Sunday, August 24, 2008

What happened to the "unity ticket"?

With the prospect of Hillary winning the Democratic nomination, the Obama people were screaming about a unity ticket, or else there would be "blood in the streets."

Now, with Obama's choice of Biden for vice president, I'm sure a lot of Hillary people feel they've been abandoned and won't vote for this ticket or will stay home (I'm kind of feeling it myself).

See here.

Once Obama made the political calculation that the personal discomfort of putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket more than outweighed the potential electoral gains, the nominee needed a way to justify his decision to her fervent supporters. Picking a first-term governor like Virginia's Tim Kaine or a political unknown like Texas Rep. Chet Edwards (who had a brief media flurry this week) would have seemed like an anyone-but-Hillary rebuff, especially since the V.P. choice will speak the Wednesday night after Clinton's name is put in symbolic nomination.

Who cares about Obama's "personal discomfort" if he could have easily clenched the election for the Democrats by getting Hillary's supporters on board? There are a lot of them (me included). It was so wrong to ignore them. (And I won't be sending Obama any money. He apparently doesn't need me is the message I'm hearing.)

See here also.

Think what you want about Biden, and I think that given Obama's stubborn and wrongheaded unwillingness to pick Hillary Clinton and put a lock on the election, Biden was the best choice politically that Obama was willing to make . . . .

I hope Obama wins the election (absent my enthusiastic support). It was his decision to actively alienate the Hillary supporters. A mistake, if you ask me. He could have sewn it up, but his ego got in the way.

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