James E. Campbell, Polarized [BUMPED]

This is a very interesting topic right now.

See James Campbell's new book, out this week, Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America.

Democrats Look to Reclaim Patriotism

Good luck with that.

The Dems are, and will always be, the hate-America party of the hate-America left.

From Cathleen Decker, at LAT, "Here's how Democrats are trying to reclaim patriotism from Republicans — and how Trump helps":

The liberal media hacks are going to find that middle America doesn't buy the Democrats' new/found love for the military

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) July 30, 2016

A sea of waving flags, standing ovations for generals and admirals and praise for police officers and President Reagan made last week’s nominating convention here unlike any Democratic conclave in recent memory.

In tone and content, whole stretches resembled a typical Republican convention — for good reason. The convention represented an effort by Hillary Clinton and fellow Democrats to reclaim ground lost as far back as the 1960s by taking advantage of Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic candidacy.

Their pitch was less issue-oriented than cultural — an attempt by Democrats to portray themselves as a haven for voters shaken by terrorism at home and abroad.

The attempt to transcend traditional differences between Republicans and Democrats has been made easier by Trump, who has scorned longtime GOP imagery and policy stances. Democrats have accused him of harboring an authoritarianism that runs counter to American values.

“The country is trying to find a balance and equilibrium,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. Rather than dividing along the “hawk and dove” divisions of earlier decades, he said, Democrats are hoping to cast the election as “stability versus flailing around.”

“The show that they put on said, ‘This isn’t your old Democratic Party; this is a Democratic Party you can be comfortable in in 2016,’” he said.

The message was aimed at a wide range of voters who have leaned toward or voted wholly with Republicans in recent elections: married women, white women in particular, worried about national security; and both blue-collar and college-educated men.

Some of them turned away from Democrats as far back as the protesting days of the Vietnam era; others moved right in the 1980s either due to Reagan’s mix of sunny toughness or the Democratic party’s lean to the left; still more shifted to the GOP, at least for a time, after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Philadelphia emphasis on patriotic, sometimes martial, imagery came at a cost: Some convention speakers drew vocal objections from antiwar delegates on the party’s left.

Perhaps more important, Democrats spent relatively little time talking about the economy, which is likely to be a deciding issue in the fall. Clinton began emphasizing that issue this weekend on a bus tour of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

But the absence of a full-throated economic pitch from Clinton wasn’t as harmful as it might have been, because Republicans, too, spent little time at their convention talking dollars and cents.

The GOP convention in Cleveland, one week before the Democratic gathering, focused largely on the nominee himself. To the extent there were policy messages, some were at odds with Trump’s own positions. And nearly everything was overshadowed by harshly anti-Clinton rhetoric that focused more on the past, such as the extent of her responsibility for the attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, than on the feasibility of her plans for the economy.

The turf being played on by Democrats melds patriotism and appreciation for those in public service with regalia that wraps all of it together for television viewers...

More.

Sabine Jemeljanova Enjoys Ice Cream

She's so beautiful.

Sabine steps out in her underwear to enjoy the warm weather https://t.co/xtleT5OEx5 pic.twitter.com/MwVdihoBoM

— Page 3 (@Page3) July 25, 2016

More here.

Socialism Sucks

It does.

Not Katie Pavlich though, heh.

Who will pay for all of the "free" stuff? You will, kids. #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/smjXsi1O9U

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 26, 2016

Nice Catch

That's a big fish!

Photo pic.twitter.com/LYa2YaqRsZ

— Tacticalpeaks (@tacticalpeaks) July 28, 2016

'Suicide Before Clinton'

Some of those Sanders supporters are pretty hardcore, heh.

"Suicide before Clinton" this protester's sign reads. #DemsInPhilly #DNCinPHL #DemConvention pic.twitter.com/yEk7oLiO4K

— Natalie DiBlasio (@ndiblasio) July 29, 2016

Bikini-Clad Policewoman in Sweden Takes Down Thief While Sunbathing in Stockholm

Heh.

That lady's buffed!

At London's Daily Mail, "Bikini-clad policewoman in Sweden takes down and arrests unlucky pickpocket."

