2008 Primaries, Leadership, Messaging, Views on News • June 5th, 2008

Well, duh

by Chris Lato

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you needed more evidence that Barack Obama doesn’t want Hillary Clinton as his VP, here you go.

I have said before that an Obama-Clinton ticket would be awfully tough to beat – but that it isn’t going to happen for a variety of reasons.

It’s not just the Clinton finances, though – it’s also the years of Clinton baggage and Obama’s fairly obvious desire to be his own leader and not have the Clintons looking over his shoulder and potentially starting slash-and-burn campaigns when they don’t like how President Obama is handling things.

More importantly, consider the message sent if Sen. Obama were to select Sen. Clinton. The Clintons represent the past – Obama says he’s looking to the future. Wouldn’t that be something of a contradiction, going back to the bad old days of divisiveness and scandal, to have the Clintons back in the White House? I think Team Obama is smart enough to know that. Luckily, Team Obama has all sorts of reasons to smack down talk of a ‘dream ticket.’

There’s also the bitterness – the divide within the Democratic Party that one senses will be extremely difficult to repair. Robert Novak writes of the sense among Democrat women that 2008 was their time to shine – and that they were denied yet again. Race and gender disputes are bubbling under the surface. It threatens to erupt in outright ugliness.

It is an open question whether the party can heal itself in time to rally ‘round Obama in November. Much like John McCain has to woo conservatives back to the tent, Obama now has to figure out how to navigate the minefield of simultaneously embracing Clinton, distancing himself from the VP talk, and uniting a fiercely divided Democratic Party.

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