It should never have come to this, because the reasons why she would make an absolutely horrible VP candidate are so plentiful and obvious, but apparently I’m going to have to spell out the reasons why this is a nightmare ticket that should never, ever, ever be.
I’ll break this into sections, starting with reasons that automatically disqualify her for VP, then moving on to major reasons she shouldn’t be VP, then I’ll go over some minor reasons, and then as a special added treat, I’ll go over a few of the other, non-VP options some people think would be good rewards for Hillary.
But first, why people say the nightmare ticket should be. There are generally two broad reasons why people say Obama should choose Hillary as a running mate. First, because Obama supposedly needs Hillary to bring in Hillary’s supporters, who might otherwise be bitter and sit out. Second, that Hillary has some sort of entitlement to the VP spot. Let’s dispense with the first right now: Obama most certainly does NOT need Hillary to bring in any votes. I heard that hack Pat Buchanan (why is he still allowed on TV?) say that Obama will need Hillary to get her 17 million voters. NO, her supporters are still Democrats, and the vast vast vast majority of them are NOT controlled by her. She does not speak for them. As Hillary supporter Hilary Rosen declared after watching Hillary’s non-concession speech,
She is waiting to figure out how she would "use" her 18 million voters.I shouldn’t even call this their rationale for including her on the ticket, it is more like a threat—-many of these people are actually threatening Obama, telling him to pick Hillary or else. These people are a minority though, and they don’t have real power. Hillary can't even hold onto her superdelegates and big donors, let alone "her" voters. The vast majority of "her" voters are smart enough to realize what is at stake in this election, and they won’t scorch the earth and spite themselves and the country just because their preferred candidate didn’t win. Her hardcore supporters also believe, mistakenly, that Obama needs Hillary to bring in certain demographics that Hillary’s campaign (with the help of the media) have pretended Obama had some kind of "problem" with. I’ll get to this in more detail later, but let me say now that that is absolutely false.
But not my vote. I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.
Secondly, just a word about entitlement. Hillary and her most loyal supporters seem to have this idea that Hillary is entitled to be Obama’s VP. They seem to think she deserves it because she came in second place. I've said this before, she has no entitlement to the vice presidency (or anything else) because there is no consolation prize for losing the Democratic primary. John Kerry didn't get a consolation prize for winning over 59 million votes in 2004. And yet Hillary is under the mistaken impression that having 17-some million voters vote for her makes her special and entitled to whatever she wants in the world. She is wrong. Furthermore, she doesn't deserve a reward for the nasty, divisive campaign she ran against a fellow Democrat. The Democratic Party owes her nothing. The only people that owe Hillary anything are John McCain and the Republicans, because she helped them out early on by throwing every right-wing attack she could come up with at Obama, without any care of what impact that would have on the Democratic Party in November. No, she hasn’t done anything to deserve a reward. And the vice presidency isn’t a reward anyway, it is something that should go to the best person for the job, and that is what this blog is all about.
