Saturday Open Thread [7.16.16]

It's official: @realDonaldTrump just chose Mike Pence as his running mate. What you need to know about him:https://t.co/VpmloblDhS

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 15, 2016

Donald Trump nearly picked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as his running mate and wavered until the last minute before announcing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was his final choice, according to CNN.

New York Times: “In conversations late into the evening, Mr. Trump repeatedly hesitated over selecting Mr. Pence, according to people briefed on the tense deliberations, who insisted on anonymity to describe the confidential talks. Even as his emissaries reassured Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump fielded a last-ditch appeal from Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another finalist, who once again pressed his own case.”

If you had any doubts about Trump sticking with his dangerous plan for America, say hello to his VP pick. pic.twitter.com/xuFClfZeLi

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 15, 2016

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Brietbart News Daily that now might be a good time for the Republican leadership to shut down the federal government, in protest of what he called “an imperial president” who will not “enforce criminal charges against a criminal.” Issa was referring to the lack of charges filed against Hillary Clinton for her private email server. Said Issa: “We should be willing to shut down the government if the president won’t limit his power.”

LOL. Please proceed, Issa.

It's only called 'open carry' when the man is white. It he's black it's 'oh shit, he's got a gun!' #PhilandoCastile pic.twitter.com/cgjSCWvd7L

— Bipartisan Report (@Bipartisanism) July 7, 2016

“I don’t know how women can vote for him… It’s incomprehensible to me.” — Barbara Bush, in an interview with CBS News, on Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.

Alec MacGillis with a great read:

The disruption that the nomination of Trump represents for the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has been cast as a freakish anomaly, the equivalent of the earthquakes that hit the other side of Ohio in recent years. But just as those earthquakes had a likely explanation — gas and oil fracking in the Utica Shale — so can the crackup of the Republican Party and rise of Trump be traced back to what the geologists call the local site conditions.

It’s no secret the country has sorted itself into ever-more polarized camps. What is underappreciated is how much that dynamic has played out even within regions, even within a single relatively small metropolitan area like Dayton. The city along the Great Miami River, an hour north of Cincinnati, was once a bastion of moderation and heterodoxy, the sort of place where the spectrum was jumbled with conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans and everything in between. But a combination of trends — among them suburban flight, deindustrialization, the flip of the Solid South to Republicans — changed everything.

Josh Marshall has four questions after the failure of the Turkey Coup.

One: Erdogan’s government has been trending in an increasingly autocratic direction for years. There are many good things about the failure of this coup. But heads of state who find their fears or paranoias about conspiracies against their rule validated in bloody attempted coups do not tend to loosen their grip. Quite the opposite. The most predictable outcome of this coup is a deepening and tightening of Erdogan’s hold on power. That’s a big problem.

Two: I’m curious what role the US and the EU and its member states played, if any, in how this crisis unfolded. All the key turning points could have happened entirely internal to Turkey. But maybe not. And if not, just how is important in understanding the current world picture – the relative balance of forces of cohesion and disintegration.

Three: What’s the fate of the fairly substantial number of members of the military who participated in this coup? This obviously goes to question one. Soldiers who conspire against a civilian government need to be punished. But Erdogan tends to overdue rather than underdo these things, to put it mildly. So I am curious to see whether some restraining forces can make their influence felt, which obviously goes to point two.

Four: The obvious one. Why did this happen? What was the precipitating event, if there was one, or what were the goals? We don’t seem to have a clear or good idea of either. Those will matter a great deal.

When manager says his candidate "acted out emotionally" cancelling biggest decision of campaign,he's saying his candidate shouldn't be POTUS

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) July 15, 2016

Did you hear the one about #ObamaJAMA?

Barack Obama just became the first sitting president to publish a scholarly article.

The article, titled “United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps,” with “Barack Obama, JD” listed as the author, was published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (known as JAMA) on July 11.

It’s a pretty badass move for a president, and he got a lot of love on Twitter with the hashtag #ObamaJAMA.

The JD after Obama’s name stands for Juris Doctor, the degree you get after graduating law school. Yes, we lawyers are actually Doctors. Call me Doctor Delaware Dem. Now, typically, lawyers with active practices and licenses are referred to as John Smith, Esquire rather than John Smith, JD. I suppose Obama’s license as a lawyer has been placed on inactive status with the Bar of Illinois. He’s been doing other things.

forget the polls for a moment. This is a dreadful picture of leadership on Trump's part this 24 hours.

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) July 15, 2016

Timothy Egan writes: “With Obama, the Personal is Presidential.”

As we saw again this week, when he took the deep breath for us, when he begged us not to let hearts turn to stone when the world is a quarry of hate, he is at his best when the rest of us are at our worst. We will long remember him singing “Amazing Grace” at that service for people slaughtered in a Charleston church, their deaths a hate crime. And we may well remember him trying to wring something teachable from the ambush of police officers; their deaths also a hate crime.

“All of us, we make mistakes,” he said. “And at times we are lost. And as we get older, we learn we don’t always have control of things — not even a president does. But we do have control over how we respond to the world. We do have control over how we treat one another.”…

What’s remarkable is that Obama hasn’t turned Nixonian or hard.

Dan Balz:

The final hours of Donald Trump’s vice presidential selection process have played out in ways familiar with his campaign — messy, unpredictable and under the full glare of the media. Only this time the candidate lost control of the story.

At some point, Trump’s choice of a running mate will be announced. But it will take some time to sort out the events of the past few days.

Was this a process that revealed indecision on the part of a candidate who has tried to project decisiveness and strength? Was it one that revealed continuing tensions inside a campaign that has been riven by staff differences? Or was it merely an aggressive media eager to break a big story that got ahead of events and created confusion when little actually existed? Or was it some combination of all of them?

Here's the meme mentioned in the previous Daily Beast link: pic.twitter.com/D6iyby6BvY

— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) March 31, 2015

Greg Sargent on how often Clinton and Trump are fact checked and found to lie (Trump wins):

There is an important process observation buried in this conclusion. On some fundamental level, Clinton respects the basic role that the press is supposed to play, however grudgingly. Trump does not — in fact, he has utter contempt for it. Clinton’s team accepts that it has a responsibility to at least try to substantiate her claims when inquisitive fact checkers start sniffing around. Trump’s team feels no hint of any such obligation. That, of course, is of a piece with Trump’s extraordinarily high volume of lies, and especially with his continued repetition of them even after he has been called out.