A Bad Week For Hillary Clinton

Not long ago the talk was about how Obama was having a bad month, but things certainly began to turn around as I noted a few days ago. Suddenly the news is all coming out looking bad for Clinton, often because of foolish moves on her part.

I’ve already mentioned how she has resorted to taking advantage of the Jeremiah Wright issue by attacking Obama here and here. Having been caught in a big lie over Bosnia certainly didn’t help either. As a result of this and other bad news David Brooks has changed the odds on Clinton:

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

Five percent. Chuck Todd looks at the math. First he makes his projections on the remainder of the elected delegates and then estimates how many of the super delegates each candidate would have to pick up to still manage to win. He estimates that “Obama would need 34% of the uncommitted superdelegates to hit the magic 2024 number, while Clinton would need 72% of the uncommitted Supers to hit 2024.”

If Clinton can’t even win this with the super delegates any more, it looks like she is going back to the idea of going after the pledged delegates:

I just don’t think this is over yet, and I don’t think that it is smart for us to take a position that might disadvantage us in November. And also remember that pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.

Most people realize that Clinton has lost the opportunity to win the nomination cleanly, but that will not stop her. Her strategy is now being referred to as the Tonya Harding strategy:

l just spoke with a Democratic Party official, who asked for anonymity so as to speak candidly, who said we in the media are all missing the point of this Democratic fight.

The delegate math is difficult for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, the official said. But it’s not a question of CAN she achieve it. Of course she can, the official said.

The question is — what will Clinton have to do in order to achieve it?

What will she have to do to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, in order to eke out her improbable victory?

She will have to “break his back,” the official said. She will have to destroy Obama, make Obama completely unacceptable.

“Her securing the nomination is certainly possible – but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” the official said. “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

At least there is hope that the Democratic Party leadership might not let her continue this indefinitely. Harry Reid has suggested that the race will be resolved before the election:

No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean (Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean) today. Things are being done.

Unfortunately it is doubtful that anything will be done until after the last states vote, giving John McCain the advantage for several more weeks.

Hillary Clinton Teams Up With Fellow Conservatives To Attack Obama

Clinton apologists have tried to excuse Clinton’s attacks on Obama yesterday for his affiliation with Jeremiah Wright by claiming Clinton was just answering a question. Josh Marshall presents a couple of arguments to debunk this defense. First he notes that Clinton repeated the attack later in the day and goes on to write:

Now obviously, Hillary’s been in the political big leagues for a while. She knows how to deflect a question. But it’s actually much richer than this. This afternoon Greg Sargent and I were talking this over and one of us realized that this wasn’t just any Pittsburgh paper. It was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more.

In fact, what I only discovered late this evening, when Eric Kleefeld sent me this link at National Review Online, is that not only was it Scaife’s paper. Scaife himself was there sitting just to Clinton’s right apparently taking part in the questioning.

This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.

But there’s more.

Let’s game this out. Hillary’s saying this wasn’t some planned thing. She just got hit with this question and she answered it. But here’s my question. You think Richard Mellon Scaife might want to dig into the Jeremiah Wright story? This is sort of like, ‘Hey, I go on Hannity and next thing you know he’s asking me about Wright and Farrakhan. How was I supposed to see that coming?’

I don’t know just how this went down. But the idea Sen. Clinton and her staff went into an editorial board meeting with Scaife and his lackey reporters without a clear sense that they were going to get at least one choice Jeremiah Wright question just somehow doesn’t ring true to me.

None of this should come as much of a surprise. If people would only look beyond the letter after one’s name they would see that Hillary Clinton has become part of the vast right wing conspiracy to impose their social views upon America.

Fox Defends Constitutional Right To Broadcast Whipped-Cream-Covered Strippers

For a few moments I’ve become a fan of Fox, and even Rupert Murdoch. Fox is standing up to the FCC on their ridiculous fines for “indecency” and fighting for the right to broadcast whipped-cream-covered strippers. Freedom of expression is freedom of expression after all. The Washington Post reports:

In an unusually aggressive step, Fox Broadcasting yesterday refused to pay a $91,000 indecency fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission for an episode of a long-canceled reality television show, even as the network fights two other indecency fines in the Supreme Court.

The FCC proposed fining all 169 Fox-owned and affiliate stations a total of $1.2 million in 2004 for airing a 2003 episode of “Married by America,” which featured digitally obscured nudity and whipped-cream-covered strippers.

