Giving Them a Real Choice

by Deacon Blues

It's been said before around these parts that the GOP will run 2016 as a law-and-order election, and sure enough, you'll hear a lot of that tonight from Donald Trump. The time-tested way to jack up white people is to scare them with imaginary lawless brown people. So look for Trump and the GOP to run a replay of Nixon's 1968 strategy.

Just don't expect to hear Trump talk about "justice" and "fairness" while he is talking about law and order, unless he wants to brazenly put forward the notion of reverse discrimination, which given his base should not be discounted. Fascists need to display an image of nativism and strength with their overt racism, so the "America First" message tonight is really code for "White People Coming Home."

As for Hillary, and her VP pick, I do think the Pence selection may have changed her calculus, but that is no reason to pick the likes of Castro, Vilsack, or Perez. Nor am I particularly thrilled with a Tim Kaine selection, yet when you look at the Democrats' actual bench, there aren't many commander-in-chiefs in waiting. Obama for his part certainly wasn't himself in 2008, but he selected Biden to compensate for that. Hillary doesn't need to check that box herself, yet she needs to make a good but not pandering pick.

I simply think in this election, with a need to drive out the Democratic base while undercutting Trump's alleged concern for blue collar economics, combatting two extremist white guys with two pro-middle class women could be a smart, and energizing play. It would also help if Hillary called Trump's bluff on economics, and focused on unions, as we've said before, and make Trump go against that.

No matter what, Hillary will have a target-rich environment to go after Trump and Pence, bit it starts with the right economic message and the right running mate.

Update, Thursday evening: Trump's prepared remarks cast America in a dark place that is all Hillary's fault:

Trump’s speech will lay out stark differences between his agenda and Clinton’s. He asserted that the likely Democratic nominee was a “puppet” of corporations and elites, and that she would “keep our rigged system in place.”

That's right, the man who is now owned by the Koch Brothers, and who has been an elite himself his entire life, is attacking the woman who came out last week for a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United.

Trump also blamed Clinton directly for the past decade and a half of turmoil in the Middle East and cast the former secretary of state as a favor-trading, self-enriching agent of foreign powers.

That's right; it was all a dream that Bush/Cheney were in the White House from 2001 until 2009. And apparently Hillary has been running our foreign policy since 2009.

"This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: Death, destruction and weakness," Trump said in the prepared remarks. "But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy."

He's now opened himself up to a 4-day exploration next week of what a Trump world would mean for America.