Clinton's concert tour isn't just about big crowds Politico

Hillary Clinton has come off a three-day concert tour, launched in North Carolina on Thursday with Pharrell Williams; followed by blow-out concert with Jay-Z and Beyonce in Cleveland Friday night and culminating Saturday night in Philadelphia with Katy Perry. Meanwhile Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony hyped voting to a crowd of 7.500 in Miami last week. The list is long and includes many talents not mentioned here.

Hillary keeps her comments short at these events, which are dedicated to recruiting new voters in key demographics in areas of key states where turnout is critical. Jay-Z and Beyonce were in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County with one free ticket distribution site across the street from the Board of Elections office. Message: VOTE!

President Barack Obama appeared with James Taylor in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Thursday. The local operatives handed out tickets across the street from an early voting site in Fayetteville and President Obama admonished, implored and basically begged members of the crowd who hadn't done so to go back. The result: voting turnout at that location jumped 80 percent compared to the previous day. Not only was it the single largest voting day there so far bit it bumped country-wide turnout by 16 percent.

“It’s about energy, it’s about mobilization. We who work in politics or cover politics have been thinking about this election for a year and a half, but there are still people who have not in some of these communities,” said Addisu Demissie, Clinton’s director of national voter outreach and mobilization. “There are a lot of ways we talk to voters — through the press, through direct voter contact — but this is just another tool in the arsenal to get to communities that aren’t necessarily engaged."

Bernie and Hillary Take to the Trail Together The Atlantic

David Graham writes that seeing a female presidential nominee, an aging socialist, and a pop star walk into an amphitheater in North Carolina on Thursday sounds like a bad joke sounds like the setup to a bad joke. In reality, Pharrell announced his support for Hillary in March 2014, long before she announced that she would run. And as US senators serving together, Hillary and Bernie voted together 93 percent of the time. Hillary's Democratic platform is heavily influenced by Bernie's goals and those of his supporters. It's the most progressive platform in presidential history.

The trio was on the ground to raise spirits in North Carolina, a state that looks like it could go for Clinton. With razor-thin poll margins and an indisputably aggressive attempt to depress the black vote, Hillary remains strong. In some areas of the state, primarily black towns and small cities that had 20 locations for early voting were reduced to one. White college-educated women who are Republicans are a big wild card, with many voting for Hillary. In other states, the Latino vote is breaking all records with a huge upsurge.

Hillary's Male Tormentors by Frank Bruni New York Times

In an extraordinarily painful primary and general election season for so many American women, it has been gratifying to read essays like this one from Bruni. This has been a consciousness-raising year for many liberated men who support women as equal partners. In the last three months, many have been compelled to speak out over what they are witnessing.

And just for the record, Susan Sarandon, you can go f#ck yourself. It's enough that you endorsed Jill Stein, but when you trash Hillary while giving Trump a pass as you did on CNN Thursday, you are my enemy. I am a peaceful woman, but I would not shake your hand. ~ Anne

From the article:

"Weiner or no Weiner, Hillary Clinton is likely to be our next president.

But she can’t seem to escape insatiable men.

She married one — for better, for “bimbo eruptions,” for two terms in the White House, for impeachment.

She’s in the climactic week of a grotesque battle with another. If she prevails, his boasts of sexual aggression will partly be why.

And if she fails? Again there’s a priapic protagonist. The F.B.I. wouldn’t be examining Anthony Weiner’s laptop if he hadn’t invited so many strangers to examine his lap, and her fate is enmeshed once more with the wanton misdeeds of the weaker sex.

Over so many of her travails hangs a cloud of testosterone.

No woman before her earned a major party’s presidential nomination, drawing this close to the Oval Office. Should she reach that milestone and make that history, she’d probably also work with a Congress in which there are more female lawmakers than ever before.

But her journey doesn’t only reflect the advances of women. It has also been shaped by the appetites and anxieties of men. (Maybe the two dynamics go hand in hand.) And it has exposed gross male behavior while prompting fresh examples of it. Prominent men on the edge of obsolescence have never acted so wounded, so angry, so desperate. Yes, Newt Gingrich, I’m looking at you, though you’ll have to wait your turn while I assess your master.

Donald Trump’s candidacy is an unalloyed expression of male id: Yield to me, worship me, never question the expanse of my reach, do not impugn the majesty of my endowment. It’s less a political mission than a hormonal one, and it harks back to an era when women were arm candy and a man reveled in his sweet tooth.

His archaic masculinity is her opportunity: a stroke of good fortune in a presidential bid with plenty of bad luck, too. When he seethed that she was a “nasty woman,” he might as well have been offering to carry her luggage into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."