Fox appealed immediately after the FCC ruling. Last month — four years later — the FCC changed its mind, saying it would fine only the 13 Fox stations located in cities that generated viewer complaints about the program. That reduced the fine to $91,000.

Despite the sharp reduction, Fox said it would not pay the fine on principle, calling it “arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional” in a statement released yesterday.

I’d feel even better about Fox if they wouldn’t falsely label one of their networks which specializes in broadcasting partisan political opinion as being a “news” network.

Clinton and Obama’s Religious Choices

Initially Hillary Clinton tried to use surrogates to attack Obama over his association with Wright. Now that Obama has not only survived but has turned this to his advantage, Clinton is getting involved personally. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Clinton said:

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

Yes, this is true. I would count Obama’s association with Wright as a negative–but a very minor one considering that it is clear that Obama does not share Wright’s more controversial views.

Everyone has a choice in who they associate with and if we are going to criticize Obama’s choice we should also look at who Hillary Clinton has chosen to affiliate with. Last September Mother Jones took a look at the choice Hillary Clinton made, reporting that “For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill.” They note who Clinton has associated with:

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection.

If you are concerned about who Obama has associated with, then also look at her association with Doug Coe, as well as who he associates with:

Coe’s friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe’s guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus’ teachings.

This group is interested in pushing a conservative social agenda which Hillary Clinton has become a backer of:

The Fellowship isn’t out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward.

This is in line with the Christian right’s long-term strategy. Francis Schaeffer, late guru of the movement, coined the term “cobelligerency” to describe the alliances evangelicals must forge with conservative Catholics. Colson, his most influential disciple, has refined the concept of cobelligerency to deal with less-than-pure politicians. In this application, conservatives sit pretty and wait for liberals looking for common ground to come to them. Clinton, Colson told us, “has a lot of history” to overcome, but he sees her making the right moves.

These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives’ group into what may be Coe’s most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn’t condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn’t back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won’t guard abortion clinics.

Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons’ approach to faith-based initiatives “set the stage for Bush.” Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.

Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose “politics of meaning” Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator’s ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. “There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there’s no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay.”

In politics, those who pay tribute to the powerful also reap rewards. When Ed Klein’s attack bio, The Truth About Hillary, came out in 2005, some of her most prominent defenders were Christian conservatives, among them Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. “Christians,” he declared, “should repudiate this book and determine to take no pleasure in it.”

Clinton’s conservative social views have been noticed by others such as the Cato Institute:

The libertarian Cato Institute recently observed that Clinton is “adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism.” Clinton suggests as much herself in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, where she writes approvingly of religious groups’ access to schools, lessons in Scripture, and “virtue” making a return to the classroom.

Then, as now, Clinton confounded secularists who recognize public faith only when it comes wrapped in a cornpone accent. Clinton speaks instead the language of nondenominationalism—a sober, eloquent appreciation of “values,” the importance of prayer, and “heart” convictions—which liberals, unfamiliar with the history of evangelical coalition building, mistake for a tidy, apolitical accommodation, a personal separation of church and state. Nor do skeptical voters looking for political opportunism recognize that, when Clinton seeks guidance among prayer partners such as Coe and Brownback, she is not so much triangulating—much as that may have become second nature—as honoring her convictions. In her own way, she is a true believer.

There are things to be concerned about with regards to who both Obama and Clinton have associated with. The difference is that Obama does not share in many of Wright’s views and has been a strong defender of separation of church and state. While Clinton does sometimes disagree with the members of the religious right which she associates with, primarily on abortion, Clinton’s public policy views are very much influenced by the religious right and she is an opponent of separation of church and state. With all these ties to conservatives and their views I might remind readers that Hillary Clinton was an old Goldwater Girl but that would be an insult to Barry Goldwater who opposed the influence of the religious right.

Update: Hillary Clinton Teams Up With Fellow Conservatives To Attack Obama

Update II: More On Hillary’s Choice and The Vast Rightwing Conspiracy

 

Conservatives and Obama

There are some conservatives who practice a knee jerk opposition to Obama, believing that labels like “liberal” and “conservative” mean far more than they do.  As I’ve noted many times before, such labels can be misleading, and will often artificially separate people who agree on more matters than they might realize and can also lump together people who disagree on a number of issues. Some conservatives who have actually paid attention to what Obama believes, as opposed to assuming that every liberal Democrat believes the same things, have actually come to support Obama. One example was in the recent endorsement of Obama by Douglas Kmiec.

