Last week's RNC was a horror show.

It was certainly depressing to see all those Republican elite, Americans every one of them, signing on to third world politics. I don't want to repeat all that they said, but as a good American who has voted Republican more than Democratic, they had nothing to offer me. I would vote for anyone if the other choice is Trump. So Hillary has my vote. 

Next week a lot of Republicans will watch the DNC, esp good Americans who can't stand for what the Repubs are offering this year. And that's why the choice of Tim Kaine was so smart.

It's not him personally that's so impressive, but the Clinton/Kaine product. Because not only will the team appeal to Democrats, it's designed to make sense to Republicans too. 

And that's how you can understand it, if you're having trouble.

There's an opportunity to do more than win an election in 2016, although the Dems surely have to do that. There's an opportunity to create a governing party. One that might last past the mid-terms in the first Clinton/Kaine term. A chance to run the country intelligently for once, after the lunatic years of Bush and the deadlock years of McConnell. Not in the aftermath of a huge financial meltdown. And not for only two years.

There's a chance for the equivalent of Nixon's Southern Strategy, but not geographically, demographically. A chance for a lot of weary Republicans to decide that the Democratic Party is a better baseline for American government than the split government we've been trying to make work.

Smart Democratic strategists are thinking in terms of the state houses, governorships, gerrymandering, the courts, both houses of Congress. Governing. 

So when you see them on stage, imagine you are a Republican who just saw the nightmare in Cleveland, and imagine how good Clinton/Kaine must look.