Name: Cindy McCain makes the jump her husband flirted with in 2001
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Cindy McCain makes the jump her husband flirted with in 2001

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MenuSee More Speed ReadsBefore his rivalry with President Trump — and even before his loss to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election — there was a time when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was seen as such a "maverick" that it seemed conceivable he to the Democrats. He met secretly with Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in 2001 to plot the move. "He was furious over the way the party establishment had treated him in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination against the eventually victorious George W. Bush," Philip Shenon reported in 2017. "We came very close," Daschle said.McCain probably never would've been a good fit with Democrats — his "" hawkishness would've been anathema to a party base that had turned decidedly anti-war by 2004. But he Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) as his running mate when he won the Republican nomination in 2008. (Whatever you think of Lieberman, the choice would've spared America from the proto-Trumpism of Sarah Palin.) And his final great act on the public stage was to cast the to save ObamaCare from a Republican repeal bill in 2017.Given that legacy — and given the President Trump and Sen. McCain had for each other — it was no surprise Tuesday when Cindy McCain honored her late husband's legacy by participating in a Democratic National Convention about the two men's friendship."They would just sit and joke," she said of the relationship between the two men. "It was like a comedy show, sometimes, to watch the two of them."It wasn't an endorsement. But it wasn't not an endorsement, either. Instead, Cindy McCain's video offered to any wavering Republican voters out there that it is okay to vote for Biden. It has been two years since John McCain died. Thanks to his wife, he remains a thorn in President Trump's side.The main argument of , at least over the first two nights, is that presidential nominee Joe Biden is a kind, decent person who will work to unite America and mend frayed external alliances, and is to a of . But there has been some policy on display as well.Tuesday night included a robust defense of the Affordable Care Act, one of the Obama administration's signature achievements — and a law Trump failed to dismantle in Congress and is at the Supreme Court. Biden also promised to expand health care and lower drug prices, though the televised segments were light on the details (those are ).Tuesday's DNC had an ad-style video showcasing Biden's role in passing the ACA and tying it to Biden's own grief-filled personal story. "This fight is personal for Joe, as personal as it gets," the narrator says. "So when Joe says he has a plan to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, protect those with pre-existing conditions, and expand access to every American, he's thinking about how having having health care saved his boys. ... Joe Biden knows what affordable health care means to American families because of what it's meant to his."Biden himself also spoke with several people who credited the ACA with literally saving their lives and/or their family's financial survival.The DNC also featured the story of Ady Barkan, an ALS patient who when Republicans came close to repealing the ACA. Two years later, his paralysis has left him without a voice, and he spoke at the DNC via a computer. "We live in the richest country in history and yet we do not guarantee this most basic human right: Everyone living in America should get the health care they need," he said, pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic. "Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people's health insurance."Health care is one of the issues where polls consistently show Biden with a sizable advantage over Trump, and a released last week "by a 20-point margin, more voters have a favorable than an unfavorable opinion of ObamaCare (56-36 percent), the most positive views recorded in a Fox News survey."The Democratic National Convention Joe Biden as its presidential candidate on Tuesday night, but the also included the votes for runner-up Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a prominent Sanders supporter, , and this is how NBC News : "In one of the shortest speeches of the DNC, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse Joe Biden." After being criticized for political illiteracy, NBC News deleted the tweet and issued a clarification about how conventions work.Editor's note and clarification (1/2):This tweet should have included more detail on the nominating process.We have deleted the tweet to prevent its further spread, but it can be seen here for the record.— NBC News (@NBCNews)The framing had already spread by that point:now the misleading headline gets picked up by the partisan FB pipeline.— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp)And Ocasio-Cortez — who and said she "deeply look[s] forward to fighting for our future together and reclaiming our democracy in November" right after her speed aired — was not impressed with NBC's "clarification."You waited several hours to correct your obvious and blatantly misleading tweet.It sparked an enormous amount of hatred and vitriol, &amp; now the misinfo you created is circulating on other networks.All to generate hate-clicks from a pre-recorded, routine procedural motion.— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)"This is completely unacceptable, disappointing, and appalling," . "The DNC shared the procedural purpose of my remarks to media WELL in advance. @NBC knew what was going to happen &amp; that it was routine." And she : "So @NBCNews how are you going to fix the incredible amount of damage and misinformation that you are now responsible for? Because a 1:15am tweet to slip under the radar after blowing up a totally false and divisive narrative across networks isn't it."The Chatfield News has been keeping people in Chatfield, Minnesota, informed for the last 164 years, and it will continue doing so well into the future, thanks to Pam Bluhm.Bluhm first started working at the Chatfield News 40 years ago, and when the owners told her in March that they were closing, she knew she couldn't let this happen. "Chatfield needs a newspaper," She was the paper's office manager, but after using her $1,200 coronavirus stimulus check, Bluhm became its owner.Newspapers are vital for small towns like Chatfield, which has a population of 2,800. The Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina has found that over the last 15 years, more than one-fourth of all U.S. newspapers have shuttered, and current and former Chatfield residents are helping keep the Chatfield News afloat — subscriptions are up 15 percent, Bluhm told the Star Tribune, and she regularly receives cards in the mail with donations of up to $400.Community members also volunteer their time writing articles and picking up the paper from a printer 60 miles away. "It's fun for them, and they want to see the newspaper make a go of it," Bluhm said. Everyone knows they are welcome to stop by the office with the latest news to share with Bluhm, and she will do her part to spread it. "Service to humanity is the best work of life," she said. "That's my motto."To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, an all-female team of skydivers put on a show Tuesday above Nashville.Melanie Curtis is a co-founder of the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team, and planned a jump with her