Needless to say, many conservatives blogs have been bashing Kmiec for his endorsement of Obama. I did find one astute comment via Andrew Sullivan–another conservative who went from suspicion of Obama to support after he studied his views.  Sullivan quotes this response from a comment at The Volokh Conspiracy:

I’d encourage anyone who’s interested in more than knee-jerk reactions to actually read Kmiec’s piece, and actually read The Audacity of Hope, and actually read Senator Obama’s position summaries online; and seriously ask why a prominent, intelligent conservative would endorse Obama. I’d go so far as to suggest that, for those of us interested in forward-thinking conservativism, Senator Obama provides the best hope since Reagan. He’s the only candidate that has the potential, and an expressed desire, to change the debate and actually face questions like: when should government intervene at all? when it does, how can it be useful and limited? We might not agree with all of Senator Obama’s answers, but he’s the only one that I’ve seen even express an interest in wrestling with the questions.

This is why many conservatives and even libertarians are supporting Obama. I’ve noted many times that Bill Clinton is correct that voting for Obama is a gamble. However given a choice between politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton who are unquestioning supporters of massive government intervention and someone like Obama who questions this philosophy I will gamble on Obama.  As I’ve also noted in the past, I anticipate that if Obama is elected I’ll often disagree with what he does–but probably far less than if McCain or Clinton is elected.

Clinton Admits She “Misspoke”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRqispBIRA]

Hillary Clinton now admits she “misspoke” about facing sniper fire when landing in Bosnia. Keith Olbermann (above) compares the video of Clinton’s claims about sniper fire in Bosnia with actual video showing her being greeting by an eight year old girl.

Yes, Hillary Clinton misspoke, just like Bill Clinton misspoke about not having had sex with that woman, George Bush misspoke about WMD in Iraq, and Richard Nixon misspoke about that break in. Someone who has repeatedly lied about her years as First Lady, and who has repeatedly lied during this campaign, will probably continue to lie in office.

Fortunately enough voters realize that Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted to prevent her from being elected and carrying on the tradition of Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George Bush of destroying the credibility of the presidency. A Gallup poll from before this lie was exposed showed that only 44% felt Clinton is “honest and trustworthy.” This compares to 67% for John McCain and 63% for Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton has based her campaign upon claims of being the more experienced candidate but much of this “experience” is based upon similarly fabricated accounts of her actions as First Lady. Her real experience is not in foreign policy but in deceiving the voters. If you want another president like Richard Nixon or George Bush then vote for Hillary Clinton. Otherwise it is time for Democrats to stop giving her a pass because she is running with a “D” after her name and reject her as being ethically unfit to be president.

Obama Receiving Praise and An Endorsement From Republicans

Some partisans will oppose members of the other party regardless of what they say or believe. Others are willing to consider specific statements and perhaps even support members of the other party. Obama’s speech on race provides a good litmus test. Conservatives who attack the speech are likely to attack anything said by a Democrat purely because it comes form the other party, while more open minded Republicans have found this speech worthy of praise.

One example of praise for Obama’s speech comes from Christopher Caldwell,  a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, in an op-ed in the Financial Times. Normally I would post an excerpt but there are really no excerpts which would do justice to the full article.

Peggy Noonan had an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal labeling this A Thinking Man’s Speech:

The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.

Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line — “And families in Michigan matter!” or “What I stand for is affordable quality health care!” — and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.

Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

They should try it.

Obama also received not only praise but an out right endorsement form one Republican, Douglas W. Kmiec. Kmiec’s biography makes this an endorsement of some significance:

Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, Professor Kmiec was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

Kmiec wrote:

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States.  I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights.  I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead.  I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select.  It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen.  I do have confidence that the Senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend…

In various ways, Senator Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view, and as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

SciFi Friday (Sunday Edition): Lost, Torchwood and Jericho Head Towards Finales; Hugo Nominees Announced

It is certainly a relief that the writer’s strike ended and Lost didn’t end the season with Meet Kevin Johnson. Seeing Michael’s story after leaving the island was probably the least interesting of the episodes this season. We did learn a couple of things. The island was capable of keeping Michael from committing suicide even after leaving as there were still things for him to do (unless he just got lucky in the auto accident and Tom told him this hoping it might dissuade Michael from trying again.) For the moment I’ll accept Tom’s claim considering that we also saw Jack’s suicide attempt get interrupted. Besides probably verifying the supernatural nature of the island, seeing Tom also provided further evidence that the Others can come and go from the island. This still leaves the question as to why Ben did not seek medical attention for his tumor off the island.