Reasons That Automatically Disqualify Hillary as VP. Each of these reasons by itself is reason enough to disqualify Hillary from being VP. You only need one, but there are a lot more than one
1.1: The Lieberman Threshold -- The most obvious reason that immediately disqualified Hillary for the VP position is that she endorsed John McCain over Obama, multiple times, saying that McCain was ready to lead, qualified to be Commander-in-Chief, while Obama was not. She said all that, even though by that time it was already fairly obvious that Obama was going to be the likely nominee. She said all that, despite how it would obviously be used against Obama by the Republicans in the general election. She did it anyway, because she was willing to say and do anything to win. And as predicted, McCain is already using that footage of Hillary’s comments to attack Obama, with the McCain campaign stating that "Senator Clinton articulated the fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama as well as anyone." Thanks Hillary. And now she wants to be VP? She spoke of a "threshold" that she had crossed, and she is right, she did cross a threshold, the Lieberman Threshold, the point where you stab your own party in the back and support the enemy. This is worse though, because at least Lieberman isn’t even a Democrat anymore, but Hillary is, and much more, because she was running to be president (hey, Lieberman did that too...), and now she is trying to be vice president, and yet she stabbed her party’s nominee in the back, repeatedly, and said that McCain would be more qualified. This obviously disqualifies Hillary from being chosen as Obama’s VP, you can’t come back from something like that. It was inexcusable, and he can’t very well have a VP who thinks their opponent is better than her boss. As Rachel Maddow said quite succinctly,
That's what you say when you want to be John McCain's vice presidential choice, that's not what you say when you're trying to become the Democratic nominee for president.Or, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
1.2: The Authorization of the Iraq War -- The second thing that automatically disqualifies her from being Obama’s VP is her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, and her subsequent support for the war, up until the point it became politically unpopular to support it in the Democratic Party. This is a pretty simple one. If you’ve been following the back and forth between Obama and McCain over foreign policy in the last couple of weeks, you’ll notice that Obama is tearing McCain up pretty well over his support for the war, and his flawed judgment. Obama can easily juxtapose McCain’s positions with his own, because unlike McCain, Obama had the good sense to oppose the war from the beginning. This offers Obama the ability to make very stark distinctions between him and McCain on foreign policy, and he is very effective in doing so. However, because of her support for the war, Hillary couldn’t make such a case, and thus as I’ve said before she would have been a much weaker presidential nominee. This also applies to the VP spot. Having her on the ticket with Obama would muddy his clear record of opposition, and make it easy for McCain to avoid being targeted for his support of the war, by simply pointing at Obama’s running mate. This obviously cannot be allowed. It is all made worse by the fact that she has never apologized for her support of the war, or admit she made a mistake, as Edwards has. This is important in ANY vice presidential candidate, they have to have been anti-war from the start, just like Obama.
1.3: Change Vs Status Quo -- The third reason Hillary is automatically disqualified from being VP is that she epitomizes status quo politics, or essentially everything Obama is running against. His entire campaign has been about changing the way Washington works and the way politics is played. Hillary is the quintessential Washington insider. Hillary used some of the worst of nasty Washington tactics in her campaign against Obama. Not just Washington tactics, nasty Republican tactics. She has consistently engaged in the politics of personal destruction to get ahead. She has lied to voters, she has used fearmongering, she has used race-baiting. Her campaign was incredibly negative. And while Obama and Edwards refused to take any money from federal lobbyists and special interest PACs, Hillary encouraged money from these sources. Hillary ran a campaign that was the antithesis of everything good that Obama’s represented. The core theme of Obama’s campaign is change, and there simply can’t be change with a relic of the status quo like Hillary filling up the bottom half of the ticket. It would destroy his argument of change, and he simply cannot do that. Edwards said it well:
1.4: Over His Dead Body -- The final thing that automatically disqualifies Hillary from being VP is her repeated invocation of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination when asked to explain why she is still in the race despite it being mathematically impossible for her to win. You can read my full commentary on her controversial comments here, but I’ll summarize it briefly now. She basically showed us that the possibility of Obama’s assassination was on her mind, and it was the only rationale that explained how she could still win the nomination. After Obama is elected, her chances of being president disappear, so her only way to get there is to be VP, and then for Obama to die. Now I’m not saying that she would somehow conspire to have him assassinated, but the last thing Obama needs it a VP who is waiting there for 0-8 years for him to be assassinated so she can step over his dead body and finally put on her long-coveted crown. Simply put, I never want Hillary in a position where she would benefit politically from Obama’s death. I’ll just leave it at that. Again, if you want to know more about my views of her comments, read my original post. I believe these comments disqualify Hillary from being Obama’s VP, especially in the minds of the millions of Obama supporters who really fear for the safety of the likely first black president. Rachel Maddow had a good comment on this one too:
And you may want to review Olbermann’s impassioned response to Hillary’s comments:
So we’ve already disqualified Hillary as VP four times over, and I could easily stop there and have all the justification anyone would need to rule her out as a viable pick, but there are many more reasons. Let’s move on to the major reasons:
Major Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. None of these reasons necessarily disqualify Hillary by themselves, but they come close. These are BIG reasons why she shouldn’t be VP, just not the biggest.
