The World According to Greg » Hillary Clinton

It’s Time

ghile — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:22:34 +0000

Lately, I, and I’m sure a whole lot of others, have been wondering why Barack Obama has not been able to close the deal, to once and for all knock Hillary Clinton out of the box and legitimately claim the Democratic nomination. After seeing the results from Indiana and North Carolina that make it even more clear that Obama is the likely nominee, and especially after listening to Hillary speaking at a campaign rally today, it has become abundantly clear why Obama can’t knock Clinton our: it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

There is one thing that will bring the Democrats together (and I have never believed that the prolonged primary struggle between the two has been a fatal or even a seriously damaging one to the party) and it is more apparent now than ever: Obama and Clinton need to be on the same ticket, Obama as president and Clinton as vice-president. I know Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have said it won’t happen, but it should happen. The true test of leadership and of the gravitas it takes for a first-term senator to deserve the nomination and the presidency is to make sure it happens.

Of course, Democrats have long been famous for screwing up elections and eating their own, so it probably won’t happen. But it should. Now.

Picking and Choosing

ghile — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Glen Greenwald has a powerful post today concerning the presidential election and the Catholic vote. Prompted by some on the right who, commenting on the Indiana precinct where a group of 80- and 90-yearold nuns were not able to vote for lack of sufficient identification, asked what the nuns were doing voting for Obama or Clinton in the first place, Greenwald points out that the right is very selective in picking and choosing which issues to exploit: “This is what tawdry religious manipulators like [National Review's Kathryn Jean] Lopez have been doing for years — selectively accepting slivers of moral dogma and religious institutions purely for political gain, while advocating policies that could not be more opposed to that dogma and those institutions.”

Greenwald goes on to say that “John McCain’s entire worldview on foreign policy, cheered on excitedly by Lopez — not only with regard to endless war in Iraq but also Iran and beyond — is nothing but a vehement violation and rejection of “the Church’s teaching on innocent human life.”

On this Greenwald is correct, but right-wing Catholics, of course, are not the only ones who hijack theology in order to pick and choose.