HUFFPOST HILL - Democrats Formally Nominate Tambourine Guy From Neighborhood Dad Band For VP

HUFFPOST HILL - Democrats Formally Nominate Tambourine Guy From Neighborhood Dad Band For VP

Donald Trump asked Russia for help locating Hillary Clinton’s emails, though we’d swear he was going to enlist Dog the Bounty Hunter for that. Gary Johnson pulls equally from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but Bernie Sanders supporters are quick to point out that the poll’s methodology doesn’t factor in enough “stuff that, you know, can happen before election day.” And searches for “Donald Trump treason” have spiked, meaning Trump might be the first person in history who whose Google Problem would improve if it contained more frothy mixtures of lube and fecal matter. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, July 27th 2016:

GOLDENBOY TIM KAINE FORMALLY NOMINATED FOR VEEP - Jason Linkins: “The Democratic Party officially nominated Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to be its vice presidential candidate on Wednesday. Kaine, who served as the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and as the chair of the Democratic National Committee before following fellow former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner to the Senate in 2013, emerged as the favorite to become former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the weeks before the Democratic National Convention. One clear attribute Kaine brings to the ticket is electability ― he has never lost an election in his 22-year political career….In picking Kaine, Clinton hopes to further define her candidacy as hopeful and competent ― as well as brand her opponent, Donald Trump, as a reckless con-man.” [HuffPost]

Bernie delegate neatly summarizes the Bernie or Bust outlook: “’They are accustomed to really healthy granola,’ said Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate from California who is also the national coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network. ‘And they get into the convention and they hear puffy white bread. It’s a shock to their system.’” [HuffPost’s Sam Stein]

OBAMA SELECTS SITE FOR LIBRARY - “A person familiar with the selection process says an exact location for President Barack Obama’s presidential library has been chosen. The individual tells The Associated press that Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have selected Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side for the library and presidential center. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the individual wasn’t authorized to discuss the choice before a formal announcement. Jackson Park is near the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught constitutional law. The library is expected to be a boon to nearby communities struggling with gang violence and unemployment.” [AP]

JOHNSON DRAWING EVENLY FROM TRUMP, CLINTON - Natalie Jackson and Janie Velencia: “When polls ask voters to choose between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Clinton currently leads Trump by over 1 percentage point overall. When Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson is included in the question, that lead evaporates. Johnson himself averages nearly 9 percent support when he’s named in poll questions. Clinton loses over 4 percentage points to Johnson, going from 43.9 percent in questions without any explicit mention of him to 39.6 percent with the Libertarian in the picture. Trump drops more than 3 points, from 42.6 percent to 39.2 percent, when Johnson is a named option in the poll.” [HuffPost]

DELANEY DOWNER - Intelligence officials are shocked that Russia appears to be meddling in the U.S. presidential election, but for some supporters of Bernie Sanders, it’s just turnabout. Lakewood, Colorado, delegate Kim Netherton said it’s beside the point whether agents of Russian President Vladimir Putin hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails, as reported this month. And it may come with a little poetic justice for Hillary Clinton, according to Netherton. “Isn’t it interesting that her campaign is now experiencing the same thing that she perpetrated on other countries,” Netherton told The Huffington Post, as she awaited Sanders’ speech Monday night. “She did this in Haiti, she did this in Honduras, and now it’s coming back on her and she’s all verklempt about it,” Netherton added. “It’s a little bit of her own medicine, but unfortunately I don’t think she’s open minded enough to see that for what it is.” Indeed, meddling in foreign politics is a great American pastime, and one that Clinton has some familiarity with. [w/ HuffPost’s Ryan Grim]

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TRUMP INVITES RUSSIA TO HACK U.S. FOR HILLARY’S EMAILS - Rather than going to the FBI or John McAfee or, hell, the Genius Bar at the 59th Street Apple store, Donald just committed some light treason. Christina Wilkie: “Donald Trump on Wednesday said he hopes Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails have fallen into the hands of Russian hackers. ‘If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do,’ Trump said at a press conference at his resort in Doral, Florida. The Republican presidential nominee was referring to the widely held suspicion that Russia is responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s servers, resulting in the leak of tens of thousands of emails just days before the party’s nominating convention in Philadelphia.Trump said that he hoped the hackers had also accessed Clinton’s private email servers. ‘They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted.’ Trump then addressed the rogue nation directly, saying ‘Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.’” [HuffPost]

Paul Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck:Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.” [BuzzFeed]

Donald has a friend in the Russian state: “[A]nalysts of state-aligned Russian media said there’s a clear favorite in recent coverage. ‘Above all Russian media are not so much pro-Trump as anti-Hillary,” said Alexei Kovalyov, who worked at a state-owned news outlet in Russia before launching a website dedicated to critiquing pro-Kremlin reporting. Kovalyov and other Russian media watchers asked by The Huffington Post to summarize recent coverage said it has been consistently critical of Hillary Clinton, most severely in state-run English-language outlets like RT (formerly Russia Today) aimed at audiences in the United States and Europe.” [HuffPost’s Nico Pitney]

Donald is friends with the head of the Russian state: “After months of claiming a close relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump now says he doesn’t really know him at all. ‘I never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is,’ the Republican presidential nominee said Wednesday at a Florida news conference...In a Nov. 10 GOP debate, Trump said: ‘I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night.’” [HuffPost’s S.V. Date]

Oh, and this: “Google saw a spike in searches for ‘Donald Trump treason.’”

