I don't see Clinton on the ticket. Certainly Obama is aware that she and her team would spend time undercutting him. She is simply not VP material. We don't need anymore 'grasping' people at VP.

That is another good lesson we have learned in the last 8 years. The center of power has to be obvious, if that means a return to the subservient years, so be it. No 'partners', please.

nalbar

Agree with your post 100%. I've always favored Obama, but was turned off a bit late last year with the gospel-tour fiasco. But like so many others, I was reawakened to the moment when Obama won Iowa and delivered that riveting acceptance speech. While watching I told my girlfriend I just couldn't see this guy losing. It was epic.

There have been some rough times since then, but more than outweighed by the good times (like the February sweep!). I don't think Obama's perfect, I would nudge him left on some issues, maybe a bit right on the foreclosure thing, but overall I see him being an excellent candidate. I think McCain has no idea what's coming for him, once Dems are united. I just don't see how he has any chance.

You know how in generic ballots, the Republican gets hammered by 15%? Well once Hillary's supporters migrate back to Obama, you're gonna start seeing polls where Obama leads McCain by 15%. Believe it. The week after the DNC convention, after Obama's (hopefully) great acceptance speech, with Bush speaking for McCain at the RNC convention, I think it will be Obama 55% McCain 40%.  Call me crazy but that's how I project it.

We also have another piece of evidence why having Clinton on the ticket would not work.In one word, Lieberman.

Liberman's injection as the trojan horse in the Al Gore campaign sunk that campaign.Something like that will happen if Hillary Clinton is accepted by Obama.She does not share Obama's values.She believes,like the Straussians, that some people are more equal than others.

She voted for the IWR becuase she believes in George Bush's policy of annihilating the Untermenschen.

She wants to "obliterate " the Iranian people.She will find a pretext for doing so.

In short,her presence on the ticket will make it impossible for Barack to implement his own policies.

There's an interesting article in Counterpunch today which argues that Fallon would be a good choice for VP for Obama.

What Obama needs - especially going up against a Republican, especially in wartime, and especially a John McCain - is some serious national security gravitas.  In this respect, I might be tempted to draft Admiral William Fallon for a running mate.  Maybe the guy has bad politics, and maybe he would be a bad politician - though he's spent a lot of time at a much related task, doing diplomacy in the Pacific and the Middle East.  I don't know.

What I do know is that he opposed the surge.  That he wanted to draw down forces in Iraq and redeploy to Afghanistan.  That he supposedly (Fallon apparently denies it) called General Petraeus an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" for carrying the administration's water by selling its Iraq policy at home.  And that he just got fired from his job as top American military commander in the Central Command (Middle East), probably because he overtly opposed a US attack on Iran, and could be counted on to do so again on D-Day.

Who else could instantly give Obama national security bona fides while simultaneously eviscerating McCain's advantage in that domain?  Who else could speak with credibility against an October attack on Iran, and save the Democratic bid for the White House in 2008, if BushCo tries such a ploy?

Makes sense to me.

The Clintons represent the Republican wing of the Democratic party.

My deep thought of the day-

Imagine that Hillary Clinton is President and she leads an administration as poorly-run as her campaign has been...

But Obama has impressed me not only through his success, but through the type of people he has attracted to his campaign.

such as Tom Daschle? Remember when the Daschle Democrats was a curse?

It is true that Obama was against the war in 2002, but Dennis Ross is one of his advisers and his voting record in the Senate is not much different than Clinton, other than she supported Kyl Lieberman and he ran like a rabbit.

Really well said, Booman.

Originally I wanted Feingold to run and he didn't. Then I was conflicted between Dodd, Edwards and Obama. Never trusted Clinton - the Bush/Clinton dynasty has made a real mess of everything and has to be ended. As Dodd and Edwards dropped out, I was left with Obama so the decision was easy. But I liked his words and speeches the best all along. It was similar to Bill Clinton's '92 message of Hope and Change but I believed Obama this time around. Bill Clinton always seemed phony with the same message.

More and more, my dream ticket would be Obama/Richardson though.

I agree 100%.  I was an Edwards supporter till he dropped out.  I had to do some thinking and some soul searching of my own before I could endorse another candidate, but Obama has won my support 100% and more.  

I will admit am not a Hillary fan as their is too much baggage she will not accept- not from the scandals surrounding Bill and her, but from some of the things the Clinton Administration did when they were in power.  If she wants to claim the experience of being First Lady and an adviser, she has to claim the mistakes also.  

The DLC scares me more than the DNC and Hillary is wedded to it.  Her playing the race card has made her a Dixiecrat in my book and I think the party and the nation are better off without them.  

Hillary as VP???  NO!!!!  It would be destroy the party even more than her campaign is now.

Doing My Part For The Left,Left Of The Rainbow

Boo, what you write is what I've been saying. Clinton is just a Republican Lite. She's a fifth column in the Democratic Party. She's got more allegiance to money and corporations than she does to her poor, befuddled followers.

Let her keep the D after her name if she wants, but don't trust her with any power. If Reid gets replaced, don't replace him with Clinton.

You write:

Obama, by contrast, can only be judged by his brief service in the Senate, and the campaign team that he has put together.

On the national stage perhaps, but we can get a glimpse of what sort of public servant he is by looking at his first elected office:

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 from the 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. Obama also led the passage of legislation mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained.

The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. -- Ambassador Kosh

Now, I'm a multi-generation feminist woman who opposed Clinton's reelection for Senate, sigh, and followed Omir's path of Feingold-nope-Edwards-etc.

My mom is 120% behind Obama, but she thinks that the VP slot should be a HRC supporter.

What about Joe Sestak?

Was dreaming about Marion Wright Edelman but I doubt that would fly.

Did no one else participate in today's big "Vote for Change" voter registration effort? I thought I'd read of others' participation!

I was out, thanks to the Obama campaign, most of they day registering voters. I had a blast. Teamed up with a stranger who became a friend over the course of the day. Ran into another Obama guy who had run for delegate while we were out at Union Station for National Train Day. Walked across the street and registered a few more voters at Olivera Street - a little slice of Tijuana in Los Angeles, tourist trappings and all.

One security guard approached and one point, and I thought she was going to ask us to leave. Instead, she asked us to register her to vote. She had just become a citizen this year. That was the most fun of all - registering first-time voters. One man was retired, but was registering to vote for the first time in his life. Amazing.

I think a tsunami is coming. And for once, it won't be aimed at us!

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

In the video clip I saw yesterday, Obama answered the question from the press about a possible Clinton VP pick, with what appeared to be either feigned or genuine interest in the idea.  
Made me start to think about how I would feel if Obama, for whatever reason, picked Clinton.  Now Hillary is, deservedly, anathema to many Democrats because of her "the party be damned, I'll do anything to win" campaign philosophy, to say nothing of her neoliberal foreign policy views.  But Obama may decide that having her on the ticket would be the surest way to unite the party, and that uniting the party was essential to winning in November.  I would be unhappy with that calculation, but I could understand it.
I'm sure I would spend the next eight years praying for Obama's health and safety, and I'm an agnostic. I hope he would insist she take a clear back seat to the President in policy matters, but I can't see Hillary taking a seat at the back of the bus, regardless.  She just spent the past several months trying to throw Obama under its wheels.  
I hope he passes on the idea of this "dream ticket."  It could very easily turn into a nightmare.

After Cheney, the VP position needs to return to what it was...powerless.