Cromwell

The DNC meeting, day two.

The Hill nomination is through.

Bill went on too long

Should have moved him along

But he did what they told him to do.

1.  Should Hillary campaign as a man or a woman?  This is the question that bedeviled her 2008 campaign, when she had to assume that her ultimate Republican adversary would attack her for being weak on defense.  I think if you could catch her in an unguarded moment, she might well tell you that her vote on the Iraq war was premised on that concern.  Since her foreign policy bona fides have been established by her tenure as Secretary of State, and Trump is running as a neo-isolationist, the issue is less fraught this time–she can run as a strong woman.

2.  Will Bill Clinton be an asset or a liability to the campaign?  There are actually two parts to this question:  one deals with his legacy as President; and the other, with his campaigning skills.  Bill has struggled at times in dealing with attacks from the left, but doing battle with Republicans puts him in his comfort zone, and moderates tend to view the late 90’s as a golden age of sorts.  He will be an asset.

3.  Does Hillary represent continuity or change?  She needs to draft off Obama’s relative popularity without sounding as if she lacks vision.  The answer to this question is incremental change, which is consistent with the best case in the real world.

Day one of the DNC show.

The Trump bogeyman’s got to go.

Michelle sounded good.

The Bern said what he should.

It should leave a nice afterglow.

Everyone knows that country music is about guys in cowboy hats (or occasionally, baseball caps) singing in a nasal twang about women, trucks, and beer, with the odd female singer mawkishly upholding traditional values and standing by her man.  Or is it?

The restaurant at which I usually eat lunch on Saturdays plays the top 20 country videos when I’m there, and I have to tell you, most of what I hear could pass easily for mainstream pop music in the 1980’s if you don’t look at the images.  A lot of it sounds pretty good–particularly the women.  I would rather listen to Miranda Lambert than, say, Rihanna any day of the week.  I like the Band Perry and Lady Antebellum.  Even some of the guys are OK, although I could do without Florida Georgia Line and their endless parade of chicks in bikinis.

There are lessons here for American politics:  mindless red/blue tribalism is counterproductive; and it’s a mistake to make judgments solely on the package. Just because the singer is wearing a cowboy hat doesn’t make the song either good or bad.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, Donald Trump blues.

You’ll surely understand; it’s all over the news.

The election’s coming quickly, and now I’ve got to choose.

Should I take the high road or engage him in his ooze?

 

Must I get down in the dirt, or just prove that I’m sane?

Everything that goes awry, he’ll see I take the blame.

Like Islamic terrorists, by that or other names.

The country’s splitting wide apart; it’s just a crying shame.

 

I’ve got the blues.

The glass ceiling blues.

Should have won eight years ago

But now I’ve paid my dues.

Obama’s really helping me.

I’m following his cues.

It’s tough to be a second act

Can’t just stand in his shoes.

 

Tim Kaine, by all accounts, was a reasonably successful governor.  He is clearly qualified to step in and become President, if necessary.  Picking him won’t cost the Democrats a Senate seat.  He gets along well with Hillary.  Everyone views him as being sane and affable.

In other words, he appears to be a perfect example of idealism tempered by experience and realism, and a good choice for VP, particularly in light of the quality of the opposition.  If the left has a problem with that, well, where are they going to go?  Vote for wannabe Mussolini?

 

In “The Werewolf,” Paul Simon sings with ironic detachment about an America plagued by inequality and violence, and stalked by a werewolf.  Who is the werewolf?  He doesn’t say, so you can fill in the blank yourself:  ISIS; Wall Street bankers; cop killers; illegal immigrants; Putin; whatever.

After watching the GOP convention on Thursday, to me, the answer is clear:  Donald J. Trump is the werewolf.

Fans of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” will of course remember the scene featuring the very tall and strange looking warriors who terrorize passersby simply by saying “Ni.”  Clearly inspired by this work of fiction, the Republicans have decided to recreate it in real life, only using the term “radical Islam.”

