Apologies

I spend far too much time reading political blogs. Hillary supporters are demanding that Obama apologize for his sexism as often and as stridently as Obama supporters are demanding that Hillary apologize for her racism. That is not how campaigns work. In the heat and battle of an unprecedently close campaign, all sorts of things are said by both sides that they can't be proud of. The media distorts everything and presents a comment by a so-called supporter as if it came from the candidate herself. When I read an obscenely misogynistic comment by someone purporting to be an Obama supporter, I have no way of knowing whether the writer is a Republican troll.

I was raised Catholic. Too familiar is the claima that either Clinton or Obama committed grave mortal sins endangering their immortal souls and must confess and repent before being forgiven and allowed in the paradise of defeated McCain.

What matters is going forward and defeating McCain. Hillary supporters don't enjoy being castigated as racists any better than Obama supporters tolerate being condemned as racists. The Republicans are both racist and sexist; they will not feel guilty about such accusations.

I want to quote from an Obama interview in the New Yorker in 2006:

You know, I think very highly of Hillary. The more I get to know her, the more I admire her. I think she’s the most disciplined—one of the most disciplined people—I’ve ever met. She’s one of the toughest. She’s got an extraordinary intelligence. And she is, she’s somebody who’s in this stuff for the right reasons. She’s passionate about moving the country forward on issues like health care and children. So it’s not clear to me what differences we’ve had since I’ve been in the Senate. I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test.