If you missed the sermon by the Reverend William Barber, please watch this theologically conservative, liberal, evangelical, biblicist speak about right and wrong, and the heart of our democracy. You owe it to yourself.
Via PBS
ETA: I found the full speech by Mr Khizr Khan, in which he is accompanied by his lovely wife. Also this.
Special mention of the gentleman delegate with the fab red turban.
? Martin
Atheist approved!
Hawes
There are drop-the-mic moments and there are drop-the-mic moments.
Patricia Kayden
Rev Barber is a hero. He’s at the forefront of the Moral Monday movement in N.C. That was a rousing sermonette. He had the whole audience on its feet.
Really enjoyed the DNC this year and am very proud of Secretary Clinton for making history. What a stark contrast to last week’s GOP mess.
Villago Delenda Est
Absolutely brilliant in every possible way.
Khzir Khan, though, had the most moving appearance of the night. His son epitomizes everything an American soldier should be…an officer leading by example and literally laying his life down for his soldiers. Inspiring beyond belief. And his smackdown of the cheeto-faced asshole was one for the ages.
gene108
Defibrillator of Love!!!!
West of the Cascades
@Villago Delenda Est: and with his wife wearing the hijab next to him as another proud American Muslim. More happy about the possibility of this year’s elections than I’ve felt in months.
Baud
Vox
Mike E
Colbert kill’d the Hilly Fanatic!
rikyrah
Rev. Barber rocks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Villago Delenda Est:
This entire convention has been absolutely remarkable. Meticulously planned, with cascading messages (and messengers) that reinforced all the other messages (and messengers). I can’t imagine a more diverse crowd or litany of speakers, and yet none of them felt as though they were merely checking off a demographic or special-interest box. And every single prime time speaker went far beyond expectations. Just an incredible week. I’m so glad we got to come after the Republicans, because people will remember our messages.
dmsilev
Donald managed to dig his phone out from wherever his kids hid it this time. Kind of perfunctory though:
I mean, there are several tweets, but they’re all pretty repetitive and, dare I say it, sad.
Mike E
Colbert ‘voice of God’ shout out!
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev: On the twitter machine Josh Marshall and others are saying that they’re all staffer tweets, not actually Teh Donald, who could be in a coma right now after the beating that was delivered tonight…from the Rev Barber, Khzir Khan, General Allen, and Hilz herownself.
I think General Allen (and the rest of the flag officers behind him) was serving as a surrogate for many on active duty who cannot get involved in politics in this way.
Felonius Monk
@dmsilev:
And for Donald — bankruptcy, unpaid bills, and bad hair follows him wherever he goes.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Could be. We’ll see what happens in the morning.
Mike E
Trump, on his Russian hack quip: Sarcasm!
Colbert: Now everything he says makes sense!
? Martin
FrankLuntz: Gen. Allen’s speech with stage full of military leaders was unprecedentedly powerful
Dems have blown away Day 4 expectations. #DemsinPhilly
Mike J
BR
@Mike J:
They’re not “the left” but a very specific subset of the left.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@? Martin: it’s hard to be happy, when nicole wallace and susan sarandon are upset.
? Martin
There is definitely a Vichy GOP now. If Trump barely loses, his faction will persist and the party will be fractured and return to candidates like him. If he is humiliated, loses badly, his faction will be shoved out and quite possibly we’ll see a slightly more rational GOP.
I think it’s going to be difficult for them to maintain CDS. This is the moment they’ve been working decades to prevent and they’ll have failed and I think the public will turn against it. I think a lot of the GOP are already turning against it. They have to. To embrace CDS further means they have to support Trump, and they can’t bear to do that either.
Interesting times.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Sigh. I have a good friend who is a complete Bernie buster. Tonight he posted to Facebook:
Oy.
WarMunchkin
The role of any anti-war faction in the Democratic Party has been on my mind heavily since the outbursts against Gen. Allen. In one sense, it’s just like any movement or issue – it fades as other movements and issues come to the forefront of political discourse. Yet, since so many of us were shaped by both 9/11 and Iraq, it’s scary to feel that the anti-war movement has been utterly defeated. Whether it has to do with security challenges regarding I/P or arming yet another future enemy, there’s neither a regular people or intellectual constituency in the Democratic Party that’s reliably anti-GWOT now.
The way I see it, for all movements, there have to be:
a) people willing to do the research that can effect policy change
b) American stakeholders actually affected by current policy who, through their experiences, can coalesce into a movement.
Moral arguments regarding deaths of civilians do not result in political action committees.
FP expertise is nearly unilaterally reliably pro-intervention and pro-drones. I’m not sure how to widen the opinion corridor there – because I can’t really figure out a way to use the scientific method in order to prove that non-militaristic intervention is a viable foreign policy in the Middle East. And I don’t just mean boots on the ground – you can’t find a serious expert consensus that drones have had a material long term adverse effect on American security.
