resemble that of the previous two nights of scheduling idiocy -- it was for an entirely different reason.

Continue Reading »

We are now halfway through the Republican National Convention, and I still have yet to hear a single policy proposal or thing that the Republicans or Donald Trump are for. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

Continue Reading »

I'm writing this while watching all of Day One of the Republican National Convention. I apologize in advance for the rather stream-of-consciousness nature of the post, but I also caution that you should get used to it, because we are in for two weeks of convention-palooza.

The Republicans went first this year, and it is actually notable that Day One is even happening. For the past two presidential election cycles, Mother Nature intervened and Republicans canceled their first day (in 2008 it was Hurricane Gustav, and in 2012 Hurricane Isaac that pre-empted the start of the GOP convention). Make of that what you will, I suppose.

I turned on the campaign coverage early today just in time to catch the big floor fight among the delegates. Call it the final death throes of the "Never Trump" movement. After being blocked by the rules committee, this was their final protest -- an attempt to get a vote on changing the convention's rules to unbind all the delegates on the first vote. The dissenters thought they had enough votes to at least force a roll call vote on the rules, but after some back-room dealing, the convention chair announced that he had strong-armed several states into dropping their names from the bid -- making it small enough (by the rules) to be ignored.

There was some shouting back and forth between the two camps. At least two states' delegations reportedly walked out in protest. These clips will undoubtedly be shown on the evening news tonight, because it was the best example of how divided the Republican Party still is over the question of supporting Donald Trump. One New Hampshire delegate (a former senator) on the "Never Trump" side later denounced the convention denying them their chance for a vote, claiming the people on the other side "act like fascists. They may not be fascists but they act like fascists." He later called them "people I would refer to as brownshirts." For those unaware, this is not usually the sort of thing heard from the floor of a national convention. To say the least.

Continue Reading »

We begin today with a warning. Our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points are going on hiatus for at least three weeks. Next Friday, we'll be heading to the Democratic National Convention, and the Friday after that we'll be heading back home. For both today and next Friday we're taking a look back (through the lens of our talking points) at the entire 2016 presidential campaign season so far. We have no idea what we're going to do the Friday after that (indeed, we can't even promise that there'll be a column at all on July 29th, at this point). Regular FTP columns will resume the first Friday in August, just in time for the traditional "Silly Season" of American politics.

The next two weeks are going to be all about the conventions, which means there'll be so many talking points discussed during the course of each week that hopefully the lack of a list each Friday won't even be noticed. For now, we can only offer up a do-it-yourself talking point challenge, just for fun. Then we're devoting the rest of the column to taking a look at the past year, for a special reason. Because this will be rather lengthy, we are pre-empting all the other segments of the column to present it.

Continue Reading »

Will one of the most exciting primary election seasons ultimately end in sheer boredom? That was my immediate reaction today to hearing the news that Donald Trump is all but set on selecting Mike Pence as his running mate, and that Hillary Clinton's first choice might just be Tim Kaine. After I yawned widely, of course. Pence? Kaine? Really? These are the best two choices for vice president around? Wow.

Considering who else is on both candidates' short lists, these would be the most spectacularly mundane selections possible, for both Trump and Clinton. Perhaps that is the point, I will readily concede. Perhaps after all the excitement at the top of the ticket, some boredom will balance things out on both sides of the aisle. In Kaine's case, that isn't even a slur, but rather a self-evaluation -- he appeared on a Sunday morning political chatfest a few weeks back and described himself as "boring."

Continue Reading »

In 1781, Benjamin Franklin wrote a satirical letter, purporting to be a proposal for a subject for European scientists to study. Franklin, an amateur scientist himself, was making a snide point about what he considered to be rather frivolous research by the Europeans. The equivalent today would be those American politicians who routinely point out some of the more far-fetched research the federal government now funds. This tongue-in-cheek document is now known by the title "Fart Proudly," although Franklin didn't actually use that phrase in his satirical essay.

Continue Reading »