2.1: The Kitchen Sink -- I already mention how Hillary epitomized the worst kind of politics in her primary battle against Obama, but aside from ruining Obama’s message of change if she were VP, the ruthless attacks themselves give us plenty of reasons why Hillary doesn’t deserve to be VP. My entire blog thus far is basically one big resource of all of Hillary’s negative attacks, you could take your pick of countless examples. Suffice to say, her tactics became appropriately known as the "Tonya Harding Strategy" (or alternatively, the kitchen sink strategy), for her desire to kneecap Obama at any cost. She lied about Obama’s positions, she lied about what Obama has said, she lied about what he has done. She (and Bill) disparaged his very real and very important opposition to the war in a cynical attempt to make them look better by comparison. She played the most cynical games with guilt-by-association attacks against Obama, including questioning his relationship with Rev. Wright and trying to connect him with terrorists. She called him out of touch and elitist (another anti-Democrat talking point). Her surrogates accused him of being "terribly sexist" (and she never said she didn’t agree). She left the door open for right-wing Obama-is-a-Muslim smears by saying that Obama wasn’t a Muslim, as far as she knew. Her campaign tried to paint Obama as anti-Israel, and perhaps even anti-Semitic. Her crazy husband even accused Obama of coordinating some vast media conspiracy to attack the them. There are many many many more examples (again, browse through my entire blog), and every single one of them gives Obama a big reason not to pick her as VP, and taken all together, well Obama has about a thousand reasons not to pick her as VP. Going back to her style of old politics, her say-and-do-anything-to-win philosophy, all of her attacks highlight her less-than-savory character, and that simply isn’t the kind of person we want as a leader, president, vice president, or anything.
2.2: The Michigan-Florida Fiasco -- The next big reason is along the same lines. Obama has a big reason not to pick her because of her incessant attempts to delegitimize him by exploiting the Michigan-Florida fiasco to her political advantage. First, she agreed to the rules, then, when political convenient for her, she switched 180 degrees and started attacking Obama in these important swing states, trying to make it look like Obama was trying to disenfranchise voters, even though his campaign kept trying to find an equitable solution to the impasse (and Hillary’s campaign shot down all of them). This episode highlights her willingness to break the rules, to say and do anything to win, and to unjustifiably attack Obama in a way that could have hurt him (or maybe was intended to hurt him) in the general election. Even after the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee reached a compromise position and it was inevitable that Obama would be our nominee, Hillary’s surrogates continued their media blitz trying to say Hillary was somehow robbed by Obama and that his nomination was somehow illegitimate. Even if Obama could forgive Hillary for employing such divisive and shameless tactics, her willingness to engage in that sort of transparent political game playing and hypocrisy would reflect poorly on the ticket if Hillary was VP. Resorting to that strategy is inexcusable. Comparing Obama and the DNC to Mugabe's murderous regime in Zimbabwe is inexcusable. You can also add her ridiculous and disingenuous "popular vote" claims, or her disparaging "states that matter" claims or her "big state" claims or any other fallacious metric she invented to try to deceive voters and delegitimize Obama’s nomination. All reflect very poorly on her character, and all were direct attacks on Obama's legitimacy, which he graciously tolerated, but should not now be rewarded.
2.3: Race-Baiting -- I briefly mentioned her race-baiting before, as an example of her stooping to Rove-like tactics to take down Obama. I think it deserves its own place on the list though, because her exploitation of racism to try to paint Obama as "the black candidate" (thus scaring away white voters) has been one of the most disturbing things to come out of this campaign. You can read a detailed analysis of examples of race-baiting from the Clinton campaign here, or if you want to see the bigger picture you can check out multiple posts on the subject here. Essentially they tried to sabotage the first viable black presidential candidate in the most cynical (and conservative) way by repeatedly injecting the issue of race into the campaign. It was shameless, despicable, and unforgivable. And as I pointed out the other day, not only did it not work, it actually resulted in greatly increased unfavorable ratings for the Clintons among African Americans. Putting her on the ticket, essentially rewarding these despicable tactics, would be a huge slap in the face to African Americans who have been appalled by her campaign’s use of racism to marginalize and sabotage Obama's historical candidacy. She should definitely not be rewarded for using those kinds of tactics.