One mystery that was definitely settled was the identities of the Oceanic Six. The promos for the episodes after Lost returns from hiatus did reveal that Aaron is one of them. I bet that the producers purposely spread information that Aaron wasn’t one of them so that we wouldn’t know that it wasn’t possible for both Jin and Sun to have returned home.

We might have received a little information with regards to other mysteries which are to be revealed later this season. While far from certain, the top theory right now as to who is in the casket in last season’s finale has to be Michael. Once he returns home on the freighter he presumably will be able to commit suicide without interference from the island as his work will have been completed. That assumes that he survives after Sayid has exposed him to Captain Gault.

The bigger mysteries regard Widmore’s reasons for sending the freighter, whether he really intends to kill those on the island, and who really set up the faked Oceanic 815 on the bottom of the ocean also remain. While we’ve heard characters make claims as to what is going on, I don’t think we can trust what anyone says regarding this until more answers are revealed at the end of the season.

Torchwood aired Something Borrowed, featuring Gwen’s wedding on BBC America. Three additional episodes have aired on the BBC. From Out of the Rain is pretty much a stand alone episode, but it does briefly mention Jack’s past. It was an ok episode, but the two following it were much better. Adrift (picture above) shows more of what the rift has done, as well as how Jack has responded. There’s also a game of naked hide and seek. (Jack cheats.)

Fragments, the second from last episode of the season, is particularly worth looking forward to (or downloading) as it reveals how everyone got involved with Torchwood, even Jack. Torchwood as portrayed on Torchwood has always differed from how portrayed on Doctor Who, and this episode attempts to reconcile this by making reference to the destroyed Torchwood London as a different organization. This still does not account for all the discrepancies between Doctor Who and Torchwood but nobody expects either show to be entirely realistic.

Jericho is heading towards a civil war, but it will have to be wrapped up quickly. The show has been canceled and therefore they will be going with the finale which (hopefully) wraps things up. After the show was canceled last season fans grabbed on to a line about nuts in the finale and convinced CBS to give the show another shot by sending in tons of nuts. This time I wonder if CBS executives are insisting that the finale involve silver dollars, Cuban cigars, or perhaps crates of Dom Perignon.

Besides Jericho, it is now official that The Bionic Woman will not return. While not definite, chances are looking good for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to be renewed. SciFi Channel has also given the go ahead to the pilot for Caprica, the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, which returns on April 4. Doctor Who will be returning to the BBC on April 5, with shows being broadcast in the U.S. on the SciFi channel beginning April 18. The SciFi Channel will also begin airing The Sarah Jane Adventures on April 11.

The Hugo Award nominees have been announced. Here’s a partial list:

Best Novel: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, Brasyl by Ian McDonald, Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer, The Last Colony by John Scalzi, Halting State by Charles Stross

Best Novella: “Fountains of Age” by Nancy Kress, “Recovering Apollo 8” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, “Stars Seen Through Stone” by Lucius Shepard, “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis, “Memorare” by Gene Wolfe

Best Novelette: “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairytale of Economics” by Daniel Abraham, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang, “Dark Integers” by Greg Egan, “Glory” by Greg Egan, “Finisterra” by David Moles

Best Short Story: “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter, “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear, “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken MacLeod, “Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick, “A Small Room in Koboldtown” by Michael Swanwick

Best Related Book: The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Glyer; Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium by Barry Malzberg; Emshwiller: Infinity x Two by Luis Ortiz; Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher; The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Enchanted; The Golden Compass; Heroes, season one; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Stardust

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Dr. Who, “Blink”; Dr. Who, “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood”; Star Trek New Voyages, “World Enough and Time”; Torchwood, “Captain Jack Harkness”

I’ve previously discussed some of the nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form including Blink, Human Nature, Family of Blood, Razor, and Captain Jack Harkness. I’d give the award to Blink, but the other nominee from Doctor Who comes very close.

Quote of the Day: Hagee on McCain

“It’s true that McCain’s campaign sought my endorsement.”
–Rev. John Hagee in an interview in The New York Times Magazine

(I found this notable because after I had posted about Obama rejecting the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan and criticized McCain’s ties to Hagee I’ve had Republicans claim I was being unfair to McCain as he had rejected Hagee’s views in the same manner that Obama rejected Farrahkan’s views. That argument is clearly untrue.)

