Takeaway: Bernie or Bust; Omni-Bust?; Trump's Trusty Thumbs

Editor's Note: Below is a brief excerpt from Hedgeye Potomac Chief Political Strategist JT Taylor's Capital Brief sent to institutional clients each morning. For more information on how you can access our institutional research please email sales@hedgeye.com.

Capital Brief: Sanders Revolution Runs Amok ... & Trump's Twitter Silence - JT   Potomac under 1 mb

“You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.”

-Andrew Jackson

BERNIE OR BUST

Bernie Sanders is certainly feeling the love from his supporters, but will it ever translate to Hillary Clinton and at what length are Sanders holdouts willing to continue their temper tantrums when they put the party at risk of losing the election? The jeering contingent of backers has been so insistent about never supporting Clinton that Sanders himself can’t even reel them in – his revolution is running amok.

Sanders formally nominated Clinton last night and his best shot to win them over is to build upon his role as Clinton’s chief surrogate now and for the remainder of the campaign. Democratic power brokers fear that these last-ditch holdouts are marring the convention, hampering unity and their general election chances; but should they be playing to the audience inside the Wells Fargo Center - or the much more critical audience of millions tuning in?

OMNI-BUST?

Congress longs for the day it can pass all 12 appropriations bills separately – but that will not happen this year…or anytime in the near future. The Appropriations Committees in both the House and the Senate have moved all 12 spending bills out of Committee, allowing for negotiations to proceed over recess. If successful, we could be looking at long-term funding for the government or more likely, an omnibus package – but don’t get your hopes up.

Congress could instead adopt a continuing resolution (CR) as an interim measure, providing funding for areas of the government for which specific appropriations are not adopted before the new fiscal year begins, but that would keep funding at the same level as the previous fiscal year. An omnibus package is better for economy and markets given the certainty that the government will be funded for a longer period of time, we can only hope something gets done before September 30.

TRUMP’S TRUSTY THUMBS

By day, Donald Trump is a campaigning machine – raising cash and swooping into swing states like NC and PA – but by night, he’s a twitter maniac. His blood pressure must be boiling watching primetime tv this week, because on the first night of the DNC, he lobbed insult after insult at every major speaker, with just one exception - Michelle Obama.

She didn’t mention him by name either, but she did criticize “the Manhattan businessman” for his rampant Twitter use. We thought the frequency of Trump’s 140 character games were going to diminish, and expected at least some sort of pivot from last week’s convention, but we were wrong.