2.4: Backseat Sabotage -- Another big reason Hillary should not be VP is because she simply doesn’t have the personality of someone who would be satisfied taking on the #2 role. She wants to have power, and the vice presidency doesn’t have power (not unless you are Dick Cheney, but that is an extreme exception, not the rule). Hillary has always been fond of this "co-presidency" idea, both in the 90s when Bill was president, and in this campaign where it has been a two-for-one special the whole way. It would be hard to imagine Hillary not trying to steal the spotlight as the bottom half of an Obama ticket. I think it is pretty easy to imagine her trying to lead from the backseat, and you can surely imagine how that imagine would play out publicly, especially on shows like Saturday Night Live. It would make Obama look weak, and that might very well be the point. There can be no doubt after watching months of Hillary try to sink Obama that the Clintons are very angry and bitter that Obama "ruined" what they both thought she was entitled to by divine right. They obviously think he is inferior, they obviously think he is undeserving (interesting how they define "deserving"), and they obviously resent his success. She has clearly engaged in a scorched earth strategy for the last couple months as evidenced by her nothing-to-lose (for her) blitz of negativity. Even after it was clear he would be the nominee, she continued to try to sabotage (most recently with claiming unfair treatment and sexism, trying to embitter her supporters), and there is no indication she won’t continue even in defeat. Being the vice president would give her unparalleled ability to try to sabotage his administration, and that is obviously something that Obama shouldn’t have to deal with. Hillary supporter Gov. Rendell even spoke of the big challenges Obama would face if he had Hillary (and by extension Bill) as a running mate:
"The Obama campaign would have to make strict rules, you know, about what President Clinton could and could not do during the campaign... For example, the Obama campaign would have to control his schedule; where he would go into, what states," Rendell told Carter.I believe this is also an important factor to take into account for any potential VP choice, they have to be able to defer to Obama. This is one of the reasons I think Jim Webb would be a poor choice, he is a fine senator, but he has a strong personality, not the personality of a follower.
"You know, normally politicians don't want to be outshone. Well you know you've got Bill Clinton lurking in the background. But Hillary Clinton, a very charismatic figure for many Americans -- generally a lot of politicians don't like to put somebody like that on the ticket," continued Rendell. "You know rule one for the vice president is make sure you never upstage the president, right? It’s rule one. You know, Hillary Clinton in some ways couldn't help but upstage, even if she was trying not to"
2.5: Kyl-Lieberman & Iran -- Having not learned her lesson from Iraq, Hillary cast a vote in lockstep with Bush, McCain and the Republicans in September of 2007, which recklessly identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an official branch of the state military of Iran, as a terrorist organization, all without evidence of any terrorism, or even killing, and all seemingly without recognition of the dangerous precedent such a declaration would make, and the fact that by the same logic of that declaration the US government represents the world’s largest terrorist organization. Let’s face it, Hillary is a foreign policy hawk, and just like the Iraq vote, her Iran vote put her on the wrong side of the Obama – McCain divide, and makes her a huge liability on the ticket. Obama has been hitting McCain very hard on Iran and foreign policy, and having Hillary on the ticket would limit Obama’s ability to draw a clear distinction between the failed policies of the status quo (Bush-McCain-Hillary), and the new smart policies of change (Obama). Add to this her comments a month or so ago when she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran, and you can start to see why this is an important reason for her not to be on the ticket.
