Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic convention, according to the campaigns of Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama said in a statement that nominating Clinton would honor her historic campaign and “help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong, united fashion.” But commentators have been complaining this week that Clinton is trying to take over the convention. Maureen Dowd wrote that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made the convention “all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him (Obama) fail.” E.J. Dionne wrote that someone needs to tell Democrats to “STOP IT!”
If you lost your job at a Target store, reportedly because you wrote on a wall, it doesn’t logically follow that you would drive 30 miles to the state’s Democratic Party headquarters and fatally shoot its chairman. Or, for that matter, that you would then go threaten someone at the state Baptist convention office. Indeed, maybe there are no conclusions to be drawn from Wednesday’s fatal shooting in Little Rock, other than that a disturbed gunman killed somebody and then was himself killed. Still, in this time of bitter politics, you have to wonder: Was the murder of Arkansas Democratic Party chairman Bill Gwatney by Timothy Dale Johnson some kind of partisan hate crime?
One good thing happened this week: The Fred Phelps clan ended up not protesting at the funeral of a Canadian man who was beheaded on a Greyhound bus. One Phelps group was barred at the border from entering Canada, but another, covert group supposedly entered Canada and had its hate signs mailed into the country. But none of the protesters showed up at the funeral this week, perhaps because they risked arrest under Canada’s hate-speech law. Just in case, uniformed Winnipeg police officers were posted at the doors and roof of the church. Phelps protesters also didn’t show up at the opening of a new theater production in Toronto titled “The Pastor Phelps Project” and subtitled “a fundamentalist cabaret.”
If John Edwards’ affair had been exposed last year and he hadn’t been on the ballot in Iowa, where he came in second to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee — or so theorizes former Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson. “Our voters and Edwards’ voters were the same people,” Wolfson told ABCNews.com. “They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us, and we would have barely beaten Obama.”
However, a University of Iowa survey showed that far more Edwards supporters had Obama, not Clinton, as their second choice.
John McCain and Barack Obama have at least one other thing in common besides Senate membership: Frank Sinatra. The Chairman of the Board was the only intersection between the candidates’ top 10 song lists, as featured in the latest Blender magazine.
Obama’s top 10: 1. “Ready or Not,” Fugees; 2. “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye; 3. “I’m On Fire,” Bruce Springsteen; 4. “Gimme Shelter,” Rolling Stones; 5. “Sinnerman,” Nina Simone; 6. “Touch the Sky,” Kanye West; 7. “You’d Be So Easy to Love,” Frank Sinatra; 8. “Think,” Aretha Franklin; 9. “City of Blinding Lights,” U2; 10. “Yes We Can,” will.i.am.
McCain’s top 10: 1. “Dancing Queen,” ABBA; 2. “Blue Bayou,” Roy Orbison; 3. “Take a Chance On Me,” ABBA; 4. “If We Make It Through December,” Merle Haggard; 5. “As Time Goes By,” Dooley Wilson; 6. “Good Vibrations,” Beach Boys; 7. “What a Wonderful World,” Louis Armstrong; 8. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” Frank Sinatra; 9. “Sweet Caroline,” Neil Diamond; 10. “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” the Platters.
Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic convention, according to the campaigns of Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama said in a statement that nominating Clinton would honor her historic campaign and “help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong, united fashion.” But commentators have been complaining this week that Clinton is trying to take over the convention. Maureen Dowd wrote that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made the convention “all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him (Obama) fail.” E.J. Dionne wrote that someone needs to tell Democrats to “STOP IT!”