Tech-Sector Titans Dominate Corporate Market Capitilization Rankings

And where are all those progs protesting against Apple, Facebook, and Google?

You know, the evil "corporations" you always hear the left railing about in their attacks on "capitalism."

At USA Today:

With moves by $AMZN and $FB, top 5 U.S. companies based on market cap are all in tech https://t.co/vTd75otLRo pic.twitter.com/r1YOOC3lkI

— USA TODAY Tech (@usatodaytech) July 29, 2016

Not Much of a Bounce for Hillary Clinton

At Instapundit, "NOT MUCH OF A BOUNCE FOR HILLARY, according to the USC Dornsife/LA Times tracking poll."

Meanwhile, lots of folks on Twitter making hash out of this, "WATCH: Bravo poll shocks Andy Cohen — Trump 65%, Clinton 35%." The only problem? It's a self-selected television poll, not a random sample or a rolling Internet panel.

Interesting, nevertheless.

America's First Major Socialist Party Debuts in Philadelphia

Heh.

At Instapundit, "FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: America’s First Major Socialist Party Debuts in Philadelphia."

And from Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "Welcome to the Communist Party, U.S.A.":

Wearing a white pantsuit, Hillary Clinton plodded out on stage to accept the nomination that she had schemed, plotted, lied, cheated, rigged and eventually fixed a series of elections to obtain.

Then she claimed that she was accepting the nomination of a race she had rigged with “humility”.

Humility is not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Hillary Clinton. It is not even the last word. It is not in the Hillary dictionary at all. But this convention was a desperate effort to humanize Hillary. Everyone, including her philandering husband and dilettante daughter, down to assorted people she had met at one point, were brought up on stage to testify that she really is a very nice person.

This wasn’t a convention. It was a series of character witnesses for a woman with no character. It was an extensive apology for the Left’s radical agenda cloaked in fake patriotism and celebrity adulation.

Sinclair Lewis famously said, "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross". More accurately, when Communism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. That’s what the Democratic National Convention was.

This night presented Hillary Clinton as all things to all people. She was a passionate fighter who found plenty of time to spend with her family. She is for cops and for cop-killers. She likes the Founding Fathers and political correctness. She wants Democrats to be the party of working people and of elitist government technocrats. And, most especially, she cares about people like you.

The convention, like everything about Hillary, was awkward and insincere.

There was Bernie glaring into the camera just as Hillary was thanking him for rallying a bunch of young voters whom she hoped to exploit. There was Chelsea Clinton reminding everyone that the Clintons are a dynasty and that everyone in it gets a job because of their last name, right before introducing her mother whose only real qualification for her belated entry into politics was her last name. And there was Jennifer Granholm who got an opportunity to have an incoherent public meltdown at the convention.

There’s the mandatory video explaining how Hillary Clinton personally hunted down Osama bin Laden while sitting in a chair. “She’s carrying the hope and the rage of an entire nation,” Morgan Freeman intones. Coming in November 2016. And Hillary Clinton will be played by Meryl Streep. Donald Trump is compared to Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s rather obvious even to the handful of Hillary supporters that their candidate fits the Ratched role much better than Trump does.

The audience was told incessantly that Hillary Clinton loves small children. Once would have been enough. Twice would have been enough. By the millionth repetition, it seems more like Hillary is the witch trying to lure children into her gingerbread house.

Helping out with that task were a continuing parade of young female celebrities. If you thought that Elizabeth Banks and Lena Dunham were awkward, just wait for Katy Perry and Chloe Moretz urging their cohort to go out there and vote for Hillary right after a bunch of ex-military people claim that the woman who helped ISIS take over two countries and the Muslim Brotherhood even more countries than that will be good for national security.

General John Allen, formerly of the Marine Corps, currently employed by Qatar’s pet Brookings think tank, insisted that only Hillary Clinton could defeat ISIS. That’s like saying that only Mrs. O’Leary’s cow could put out the Great Chicago Fire which she started. Furthermore Qatar played a major role in the expansion of Islamic terrorism that helped culminate in the current crisis.

There were treasonous Republicans, confused celebrities and a weirdly lifelike Nancy Pelosi. There was yet another New York politician likely to be indicted, Andy Cuomo, trying much too hard. But topping them all was Hillary Clinton who was in her manic mode, trying too hard to be human, and failing.