2.6: The Electoral Typhoid Mary -- This is a big one that isn’t about what she has said or done, rather it is about what she would do to the ticket just by being part of it. She’d kill it. Let’s be honest, Hillary has incredibly high negative ratings among the general electorate. A full 50% of Americans dislike her. We didn’t have to deal with this in the general because she did fine for the most part among Democrats, but for the whole country it is another story. We have to face it, Hillary is very polarizing. She came into this race very polarizing, and she left even more polarizing, because now even many on the left, like me, who were fine with her when she began, can’t stand her now because of her negative and divisive campaign. We need to fight for the middle (and even take some disillusioned Republicans with us) in the general election, and Obama is very very good at this, and McCain is decent at it, to a lesser extent, but Hillary is very bad at it, and having her on the ticket would undoubtedly push many in the middle over to McCain. Past the independents, she would keep away disillusioned Republicans who may have otherwise crossed over to Obama. Instead, they would stay with McCain to take down Hillary, and McCain’s entire Republican base would rally and become energized by fighting Hillary. Even Republicans like Rush Limbaugh have acknowledged this upfront:
The Republicans do not seem to be relying on leadership in their party to unite the party. They seem to be relying on all these external things, nobody is going to vote for Hillary, negative turnout factor. What if she's not the nominee? We've got make sure she's the nominee if the Republican Party is to be unified.That is the best articulation of it, straight from the fat bastard’s mouth. Having Hillary on the ticket, even as vice president, would be the best possible thing for the Republicans, and it would most likely completely negate the amazing gains Obama is making in the electorate. Having Hillary on the ticket would be the best way to slam the breaks on the massive victory we are heading for in November, from the White House to Congress to local races all the way down the ballot (this is known as the Hillary Effect).
[…]
She just polarizes people. I think she's going to gin up enough anti-Hillary turnout out there to perhaps be a boon to whoever the Republican nominee is.
Now, if Obama is the nominee, we are doomed, and you should get ready and prepared for it now.
2.7: Let The Vetting Begin -- Hillary spoke a lot of vetting throughout the primary campaign, generally claiming that she had been thoroughly vetted throughout the 90s, and so she was now squeaky clean, while Obama is a big question mark. The honest truth is that while Obama was vetted up and down by Hillary and the media throughout the campaign, and actually was pretty spotless (ridiculous attempts to tie him to his former pastor’s out of context comments aside), Hillary hasn’t actually been vetted all that well. Obama was nice enough not to tear through his opponent like she tried with him, and the media was asleep at the wheel, so we actually heard very little of the possible dirt on Hillary (and by extension, Bill) during the primaries. However the general election is another story, and it is Obama’s responsibility, and right, to thoroughly vet every single vice presidential option to make sure they wouldn’t become a liability in the general election, or even after taking office. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gives a brief look at the VP vetting process:
The vetting process entails a rigorous schedule of interviews focusing on everything from politics to potential embarrassments -- Did they ever employ a nanny on whose behalf they did not pay Social Security taxes, for example; did they experiment with drugs or people in college? -- and potential candidates are required to give the search team access to their tax returns and other financial records.I emphasized that last point for a reason. While the media didn’t make an issue out of Bill’s numerous shady business dealings and conflicts of interest, the Republicans surely would (you can be certain that they are sitting on a fat file cabinet of dirt just in case Hillary finds her way onto the ticket). There is a lot of dirt there, and the Clintons have been very secretive about disclosing that information. They didn’t come anywhere close to coming completely clean during the primaries, and there is little indication that they would submit to giving all that information up to Obama now for thorough vetting. Hendrik Hertzberg from the New Yorker gives us a look at what other problems Hillary might run into during the vetting process:
Hillary has her own vulnerability in this general area, and it is larger than the fact, mentioned by Obama in his riposte to her, that her husband, on his last day in office, commuted the sentences of a couple of old Weather Underground jailbirds. ...It wouldn’t be pretty, assuming they Clintons actually submitted to it (which is unlikely), and there is little chance she would come out the other side with a clean bill of health. The vetting process is actually the most likely explanation for why she won’t be chosen as Obama’s running mate, because she is a walking liability, her refusal to be vetted with disqualify her, and no one can fault Obama (and all Democrats) for wanting the strongest ticket possible. It could be his best friend in the world but if they have unsavory scandals in the closet they shouldn’t get anywhere close to being VP, period. It is nothing personal, it has nothing to do with Hillary or any other reasons on this list, it is simply business, and common sense. Hillary must be vetted.
My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton "scandals" of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls "distractions." To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not "fair game," big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a "there" where the Democratic Party really wants to go?
Minor Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. We’ve already seen a ton of reasons why Hillary would be a horrible choice for VP, but there are more still. This category is for the non-major reasons, but that doesn’t make them insignificant.
3.1: Excess Baggage --This goes with the vetting process above (2.7), but assuming she was chosen somehow, her (and Bill’s) baggage from the past, and present, would be a never ending issue. Most of us can recall the circus that the Clintons made of the Democratic Party in the 90s with all of their drama, and I think very few of us want to go back there (especially given how many electoral defeats the Democrats suffered during those years). Add to this Bill’s increasingly erratic and antagonistic behavior, and you have a Pandora’s box you don’t want to open. And the recent Vanity Fair article about Bill highlights that these problems aren’t going away. Leave the past in the past, and the Clintons off the ticket.
3.2: Brings Nothing To The Table -- When looking at any VP candidate, you have to ask yourself what they bring to the table. This isn’t so much something wrong with Hillary, but it is simply something that Hillary doesn’t do. It isn’t as if she just has to not have any reasons NOT to put her on the ticket, she still needs to have reasons TO put her on the ticket, and she doesn’t. This is what I alluded to at the beginning, Hillary brings nothing demographically to the ticket. Despite all her rhetoric about being the best to bring in those elusive "white, hardworking white Americans who are white, and hard working and not dark" Americans, she doesn’t actually do better among this group outside of Appalachia. In addition to that, the most recent poll out of West Virginia shows Obama not far behind McCain! And beyond that, West Virginia and Kentucky are not states that Obama has to win in November, and that is really all Hillary can claim she can do for him. Worse, she has never been able to offer any logical argument or empirical evidence to back up her claim that she can carry certain states better than Obama in the general election simply because she won among Democrats in those primaries. There is one state Hillary could possibly help in, and that is Florida, but the numbers out of Florida are deceiving because Obama has been unable to campaign there, thus his numbers are at their lowest levels, while Hillary’s are most likely at their highest. It is entirely possible that Obama will be able to carry Florida without Hillary, and there is a distinct possibility that he won’t even need Florida to beat McCain, because of how he expands the map (and remember the electoral Typhoid Mary, she is much more likely to hurt than she would be to help). The national polls already show Obama gaining huge leads over Hillary, even among her strongest demographic: women. He is even ahead in Latino votes nationally. He wins among the poorly educated now. He wins among low-income voters. He doesn't need Hillary to bring these groups, these are all Democrats, and they will vote for the Democratic nominee (and lets not forget that many of these perceived Hillary strengths were padded by Limbaugh Democrats). One last point, and this is important: even among groups she performs well in, like Latinos, that doesn’t mean she is the standard bearer of this group, and there is no reason to assume that there aren’t other VP options who would bring in that vote much better, for example Bill Richardson, who would probably help Obama win Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and possibly even Texas (some of those states Obama can win without him, but Richardson would give him an even bigger boost). Simply put, Hillary adds nothing to the ticket, she doesn’t add states, and she doesn’t add demographic advantages (nor does she add good judgment, exceptional experience, or management skills, which we will see next).
3.3: Poor Management --Again, let’s be honest, Hillary has run a terrible campaign, and I’m not talking about tactics this time, I’m talking about organization, staffing and strategy. She surrounded herself not with the best people, but with loyalists who were placed as favors, not because they were qualified. The most striking example of this was her placement of Patti Solis Doyle, someone without any campaign managing experience, as campaign manager. She also made horrible strategic decisions, like having a bad campaign message, poor grassroots organization, no long-term strategy, and basically ignoring half of the states. She also managed to take a campaign staffed with the party’s best fundraisers (that she did part right), and managed to run her campaign into debt by having absolutely no idea how much money she had, or how much money they were burning through (and spending excessive spending on luxuries). She ended up with around $30,000,000 in debt, and at times vendors were considering taking her to collection agencies to get their money. She essentially ran her campaign into the ground, which leaves you with the obvious question, who is really ready to lead on day one? The truth is, Obama, the person they so fatally underestimated, ran a well oiled and unprecedented campaign, bringing in unprecedented amounts of money from an unprecedented number of people and operated a grassroots level in 50 states with a massive number of volunteers. He ran a campaign for the history books, and all against Hillary’s establishment machine, and he won big as hers fell apart around her. She definitely doesn't bring management or organization to the table. And would you actually believe that she would run a better campaign if she were trying to win for Obama instead of herself? Not a chance.
3.4: Forced Ticket -- As Hillary’s surrogates work overtime to try to force Obama to pick her as his VP, it raises the potential of Obama looking weak if he did pick Hillary as VP in the end. This is the first big decision of the general election for Obama, and so far in everything else he has done post-primary he has been a strong leader. Now people are looking to who his VP will be, and Hillary’s surrogates are trying to force-feed him, the nominee and leader of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton as his VP. Taking her as his running mate under those conditions would make him look weak, and it would definitely give him an image problem, especially given the perils of the "backseat sabotage" I mentioned previously (2.4). As Hillary-supporter Gov. Rendell stated firmly:
There's no bargaining. You don't bargain with the Presidential nominee. Even if you're Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don't bargain.And frankly Obama isn’t weak. He was the proverbial David standing up to the doubleteaming Goliath, and he knocked them down against all odds. He won’t be threatened or forced into anything. He has always picked the best people for the job (not a single shakeup in his campaign for incompetence, compare that to Hillary’s record), as we just saw with his decision to keep Dean as DNC Chairman, and the VP position is no different. In fact, if Obama were to pick Hillary as VP, that would be the first time I ever had reason to doubt his judgment.
If somehow all of those reasons didn't prove beyond a doubt that she would be a horrible choice for VP, you can just listen to Jimmy Carter’s opinion about the nightmare ticket:
I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made.Well said Carter, well said.
Other Ideas For Hillary’s Non-VP Future.Unfortunately many of the people who know better than to advocate for Hillary as VP have suggested other consolation positions for her, although those ideas are also ill-advised. And again, why the sense of entitlement? Why does she need to receive any special treatment not afforded to others like Kerry, Dodd, Biden, Kucinich, Richardson, Edwards, Ted Kennedy, etc?
4.1: Cabinet Position – Team of Rivals-- This one Obama brought upon himself, and I hope he was just thinking out loud in a very not-serious way. Here is what he said not so long ago:
One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was 'how can we get this country through this time of crisis?’ And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.Now there has been much (legitimate) talk about the possibility of appointing some of his "rivals" to important positions, like John Edwards as Attorney General (he is a lawyer, and the social justice issues he advocates would make it a good fit), and perhaps Senator Biden as Secretary of State (he has a ton of experience in foreign policy), and perhaps Wes Clark (okay, not an '08 candidate, but he did support Hillary) for National Security Advisor (if there isn't anyone better. I would say Secretary of Defense, but military personnel must be at least 10 years removed from active duty before they can assume that role, and Clark retired in 2000). Those I understand, because these people are qualified, and they aren’t "rivals" to the extent that they are on opposite sides of the issues or hate each other. Hillary though, is another story entirely. Obviously it would be hard for Hillary and Obama to work closely together again, especially with Obama as Hillary's boss, it just wouldn't work. Also, I think it is a safe assumption that anyone who brings up the idea of a cabinet position for Hillary has the Department of Health & Human Services in mind for her. This sounds reasonable because she is all about health care right? Wrong. She has tried to brand herself as a expert on health care, but in reality she is far from an expert. She has no educational background in medicine or public health policy. She has never held a job in any field related to health care. The closest thing she has to experience in health care is a failed pet project in the 90s, and her current assignment on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. But does that make her an expert? Not even close. Does that qualify her to be Secretary of Health & Human Services? Most definitely not. Is she equipped to manage "one of the largest civilian departments in the federal government, with a budget that accounts for almost one out of every four federal dollars and more than 67,000 employees"? From the looks of how she ran her campaign, not a chance. Listen, with all due respect to Hillary, she just isn’t qualified. You know what? I’m not either, that’s why I’m not going to get put in charge of health policy for the entire United States. The cabinet is meant for EXPERTS, the best of the best, so the president can have the very best advice and so the federal government can run as smoothly as possible. Bush didn’t understand this, or didn’t care, so he put his corporate cronies in charge of everything, no matter how unqualified they were, and we’ve seen disastrous results across the board. Obama is not an idiot, he wants the best people supporting him, and so there is no room to be handing out Cabinet positions as consolation gifts for people who are bitter about losing the presidential nomination.
4.2: Supreme Court Justice-- Fine, except she isn’t a scholar, isn’t qualified, and failed the bar, even though 95% of Yale Law graduates pass the bar, she was in the bottom 5% who failed it. After failing the bar she jumped on Bill’s coattails and road them throughout his entire political career, eventually winning her a seat in the Senate in a state she didn’t belong to, not because she had any experience, but because of who she married (seriously, ask yourself if anyone who wasn't married to Bill Clinton could have done what she did). And now she is supposedly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court just because she came in second place in her party’s presidential primary? I don’t think so. Again, why are people floating the idea of putting Hillary in positions she isn’t the least bit qualified for?
4.3: Senate Majority Leader-- And then there is the position of Senate Majority Leader, currently held by Sen. Harry Reid. Well, let’s just ask Sen. Reid about what he thinks about Hillary deserving his job as a consolation prize:
I do this job the best I can, with the full support of my senators. I feel very comfortable with where I've gotten.Hm, good point Harry, why is Hillary owed your job just because she ran a horrible campaign and spent months attacking her own party? Is it because she is more qualified than you? Let’s see, what did Harry Reid have to do to get to where he is now? He was the governor of Nevada for four years. Then, he spent two terms in the US House of Representatives. Then he served in the Senate for 20 years, including two years as Majority Whip. But apparently Hillary deserves to be Senate Majority Leader because she was married to a president, got elected to the Senate after carpetbagging her way into New York with no legitimate experience, then served a term in the Senate and ran a failed campaign for her party’s presidential nomination. Yeah, I guess that is more important than 24 years in the US Congress and four years of executive experience. Step aside Reid, people seem to think Hillary is entitled to your job.
Keep in mind also, a senator coming back who's run for president is not a very unique one. Senator John Kerry ran, he's back. Chris Dodd ran, he's back. Joe Biden ran, he's back.
Those senators have been plenty busy since returning from the campaign trail. … Senator Clinton has some very fine committee assignments.
4.4: Governor of New York-- Who knows. Like I said before, how she ran her campaign doesn't give me much confidence in her ability to manage, and the state of New York would be quite the management nightmare. This I’m less opposed to than other ideas though (although being Lt. Gov. first would make her more qualified), except one small problem, her supporter David Patterson happens to have the job now, and is planning on running for reelection, and he is fairly popular, and African-American, which probably wouldn’t go over well after the racial issues she stirred up against Obama. Pollster John Zogby put it well:
She'd be nuts to take on a sitting governor, an African-American governor, and let's assume a somewhat popular governor. It would be viewed, to say the least, as a hostile act.Which means she’d probably try to take him on.
Here’s the bottom line: Hillary would be the worst possible pick for VP, for the many reasons listed above. Hillary isn’t entitled to anything just because she got a lot of votes but eventually came up short, it isn’t a unique occurrence, and no one else comes back from their failed bids thinking they deserve to given a special prize. I’m thankful that some people recognize the nightmare ticket for the disaster it is, but quit trying to place her in positions she isn’t qualified for or hasn't earned, just because she is Hillary Clinton. There are over 30 Democratic Senators with more seniority than her, and she is still maybe 8 years from having enough seniority to chair a committee, let alone be Majority Leader. People need to get realistic.
One last thing, for all those women who are sad because Hillary isn’t going to break the "ultimate glass ceiling":
Newsweek's Howard Fineman just said on MSNBC at 8:35pm Eastern that the Clinton campaign is demanding that Hillary be offered the VP position, which she will then decline, and then Fineman quotes the Clinton campaign as saying "don't you dare offer it to another woman." Isn't that special. Apparently, Hillary was only planning on breaking her own personal glass ceiling. For the rest of you, you can break you own.I hope her supporters didn’t think she was doing this for all women, because she is doing it for her own political gain and fame, women are just a sympathetic tool at her disposal.
[In conclusion, please feel free to use these reasons to push back against people who are in favor of the nightmare ticket, because people need to start being realistic, this isn't something we want to screw up. Also, if I missed anything, let me know in the comments and I'll keep adding to the list. And if you read this entire thing, you are a hardcore, gracias!]
And read this to see why Richardson would be a very good choice for VP.
