Warren to meet with Clinton this morning, fueling VP speculation Washington Post

Given that the press got EVERYTHING WRONG in their early morning speculations about what would happen yesterday, we wouldn't read too much into this headline.

There is no doubt that Warren and Clinton will be coordinating their strategies. Imagine this possibility:

Warren and Clinton coordinate a group of 10 high-profile women -- because The Donald loves women -- and they launch a relentless and epic Twitter and social media campaign against him. Because she is so good at it, Warren is chief social media in chief coordinating the daily talking points for the women. The assault is relentless and informed and Warren is the general. Maybe the Clinton campaign gives Warren a small staff and they take their strategic marching orders from her. And a group of women do it - which adds to his macho humiliation.

Just sayin' there are many reasons for Warren to meet with Clinton. Besides, the women need to form a more personal bond. ~ Anne

Many of the factors that helped Hillary beat Bernie will let her crush Trump VOX

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is heading into a general election battle against Donald Trump, reality-show kingpin and probably the most controversial and entertaining presidential candidate in a very long time. As usual, Hillary's attack plan is boring, by media standards.

Reality is that Hillary Clinton's boring strategy worked well against Bernie Sanders and many strategists believe it will work even better against Donald Trump. Hillary and Bernie truly do share many of the same progressive values. Trump is her ideological opposite, relying like Bernie on slogans, mega rallies, and aggressive white male supporters.

Compared with the Sanders's campaign, Hillary Clinton's focused on policy details, consultations with a wide array of stakeholders, data, and elite endorsements. Journalistically, the media had no interest in policy details or educating voters about nuanced differences between the two candidates.

While Sanders created the more interesting American narrative, drawing enormous crowds, he lost the election. Pundits and pollsters, be damned, because voters got the message. Clinton beat Sanders with the same strategy she will use against Trump. With Trump having no political expertise and an ego larger than Texas, he's probably thinner-skinned than Sanders, who is also noted for taking offense easily. Trump simply can't handle the pressure of being belittled, and the Hillary Clinton campaign will do everything possible to portray him as being volatile, unstable and unfit to be president.

This Is How Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Are the Same Person by Jonathan Capehart Washington Post

In this delicate period for Bernie Sanders and his supporters, we will post provocative essays like this one from the highly-regarded pundit Jonathan Capehart. Our current position is not to go out of our way to criticize Bernie but we won't depress our coverage of other people's positions, so as not to anger Sanders supporters.

By next week our post goals will be 40% Hillary, 40% Trump and 20% Bernie -- unless all hell breaks lose. Now to Capehart.

Two stories in the past 48 hours cement my view that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the vanquished Democratic candidate for president, and Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, share the same DNA. These two stubborn outsiders believe they are their campaign’s best political mind. And the damage that outsized and misplaced view of their capabilities has done on their respective quests for the White House is plainly apparent.

The lead of the Politico story on the “bitter last days of Bernie’s revolution” says it all.

There’s no strategist pulling the strings, and no collection of burn-it-all-down aides egging him on. At the heart of the rage against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the campaign aides closest to him say, is Bernie Sanders.

{ . . . }

Trump and Sanders ran populist presidential campaigns from opposite ends of the political spectrum. That’s why it was no surprise to me early in the primary season to hear that voters were trying to decide between wanting to “feel the Bern” and “make America great again.” That’s why it was no surprise that Trump started using Sanders’s arguments against Clinton to bolster his “Crooked Hillary” nickname for her once he cleared the field en route to becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.

In the battle of the outsider egos storming the political establishment, Trump succeeded where Sanders failed. But the chaos unleashed by Trump’s victory could spell doom for the GOP all over the ballot in November. Pardon me while I dab that single tear trickling down my cheek. "

Anarchists for Donald Trump -- Let the Empire Burn The Daily Beast

What’s needed now in American politics is consternation, confusion, dissension, disorder, chaos — and crisis, with possible resolution — and a Trump presidency is the best chance for this true progress. This is a politics of arson. I’d rather see the empire burn to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton.

I’m not alone here. Travelling across the country, I keep meeting people who voted for Sanders in the primaries but mutter under cover of night and a few drinks that they’ll vote for Trump in November. Friends out in the wildlands of the intermountain West, hard gun-toting anarchist redneck Amy Goodman progressives, say so. Big-city journalists, too. I suspect that the left-contrarian, anti-Hillary, pro-Trump arsonist crowd is larger and wider-spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for.

Trump arsonist-progressives are mostly embarrassed to go on the record. An editor of a major progressive website tells me in an email that if I outed him/her as a Trump supporter, “We’d probably lose the last funders that we have!!!”

Hillary Clinton Headlines June 10, 2016

Top Clinton adviser rallies greens as general election begins The Hill

Hillary Takedown: 8 Right-Leaning Films Set for Theatrical, Online Release Hollywood Reporter

Joe Scarborough Finally Declares War on Trump, Calls Endorsers 'P*ssies' The Daily Beast

Hillary Clinton: Warrior or peacemaker? CNN

Writing for CNN, Julian Zelizer argues that it's overly-simplistic to define Hillary Clinton as a hawk, based on her 2002 vote on the Iraq War. Arguing that the best way to understand a person's ideas is to study the people who influenced he(r), Zelizer proposes to study Richard Holbrooke, in order to understand Hillary.

At the heart of "The Diplomat" a new HBO movie series premiering with Richard Holbrooke and his tireless work trying to resolve the horrific 1995 conflict between Serbia and Bosnia is his belief in diplomacy before guns. Rather than sending in the military, then president President Clinton dispatched Holbrook to resolve a brutal war.

Facing a horrendous situation that inclted violent "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs (the film has images of the conflict that are a powerful reminder of what was at stake), he undertook many days of intense shuttle diplomacy that ultimately produced the 1995 ceasefire completed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio.

Read this superb article about the explosive, larger-than-life Richard Holbrooke for clues about how Hillary Clinton will promote diplomacy over guns, argues Zelizner.

Al Franken Steps Up For Democrats

Franken Gets Serious About Flipping Senate to the Democrats Politico

Minnesota Senator Al Franken makes it clear that he will be joining Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker in a major push to return the Senate to Democrats in 2016. It might only last two years -- with 2018 putting Dems under enormous pressure, but how else will President Clinton get anything done, asks Franken.

. . . This year alone, Franken has spread his star status around, raising money for safe incumbent Patty Murray of Washington, choosing sides in contested primaries by supporting Tammy Duckworth in Illinois and Ted Strickland in Ohio, and clocking four events for Catherine Cortez Masto in the swing state of Nevada.

. . . Democrats are relying on Franken, Warren and Booker to be both show horses and workhorses: to remind voters that the Senate races may not draw the attention of Clinton’s presidential bid but are still critically important and to simultaneously raise gobs of money for Democratic candidates.