Is Hillary Getting Desperate?

My first read of Hillary coming out against the Keystone Pipeline yesterday is that she knows that Obama has already decided against Keystone. The conventional wisdom is that Obama is waiting on announcing the decision because it is going to cause a diplomatic furor (as it should) with our largest trading partner, Canada. Obama may also be waiting for the results of the next UN climate summit in Paris in December, where the climatistas have high hopes for a successor treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol. It might allow Obama to say that we have to kill Keystone in order to help fulfill our new climate treaty obligations. This is nonsense of course, but why let facts and reason get in the way of a political decision? Still, we should look forward to headlines in Canadian newspapers: “Obama to Canada: Drop Dead,”

But it may be that Hillary is slipping so fast that she needed something to shore up the environmental flank of the Democratic Party, since it supplies so much campaign cash. The Washington Post today notes the peculiar timing of Hillary’s announcement—on the afternoon of the Pope’s arrival, meaning it would get buried in the headlines about the Pope. Polls show the public supports the Keystone pipeline by a 2 – 1 majority. Maybe Hillary received a stern phone call from Tom Steyer? It is also a pre-emptive move against Joe Biden, who will probably be handcuffed on Keystone as a candidate, though with Slow Joe you never know what he might say. I could see him coming out for Keystone in a bid to solidify his support from organized labor.

 

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