CONGRESSIONAL DEMS WANT WHITE HOUSE TO STEP ON RUSSIA HACK - And not to ask Russia to hack the U.S. more, to be clear. Katie Bo Williams: “Key Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday urged the White House to publicly release any information about Russia’s alleged involvement in the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails. ‘Given the grave nature of this breach and the fact that it may ultimately be found to be a state-sponsored attempt to manipulate our presidential election, we believe a heightened measure of transparency is warranted,’ Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote in a Wednesday letter to President Obama.” [The Hill]

WHO WILL REPLACE DWS? That is, if a power sharing arrangement cannot be reached between H. A. Goodman and Susan Sarandon. Daniel Strauss and Gabriel Debenedetti: “[M]uch of the speculation focused on former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a proven television surrogate and fundraiser who has worked with pro-Clinton super PAC Correct The Record. Since Sunday, Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY’s List, who has close ties to the Clinton campaign and has long been rumored as a potential chair, has also emerged as a leading candidate. Other party leaders have pointed to former Maryland governor and 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley...The name of DNC Vice Chair R.T. Rybak, a former Minneapolis mayor, also often surfaces...Another vice chair, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley, draws even more frequent mention after he helped Gov. Maggie Hassan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen survive their reelection bids in the heavily Republican 2014 cycle.” [Politico]

CLINTON MAKING NICE WITH FOX - Michael Calderone: “The pro-Bernie Sanders protesters out in force may hate to admit it, but the Democratic primary is over. The Clinton campaign, however, is clearly looking ahead toward November as it increasingly targets Fox News viewers. Hillary Clinton gave her first interview to the network this election cycle just last month, after becoming the party’s presumptive nominee. She next called into Bill O’Reilly’s primetime Fox News show in response to the Nice terrorist attacks, taking a page from Donald Trump’s media playbook. Clinton will now give her first post-Democratic convention interview to Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ The Democratic nominee hasn’t appeared on the Sunday show since 2011, and in a Wednesday appearance on Fox News, Wallace said he’d been requesting an interview since she announced her run for president 15 months ago.” [HuffPost]

TRUMP NOT MAKING SENSE ON MINIMUM WAGE- We’re not saying we disagree with him, we literally do not understand him. Dave Jamieson: “One reason the minimum wage plays so well as a political issue is that it’s a pretty simple policy. The federal government mandates a minimum wage that serves as a baseline wage floor for the entire country. Either you want to raise it, or you don’t. But good luck figuring out where Donald Trump stands on the issue...Last year, he said in a television interview that a low wage floor isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And in a primary debate, he infamously said that American wages were already ‘too high,’ suggesting hiking the minimum wage would be bad for the economy...Then, in May, Trump said the question of the minimum wage is best left to the states. “I’d rather the states go out and do what they have to do,” he said. In case Trump hadn’t confused you enough, he managed to muddy the issue even more in the past 24 hours, thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In his Democratic National Convention speech, Sanders said that Trump wanted to give states the leeway to set minimum wages even lower than the federal level. As PolitiFact noted, this line appears to be a reference to Trump’s statement in May that the issue should be left to the states.” [HuffPost]

John Hinckley’s getting out of St. E’s.

FACT CHECK: TRUMP’S CLAIM THAT TIM KAINE IS TOM KEAN IS ‘MOSTLY FALSE’ - Kate Sheppard: “In a press conference Wednesday morning, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, for how he governed New Jersey. ‘Her running mate, Tim Kaine, who by the way did a terrible job in New Jersey ― first act he did in New Jersey was ask for a $4 billion tax increase and he was not very popular in New Jersey and he still isn’t,’ Trump said. Except Tim Kaine was the governor of Virginia. Tom Kean, a Republican, was the governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. They are different people. Kean, now 81, has been critical of current New Jersey governor and Trump ally Chris Christie. And he wrote a whole book, The Politics of Inclusion, about how Republicans shouldn’t divide people, which is kind of Trump’s thing.” [HuffPost]

HuffPost Hill Facts of Life: only facts can be true.

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a bird that thinks it’s a squeaky toy.

COMFORT FOOD

- Revisiting Seventeen Magazine’s “Am I Emo?” feature 14 years later.

- Photos of Bill Clinton’s rather extensive history of speaking at Democratic conventions.

- The story behind the crying Bernie bro.

TWITTERAMA

@mollyesque: Just saw the world’s most boring political T-shirt here in Philly. “Hillary 2016: Qualified and Sane”

@BrendanBuck: I leave Friday for vacation and I’m going to ignore you all so hard.

@TimoDC: Remember when the MSM and Dems spent a week OUTRAGED that Mitt wanted to cut PBS funding? Good times.

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com).

Correction: this post has been updated to reflect that Norman Solomon is not part of the Bernie or Bust movement

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