Hillary Clinton, History, and the 'Color Memo'

Women who work together will attest that inexplicably there arrives at random a day every so often when everyone shows up in the same color or color combination.  A few of my Facebook friends, in the run-up to Hillary Clinton's landmark speech last night, speculated on what color Hillary would chose to sport for the history books.

Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump: The messages behind the fashion

By Marysia Nowak BBC News

Getty Images Image caption A white dress code for the road to the White House

Hillary Clinton wore a white pantsuit on the last leg of the race to the White House. Many column inches have been spent on the image of the candidates and their spouses, almost as much as on their political message. So what were they trying to say, and did it work?

The importance of a candidate's fashion image in a world which revolves around branding and marketing cannot be overstated.
SNIP
She will mostly be seen in trouser suits - a businesslike style that would do as well in a boardroom as in the White House.
No surprise then that on the night of her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, she wore her trademark pantsuit.
It is early days, and no fashionista has yet ventured to name the label, but much has already been made of the colour.
White for purity, white for angelic, white for new and fresh, white for White House.
But also the colour of the suffragettes, as social media users were quick to point out:

Read more >>>>

Before feminists get all riled and start telling me that we would never discuss this if she were a man, I urge you to click on the article and read more since the next topic is Donald Trump's sartorial selections with a photo of him with his wife who chose to wear this on the evening of her big speech -  or rather her reading of Michelle Obama's speech from 2008.

What was interesting, last night, was that Hillary was not the only woman on the stage to zero in on "Suffragette White" for this historical evening.  Here is what Ohio's Joyce Beatty packed in her suitcase for her speech in Philadelphia yesterday.

She looked beautiful.  Yes, that's Melania's dress, but Joyce did not copy her copied speech. I laughed for nearly an hour.  We got the memo, Joyce!  You rocked it!

ICYMI: Yesterday at the Republican National Circus

Yesterday, day three of an already bizarre convention snubbed by all but one of the living past nominees and other big GOP names, played out in a way most Hollywood producers would reject as too crazy a concept.

The runner-up, Ted Cruz, gave a speech in which everyone expected him to endorse the candidate, but he did not.  Instead he urged his fellow Republicans to vote their consciences.  Hillary Clinton liked that line.

Hillary Clinton ‏@HillaryClinton 

Vote your conscience. http://hillaryclinton.com/vote 

Trump entered the room just as Cruz was wrapping up his remarks, and Cruz was booed off stage in Showtime at the Apollo fashion. Newt Gingrich then came on and tried to twist Cruz's words or lack of them like a pretzel.

Both Newt and Trump's running mate Mike Pence engaged in the compulsory Hillary-bashing based on lies.

The backdrop to all of this:

-A day that began with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce endorsing the Democratic candidate on morning TV smack in the middle of the Republican quadrennial presidential nominating event and condemning their candidate in no uncertain terms.  Read the endorsement here >>>>

-The incoherent statement from a Trump advisor calling Hillary "the Jane Fonda of the Viet Nam" and calling for her execution for treason. This the morning after Chris Christie roused chants of "lock her up" from conventioneers.  The advisor is under Secret Service investigation.

-An evening that began with a live band serenading delegates with Sweet Caroline.

David Corn Verified account ‏@DavidCornDC 

Never really thought that the decay in democracy would happen to the music of Neil Diamond. #SweetCaroline#RNCinCLE

-The detritus in the aftermath of Melania Trump's Tuesday night speech.  I haven't mentioned the purloined paragraphs here.  Until yesterday, there was a mist around how the passages came to appear on Mrs. Trump's teleprompter. Finally,  Meredith McIver, a Trump organization staff writer, owned up to writing the piece based on ideas Melania read to her from Michelle Obama's 2008 speech during a phone call.  Aside from the obvious: the accusations of plagiarism (it was - no attribution was included), the denial (at first it was not clear that she knew she was reading someone else's words), the equivocation (she said she wrote it herself with as little help as possible),  there is the small matter of Ms. McIver's employer. She offered to resign and the resignation was rejected, but resign from where?  Ms. McIver is not employed by the campaign and therein may lie an FEC violation.

Melania Trump Speech Appears To Be An Illegal Campaign Contribution

Ethics watchdogs suggest that’s another oops for the Trump campaign.

