Still in shock (and awe (sorry)) over the quality of speakers for the Democrats. I mean, many of the "big names" for Republicans actually showed up last week (all the party leadership and who they consider "rising") and it was still miserable. This is going to dog them for some time yet. Since they did next to nothing to work on a new generation of the party while W was in office there's a massive vacuum that's barely starting to fill itself in now. No succession whatsoever from that administration was quite a mistake. Even if they would have been entirely tainted by the W legacy for 4-8 years it's at least a basic infrastructure. That total lack of vision is what's caused the broader disaster the party is in now, too, of course.
The GOP won't truly get anywhere until the neocons and all the ancient Reagan/Bush advisors are out. Trump as the nominee forcing a lot of the more ambitious members of the party away has effectively delayed the entire process 4 years. Even worse, Trump deeply humiliated the core of that alleged deep bench of theirs. And as a bonus, he's glad to burn bridges that were just starting construction. Every old GOP stereotype of the past 20+ years is being heavily reinforced. The platform officially confirms it, being even more ridiculous and out of touch as the one in 2012.
Meanwhile, Obama created a ruthlessly efficient campaign machine the party gets to inherent and the DNC has too many notable faces to throw up to fit them all in the prime speaking slots. Got to say, did not picture it like this 8 years ago (beyond knowing Hillary would run) with Biden being a likely dead end VP. If I have one complaint here it's that the organizational and grassroots power we've learned progressive can have (from Dean > Obama > Sanders) has resulted in too aggressive a platform. It has a number of large leaps forward I can see the general public not being entirely comfortable with. Almost too forward-thinking. Good thing it's competing against the more absurd conservative platform ever!
As an interesting twist, the whole Putin thing. DNC party emails are a non-story after this week, and it's an It's Fucking Nothing to the general public regardless. DWS got outed in a hurry when it hit the fan and her temporary replacement at the head of the convention is adorable and forgets that she has to use a gavel for stuff. It didn't cause any institutional crisis for the convention or anything. The day 1 jeering drama was going to be there anyway. It's an odd thing to gambit on heavily with 100+ days to go still. After exposure and skepticism from Americans it'll be harder to try to push anything into the media, and it just makes Trump look bad.
What an incredibly petty thing to blow your cover on.
Apologies for the rant post.