Eyes wide, looking suspiciously from side to side, shrilly barking lines into the microphone that stripped them of their emotional context, Hillary delivered both sides of her personality in one speech.

And both sides of her agenda.

The radical agenda of the Left was clumsily cloaked in references to the Founding Fathers. The same group of people whose names the Left want to see ground into the dirt. Hillary’s call for collectivism, the insistence that none of us can do anything as individuals, was dressed up in E Pluribus Unum and the Founding Fathers.

Sinclair Lewis was almost right. When Communism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag...

Keep reading.

Deal of the Day: ZapMaster LED Lightbulb and Bug Zapper

This is great!

At Amazon, ZapMaster ZM400 2 in 1 LED Lightbulb and Bug Zapper, White (4 Pack).

Also, Save on Select Pocket and Camping Knives.

More, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

And, Under Armour Storm Hustle II Backpack.

Plus, School Supply Lists.

And from Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam.

Still more, from Michael Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict.

BONUS:  Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War.

Polarization and Accumulated Hatreds

Just posted, at Althouse:

This election's all about accumulated hatreds. It's tribal polarization all the way, and it's just the beginning! If Trump wins it'll probably just be a finger in the dike of the coming wave of Third World brown hordes. Hunker down people. Get your survival gear. Extreme federalization of loyalties is likely, and that's the peaceful outcome. Civil war is the other extreme, and it's not too far-fetched of a possibility. Shoot, just note the Democrat convention for your narrative justification. Michelle Obama's talking about slaves building the White House. I thought O's election was supposed to transcend race. We were going to be one America, not divided by hatred or ideology. Well, not so much, it turns out.

One Way to Help Native Americans: Property Rights

From Naomi Schaefer Riley, at the Atlantic.

I'm almost done with her new book, The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians.

It's great!

Will Democrats Welcome Less Educated White Working-Class Voters?

No.

Democrats hate the white working-class, especially white working-class men in flyover country. That demographic is literally a despised enemy fit to be shot.

I didn't blog it at the time, for some reason, but this description of leftist hatred of the white working-class is perfect, at the New Yorker, "How Donald Trump is Winning Over the White Working Class":

Identity politics, of a different brand from Trump’s, is also gaining strength among progressives. In some cases, it comes with an aversion toward, even contempt for, their fellow-Americans who are white and sinking. Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments—who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know. White male privilege remains alive in America, but the phrase would seem odd, if not infuriating, to a sixty-year-old man working as a Walmart greeter in southern Ohio. The growing strain of identity politics on the left is pushing working-class whites, chastised for various types of bigotry (and sometimes justifiably), all the more decisively toward Trump.

See that? Chastised for bigotry, sometimes justifiably!

So, no. Democrats aren't going to win over bedrock white working-class voters. They're not even winning over white women with no college education, according to recent polls.

The question remains whether building a winning presidential coalition around this demographic will be enough to win in November. And even if Trump wins, with the coming tsunami of brown-power demographic change, to say nothing of the rising youth vote of transformation, it's doubtful Republicans would be able to hold on to power. In the back of my mind I feel we're on the verge of a long-lasting party realignment toward the Democrats, which would see far-left politics and ideology entrenched at the national level for decades. A Trump victory in November might simply postpone that inevitability. If change is too rapid, regardless of inevitability, we'll continue to have intense ideological and demographic divisions in the years ahead.

In any case, here's Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic, "Does the Diverse Democratic Party Have Room for the White Working-Class?":

The evocative sound of barriers falling was the signal note during the Democratic National Convention’s first two nights.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s riveting Monday-night speech condensed the centuries of racial pain and progress bound up in her husband’s two victories into a single indelible phrase: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” One night later, Hillary Clinton shattered another ceiling when she became the first major-party female presidential nominee.

The delegates have displayed understandable pride in these twin social milestones. But there is also an undercurrent of concern that something old is being lost in this celebration of the new. The fear among some is that this polychromatic Democratic Party, open to all races, both genders, all sexual orientations, welcoming to immigrants, and championing diversity, may not have preserved enough room for the working-class white voters who anchored the party from Andrew Jackson through Lyndon Johnson.