It’s possible that Republicans will pick up a liberal bloc that seeks to reign in executive power from a “strict constitutionalist” perspective, but that hasn’t been litigated in this campaign and cannot be as long as Trump is the candidate. I don’t really see any way other than drones and such becoming a further entrenched policy preference among consensus professionals.
As for actual people affected by policy, I don’t think a drone operator’s coalition will be enough – it’s going to be difficult to argue with people that PTSD as a result of drone operation is worth non-interventionism. I think it’ll be more likely that we shift to AIs using weapons instead. Oh, I just made an argument for Skynet.
Feebog
The entire four days was a demonstration in competence and teamwork. Clinton hit all the marks, and left no doubt she is ready to take it to the Donald. I’m looking forward to see what kind of spike she gets from this, I’m guessing 6-8 points.
Lizzy L
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Some people you can’t help. I hope your friend comes to his senses before November.
I just watched/heard the Reverend Barber’s speech. Powerful. Now to hear Khizr Khan.
? Martin
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: So your friend is going to abandon everyone who would be hurt by Trump. Remind him/her of that. It’s a selfish and immoral position to take.
amk
rethugs: let’s make obama a one-term president.
dems: let’s make it a third term.
Omnes Omnibus
@WarMunchkin: Bosnia and Rwanda?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: I know; I think I’ll manage, somehow.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@? Martin: His Weapon Master fighter is utterly dependent upon my healbot cleric, so maybe I can just revoke his health coverage for a pre-existing condition and let him see how it feels.
MobiusKlein
@WarMunchkin: Where does non proliferation fit into your anti war agenda? And containing hostile forces out there?
Not to put down the real need for peace in our world, nor ignore our war mongering tendencies! But ask how we do can blend security and anti war, and also get elected.
slag
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: There are some people who just can’t take yes for an answer. This has been the most unapologetically liberal Democratic convention in my lifetime, and I couldn’t be happier about it. There is no democracy without compromise, so it will never be perfect. If your friend can’t deal with that fact, then your friend has issues.
Lizzy L
The gentleman with the turban may be a Sikh. That is the kind of turbans Sikhs wear. (I have Sikh neighbors and there is a Sikh temple a few miles from me, quite lovely and prominent.)
Mr Khan’s speech was also powerful, and effective, and very moving. Thanks for posting both of these videos.
The difference between the two conventions was stunning. Fear vs. hope; exclusion vs. inclusion. I wonder if any of the chattering commentariat will take note of that tomorrow.
? Martin
@WarMunchkin: The anti-war faction is harmed by routine over-reach. There has to be some acknowledgement and accommodation for how to handle non-interventionist military actions. There are groups actively trying to kill Americans and other civilians. They demand a military response.
I’m sympathetic to the dangers of interventionism and to the ease of drones, but I’m also sympathetic to the need to stop military groups like ISIS. The anti-war faction has never been able to find that middle ground, and they’ve never been very good at modulating their actions. You’re going to heckle a Medal of Honor recipient? Heckle the president when he’s trying to advance every other progressive goal that you care about? Sorry, but you’re going to get shouted down by 95% of the left for that kind of shit. There’s a time and place, and the anti-war folks too often get that wrong.
scav
Still a bit on an unexpected adrenaline high, so ran across this fine example of policing: US police mistake icing from Krispy Kreme doughnuts for crystal meth.
“I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic,” Eleven years of being a cop and not recognizing doughnut remains? Policing has certainly changed.
Oldgold
So many great moments in Philly. Can’t remember one in C-Town.
I have watched 14 Democratic conventions. This was the best one.
WarMunchkin
@? Martin: They often do, yes. But I’ll also point out that the anti-war argument has absolutely not been an issue in this campaign, on either side (I think most would agree that Sanders is indifferent). Like Reagan with taxes, Bush has actually won that particular debate. I’m not that angry about outbursts against Panetta and Allen as I am at other outbursts because of this. There is no actual competitive outlet here, no place for a contest of ideas. I wish they hadn’t done that, of course.
@MobiusKlein: I was referring to our military campaigns in the Middle East rather than Europe.
Also, I didn’t realize that this wasn’t an open thread, I think I confused this with the lower one and I apologize.
bluehill
The contrast between the organization of the Clinton dem and Trump repub conventions is another indication of how each candidate would govern. I know there are so many other disqualifying issues with Trump already, but this is visceral proof: Clinton’s uplifting and harmonic convention vs. Trump’s hateful, cacophonous one.
Omnes Omnibus
@WarMunchkin: Go look up Just War Theory.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
Not just full, but full of diversity: men and women of all colors and religions. I know I saw at least one of them in a turban, and possibly more than one.
