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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Philly Cheese Stank, Day 1: The Stankening

You'd think the horse-race media would at least shake up their own narrative, but that would give them too much credit. Just as last week's crapfest began with floor fighting among remaining holdouts, so the Dems' attempt at levity began with trying to tame the hostile Bernie bros. By the end of the night, things seemed to have calmed down, and by the end of the week the butt-hurt will be mostly forgotten, except with people who were probably never going to vote for HFC anyway, but look for it to be an underlying theme of commentary all week.

It was probably a good idea to get Warren and Sanders done on opening night, because despite both players' move toward comity, the fact is their central theses revolve around the theme of dire inequality and disparity. They are correct, of course, but such an argument comes directly at the expense of the structural integrity of the current and future leaders of the actual Democratic Party.

They can't have it both ways -- Obama has been president for eight years now, and while there certainly has been no cooperation from Congress, the fact is that pretty much nothing has been done about worsening economic inequality. At this point, people figure you're either ineffective or you're in on the racket.

Record Dow Jones indexes and low unemployment figures only matter if the gains are being spread with at least some equity. And there appears to have been no forward motion at all toward that goal. When Sanders points out that the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans own as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent of Americans, it cannot be ignored that at least some of it happened on Barry O's watch, on Billy C's watch as well. The unasked question is what HFC is going to do about it when it's Her Turn.

And the only answer anyone has is, Nothing, of course, but the other guy would be even worse. Whaddaya gonna do? And they're right. Keep that in mind, kids, when it's November 9th and we look at the results -- even if we squeak by and avoid the Drumpf aster-turd hurtling toward Earth, the economic cycle of institutionalized racketeering will continue apace, and more demagogues with smoother deliveries and fewer rough edges will emerge to charm the disfavored, and we'll be right back here again. Four years, eight years, twelve, twenty -- doesn't matter. It's the process now -- crisis averted, back to your regularly scheduled programming, which wasn't very good to begin with.

In the meantime, Warren has been and will continue to be a very effective attack dog, merciless in her criticism of all things Drumpf. Again, a catchy nickname like "Deadbeat Donald" would get a nice extra dig in coming from surrogates like Warren and Sanders, conveying a ring of truth while allowing HFC and her closer circle to maintain the veneer of gentility in a bare-knuckle brawl.

Other than that, Michelle Obama probably set the bar for the week, until the big dogs roll in on Wednesday and Thursday. She spoke eloquently of opportunity and advancement in this society, a trendline that too many Republicans, past and present, seem to believe just don't exist simply because they refuse to talk about them. The African-American widow who spoke about getting fleeced by Drumpf "University" also came off pretty solid, even if it was clear that pros worked on her speech, helped her corral and muster her argument as forcefully as possible.

It's a theme that they should return to as much as possible throughout the week -- this guy is an ignorant con-artist. Donald Drumpf's only skill set has to do with separating idiots from their money. With the barrage of terror attacks throughout Europe, the Democrats must also focus on that area and provide a viable alternative to Drumpf's limbic superstition of Daddy's home and he'll keep you safe.

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