Ghazala Khan, whose U.S. Army captain son was killed fighting in Iraq in 2004, responds to the callous cruelty of Donald Trump in her op-ed in The Washington Post titled Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice:
Donald Trump has asked why I did not speak at the Democratic convention. He said he would like to hear from me. Here is my answer to Donald Trump: Because without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart.
Donald Trump said I had nothing to say. I do. My son Humayun Khan, an Army captain, died 12 years ago in Iraq. He loved America, where we moved when he was 2 years old. He had volunteered to help his country, signing up for the ROTC at the University of Virginia. This was before the attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He didn’t have to do this, but he wanted to.[...]
I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it. Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could? Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Will the GOP repudiate Trump’s cruelty to a fallen soldier’s family?
Republican politicians face a choice. They can accept Hillary Clinton’s invitation to abandon Donald Trump and prevent a redefinition of their party as a haven for bigotry. Or they can prop Trump up, try to maximize his vote — and thereby tarnish themselves for a generation.
If there were any doubts about Trump’s disqualifying lack of simple decency and empathy, he resolved them on ABC’s “This Week” over the weekend with a characteristically cruel and self-centered attack on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, an American Muslim couple whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in the line of duty in Iraq. [...]
Most politicians — most human beings — would have humbly declared that no sacrifice is comparable to losing a son or daughter in service to the nation. Instead, Trump said he had made many sacrifices because (I’m not making this up) he “created thousands and thousands of jobs.” He said of Khizr Khan’s speech: “Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s script writers write it?”
Every Republican politician and commentator who continues to say that Trump is a superior or even morally equivalent choice to Hillary Clinton will now own their temporary leader’s brutality for the rest of their political careers.
Xeni Jardin at The Guardian writes—Hillary Clinton's speech was a powerful, primal first – and it blew me away:
The glass ceilings in our own lives feel thinner today, if not entirely shattered. Today’s little girls will grow up knowing they are complete human beings, equal to and possessing the same innate dignity and value as any boy or man.
I wasn’t prepared to feel all this gratitude, all this grief. Sadness that something so simple had finally happened, after being denied to so many for so long. I’m old enough to have followed Clinton’s career for almost as many decades as she’s had one. I never identified myself as a fan or supporter. I disagree with her take on many issues, war and whistleblowers among them. I felt the Bern, and had hoped to cast my vote for Bernie Sanders. I was surprised at how this moment changed me. [...]
Hillary’s speech was like watching the moon landing. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that a woman could never be president. But that’s how deeply sexism and “less-than” are woven into American culture. My culture. The understanding that women matter less, that we’re capable of less, and that all our achievements can be calculated in husbands, babies, hotness or bra size – it’s everywhere. It’s what we breathe.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Off to the Races:
Anyone paying close attention to each convention and each candidate and listening through a lens of rationality knows that Trump is not even in the same league as Clinton when it comes to qualifications. It’s like the difference between a tomcat and a tiger.
But Clinton can’t seem to break into the space of true dominance. There is tremendous dissatisfaction with both candidates. [...]
And Clinton is continuing to struggle with younger voters, a deep scar inflicted during the harsh primary with Bernie Sanders that is proving incredibly hard to heal. According to a Gallup opinion piece last week written by Frank Newport and Andrew Dugan, Clinton’s approval ratings among young voters — those 18-29 — went from her strongest asset among age groups in July of 2015 to her greatest weakness this July.
Sarah Vowell at The New York Times writes—Hillary Clinton Made Me Cry:
I am just a plain writer, as opposed to a female writer, who would be prepared, if I knew much about sports, to agree that Serena Williams is, according to Ms. Williams herself, “one of the greatest athletes of all time” — and not just one of the greatest “female” athletes. Before the convention I had extended Hillary Clinton the feminist courtesy of not caring much about her historic presidential gender.
Though at this point in the campaign I mostly care that she is not mentally ill. That and she isn’t contributing to the climate crisis by spewing the sort of unconstitutional nonsense about Muslims that keeps the religion scholar Reza Aslan driving from one TV station after another to re-explain that about a fourth of the world’s population might not be comprised entirely of murderers. [...]
But the other night when the D.N.C. rolled that montage of non-dame presidential faces I wept so hard I had to open a new box of tissues. I cried like a 14-year-old girl for the 14-year-old girl I once was and because Geraldine Ferraro and Jeannette Rankin did not live to see it. Feeling represented does matter in a representative democracy. (But it matters more to elect the candidate who is not bonkers.)
Maureen O’Connor at New York Magazine writes—The Power of Political Daughters:
Last week, when Ivanka Trump strode onto the RNC stage with “Here Comes the Sun” playing in the background, I turned to the friend sitting beside me and asked: “Why is she so infinitely more appealing than her brothers are?” Her speech was immaculate and skillfully delivered; so was her brother’s. But whereas she seemed poised, intelligent, and — somehow — likable, even as she pushed for a dangerously authoritarian president, her brother remained repellent. She was the epitome of class and poise; he was another selfish rich guy.
The disparity between the siblings can be explained in many ways. Perhaps Ivanka is, quite simply, better at public appearances than her brother is. Perhaps I was responding to the fact that Ivanka was basically touting progressive liberalism in her speech, while her brother is actually a conservative. (Some right-wingers were downright impressed.) But maybe it also has something to do with the unique power of a political daughter. Last night, Chelsea took the same role that Ivanka held at her father’s convention, providing a warm-up for her mother with an affectionate speech — a role that, in 2012, went to both candidates’ wives. The entire DNC, in fact, has been heavy on the daughter motif, invoking the image of wide-eyed little girls dreaming big and a daughter’s heart beating with her mother’s.
David Dayen at The New Republic writes—The Democratic Convention Was Senior Week: The party rolled out its old warhorses—while the next generation had to make its own noise:
The Democratic National Convention began with an emphasis on outsiders—specifically, the much-derided, much-lampooned, mostly young Bernie Sanders dissidents protesting in the arena and on the streets. It ended with Hillary Clinton, the ultimate insider, giving a nomination address that matched the progressive platform her party (thanks to Sanders and his supporters) had ultimately approved. Uniting those two poles—the young and old, the boldly visionary and the cautiously centrist—is the central challenge of the American left, beyond this election. But by and large, the Democrats missed their chance this week to build that bridge, to fully invite the next generation in.
Many of the central themes of Sanders’s year of stump speeches—expanding Social Security, rejecting trade deals that hurt workers, providing debt-free college, reclaiming our democracy from big money—resounded throughout Clinton’s speech. While she identified the critical issues of social and economic justice and even decried systemic racism, she also acknowledged working-class anxieties, while telling Americans that they shouldn’t actually have to go to college in order to get a good job. And she told the nation that we could accomplish these goals if we work with common purpose. “Americans don’t say ‘I alone can fix it,’” Clinton said, referring to a line from Donald Trump from last week’s nomination speech. “They say, ‘We’ll fix it together!’”
But who will be the stalwarts who help press this agenda forward? Who are the rising stars who will galvanize the public to make change happen? If it takes a village to bring about transformation, then who are those villagers?
John Nichols at The Nation writes—Sherrod Brown Teaches Democrats How to Demolish Trump’s False-Prophet Populism:
Ripping Donald Trump’s “counterfeit campaign,” Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown used a speech on the last night of the Democratic National Committee to provide a lesson on how to demolish Donald Trump’s claim to be a champion of American workers.
The Republican presidential nominee has always been a false prophet of populism—a fact confirmed beyond debate by the New York billionaire’s selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence, an anti-union zealot who has supported free-trade pacts that devastate working families and the communities where they live, as his running mate.
But Brown explains that, even before the selection of Pence, it was easy to identify Trump as a scam artist when it comes to trade policy.
“I’ve been fighting for a trade agenda for more than 20 years that puts American workers first. And I can tell you, in all those years, I’ve never even seen Donald Trump. No—the only thing I’ve seen Donald Trump do when it comes to US trade policy is run his mouth and line his pockets,” Brown told the convention shortly before Hillary Clinton accepted the party’s presidential nomination.
Rebecca Leber at Grist writes—Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate:
One presidential candidate says that scientists who work on climate change are “practically calling it a hoax” and wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. The other calls climate change “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” And about four out of 10 millennials in battleground states think there is no difference between their views on the issue.
Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate group released polling at the Democratic National Convention this past week focused on millennials in 11 battleground states,conducted by Global Strategy Group in June and early July.
According to the poll, 21 percent of millennials are Bernie Sanders supporters who are so disillusioned with Clinton that they wouldn’t plan to vote for her in a general election if there are third-party candidates as well. Young voters are one of the more unpredictable factors in the 2016 election, because they’re more likely than other age groups to support Sanders and less likely to vote in general. Democrats run the risk of losing Sanders holdouts to a third-party candidate. Nearly seven out of 10 Sanders supporters believe there’s no daylight between Trump and Clinton on the issues they care about.
That is alarming news for Clinton. But the numbers could change. NextGen’s findings suggest that if Democrats emphasize climate change and clean energy, they could make progress in winning over this demographic.