Those voters haven’t been the party’s center for years: except for Bill Clinton in 1996, no Democrat has won more than 40 percent of white voters without a college education since 1980, according to media exit polls. On a national basis, Democrats have largely replaced them with increased support from Millennials, minorities, and college-educated whites—while running just enough above their national numbers among working-class whites in the key Midwestern battlegrounds to retain the advantage in those pivotal states.

Even so, many in the party are incredulous that so many blue-collar whites are flocking to Donald Trump, a candidate Democrats view as uniquely divisive and unqualified. The post-Republican National Convention polls released on Monday poked directly at that anxiety. Trump held big leads among non-college whites in the surveys released by both CBS (23 percentage points) and CNN/ORC (fully 39 percentage points). The CNN poll had Trump attracting not only 69 percent of non-college white men but 64 percent of white women without college degrees—and recording most of his convention gains among the latter.

Both surveys showed Clinton holding preponderant leads among minority voters and running much better than Democrats usually do among college-educated whites. Those strengths could allow her to survive a Trump majority among working-class whites. But not any majority: If Trump’s advantage among blue-collar whites grows too large, Clinton would still struggle to overcome it with other voters.

Many Democrats are also uncomfortable with the thought of becoming a party that largely concedes the white working-class to rely on white voters mostly above the median income, and non-white voters mostly below it. (If nothing else, that’s not a plausible strategy for controlling Congress, even if it works at the presidential level.) Reduced reliance on working-class whites since the 1990s has freed Democrats to pursue a more consistently liberal cultural agenda. But anyone watching this convention’s first nights might easily view social inclusion, not economic opportunity, as the party’s core priority. “One of the challenges for Democrats is talking about diversity, talking about gender in a way that doesn’t put people on the defensive, [and] make them feel like they are being … accused of being bigoted,” says Democratic pollster Margie Omero.

The convention has exposed the inconvenient truth that Democrats no longer have many voices that intrinsically resonate in white working-class communities. Monday night’s opening speeches were often eloquent and compelling. But at one point, Cory Booker (Stanford, Yale Law School) gave way to Michelle Obama (Princeton, Harvard Law School), who was followed by former Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren. Each overcame significant barriers and showed great tenacity to scale those heights; but all were winners in the information-age meritocracy...

More.

As note above a the New Yorker piece, it's clear leftists don't care about white working-class voters, and I expect the bedrock white turnout for Trump to be even stronger than the current consensus suggests. Indeed, if that CNN poll Brownstein cites is a reliable indicator, I'd argue Trump will be the prohibitive favorite in November.

Still, some of the polls are all over the place, and it's especially important to take a look at the survey methodology. There's been way too much variability in the numbers, with Trump up by high-single digits in one poll to the exact reverse in another (see Reuters' terrible new poll, for example).

I'll have more on this, as always.

Previously, "Two Party Conventions Showcase America's Stark Political Polarization."

Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic [BUMPED]

Commentary's got a symposium on Yuval Levin's new book, The Fractured Republic.

Without even mentioning Donald Trump, Levin's apparently nailed the angst that's driving the hardcore populist uprising in the electorate.

At Amazon, Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism.

Pre-Order: Ann Coulter, In Trump We Trust [BUMPED]

At Amazon, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!

The book's out August 23rd.

Two Party Conventions Showcase America's Stark Political Polarization

This is good.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Two conventions, one vast gulf: Republicans and Democrats appear to be speaking to different countries":

One night this week, the Democratic convention featured eight black women whose children had died in shootings or at the hands of police. A week earlier, Republicans repeatedly paid tribute to law enforcement.

In Philadelphia, the billionaire global warming activist Tom Steyer was ubiquitous. In Cleveland, Republicans put a spotlight on the plight of out-of-work miners and pledged to increase use of coal.

A speaker needing applause at a Democratic convention can always praise teachers. Republicans can reliably criticize public employee unions.

As the themes and tableaus of the parties’ conventions illustrated, a deep political gulf separates the country’s two major parties, their elected officials and their most reliable voters. And it is getting wider. Voters not only disagree on solutions to the nation’s ills, they hold starkly different views about what the problems are.

