Senate candidate Jason Kander will skip Democratic convention, citing scheduling conflicts

Watch Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama"s 2008 Democratic Convention Speech

UPDATED at noon Tuesday:Kander"s campaign announced today he won"t attend the convention, citing scheduling conflicts.

ST. LOUIS Jason Kander, the Democrat challenging U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., this fall, said Monday he still hasn"t decided whether he will attend next week"s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

"It"s really a scheduling question," Kander said, when askedduring an unrelated campaign event downtown. "We"re looking right now to see if it fits in the schedule."

You don"t have to be a raving cynic to wonder about that explanation. National political conventions are what other items on a candidate"s agenda are scheduled around, not vice-versa.

The fact that Blunt is skipping this week"s Republican National Convention in Cleveland has been widely interpreted as an attempt atkeeping presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump at arm"s length. It appears Kander is at least considering the same tactic with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who isn"t popular in Missouri.

Kander, who is currently Missouri"s secretary of state,said he will decide in the next few days whether he"s going.

Nationally, polls have consistently shown Trump and Clinton to be, respectively, the least-popular and second-least-popular nominees in modern presidential history.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/senate-candidate-jason-kander-will-skip-democratic-convention-citing-scheduling/article_af95a848-fdfc-5462-8ea2-863a65fb8442.html