Larry Buhl at DeSmogBlog writes—The Color of Pollution: How Environmental Contamination Targets People of Color:
Recent research on southern Texas’ fracking sites adds to a growing body of research showing that race is more important than income when determining a person’s risk from air, water, and ground pollution in the U.S.
A University of Minnesota study from 2014 that looked at outdoor nitrogen dioxide levels found people of color in the U.S.are exposed to nearly 40 percent more of this deadly chemical than their white counterparts.
A 2014 analysis by NRDC found the majority of people living near oil and gas development in California are people of color.
A 2015 study showed that poor Latino and Latino immigrant communities are very likely to be living near “toxic hot spots” of cancer-causing air pollution.
In April, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported a rather candid public quip by Terry Bossert, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs at Range Resources, a natural gas exploration and production company.
Bossert said, essentially, that you can’t frack the wealthy because they have the money to fight back
Hannah Levintova at Mother Jones writes—Clinton's VP Pick Just Made Pro-Choice Groups Mad:
Earlier this week, the 2016 Democratic platform committed to securing public funding for abortion by calling for the repeal of the Hyde and Helms amendments. The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal Medicaid money to pay for the procedure for low-income women, and the Helms Amendment bans the use of US foreign aid to help women abroad obtain abortions.
But on Friday, Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), broke from both Clinton and the party when he said in an interview on CNN that he still supports the Hyde Amendment. "I have been for the Hyde Amendment," said Kaine, a lifelong Catholic, repeating several times, "I haven't changed my position on that." Kaine is only repeating what he told the Weekly Standard earlier this month, when the Democratic Party first released its draft platform.
Pema Levy at Mother Jones writes—Is This the Future of Bernie's Revolution?
Leaders of the Working Families Party, a progressive party backed by labor unions and community activists, were in Philadelphia this week to make the case to Sanders supporters that the WFP should carry the torch. Unlike the Green Party, whose presidential candidate, Jill Stein, has attracted some Sanders backers and threatens to draw votes away from Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, the WFP sees itself as a complement to the Democratic Party, working to pull the party to the left.
"We are not the Green Party," said Dan Cantor, WFP's national director, shortly after arriving in Philadelphia on Monday. "We are not running noble but doomed people. We are trying to win Democratic primaries. We want to replace bad, corporate, or inert Democrats with progressives, and then we work to defeat Republicans."
Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Atlantic writes a condensed version of her book—The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians—arguing in her essay (One Way to Help Native Americans: Property Rights) for the introduction of private property onto the reservations. Like other proposals dating back to the late 19th Century, this one presents itself as a humanitarian solution to the horrible statistics about poverty, teen suicide, and domestic violence that plagues so many Indian communities. And like those others, it ultimately amounts to just one more version of non-Indians seeking ways of getting access to, control over or ownership of Indian trust lands:
Indian reservations, Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan wrote in Louisiana State University’s Journal of Energy Law and Resources, “contain almost 30 percent of the nation’s coal reserves west of the Mississippi, 50 percent of potential uranium reserves, and 20 percent of known oil and gas reserves”—resources worth nearly $1.5 trillion, or $290,000 per tribal member. Tragically, “86 percent of Indian lands with energy or mineral potential remain undeveloped because of federal control of reservations that keeps Indians from fully capitalizing on their natural resources if they desire.” [...]
Indians have long suffered from what the Nobel Prize–winning economist Hernando de Soto has called “dead capital.” They may possess a certain amount of land on paper, but they can’t put it to use by selling it, buying more to take advantage of economies of scale, or borrowing against it.
David Moberg at In These Times writes—This Is What Progressives—Especially Labor—Can Learn From Bernie Sanders’ Campaign:
Labor for Bernie, Sanders’ independent union supporters, was moderate in size but active and disproportionately influential, tipping the balance in some primaries, such as Washington state, supporters say. Six national unions (Communications Workers of America, National Nurses United, Amalgamated Transit Union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, United Electrical Workers and the American Postal Workers Union) belonged to the group, plus 107 local unions and tens of thousands of individuals.
Now it is shutting down, says volunteer organizer Rand Wilson, but the group could still serve as a base for future organizing. By promoting Sanders’ ideas, it helped make more class conscious political discussion possible within union ranks.
Most Labor for Bernie members are likely to agree with Wilson that despite its small base, the organization gave a hint at what’s possible.
“Labor had an opportunity to get behind a serious candidate for the working class,” he says, “and you can see what more could have happened if Bernie had been endorsed (by the broader labor movement).”