“Rarely in American history,” as Gov. Jerry Brown said here at the DNC, “have two parties diverged so profoundly.”

Both presidential nominees now face the question of whether either can bridge that divide — or whether they even want to try. Each entered the convention weeks with  a strategic choice: Does the path toward victory involve reinforcing party loyalty in hopes of driving more on your side to vote? Or does winning require reaching across the tribal lines of American politics?

In Cleveland, Donald Trump placed a clear bet on the former path. Nearly every element of the Republican convention played to the anxieties and frustrations of the older white conservative voters who form the core of the GOP coalition.

His campaign strategists believe they can do better than the last two GOP nominees in motivating those voters to the polls. They’re also counting on Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable image driving down turnout among Democratic-leaning groups, particularly young people and minorities, who may not back her as readily as they did President Obama.

Clinton confronted a more complicated calculus.

Her party has proved the strength of its electoral coalition — winning the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. But its voters have grown frustrated at the gridlock that has resulted from a divided political system.

Moreover, Trump’s powerful appeal to the economic unease — and the racial resentments — of blue-collar whites has accelerated the trend of such voters identifying with the GOP. To make up for potential losses among them, Democrats need to increase their vote among suburban, college-educated voters who in the past have often sided with Republicans.

“We're trying to bridge that gap, to try to make an argument that the politics of division are dangerous for our country,” Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, said at a meeting with reporters sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

The Democratic convention, culminating in Clinton’s speech, reflected that imperative. With speakers like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and repeated descriptions of Trump as a dangerously unsteady authoritarian, they sought to make moderate, college-educated Republicans and Republican-leaning independents comfortable with the idea of crossing the line to vote for a Democrat.

Creating such inroads, however, is a tricky task...

More.

Americans Suffering the Weakest Economic Recovery of Post-World War II Era

Heh.

Historically, the state of the economy has been the number one variable predicting the electoral success of the president's party.

And things aren't looking good.

Make America Great Again! (Or grow again, heh.)

At WSJ, "U.S. GDP Grew a Disappointing 1.2% in Second Quarter."

And, "Seven Years Later, Recovery Remains the Weakest of the Post-World War II Era":

The current 7-year stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than shorter cycles https://t.co/BzXYx89o9Q pic.twitter.com/pAGGevwOHH

— Eric Morath (@EricMorath) July 29, 2016

Even seven years after the recession ended, the current stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than much shorter business cycles.

In terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949. (And for which we have quarterly data.) The economy has grown at a 2.1% annual rate since the U.S. recovery began in mid-2009, according to gross-domestic-product data the Commerce Department released Friday.

The prior expansion, from 2001 through 2007, was the only other business cycle of the past 11 when the economy didn’t grow at least 3% a year, on average.

Total growth this expansion ranks just 8th of the past 11 cycles. The U.S. economy, at the end of June, was 15.5% larger than it was when the recession ended in 2009.

The current expansion remains smaller than the one during Richard Nixon‘s administration. And that 16% expansion lasted just three years. The economy grew 18% from 2001 through 2007. It grew 52% from 1961 through 1969...

Olympic Athletes Urged to Keep Their Mouths Shut in Rio (VIDEO)

Heh.

Watch, at Euronews:

Keep your mouths shut!

That is the advice from health experts to Olympic athletes preparing to compete in the polluted waters of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, where drug-resistant super bacteria have been found in abundance.

The opening ceremony for the games is just a week away.

"The idea is that athletes maintain minimum contact with the water. Unfortunately that is how it is," said doctor Daniel Becker, acknowledging that it is not always easy to remember to keep your mouth and eyes closed...

Deal of the Day: Save on Select AKG Over the Ear and JBL In-Ear Headphones [BUMPED]

At Amazon, AKG K545 BLK Studio-Quality, Closed-Back, Over the Ear Headphones (Black).

Also, More Savings on AKG Headphones. And, JBL In-Ear Headphones.

Plus, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

And, Amazon Echo.

More, Douglas Field, All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin.

And, Randall Kenan, ed., The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

BONUS: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain.