Veepstakes

[sigma7]

Well, that's why I'm not a political analyst, I guess. Obama 57/41 in Montana, Clinton 55/45 in SoDak. Eh, close. Still more right than Mark Penn.

Guessing Hillary gets offered Veep and turns it down. I don't think Obama has any other choice -- given the nature of the finish, her pull in Florida in the northeast, and the very fact that she seems unwilling to give up (I keep hear her quoting Adam Savage: "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"), you gotta give her the opportunity to spurn. And spurn she will -- I don't think she wants to spend four more years in Washington in a position of subservience. So I anticipate her being rewarded, at some juncture -- probably not the cabinet, more likely SCOTUS -- but not as VP.

So that leaves the usual cattle call of senators and governors from swing states. I take Kathleen Sebelius off the list automatically -- Kansas isn't a swing state (I don't think you deliver Kansas no matter who you pick, and even so, it's just six electoral votes anyway), and I hate to think what Hillary's reaction would be if another woman were chosen. Evan Bayh and Jim Webb get mentioned a lot, and they've both got intangibles as well as the very tangible of possibly delivering Ohio, which is both substantial and teetering between red and blue. My personal favorite pick would be Wesley Clark, not only to soothe internal divisions as a longtime Clintonite, but also because of his distinguished military service, which you can bet will be a Republican drumbeat come the fall.

Who does McCain pick? I don't think he needs to placate those Republicans who blustered they'd vote for anyone except McCain -- that seems so long ago, doesn't it? Mike Huckabee seems to take him farther away from swing voters. Mitt Romney seems to be a more solid choice, he's certainly more at ease in front of a camera than McCain (as the lime green disaster proved last night). Chuck Hagel would be a good pick, but I don't think he'd do it. Lieberman is a long shot, but he'd help with the centrist/maverick perception McCain is after. Dunno. I'm pretty sure it's going to be someone we've seen in prominence recently and not a Dan-Quayle-obscurity-level pick. Curious.

Either way, let the monotony of the primaries be replaced with the mindless drone that lasts until November. Though I think -- unlike 2000 and 2004 -- this race will be over long before then.

Comments

[nute.livejournal.com]

Best political icon ever.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I confess I stole it from alstaria. But it's worth stealin', ain't it?

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

I have two words as to why Obama should not even offer VP to Clinton:

Vince. Foster.

Personally, I like Sebelius as Veep. She gave the rebuttal to the SotU speech (much like Obama's keynote at the DNC), she's done a pretty good job as governor, and she's done it without throwing hissy-fits to the press. Plus, she's squeeky-clean as politicians go. Wesley Clark would be a smart choice but not one that I'd like, for the same reason that you can forget about Edwards: they're simply incompatible with Obama's image of Change(tm).

For the Republicans, man, I don't know anything that can save McCain. Romney is the easy choice, since he's younger and can be trusted not to pull a Dan Quayle. If I were playing Fantasy Politics here, though, I think I'd go the other way with Ron Paul. You pick up an extremely zealous (if largely ineffective) base, and you can honestly go toe-to-toe with Obama in the Change(R) category by letting Ron's leash out a little.

What the DNC needs to figure out, and figure out now, is that Hillary Clinton is about as likeable as a Chlymidia-infested Roger Clemens-skunk love child with leprosy. She's a cancer to the Democrat Party and the very concept of representative government.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

K-Seb had a chance to knock it out of the park in her SotU response, and I think she hit a dribbling grounder that just made it out of the infield. If she had drilled it, she'd be your VP front-runner. I think the best she can hope for now is a cabinet position.

Paul as the Republican VP is just...amusing. The Republicans never took quite the shine to Paul that I expected, and it's much the same shine that Democrats took to Obama. He's out-of-kilter enough with traditional (check-writing) Republicans that I don't think he'd mesh well (especially with McCain, having been in the Senate for 26 or so years, running on a platform of change), but you're right, if he were, he'd appeal to the same idealist-sparkly-eyes who're going for Obama now.

The saddest thing about the Clinton campaign as been a sentiment I've heard that "I guess America's not ready for a woman president," which is load of utter unmitigated crap. If it'd been any woman other than HRC, chances are she would've won; it's just not time for this woman in particular. (I'd say her candidacy's success is a very significant statement that if America lets HRC get this far, then yes, gender's no longer an issue.) With these three candidates, we either would've had the first non-white, first female or oldest elected president. Pity we can only break one barrier at a time.

[rainfletcher.livejournal.com]

While I agree that America itself might be ready for a female president, I'm not sure that Washington is. I think there's still plenty of Old Boys Club going on, sad to say.

Plus, it can't be denied that there was some pretty blatant sexism in the media coverage of Clinton's campaign - she got roasted plenty of times just for being a woman, rather than for being an unacceptable candidate, and that's too bad -- I worry that it will be that much harder for the next prominent female candidate, especially if people really buy into this America's Not Ready thing (which you correctly identified as being entire geological strata of crap).

Of course, I am also of the opinion that there are large bits of America who are not ready for a black president (which might win me some sort of award for Understatement of the ________). My response to them is that they'd better effing get used to the idea.

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

I don't think she got roasted because she's a woman, I think she got roasted because everybody in the media realizes what I said in my previous post is true. She's utterly unlikeable and the very embodiment of political entitlement. She doesn't want to make the world a better place, she wants to be the First Female President, and she was willing to get married to Bill Clinton to do it.

Now with the experience she has with the position and the Senate, if she had the usual suspects to run against, she'd get a lot more support from the media. I'm not saying she wouldn't have taken some unfair shots, because there are misogynistic jerks everywhere, but she would have had an easier time of it. The problem is that she's running against the most genuinely likeable candidate we've seen since Bill and perhaps since JFK, who also happens to have his own novelty.

Combine this with the near-panic the Democrats are in to not screw up the seemingly can't-lose election, kicking out the Republicans after six+ years of the Iraq War, and it's easy to see why Clinton got the media dogpile.

Thinking more about the Republican Veep race, here's a candidate that would look like an absolutely superficial and self-serving choice, but would really be a darn good one: Condoleeza Rice. She's smart, she knows the office, she's knows a little something about foreign policy, and - oh, yeah....

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hope not, if only for Condi's sake. I don't know that she has any record as a SecState to run on. Yes, she'd bring the "intangibles" to McCain's side of the ticket, but if being a NSA during 9/11 and before the Iraq war doesn't immediately neutralize her capacity to be taken seriously, I don't know what would.