teammates that coincided with the dedication of the Woman Suffrage Monument in Nashville's Centennial Park. Curtis she wanted to honor the "bold, brave women who stood up for the change they wanted to see in the world."Curtis and her teammates carried flags with messages on them, including "Votes for Women," "1920-2020," and "Shall Not Be Denied." They did a similar jump last year in Seneca Falls, New York, where the first women's rights convention was held. "The history of these women absolutely inspire us," Curtis told WSMV, and she hopes the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team can "show the women coming up after us, both in the sport of skydiving and just in the world, 'Wow, if they can do it, maybe I can, too.'"Republicans in Florida's 15th Congressional District chose Scott Franklin, a Lakeland city commissioner, as their nominee in Tuesday's primary election, unseating freshman Rep. Ross Spano (R-Fla.), currently for alleged . Spano is the eight House incumbent defeated in a primary this year — joining four Republicans and three Democrats. That's twice the incumbents unseated in 2018 and the highest number since the post-Watergate 1974 primary season, .Democrats, who deleted former TV journalist Alan Cohn as their nominee, had targeted the traditionally Republican district, though Spano's defeat dimmed their chances.Republicans in Florida's 21st District, home to President Trump, selected and Laura Loomer in a six-way race to challenge Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) in a safely Democratic seat. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who also endorsed Franklin, had backed Loomer and on her win. So .The President congratulating noted conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, PayPal, and others for repeatedly sharing hate speech, for winning her Republican primary.— S.E. Cupp (@secupp)Gaetz, who won his own primary, got a third win when his candidate Anna Paulina Luna, an Air Force Veteran, won the GOP primary in Florida's 13th District, beating lobbyist Amanda Makki, the candidate backed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other GOP leaders. Luna will challenge Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) in November.Kat Cammack, former chief of staff to outgoing Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), to replace him in Florida's solidly red 3rd District. Miami-Lade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, meanwhile, won the GOP primary in Florida's more competitive 26th District and will take on first-term Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) in November.For the second night in a row, the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday prominently featured a speaker whose life and interests seem to range — gasp! — beyond politics.On Monday night, it was Michelle Obama. The former first lady endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden while making it clear that she doesn't much love the whole business of electioneering. "You know I hate politics," "But you also know that I care about this nation."Her speech was followed on Tuesday with a primetime appeal from Jill Biden, the nominee's wife. didn't explicitly state her disinterest in politics, but she has shown by her example over the years. She kept her teaching job when her husband was vice president, instead of giving up her career to support his work and ambitions. And she said this week she plans to keep teaching even if he wins the November election.Joe Biden seems okay with this: "Teaching is not what Jill does," he said. "It is who she is."The indifference to all things Beltway seems to perplex some pundits, who of course spend their days and lives obsessing about this stuff. David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, Obama's speech because "politics is not something to be hated but something to be done, and if possible to be done well."Perhaps. But lots of Americans aren't that interested: Less than of eligible voters went to the polls in 2016. And plenty more do vote, but don't love the choices they have been given. That matters. In 2016, a of voters hated both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — and that group voted for Trump. This year, lots of voters hate both Trump and Biden, but polls show they're leaning for the Democrat this time.Which means there is an audience of voters who don't love the electoral process, but do their duty — and then get on with their lives. Jill Biden and Michelle Obama are the Democratic Party's emissaries to those voters.My question is not meant to be inflammatory or conspiratorial. I am simply wondering whether the tedious montage of speeches, many of them given outdoors, broadcast on cable television on Tuesday night as the "Roll Call Across America" was the actual mechanism by which Joe Biden was as the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate.My reading of the bylaws does not give me any indication that schmaltzy prerecorded video clips can take the place of the tedious process outlined in and other documents. Figuring out what words like "present" and "the floor" mean in the current environment is difficult enough, but even by the standards of Robert's Rules-style meetings held over Zoom what we saw on Tuesday was not a formal meeting. It was a long television commercial.Was an actual procedural roll call conducted earlier in the day (or the week) via teleconference, or was it taking place off-camera during the broadcast itself? Logistically speaking even that is difficult to imagine. There were 3,979 pledged delegates to this year's convention. The most expensive Zoom subscription allows for a maximum of 500 participants, just barely enough to host California's 494-person delegation. There is no obvious way that anything that took place remotely could have borne any meaningful resemblance to the party's actual convention rules. It is interesting that no journalist as far as I am aware has looked into this question.What was the alternative, though? Would it really matter if there had been no convention at all and Biden's nomination as this year's Democratic presidential candidate had simply been announced by fiat? Political conventions are a relic of a bygone era in which primaries, if they were held at all, were meaningless straw polls and candidates were chosen by party elites behind closed doors.I, for one, welcome a digital return to smoke-filled rooms.2020 The Week Publications Inc., All rights reserved.

MenuSee More Speed ReadsBefore his rivalry with President Trump — and even before his loss to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election — there was a time when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was seen as such a "maverick" that it seemed conceivable he to the Democrats. He met secretly with Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in 2001 to plot the move. "He was furious over the way the party establishment had treated him in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination against the eventually victorious George W. Bush," Philip Shenon reported in 2017. "We came very close," Daschle...

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Joel Mathis

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The Week is a weekly news magazine with editions in the United Kingdom and United States. The British publication was founded in 1995 and the American edition started in 2001; an Australian edition was published between 2008 and 2012. A children's edition, The Week Junior, has been published in the UK since 2015.

Cindy McCain makes the jump her husband flirted with in 2001

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