I understand that the bonds of tribalism can be very, very strong.  When your party’s candidate is clearly poised to run the country into a ditch, however, your obligation to the nation must take precedence over party loyalty.  Period.

Ted Cruz, in his weird, self-interested way, met this test.  So did the Bush family, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, and all of the prominent right-wing print commentators.  Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker failed.

America needs to remember that in 2020.

The end of the chaos is here.

An orgy of hatred and fear.

If you don’t like the drama

Then you’ll miss Obama.

I wish he could serve four more years.

          The Chaos in Cleveland

The chaos in Cleveland is done.

The fallout has barely begun.

If you don’t own a truck and a gun

I doubt that you had lots of fun.

 

If you think Clinton should go to jail,

If you like men who blow up a gale,

If it’s OK that Trump tells tall tales,

Then he probably finished the sale.

The werewolf has arrived.  Dirty Harry takes on the world. Savonarola for the 21st Century.  These are a few of the ideas in my head after watching Trump’s speech last night.

There was absolutely nothing uplifting about the speech.  Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” was in ashes.  Even his efforts to reach out to groups that are usually anathema to Republicans were fueled by anger and fear of The Other.

I have watched film of Mussolini strutting and ranting and wondered why the Italian people didn’t just laugh and walk away.  Now I know the answer; angry, forceful shouting can make for compelling theater.

Understand that if things are truly as bad as he said, Trump was making the case to be our dictator, not our President.  The question now is, when people get up this morning and walk into a world in which the unemployment rate is less than 5 percent, the market is at record highs, violent crime has diminished, and illegal immigrants are not stalking us in our streets, will they believe their eyes or what Trump told them last night?

We’ll find out in November.

I’ve represented hundreds of developers in my time.  In spite of their dubious public image, the vast majority of them are extremely decent, rule-following, pragmatic people who do their best to avoid conflict with the government and the community in order to protect their bottom line.  They are some of the best people I know.  It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work for them.

The caricature of a developer is something completely different:  a middle-aged white man who wears flashy jewelry; drives expensive cars; boasts about his political connections (and uses them constantly); repeatedly makes unreasonable demands on his representatives and the government;  and sues everyone in sight when he doesn’t get his way.  I’ve known a few of those, too, although I’ve never actually worked for one.

Trump meets the caricature in every possible way.  I never would have agreed to work for him, no matter how much money he offered me.  I’m sure as hell not voting for him.

1.  Regardless of the wisdom of his decision, Cruz had the right to say what he did, because:  (1) Trump attacked his family in a disgusting way during the campaign; (2) the convention is for all Republicans, not just Trump supporters; and (3) Trump saw his speech in advance.
2.  I’ve seen too much of Cruz to think that he is capable of doing anything based solely on principle.  He is clearly expecting (and hoping) that Trump will not just lose, but lose by a catastrophic margin, and that he will be able to pin some of the blame for the disaster on Trump’s enablers (e.g., Rubio; Walker) in 2020.
3.  That said, it would have been easy for him to make a pitch for his views while tepidly endorsing Trump, but he had the nerve to force a confrontation, instead. I have to admit that I’m a bit more impressed with the guy than I was at this time yesterday, but I think that his gamble will ultimately fail, because he will never regain the trust of the Trump wing of the party.
4.  The Mike Pence speech was an island of superego in a vast sea of id.  His bland competence would have fit well in 2012.  Here, it sounded downright weird.
5.  Pence tried to convince us that Trump is a standard fare Republican with a few rough edges.  He isn’t, as evidenced by his interview with the NYT today.
6.  Pence predictably framed the ultimate issue in the campaign as whether we want a third Obama term, or change.  I would reframe it by asking whether we would prefer chaos to a current condition of relative peace and prosperity.

Republican meeting, day three.

A great fear stalks the land of the free.

The bomb dropped by Cruz.

He’d best hope that they lose.

But Pence sounded OK to me.