this was on my list of reasons for why she is staying in the race.
i'm actually warming to this idea. can you believe it. i'd like to see hillary redeem herself. as veep, she might spend more of her time, though, undercutting obama to make herself look good for 2012. can hillary really stand no. 2? what about all of her baggage? i'll have to mull it over.
ABC's chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos told Charles Gibson on "World News" that Clinton is staying in the race to negotiate a spot on the Democratic ticket in November.
CHARLES GIBSON: George, she puts on a brave face in public. What's going on behind the scenes?
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I think it's fair to say ... that everyone's waiting for a signal from her on how to go forward. Today, the signal was very clear — we're staying in — [according to] the Clinton campaign. And it's based on the hope that anything can happen. And that every Democrat deserves a vote. That's the principal they're running on right now. The arguments against, inside right now, are you may be spending a lot more money in [a] futile effort. You may also be dividing the party the longer you go on. You heard (California Sen.) Dianne Feinstein say that as well, but the math just doesn't work.
an argument against hillary as veep:
The Hillary camp is angling now for the VP slot, and some facile pundits are refrying the dream team cliché.
But don’t go out and buy an Obama/Clinton bumper sticker any time soon.
Here’s why Barack won’t take Hillary.
For one, they can’t stand each other, and neither can their staffs. Michelle probably would divorce Barack if he chose Hillary. Given how nasty the Clinton campaign has been toward Obama, it’s hard to see them making up.
And for two, Clinton wouldn’t help the ticket.
Her negatives are astronomical, and she’d galvanize the Republican rightwing, which isn’t exactly thrilled with McCain.
Any draw that she might have with independent women or moderate Republican women would be far outweighed by these factors.
And I don’t buy the idea that her appeal with white working class men, which she now brags about in a racist way, is bankable.
Here was her outrageous comment to USA Today:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said citing an article that she said “found how Sen. Obama's support among hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
Hard-working Americans and white Americans are an identical set?
Black Americans aren’t hardworking?
That’s not going to endear her to Obama, either.
an argument for the obama clinton ticket:
new republic: I know this is a deeply unpopular, even infuriating, suggestion to many Obama supporters who've watched the Clinton campaign savage their champion for many months. Indeed, some of them think the vanquishing of the Clintons from power in the Democratic Party is the whole point of the Obama "movement." Why, many ask, should Obama take on Hillary's "baggage" after finally defeating her at the cost of so much blood, sweat, tears, money, and approval-ratings points?
The answer is simple, and for me at least, overwhelmingly compelling. Right now the Democratic Party is deeply divided, as evidenced by the steadily rising number of Democratic primary voters threatening to take a dive in November. Those divisions are, in fact, John McCain's most important political asset. Yet they are not about ideology, or about policy issues, really; they are about these two Democratic politicians, and all the symbolic freight each has assumed. The easiest way, the fastest way, and the only sure way, to heal these divisions is to unite their sources on a single ticket.
Sure, many, perhaps most, disgruntled Clinton voters will "come home" in any event, and Obama could appeal to some vulnerable constituencies through a different choice for running-mate. But nothing quite scratches the itch like a unity ticket.
Would Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential candidate overshadow Obama? There's no reason to think that; his candidacy remains the big political story of the year. And let's have no illusions that if the Clintons are assigned a minor role in the fall campaign, they won't be a distraction. For one thing, the Democratic National Convention, no matter how well stage-managed it is, will be "about" Obama's narrow margin of victory and his and others' efforts to unite the party. A unity ticket will greatly enhance the positive side of that story. As for the much-cited idea that Hillary's presence on the ticket will "energize" conservatives, I think the events of the last few weeks have abundantly shown their willingness to whip themselves up in a hate frenzy towards Barack Obama as much as Clinton.
Symbolism aside, Hillary Clinton would bring some tangible political assets to the Democratic ticket. Even if you dismiss her relative strength in the primaries among white working-class voters, older voters, Appalachians, or Catholics as ephemeral or irrelevant to a general election campaign, there is simply no denying her personal and positive appeal to professional women and Latinos, with whom she has generated as much excitement as Obama has among younger voters and African-Americans. She would also bring some national security street cred to the ticket, which is an Obama vulnerability that I suspect is being underappreciated at the moment.
more buzz on veep talk. some of the comments on the cnn message board say that obama would need a food taster! i believe hillary did herself in.
