I’m not Barack Obama. I’m not Bill Clinton. Both of them carry themselves with a naturalness that is very appealing to audiences. But I’m married to one and I’ve worked for the other, so I know how hard they work at being natural. It’s not something they just dial in. They work and they practice what they’re going to say. It’s not that they’re trying to be somebody else. But it’s hard work to present yourself in the best possible way.

You have to communicate in a way that people say: ‘OK, I get her.’ And that can be more difficult for a woman. Because who are your models? If you want to run for the Senate, or run for the Presidency, most of your role models are going to be men. And what works for them won’t work for you. Women are seen through a different lens. It’s not bad. It’s just a fact.

It’s really quite funny. I’ll go to these events and there will be men speaking before me, and they’ll be pounding the message, and screaming about how we need to win the election. And people will love it. And I want to do the same thing. Because I care about this stuff. But I’ve learned that I can’t be quite so passionate in my presentation. I love to wave my arms, but apparently that’s a little bit scary to people. And I can’t yell too much. It comes across as ‘too loud’ or ‘too shrill’ or ‘too this’ or ‘too that.’ Which is funny, because I’m always convinced that the people in the front row are loving it.

– Hillary Clinton

Jonathan Chait for New York Magazine:

[Hillary] Clinton does not have the image of a politician who has made ordinary lapses. Her image is that of a crook — and not just in the fevered minds of Republicans chanting, “Lock her up!” …. Clinton’s own behavior has certainly contributed to this reputation. As Karen Tumulty and others reporting on Clinton have found, she is caught in a pathological cycle of paranoia and indignation. Clinton distrusts the media, and her fear of mistreatment can drive her to act like a person with something to hide, making reporters suspicious, which inflates her own paranoia. But the scale of her actual mistakes and misdeeds comes nowhere close to the scale of her reputation and cannot account for it alone.

“They… asked me to sign a letter relieving them of responsibility if I got whacked [at the hardware store].”

Alone time matters.

Paul Krugman says he “was reluctant to write today’s col because [he] knew journos would hate it. But it felt like a moral duty.”

[T]he best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

James Fallows and Norm Orenstein have also been critical of The New York Times’ campaign coverage this weekend.

Lynn Vavreck notes that the Republican Party has gone off the equilibrium path:

Given that they want to win elections more than anything else, parties rarely make catastrophic mistakes in nominating candidates for president. Because of that, it is easy to believe that who the candidates are and what they say has little effect on presidential election outcomes, especially in this period of heightened partisanship and party sorting.

But they do. Just because we rarely see it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

This is a nuanced point and also crucial to understand that this mistake does not mean that parties have been disrupted or otherwise broken. The G.O.P. will figure this out before 2020.

Rana Foroohar reviews Weapons of Math Destruction for Time:

One thing [Cathy O’Neil] has already made quite clear – far from being coolly scientific, Big Data comes with all the biases of its creators. It’s time to stop pretending that people wielding the most numbers necessarily have the right answers.

Who knew that it would be Donald Trump to come out and convert the GOP base to supporting amnesty the same week Ann Coulter’s book comes out!

– Rush Limbaugh

Dave Winer:

Peter Thiel, the guy who thinks his wealth entitles him to shut down publications he doesn’t like, not only did he make billions from Facebook stock, he’s still on the board of Facebook. Zuckerberg has had plenty of time to ask him to leave, or to fire him, and he hasn’t done it. Again, you could just shrug it off and say Zuck is like Thiel, but he’s extra special in that he wants you to believe he appreciates the gift of the open web, as he strangles it. 

Let’s boycot Facebook.

Katy Waldman for Slate:

What if this chirpy blog post is in fact a devious act of sabotage, a campaign attack on Donald Trump coming from inside the house?