[Daily Kos will be covering the Republican convention tonight from 8 PM to 11 PM ET.]
Having survived the first night of the Republican National Convention, we and Donald Trump both prepare ourselves for the second. We pivot from last night's festival of blood and gore to a hopefully less Draculian topic: labor and the economy. (Then again, this is Donald Trump we are talking about—for all we know the night will be devoted to stories of brave American business leaders walling up labor leaders in abandoned coke ovens.) The theme for the evening is Make America Work Again, but we shall choose a more apt title: the Airing of Still More Grievances.
Today the convention delegates officially nominated Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for president, marking the equally official end of the Republican Party. The mood as we start these primetime hours is appropriately funereal, presuming we’re talking about a funeral in which everyone is wearing oversized novelty hats and are very obviously drunk.
That's the good news. The bad news is that we seem to have used up all the Republican star power yesterday with Scott Baio and the ex-General Hospital guy. We'll be starting out tonight in speaker wasteland; it only gets better (if you can call it better) when we kick off the ritual presentation of the severed heads of Donald Trump’s primary foes—sorry, I mean that tonight is the night we'll start seeing "endorsement" speeches from a few of the folks Trump trounced to get to this point. Tonight’s featured speakers:
•Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. As the evening kicks off we’re not quite fully detached from yesterday's blood sport; our program helpfully tells us that Donald Trump was willing to hold White’s "once-controversial mixed martial arts competitions" on his properties when nobody else would. White, one presumes, will be held up as an example of the sort of small businessman who will be amply rewarded under a Donald Trump presidency; cage fighting, man-versus-lion, and all manner of other ancient and manly sports will be making a comeback as America turns to its new focus on pitting commoners against each other for the amusement of the ultra-rich. And we'll be making sure none of those damn commoners have Obamacare, either. Sew your own intestines back up, gladiator, or step aside for someone who will.
•Asa Hutchison, governor of Arkansas. Nope, nobody knows why. Presumably somebody lost a bet.
•Sen. Ron Johnson. He is here not in his official Senate capacity, but as the founder of "a polyester and plastics manufacturing business, PACUR, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin." Which is good, because even Republicans aren’t keen on talking about what he’s been doing since.