07/20/2016

Paul Blumenthal

CLEVELAND ― The revelation that Donald Trump’s business staff writer Meredith McIver wrote the partly plagiarized speech given by Melania Trump on Monday night raises questions about whether his campaign is illegally commingling corporate and campaign resources.
McIver does not appear to have any official role in the presidential campaign. Her letter acknowledging her role in the speech debacle appeared on corporate letterhead from the Trump Organization. And she is not listed as being paid by the Trump campaign on any available reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Corporations are banned from donating directly or through in-kind services to political campaigns. McIver could have volunteered her services, but her offer to resign from the Trump Organization suggests that she was acting within her job responsibilities. (Donald Trump rejected that offer.)
Read more >>>>

Meanwhile, hardly a speaker takes the stage in Cleveland without bashing Hillary.  One of the memes is that laws do not apply to her the same way that they do to everyone else, the reverse of James Comey's statement before the House Oversight Committee.  Actually, that meme befits Trump and his campaign more accurately.

Who knows what to expect tonight? We've seen some crazy conventions. John Avlon, on the ground in Cleveland, files from a gloomy perspective.

We Are Better Than This!

If I had a dollar for every time over almost eight years that I have heard Hillary Clinton explain, in so many countries as well as here at home, that we have regular, peaceful transitions of power in this country, I would give every dollar to Hillary for America.

Most recently, she made what has become a boilerplate remark of hers about our democracy when she appeared with President Obama in Charlotte.

Some of you might remember, that he and I competed against each other as hard as we could back in 2008. But when it was over, I was proud to endorse him and campaign for him.
And I’ll never forget when he called me the Sunday after the election, asking me to come to Chicago. It turned out he wanted me to be Secretary of State, and I don’t think anybody saw that coming – especially me.
And as I travelled on behalf of our country, a lot of people around the world asked how President Obama and I could work so well together after being such fierce competitors. In some places, the person who loses an election gets exiled or executed, not asked to be Secretary of State.
But President Obama asked me to serve, and I accepted. You know why? We both love our country.
That is how democracy is supposed to work. We just celebrated 240 years of independence. In America, we put common interest before self-interest. We stand together because we know we’re stronger together.

So it it especially jarring and disconcerting to hear crowds at the Republican Convention in Cleveland chanting "Lock her up.!"  Really?

The Republican convention’s fixation on locking up Hillary Clinton is really disturbing

Updated by Andrew Prokop on July 19, 2016

CLEVELAND — It’s pretty disturbing to hear a large crowd at a major party convention repeatedly call for the jailing of the leader of the other major party.

And I’ve heard that happen again and again at the Republican convention so far, as the clear favorite chant of the attendees is: "Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!"

It’s not just the crowd. Three speakers at the podium on the first day of the convention called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed.

And Chris Christie’s speech on day two, while nominally a critique of Clinton’s foreign policy judgment, was framed as a "prosecution" of Clinton in which he repeatedly asked the crowd whether she was "guilty" or "not guilty."

Naturally, the crowd interrupted Christie four times with the "lock her up" chant. Indeed, the idea of sentencing Clinton to prison has been the only thing that’s really excited the crowd so far on this listless second day.

To me, all this seemed like a new crossing of a line and an ugly degradation of a norm in American politics.

Read more >>>>

The Rachel Maddow Show / The MaddowBlog

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Speaks at the Old State House in Springfield, Ill., July 13, 2016.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP

The GOP’s preoccupation with imprisoning Clinton isn’t normal

07/19/16

By Steve Benen

At any major party’s national convention, partisans aren’t going to use kid gloves when going after the other party’s nominee. It stands to reason that when Republicans target Hillary Clinton in Cleveland this week, they’re going to use every possible line of attack they can think of. It’s just how the game is played.

But Vox’s Andrew Prokop picked up on GOP messaging from the first night of the Republican National Convention that goes much further than anything Americans are accustomed to.

One of the most striking recurring suggestions of the Republican convention’s first day was that Hillary Clinton should be sent to prison.

During retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s speech, the delegates began to chant, “Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” Soon, Flynn agreed, saying, “Lock her up, that’s right! It’s unbelievable!”

After noting some other speakers who called for Clinton’s imprisonment, Prokop’s piece added, “To me, all this seemed like a new crossing of a line and an ugly degradation of a norm in American politics.”

He’s not the only who thought so. Independent Journal Review’s Justin Green, a conservative journalist, added, “Plagiarism is bad, but it’s remarkable that the headline news today isn’t that speakers at the RNC called for jailing the opposing nominee.”

It’s no small detail. In the American tradition, partisans will blast rivals on every front, but voters are not accustomed to hearing calls for the incarceration of the other party’s presidential candidate.

Read more >>>>

We stand as the role model of bloodless transition for all the world.  It is beyond not normal.  Steve Schmidt, on MSNBC tonight, called it "Banana Republican" right after I remarked that I had never seen anything like this in this country.

No.  This is not normal.  It is not what we do. It is not how we act. It is not who we are.  We are better than this.