Seanly
but, but, but NPR has been nothing but Bernie Deadenders…
pseudonymous in nc
I want to underline how important Rev. Barber has been to those who felt hopeless in NC after the GOP took over, especially after McCrory’s election. He built Moral Mondays up from a few people to thousands reclaiming the people’s house in Raleigh, and he widened his embrace as others embraced him around a broad common message of social justice. I really think NC’s going to go blue — perhaps not the gerrymandered state legislature, but statewide offices — and you’ll see him on a stage with Hillary Clinton somewhere in NC over the coming months.
I think Jeet Heer has a sliver of a point in that reframing this as “Trump vs. America” broadens the Dem coalition in potentially unwieldy ways: large parts of the Sanders economic argument, with unabashed economic populism; a national security pitch that is stripping away the security-first establishment GOP. If I had the choice, I’d like a wee bit more of Obama’s small-c conservatism about foreign policy, aka “don’t do stupid shit”, but fuck it, this is what happens when GOP primary voters choose an angry, ignorant trolling cantaloupe.
sigaba
@WarMunchkin:
I don’t think the scientific method is appropriate, this is a moral question. We speak of our duty not to kill people, or of the sanctity and unimpeachable virtue of human life, even the life of an enemy soldier and murderer.
People who have experience in foreign policy are uniformly pro-intervention because they almost always see the world as a community, and the United States is a citizen of that community. It’s also eight times more militarily powerful than its closest rival and holds a moral legitimacy unknown in human history for a great power (at least until Trump started Tweeting out of it). Inaction in the face of injustice is unjustifiable for the US because inaction, when one has the means to stop it, constitutes endorsement, and there are many evils the US should not endorse.
The antiwar movement should be single-mindedly, laser like, focused on reducing the size of the military if they want the US participating in fewer wars. Only be depriving the US of guns do they deprive it of her moral imperative, the two feed each other.
Of course a lot of other small countries, ones that depend on the integrity of borders and the stability of international law, would see this as the US washing its hands of the world and pulling up the ladder. So you gotta be okay with that if you’re a committed antiwar activist. I read Larison and conservative anti-imperialist bloggers all the time and they’re ready to endorse this sort of approach, for exactly these reasons: “World, go fuck yourself and your chaos. We got ours.”
Adam L Silverman
@scav: The field testing kits they use cost about $2 a piece. They have a tremendously high failure rate, which all too often leads to devastating outcomes:
d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net/user/view.act?p=MTMwMDY=&c=Mzc3MjQwMTA=&fuid=MjI4OTEwNDU=…
mike in dc
We made it through the convention intact and as unified as we need to be. At this point, BernieBro deadenders are completely irrelevant. Nothing left to disrupt. Their candidate gave a full-throated endorsement and will do a few events across the country to promote GOTV. 90+% of Sanders supporters have already switched their support. And she may have picked up some Republican women after this week. Definitely picked up some independents.
sigaba
@WarMunchkin: And then, our friends, the people we do work with and count as our allies can no longer count on us to help them. For the US, Putin in Ukraine or Latvia is a very abstract problem, but for a Pole or even a German it positively is not.
Lizzy L
Can we have a “Like” button; please, please, pretty please with ice cream on it? I really want to LIKE “angry ignorant trolling cantaloupe.”
Villago Delenda Est
The assholes at Faux noise cut to a Benghazi commercial during Khzir Khan’s speech.
They are despicable.
Omnes Omnibus
@WarMunchkin: Actually, what the fuck are you talking about?
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@WarMunchkin:
I think they should all be open threads, so there is no need to apologise.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Far freakin’ out! : )
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@pseudonymous in nc:
If Reverend Barber isn’t the one saying the prayer at Hilary’s inauguration, I will be sad
trollhattan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Taking “a closer look at Jill Stein” is like considering switching to unfiltered cigarettes.
Soylent Green
@? Martin:
I think they will double-down and get behind a True Conservative (TM). Their backs will be against the wall and as a cornered animal will fight, not become calmly rational. They will cling ever more bitterly to their delusions. Their willful ignorance, intolerance, and intemperance will be with us for years to come. Whether they brand it Trumpism or conservativism or christianism, the core principles are the same.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh no they didn’t! Ailes must be in da house.
Adam L Silverman
@WarMunchkin: There are several separate issues here, but its late so I hope you’ll forgive me for just providing two before going and brushing my teeth. The first is that because of the nature of our domestic politics we have artificially constrained policy discussions. The amount of space, the right and left curbs if you will, are almost always far too close together. And this is the same for both domestic and foreign policy. As a result it makes it very difficult to do what everyone says you’re supposed to do: think outside the box, be creative, apply your critical thinking to problem sets in a broad and deep manner. The second is that regardless of where we place the limits within which we’ll consider what to do and how to do it in regards to any particular problem set, and in this case its for foreign policy, the discussion of what to do has to be across all elements of National power: Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME). Because of the constraints created by our domestic politics, aided and abetted by our abysmal news media, the default almost always seems to be the Military. Or, if we’re using the extended version that includes Financial, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement (FIL), we wind up defaulting to Military, Intelligence, and maybe Law Enforcement. When we don’t go right to these we tend to quickly blow through Diplomatic right into Economic and Financial through sanctions, which some consider to actually be an act of war all of their own.
We have a National myth that as Americans we are a peace loving people that only fight when we absolutely have no choice. I think if you actually add up all the wars the US has actually been in – formally declared or otherwise, conventional or irregular and/or unconventional, we’ve only not been at war for about 20 years since the country was founded. I’m not arguing that some, or even a lot of this war, wasn’t necessary once push came to shove – The Revolution, The Great Rebellion, WW I, WW II, Operation Enduring Freedom, and now, because Operation Iraqi Freedom has come back to chew on us and far too many others, Operation Inherent Resolve where we try to clean up the mess we made through strategic malpractice. We are a violent people. We don’t talk about it, but we are an aging revolutionary state and society. In the modern period we are the oldest continuously in existence aging revolutionary state and society even as we became a revolutionary state and society on behalf of the elites and their interests, rather than the masses. This is itself strange and unique. And while we also like to consider ourselves the oldest of the modern democracies (ignoring the Althing in Iceland), we’re a rather special snowflake. No other state or society organizes itself the way we do. And this includes the ones we help to transition to democracy. We never have them adopt our version of democracy or create our type of Republic. That speaks volumes, though all too often no one is listening to hear it.
I’ll look for a response after I brush and floss. Dental hygiene is the bedrock of a self-governing democracy!
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: That man is a power to be reckoned with. I’d never heard him preach before.
Miss Bianca
@Lizzy L: me too!
scav
@Adam L Silverman: It’s amazing how comprehensively broken and maladjusted things are. All their tanks and lethal hardware seem to work farily consistently, but not their cameras or drug kits. And the system grinds ever onwards, churning out the fines and other by-products some can profit from.
Steeplejack
The music was generally very good at this convention. Some good old-school Curtis Mayfield covered in the intros tonight:
“People Get Ready.”
“Move on Up.”
MisterForkbeard
@? Martin: From my own experience, this doesn’t work.
Anyone who’s been generally a leftie or who voted for Bernie for his positions but *can’t* bring themselves to vote for Hillary is being self-righteous and selfish, to be sure. But pointing it out to them never goes well. It just cements you as part of the problem to them.
I’ve had slightly better luck asking them why they wouldn’t vote for Democrats, given their history of work and success on civil rights, progressive taxation, insurance, etc. If they tell you it’s about Hillary, it’s usually trivial to rebut whatever their criticisms of her are.
I mean, they tend not to believe you, but you can stick with provable facts or you can shame them. Shaming them doesn’t work – many of these people have convinced themselves that not voting for Hillary is the moral thing to do, and that makes anyone who attacks them on moral grounds equally culpable.
Adam L Silverman
@sigaba: And just quickly on this: in 2008 when Georgia, thinking the US would come to its aid because the Bush 43 Administration and certain senators had intimated that if they joined our coalition in Iraq we’d do so and move them towards NATO, over reached and provided Russia an excuse, I was able to watch members of the 33rd Battalion (light/shavnabada) of the Georgian Army go home from Iraq to fight in their own country. It was embarrassing, one of the only times I’ve ever been embarrassed as an American to be an American, because they wanted to know if we were coming to help them just as they’d come to help us. We did nothing. No one was going to risk a war with Russia, a third front, when we had active fights in two different theaters. But we had a moral obligation to live up to our National values and the impression we’d given to get them into the coalition to help! And we didn’t.
WarMunchkin
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the response. You’re a smart guy. You recommended I read a paper of yours a couple months ago about the Treaty of Westphalia and violence in the ME, but I never could find it – did read another thing you wrote though.
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Eh, this was a thread about a Muslim man’s expression of grief and a black reverend’s forceful defense of liberalism through the eyes of religion. I’m particularly ashamed at misposting given that. I have a habit of opening multiple threads in different tabs, so I just slipped.
Ferd ofthe Nort
The man in the turban is Sikh.
Warrior people. Bad Asses to the max.
Check out Canada’s Minister of Defence. Ex-cop on gang task force. Ex-Colonel in Afghanistan. The US Army loved to send him on meetings in the communities because the Pashtuns know about Sikhs and this was a big curve-ball in their preconceptions.
Steeplejack
@dmsilev:
Basic subject-verb agreement fail. Stupid! He should sue his prep school.
Mnemosyne
@sigaba:
This. The US had actually started to transition into doing interventions with actions like in Bosnia, until W decided he just had to kick the fucking hornets’ nest because he was pissed about 9/11 and just made everything so much fucking worse than it had to be.
As I’ve said before, the way I knew W and his merry band of assholes were going to pitch us headfirst into a disaster was that Iran made their first official diplomatic overture since 1980 by offering official condolences on 9/11 and we refused it. And then we spat in their faces with that whole stupid “axis of evil” shit.
Imagine for a minute if we hadn’t had a bunch of shortsighted assholes at the helm on 9/11 and instead imagine what would have happened if someone with some common fucking sense had used that opportunity to start repairing relations.
So, yes, having someone at the helm who understands diplomacy is key. I’m actually a little less worried about Hillary’s hawkish tendencies because she spent four years of SoS and knows from the inside that diplomacy works if you let it. And she ALSO knows that if your predecessor fucks up diplomacy, there’s going to be a giant pile of shit to clean up.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Wow. Blink. All kinds of interesting hares started up there.
I’ve heard it opined that one of the reasons the American Revolution was unique was that it was such a bourgeois – even owning-class based revolt than a lot of other popular revolts. I’m not sure I buy that as a theory – the French Revolution seems to have been driven primarily by lawyers. French Republicanism has had a much wilder ride than ours.
James E Powell
@? Martin:
CDS?
Steeplejack
@? Martin:
I sort of agree, but what I see in all the posts and tweets from Republicans decrying Trump and bewailing the way the Democrats have flipped and/or coöpted the GOP’s agenda is that they’re blaming everything exclusively on Trump, this monster that they are shocked—shocked!—to find suddenly in their midst. Conveniently ignoring the 35 years’ worth of shit that they have been shoveling to get themselves to this point.
pseudonymous in nc
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s noticeable as an outsider: ROTC displays at high school football. Anthems at charity runs. The extent to which the US is a nation at arms only becomes clear when you’re elsewhere. Back when I smoked (terrible thing, don’t do it) I had extended conversations in airport smoking rooms with young American men (always men) in uniform talking about the small towns or run-down cities they came from, and the places they would never have visited had they not signed up and the things they were going to do with their lives once they returned to civilian life.
I tend to think of the US in many ways as an adolescent nation — like I think of St Paul’s in London, with its scratched graffiti from the 1740s, as a young cathedral — with the temperament and dynamism and splashes of irrationality of adolescents, but I like your description a lot and I’m going to squirrel it away.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: As I’ve written here before we are in need of systemic and systematic reform of our criminal justice system, policies, and strategies. From recruitment and training standards for law enforcement to prosecutor’s offices to corrections. We underfund the really important things and overfund things that could be cut back.
Fair Economist
@SiubhanDuinne:
On several occasions during Hillary’s speech, I realized they’d been building up a theme or message all week so she could deliver it at the end. She could say one soundbite and it would carry hours of earlier testimony, demonstrations, and speeches. Impressive communication.
Steeplejack
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Yes, clearly, three months before a major election is the time to investigate a party that runs a crank for president and has a vanishingly small presence anywhere else on the ballot in any state.
Adam L Silverman
@WarMunchkin: Do you remember which paper I recommended? And which one did you read?
Also, thanks for the kind words.
Amir Khalid
@James E Powell:
Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Calouste
@sigaba: There are 10 million people with Polish heritage in the US. For a number of them Putin occupying Lithuania will also be a less than abstract issue.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Which French Revolution? They have them so often…
Fair Economist
@Miss Bianca:
Primarily, the American “Revolution” was not a revolution (overthrow of the existing government) but a rebellion (local government throws off distant government). It slid into a democracy easily because the local rebelling governments already were mostly democratic for a variety of reasons. So it was a very different situation from the English Civil War or the French Revolution, where an entirely new government had to be created (and, in both cases, soon failed).
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Greenwald also said that Donald Trump was just kidding when he said Russia should get him more information on Hillary, even though the people who know Trump best say he basically doesn’t have a sense of humor.
It is starting to dawn on poor Glenn that he’s going to have to dance with the ones that brung him, and it turns out that they might have had motives other than libertarianism for helping him out for the past eight years.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Well, the first in the series, I was thinking…you know, the sequels just usually aren’t as compelling.
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: Our civil/civic culture, or what passes for it, is suffused with imagery that is both civil and military. And this goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. Most of it has become innocuous, but a lot can still too often be problematic.
And, unfortunately, the only socio-economic escalator we have left in the US is the military. Its the only institution we have that you can go in at the bottom of American society and come out at the top. One of my former team mates, a retired Green Beret 1st Sergeant, would be sitting on a stump in Mississippi in front of a one pump gas station asking whoever pulled in “fill er up?” if it hadn’t been for the military. Instead he has a proper pension and retirement. The GI Bill should he ever decide to finish his degree. And instead of being poor white trash he’s upper middle class, though still very socially and religiously conservative. There isn’t any other institution left in the US that could do that. And as a society we should be ashamed that we’ve allowed this to happen and do something to fix it.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: It’s what happens when you let George Lucas write the scripts and direct… And to cross the streams, the odd numbered ones just miss a beat like the Trek1, 3, and 5.
Miss Bianca
@Fair Economist: I had thought about that as a factor. Even in other cases, tho’, where rebellions have thrown off foreign governments, the rebel/revolutionary government seems to revert with frightening ease into authoritarian models. The American Revolution spawned a republic which has lasted for almost 250 years – with a violent internal rupture more like the first French or English Revolution, but survived basically intact despite that That’s…unique, in modern history.
Steeplejack
@James E Powell:
CDS = Clinton derangement syndrome.
jl
@srv: Hell with those downers. I couldn’t watch the speech real time, but finishing listening to it now. Damn good speech, I thought. She needs to be herself, like the other folks who gave good speeches. That is what she did and that worked just fine tonight.
I would have liked a little more on details of what she was going to do, and less Trump bashing. But they know what they are doing, and if that was the best approach, I trust them.
Edit: not that I have anything against Trump bashing, but question of allocation of limited time.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Now *there’s* a hell of a talking point for a domestic policy speech. And I think now might be the time to make that argument, and people might start to hear it.
One thing I didn’t hear HRC urge, when she was outlining how she was going to implement her domestic policy agenda, was the necessity of flipping the Congress. Maybe she did and I just missed it. I was running a bath at the time.
pseudonymous in nc
@Fair Economist:
It was basically a Whig rebellion that became a separatist movement: 1689 recapitulated in a land without a court party.
@Miss Bianca:
Picking up on Adam’s point earlier: after the Bolivarian revolutions in Latin America, a lot of new nations went with American-inspired strong-presidential systems, and that has generally not worked well for them.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: How many miles of road work do you make your bath do a week?
And on that cheery note, I’m to bed!
daves09
@Feebog: Just read Andrew Sullivan’s live blog for the convention. Not a single original or illuminating thought. His only consistent idea is despising the Clintons-but he is planning to vote for HRC.
His fans, however, think he is the second coming of Mencken-sad, bigly sad.
He did hate the bernie deadenders, so maybe cut him some slack-nah, he’s a douche.
Villago Delenda Est
@pseudonymous in nc: The Dutch Army was also quite helpful in 1689.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: oh – you – I – say, varmint!
Yeah, me too.
Calouste
@Miss Bianca:
The Dutch and the Swiss would like to have a word with you.
Fair Economist
@Miss Bianca:
Right, but the rebellious government was almost always also authoritarian – generally you’re talking about a duke revolting against a king or such. Individual European cities, which often had some semi-republican municipal government, did often maintain it in those times they managed to rebel successfully. The American “Revolution” led to a democracy because most of the colonies had had largely democratic governments for a century or so. When the revolt succeeded, they were already there.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Shorter pundits: “Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?”
It was a great speech. It wasn’t Obama-level, but it’s more than a little unfair to compare her to someone who’s acknowledged as one of the greatest orators of our time.
And, as we saw happen with Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Michelle Obama over the past 8 years, Hillary and Tim Kaine will just get better with practice.
amk
@srv: Had to troll for those, idiot? Feeling panicky that your pos is a goner?
Fair Economist
@Calouste:
Technically the Dutch only made it to 214 years. In addition they were never committed to a true Republican government – most of the time they had quasikings in the form of Stadtholders from the House of Orange. Switzerland has been democratic, kind of, for a very long time, but it’s a very different beast than the United States.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@Adam L Silverman:
apropos of nothing at all – well, this comment – can i just say what an asset you are to this blog?
It’s amazing – cogently reasoned, historically based, thoughtful commentary just falls from your pen like magic! i consider myself a competent amateur historian, made my living as a writer for years – but it would take me a full day, at least, to research, draft, and rewrite these paragraphs that you just dashed off in – what – 20 minutes?
You always teach me something I didn’t know, or provoke me to think in new ways about things i though I did – and I really appreciate it.
So there. just wanted you to know we love you.
Amir Khalid
@daves09:
Sometimes I think the only thing that gives Sully any cred with the upper-middlebrow magazine guys (and their online equivalent) is that he used to be one of them. He’s a decently clever writer, but not a very original or clear thinker. And his obvious biases make his conclusions unreliable.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Everyone has to find their own voice and style and work on it.
And it takes work, in addition to natural gifts. People forget that. I’m still impressed that Obama wrote more than 6 drafts of his speech just in the last week. Probably more than a dozen since he first started working on it, I’d bet. I don’t know if I could do that many drafts of some speech I had to give without going mad.
You don’t need great oratory to give a great speech. HRC and Kaine can give them if they find their unique voices and willing to put in the work, I think.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Amir Khalid: and in such an obvious way–obvious to him even!
burnspbesq
@Calouste:
Yeah, but Poland seems to be doing a fine job, with no help from Putin, of losing its way.
cckids
@Oldgold:
Truth. In fact, you could remove the top tier of speakers at the Dem convention, and ANY ONE of the 2nd tier speakers are still 1000x more memorable than the best speakers at the Repub convention. Hell, most any one of the average people who spoke this week were more moving and effective speakers than the best Republican speaker.
jl
@cckids: Was thinking the same thing. Very moving, rousing, interesting, stirring, speeches from everyday people all the way up to the political stars.
TriassicSands
The New York Times fact checked Clinton’s speech. I’m going to have to go back and look to see if they fact checked Trump’s speech, but I don’t remember seeing it in the Times, whereas I had no trouble finding the headline for her fact checking.
Hers was not a wonky, fact-filled speech, so there wasn’t a lot to pick nits about.
Report card:
True“Children like Ryan kept me going when our plan for universal health care failed, and kept me working with leaders of both parties to help create the Children’s Health Insurance Program that covers eight million kids in our country.”
True“Our economy is so much stronger than when they took office. Nearly 15 million new private-sector jobs.”
Largely TrueThere are now “20 million more Americans with health insurance.” (their caveat? — “However, critics argue that the law has caused premiums to rise, sometimes drastically for people who already had health insurance.” Funny, I don’t see how that makes her claim that 20 million more people now have health care is anything less than 100% true. It may also be true that some people lost their health care and had to find new coverage. It doesn’t change the truth or her statement, nor is her statement misleading. Of course one sentence is not going to describe the entirety of health care reform.
Largely TrueThere is now “an auto industry that just had its best year ever.” (their caveat? — the auto industry has “changed” and the old Big Three have a smaller market share than they used to. Again, I don’t see how that affects the truth of what she claimed — that the auto industry had its best year ever. Lots of Americans now work at foreign auto manufacturers’ plants in the US. A job is a job; a paycheck is a paycheck.
Depends “More than 90 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent.” This is not cut and dried, because it depends on the time frame used. It’s true for some periods and not for others.
True“In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you will find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills.”
Partly True“Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin.” It’s unclear what their quibble is with this statement.
It seems to me that the appropriate use of the Internet would be to follow this article with a link to the fact checking of Trump’s speech. I don’t see one.
jl
Edit: going back to hit some of the domestic policy points of the HRC speech. Notice she mentioned something wrt to working people and economic justice several times that I haven’t hard others mention, not even Sanders. RESPECT! Damn good speech for good old fashioned communicating, which is good enough for getting elected. Lots of plain explanations.
jl
@TriassicSands: I think there was a compilation of those fact checker outfit ratings, and HRC and Obama consistently most truthful of anyone. Surprised the Jeb was high on the truth meter, but then that is probably why he bombed in the GOP primary. Then Bernie, I think. Or Sanders then Jeb. I need to get that summary chart and wave it in some people’s faces who have been brainwashed by GOP propaganda repeated by mindless media that HRC just lies all the time.
cckids
@trollhattan:
As the FB meme says “I asked for Pepsi, but they only had Coke, so I set my head on fire.”
Calouste
@Fair Economist: 214 years is still 130 years longer than the United States lasted before falling apart.
Calouste
@TriassicSands:
She should probably have mentioned that Trump suits are also made in China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Egypt, not just in Mexico.
amk
@TriassicSands:
rethugs don’t need no steenking factchecks / sd msm
Mary G
The idiot three doors down from me set his garage on fire just as Jennifer Grantham got started and our power was just now restored, so I missed the whole evening program. Watching the rerun of Hillary’s speech on C-SPAN now, seems good to me so far.
James E Powell
Our convention was a triumph. Everybody who matters in the Democratic Party was there. That was the most political talent I’ve ever seen assembled for a convention. The Bernie Dead-Enders were a minor thing, despite MSNBC’s relentless efforts to promote them. Nobody did badly, all the significant people did very well to great.
In contrast, the Republican convention was a joke from start to finish. A one note show – yell about how Hillary will destroy America. Most Republicans of any significance didn’t show. The one guy who did, Cruz, was booed and vilified. The candidate was ridiculous and devoid of any political savvy apart form inciting the worst elements in his party.
Despite these contrasts between the two week-long performances, when the polls come in on August 15, the candidates will be exactly where they would have been if the race was between Generic D and Generic R.
If this were a rational world, the race would be over. No rational person can view the last two weeks and not take one coalition over the other. Yet they do and they will continue to do so. I am depressed.
jl
@Mary G:
Jennifer Grantham (Correction: Granholm) gave a rousing speech. I think it was her, pretty blonde talking about Michigan and auto industry mostly. I think she’s given it at least once before at a convention, but it’s always good.
amk
Muzzling the press a la erdogan style.
and yet the msm doesn’t have the ethics or the guts to call out this treasonous punk 24×7.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: “Donald Trump, you probably think this speech is about you.”
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: She can boom out a rousing speech. Always fun to listen to her.
James E Powell
@Villago Delenda Est:
Remember back in 2000? Bush/Cheney treated the press like dogs and the press just whimpered and asked for more.
WarMunchkin
@jl: Man, I love Jennifer Granholm, I want her as head of the DNC. Can’t believe she’s almost sixty years old.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
I disagree. What’s a huge loss? Popular vote doesn’t matter and there will always be states that are reliably red. If Trump loses, but down ticket Republicans still win, the GOP will still claim some phony people’s mandate.
Also, Trump would be humiliated by any loss, no matter how big or small. It’s not in his character to be affected deeply by margins of victory.
Ultimately, I don’t think there is much point in trying to predict what the GOP may do. Nobody saw Trump coming, or the degree to which the GOP ultimately embraced him, despite the risks, and despite the warnings from conservative Republicans.
That said, I am happy to wish for a huge Clinton victory and to watch the Republicans have to deal with it.
Keith G
When the Republican Party decided to turn its back on the movement fighting for African Americans equal justice in this land, they also turned their back on the power of African-American faith and the power that that faith can Infuse into a political movement. Their loss.
Anne Laurie
New post up top — Early Reviews, from the twitterverse.
TriassicSands
@jl:
I saw the compilation — funny how the Dems seemed to be clustered at the bottom of the chart (the truthier end) and Donald was at the top.
I found the Times’ fact checking of Trump’s speech and they used a slightly different format. Surprisingly, most of what he claimed was either true or kinda true, but some or even a lot of it was just meaningless, like this claim:
Most of that is beyond the control of either Clinton or Obama — it’s not like they created the Arab Spring. The claim about Iran is very misleading, since the sanctions were ramped up under Obama over what the Bushies had and that helped result in the deal with Iran on nukes, which the vast majority of foreign policy experts I saw quoted agreed was a very good deal, not the disaster Trump claims it to be.
He claimed that the number of police officers killed in the line of duty is up almost 50% from a year ago. The truth — 68 this year; 69 last year — one more than this year. So, down by 1, not up 50%.
Here are the numbers of line of duty deaths due to gun shots from 2006 to 2015
54 70 41 50 60 73 50 33 49 41 It’s hard to see a worsening trend in those numbers.
Over the same period 536 cops were killed in auto accidents or struck by vehicles, while 533 were shot or stabbed. All increases in police mortality are not indications of worsening crime.
In 2008, one police officer was poisoned. What’s up with that?
Trump — “Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years.”
Homicides are up in some cities, down in others. Chicago has been hard hit, but NYC had a 25% decrease in the first quarter of 2016. In 1990, NYC had 2245 murders. In 2015, there were 352. Sounds like things are out of control in the Big Apple.
Like so many of Trump’s “facts” they were cherry-picked to scare the fraidy-cats who sit at home with their Glocks waiting for a black or brown man to invade their home and rape and kill them.
Like a friend of mine — a Democrat, who is reasonably intelligent, but gets his news from cable TV. He had no idea that violent crime has been falling for decades. He lives in a gated community and has never heard of a home invasion in his neighborhood. But he has a handgun to protect himself and his wife from the all but inevitable smashing of glass, shredding of wood, and muzzle-flashes that are coming any day. He’s 80 years old, has never been the victim of violent crime, and actually worries about a home invasion — in a gated community that has never had one. Go figure.
Looking at Donald Trump’s words has exhausted me. I’m going to sleep. Night all.
Keith G
@Anne Laurie: Of course.
Manyakitty
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Amen!
JMG
@TriassicSands: Your friend is acting out his fear of the inevitable home invasion by the guy with the scythe. Catering to that is the Fox News business model.
gogol's wife
I think I can risk saying, Rev. Barber made me proud to be a Christian!
And Khizr Khan was probably my favorite speaker of the whole convention, which is saying a lot.
J R in WV
@TriassicSands:
But if there were no facts in Trump’s speech, how could they have done any fact checking on it at all ?!?!
Simple logic there.
Adam L Silverman
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): Thank you. Since you all (provided you’re a US taxpayer) paid for me to learn how to think about this stuff, consider it recompense.