So what’s REALLY behind Senator Hillary Clinton’s big battle to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations and lump the two states’ popular primary votes into hers, even though her own associates had originally backed the DNC’s stand on “punishing” the two states for not obeying party rules — and just one week after many analyists claimed Clinton was toning down her polarizing campaign?
Some websites and analysts now think the motor of action on this could be, to put it bluntly, this: the Clintons want Hillary to be Vice President on Senator Barack Obama’s Democratic Presidential campaign ticket if, as many expect, he gets the nomination.
Here are the key components of this theory.
First, there was this via Time:
What will Clinton’s terms of surrender turn out to be? Her husband, for one, seems to have a pretty clear idea what he thinks she should get as a consolation prize. In Bill Clinton’s view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama’s running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill “is pushing real hard for this to happen,” says a friend. Hillary is more opaque about what she might want, divulging little even to those who see and talk to her every day. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face that this whole thing has shifted to a different mode,” says a top Clinton strategist. “But I don’t know what she wants. I don’t know what she’s thinking.”
Then The Field’s Al Giordano had this:
The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.
And that is all that anybody needs to know to understand the childish and wounded behavior of Senator Clinton yesterday, grandstanding hypocritically to senior citizens in Florida..
Popular progressive blogger Kos of the Daily Kos then wrote this:
In matters like these, I won’t put much stock on anyone’s secret sources — whether it’s Time or the always excellent Al Giordano– since there’s so much bullshit, misinformation, and rumors floating around that it would be impossible for anyone to sift between fact and fiction. There are probably only a handful of people who would know whether this is true, and they’re not publicly dishing.
But as a theory, Clinton’s over-the-top outbursts yesterday really would fit the pattern of someone scorned of a prize they felt they had rightfully earned. In the stages of grief, we may have gone from “bargaining” back to “anger”.
Later, as Giordano points out, Talk Left’s always excellent Big Tent Democrat, writing about a Clinton conference call (TMV wasn’t invited but we will break our rule once here about passing on posts about blogger conference calls to which we were not invited) notes that the top Clinton strategists talking to bloggers and newspeople flatly deny the report.
The bottom line? It seems logical that Clinton is pressing this issue in this hot-button, highly polarizing way because (1)she thinks she can win, OR (2) her campaign feels more will come out about Obama or he will seriously stub his political toe OR (3)she is doing a full-court press to accumulate maximum power within the party for some influence on Obama’s campaign or the party’s future course OR (4) she’s doing pressing her case so delegates in effect say to Obama “Oh, please, Daddy, please, make the lady stop — give her the Vice Presidential slot on your ticket!”
It is plausible that this is pressure tactic to get the Vice Presidential nomination. According to reports, Obama is now starting his search for a Veep. And, the New York Times now reports, as the race (supposedly) wants, talk of an Obama-Clinton ticket grows.
But some, including Boston’s Mayor who is a Clinton delegate, say Clinton shouldn’t be on the ticket:
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t run for vice president on a ticket with Barack Obama because her husband, former President Bill Clinton, could cause problems for the new administration.
“If she got back into the White House, she’d bring along Big Daddy, and he would overshadow the president,” Menino said in an interview Thursday.Bill Clinton is “pushing real hard” for his wife to be Obama’s running mate, Time magazine reported this week.
Menino, 65, was reelected to his fourth term as mayor in 2005. He endorsed New York Sen. Clinton in 2007 and is a pledged Clinton delegate to the Democratic convention this August.
Confirmed? No. Possible? Yes.
If it’s true, will the Democratic party, its DNC apparatus — and Obama — be pressured into putting her on the ticket to halt what seems to now be a Democratic party march towards an ugly, election-losing split?
For more viewpoints on this story GO HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.