Dream Ticket Lives! Update!

Update: 9 pm: Just got this statement, via email. It seems to clarify what Chris was talking about.

Joint Statement from the Clinton and Obama Press Offices

"We are working together to make sure the fall campaign and the convention are a success. At the Democratic Convention, we will ensure that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected and our party will be fully unified heading into the November election."

Update: I think my colleague Chris Weber may have been "burying the lede" earlier when he presented video from Hillary Clinton's August 1st fundraiser. Halfway through the video, someone shouts, "Vice President," and Hillary pauses, and says, "Well, we're trying to work that out with the Obama campaign...," then continues her answer as though she was talking about the floor vote all along.

It looked to me like a moment of candor, and her reply jibes perfectly with what I've been told.

Here's some additional video from that event, apparently shot by a nearsighted slasher-flick villain, in which she fields a direct question about the VP slot. Notice the consistency with my analysis.


And another bit on VP, again almost word for word what my sources told me:

8/05/2008 - All of the recent buzz on Barack Obama's search for a VP has centered around Tim Kaine, with a short-shortlist rounded out by Evan Bayh and Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton's candidacy has been all but left for dead.

A fair amount of that dismissal of the "Dream Ticket" is the result of an email sent by the proprietors of VoteBoth.com, in which they announced they were shutting down the site:

Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November.

I say, "Not so fast!" A lot of people assume that these guys, who worked for Clinton for years, are acting on some kind of inside information, that Hillary has come to them and said, "Stick a fork in me, guys. I'm done."

I think they might have inside information, but it isn't what you think. More on that later.

On ABC's This Week, David Gergen and Donna Brazile had an exchange that closely mirrored my conversations with well-placed insiders in both campaigns some weeks ago. Here's the video:



If Gergen's argument sounds familiar, it's because I've been making it for months. Not only do I think Hillary could attack McCain in ways that Barack Obama can't, I also see her as filling a similar role in Obama's administration, an enforcer to Barack's "good cop."

In late June and early July, I spoke with very well-placed sources with both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and both indicated that Hillary was a very strong candidate, in a category by herself, and both indicated similar conditions that would be needed to make the pick more likely.

The key component there was a "cooling off" period from the contentious primary. Coupled with the Clinton campaign's refrain that the VP pick is 100% up to Obama, and the fact that strong lobbying for the job by Clinton insiders has stopped, the message is that Barack Obama cannot be seen as having his hand forced in the selection of Hillary as VP. This only makes sense, as a big concern among Obama supporters has been that a Vice President Clinton would usurp or undercut President Obama, and make him seem like a weaker candidate from an electoral standpoint.

That brings me back to the VoteBoth guys. The Clinton campaign might very well have reached out to suggest that they pack it in, but only as a way to quietly relieve another bit of pressure from the Dream Ticket pick. With their petition ended, with PUMA increasingly marginalized, and with everyone convinced that the pairing is a dead issue, the path is now clear for Obama to make the pick.

What makes this even more brilliant is that no-one will see it coming (except me, and now, you). The press and the bounce for this will be huge. No visit to a sausage house is going to blunt the force of that announcement.

In case you missed the hundred or so articles I've written making the case for Hillary as VP, here's the start of a pretty good summation I did awhile back. The short version: It's the smart thing to do, and Barack and Hillary are very smart.

Do Bears Campaign in the Woods?

Should Barack Obama pick Hillary Clinton to be his vice-president? Never has such an obvious answer been so hotly debated. The answer really only depends on one factor: How much does Barack Obama want to win by in November?

There is very compelling evidence to suggest that Barack Obama would wipe the floor with John McCain if he named my dog his VP. Even at this early stage in the just-begun general election, Obama leads McCain nationally by a significant margin, and outpolls McCain on most key issues. Once the polls reflect Obama's shift to campaigning against McCain, I expect Obama's leads to increase. Additionally, a new poll shows only 17% of Clinton supporters threatening to jump, down from a 45% high

Even so, these are Democrats, so with the stakes so high, nothing should be left to chance. An Obama/Clinton ticket has much to recommend it, most of all a guaranteed victory in November.

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