Clinton vs McCain Would Not Be A Choice Worth Voting On

Josh Marshall has posted a number of emails from supporters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who say they will not vote for the other should they win the nomination. He has given this response to the question of not voting for the opposing candidate:

Whichever you prefer, they’re actually very different candidates. What I am saying is that no one can run away from the choice every American with the franchise will face in November. The next president will either be John McCain or the Democratic nominee. That’s an immovable fact. Not voting or voting for some protest candidate doesn’t allow anyone to wash their hands of that choice.

Now one reader, TPM Reader KK, wrote in and said that he supports Obama, isn’t a Democrat, actually doesn’t agree with a number of Obama’s policy positions but believes he could change the tenor of politics in the country and through his election help shift the rest of the world’s view of the US. For KK, if Obama doesn’t win the nomination, I guess there really might not be any particular reason he’d vote for Clinton over McCain.

But I do not believe this is the case with the great, great majority of readers of TPM who are supporting either of these two candidates. I think most are Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents who ascribe to a series of policies now generally adhered to by members of the Democratic party. People for whom that applies have to decide whether the alleged transgressions of either candidate or their differences in tone, political style and so forth are so grave and substantial that they merit electing John McCain who stands on the other side of basically all of those issues.

This analysis might be true of readers of Talking Points Memo and the average reader of liberal political blogs. What must be remembered is that people with such views make up a minority of the electorate, and certainly does not include me.

Some people will vote for who ever has a “D” after their name, and in such cases it would make sense to assume they will vote for either Obama or Clinton regardless of who receives the nomination. This may also be true of some “Democrat-leaning independents” but not all of us independents.

When I vote for a Democratic candidate it is because I hope they will support certain positions. I support Democratic candidates because of opposition to the war, but Clinton was not only a backer of the war but has repeatedly pandered to fears of terrorism to both defend her support for the war and to attempt to promote her campaign. I do not believe that Hillary Clinton would get us out of Iraq one day before John McCain would, and I certainly do not believe she would be any less likely to get us involved in any other unnecessary wars. At least McCain has stood behind his beliefs, even when unpopular, as opposed to trying to rewrite history with regards to her position.

I also will vote for Democratic candidates if I believe they will be defenders of civil liberties, reducing presidential power, and defenders of separation of church and state. Hillary Clinton has terrible records on all of these issues as I’ve discussed in multiple previous posts such as here. With regards to the issues which most matter to me there is very little difference between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Both represent continuation of the status quo.

Josh gets it wrong in an earlier post when he argues, “But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.”

This has nothing to do with “ego-investment” in any one candidate. I probably will not vote for Hillary Clinton because of my interest in public policy, not because of investment in any other candidate.Barack Obama is an acceptable candidate on the issues and and I will vote for him. There were other potential Democratic candidates who I would vote for, some possibly even better than Obama. Hillary Clinton is not one of them. Clinton is an unacceptable choice for president regardless of who she is running against.

Josh also made reference to character but too quickly dismissed this issue:

There’s a lot about the presidency beyond policy positions. And character does count. The problem is just that in this country we routinely seem to confine it to matters of sexual ethics and whether you happen to say something that can be distorted beyond imagining by sundry right-wing agitprop freaks.

The media might concentrate too much on matters such as sexual ethics, but character does extend beyond this and, as Josh says, “character does count.” Hillary Clinton has repeatedly shown she will say anything to be elected. Her career, as well as the career of her husband, demonstrate a shocking lack of principle and integrity. To the Clintons everything is about accumulating power and any principle is expendable when politically expedient.

John McCain is hardly the moderate straight talker which the media portrays him as but both Clintons combined still have less integrity than he has, which does outweigh the fact that I might agree with Hillary Clinton a bit more than John McCain on a list of political positions. I doubt I would vote for either of them, and I cannot see enough of a difference between the two to be concerned with having the candidate with the “D” after their name win.

If anything, in a case of two awful candidates it might be better to have the Republican who at least does not go along with some of the party’s most extreme positions. A McCain victory might bring about a small improvement in the Republican Party, and we’d have a chance at a better choice from a Democratic challenger in four years. In contrast, a Clinton victory would mean her views would dominate the Democratic Party for at least eight years, with no real hope of a Democratic candidate in the short run who embodies the reasons why I have voted Democratic in recent years.