On a slow news Friday in August both Slate and New York ran thumb suckers calling on the Clintons to shut down their foundation.  This is in response to a Clinton promise that the foundation would take no foreign donations during a Clinton presidency. Look, I get it.

Donald Trump is clearly losing this election. What is the media going to do about it?

Even Trump understands that he's way behind in the polls and that those polls are on the level. That's why he shook up his campaign staff this morning to make it more Trump-y. (New campaign motto: "Let Trump be Trump. We're out of other options.") He's doing much worse than Mitt Romney was four years ago, and Romney lost by a solid margin.

As a denizen of the Internets given to spouting personal opinions I'm not easily offended.  I can't afford to be. It's hard enough to write without having to do it curled up in a fetal position, tears in my eyes, sucking my thumb.

But I'm offended by my country.

There are still three months to go and we've already gotten to the smirking-death-threats portion of our general election. I can't even say that I'm surprised Trump did it. I just never expected it so early, and I'm sickened by the thought of how much lower the man will sink by November 8. It will get even worse. I mean, of course it will. There's no doubt. But I'm not looking forward to it.

How many times will we play the same game? Here's how it goes:

1. Donald Trump says something outrageous
2. Outrage ensues
3. Trump pretends to be misinterpreted.
4. Pundits argue about whether Trump was misinterpreted

...and repeat.

Slate has run with a thought experiment that serves as a kind of counter to calls by people like President Obama for Republicans to repudiate their own nominee, for the good of the country.  The idea here is that if populist Democrats had somehow handed the nomination to somebody like Sean Penn, people left of center would not take kindly to being told to vote for Ted Cruz in the name of apple pie and American values.

"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."

Ghazala Khan, grieving mother of Army captain Humayun Kahn, killed in action in Iraq trying to save his soldiers and innocent civilians.

I enjoyed that Democratic Convention a lot, and mostly for the right reasons. In fact, I'm still enjoying it, because I'm currently five time zones ahead of Philly time and so watch the major speeches the next day. [SPOILER ALERT: Don't tell me who they nominate in the finale!] The Democrats presented a positive vision about candidate, cause, and country: inspiring reminders about what they are about, what we are about, and what America is about. It's great, and also I'm walking around London with Stevie's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" stuck in my head. I am one happy Democrat.

It would really be great if DNC delegates would stop, you know, booing black people.

End of post.

Trump and his circus have left town, and so have I. But before I turn myself over entirely to watching the DNC on GMT, let me point out a few local Cleveland issues that bothered me about this convention. I've already blogged about the big stuff. Let me just get some Cleveland things off my chest.

Please reserve space in the comments below for Hal to make fun of me if Hillary Clinton picks Tim Kaine as her running mate this afternoon.

The rest of you do not have to wait, though, and can make fun of me now.

Happy Friday!

I've had enough of the Republican Convention. I'm getting out of Cleveland today and flying to London. So I won't see Trump's speech in real time. I'll just get the replays tomorrow, and spend the next two weeks reassuring frightened Brits that the end of the world is not approaching. (Someone, please, reassure me.)

On Tuesday, July 19, the second day of the 2016 GOP convention, Donald Trump, the inexperienced, inarticulate, potty-mouthed, dubiously reputable business man turned anti-government carnival barker officially became the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. 

Surreal as that nomination appears, even in the topsy-turvy world of 21st Century Republicanism, it came about because the Party hardliners were helpless to stop it. The people--their people--had spoken. Unwittingly, unintentionally, they had managed to churn up their portion of the masses so effectively they made it easy for a fast-talking charlatan like Trump to pounce on this most golden of opportunities, winning vast numbers of hardened hearts and brainwashed minds.

So, they're finally here. After months of anxious preparation here in our city, the Republican National Convention has come to Cleveland. The city is as carefully groomed and as nervous as a teenager before the prom. The pedestrian walk on East 4th Street is filled with broadcast booths. High-end restaurants have turned into the temporary headquarters of Bloomberg or Twitter. The park in Public Square has been completely, and beautifully, renovated; we had to close it down for more than a year.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued some mildly opinionated statements questioning Donald Trump's fitness to be president and now the idiot wing of lefty America has stirred to admonish her for... saying what any reasonable person would expect her to believe about Donal Trump any way.

Hillary has been labeled a closet conservative by some in the progressive movement; from that political vantage point, what issues is she's to the right of Donald Trump on?  

Is Bernie's endorsement of Hillary a sign of compromise or betryal? 

What's the best argument for a Trump presidency?

You don't need me to recount the week of police-violence and resulant lone wolf terrorism, so let's just stipulate that you all read and watch the news.  In New York Magazine, Johnathan Chait assures us "It Is Not 1968." It's a well done essay but somehow when Chait says something declarative, I suspect it just isn't entirely true.

So, Hillary Clinton is not getting indicted. The media presents this as a surprise. But it is pretty obvious that no major political actors are surprised. The press has talked for a year as if Clinton could possibly be indicted. The players (the national Democrats, the Republicans, the White House, the donors) have acted as if they knew she would not. Even politicians who publicly said that she was in danger of indictment acted as if she would not. The simplest answer here is that this story has not been covered honestly.

People have been asking if we're seeing a realignment of American electoral politics, with Donald Trump  scrambling the campaign map. There are no real signs of that yet: polls show the presidential electoral map unchanged so far, with the Democrats and Republican leading in the same states they carried last time and the time before that. The real story is the realignment that has already happened, without fanfare, over the past quarter-century. This Fourth of July weekend I'd like to talk about Maine and Vermont.