Of course. Hillary Clinton keeps coy on Keystone

[karynnj]

15. Hedging her bets, but could that hurt her this time?

She has the luxury of not being in office - thus not having to make a decision or to take a vote. Consider how the accountability of being in office has affected people in the past.

The problem is that this not an issue where the person has absolutely no record on the issue. It is pretty clear that the team she gave the study to - and even more the assumptions they were to include in the study - guaranteed a result that would say there was no climate change affect. This was because, it was ASSUMED that pipeline or not, the same amount of tar sands would be extracted. It's been decades since I had a microeconomics course, but this seems a completely ridiculous assumption. Why? There is a point given the total cost of getting the oil to where it is going becomes greater than the price you get. Above that point, it is uneconomic to extract more. The reason they want the pipeline is that it reduces that total cost. That would change the point where it becomes uneconomic to extract more.

At any rate, it was likely Clinton's desire that she push things back until she left - and hoped that the pipeline was then quickly approved - the earlier the better. Her hope would be that by 2016 the issue would not stick to her - just to Kerry and Obama (who are not running).

At this point, it is rather a mess. Obama did approve building the lower part - thus to some degree raising the bar for now rejecting the whole concept. Additionally, could it impact our relationship to Canada?

I hope that many postponements suggest that Kerry and/or Obama do not want to approve it. I would suspect that politically they worry more about a "no" impacting the many swing seats up this time. In the 2014 states, which state could be lost by a "yes" decision? I know that some might speak of demoralizing the base, but in many at risk states the Senator himself/herself has already called for it to be built. It is hard to see how anger on this issue at Obama from the left could change the overall dynamic. I really hope that Kerry especially sees this as a possible catastrophic environmental disaster and realizes he owes NO ONE his approval of this.

As to Clinton, I suspect she will wait to see how the politics play out. If she decides it is better to argue for it -- I assume she will try hard to avoid speaking of it until after the primaries.