Bill Clinton, campaigning in Pass Christian, Mississippi, today underlined the Clinton campaign’s latest favorite narrative: that they’d like to see Barack Obama as Hillary’s vice president.
I know that she has always been open to it, because she believes that if you can unite the energy and the new people that he’s brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she’s carried overwhelmingly, if you had those two things together she thinks it’d be hard to beat. I mean you look at the, you look at the, you look at the map of Texas and the map in Ohio. And the map in Missouri or — well Arkansas’s not a good case because they know her and she won every place there. But you look at most of these places, he would win the urban areas and the upscale voters, and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put those two things together, you’d have an almost unstoppable force.
To many Democrats who are torn between the two candidates, it’s a tantalizing solution. Obama would emerge from four to eight years as veep with the a lock on the nomination and a lot more seasoning for those worried about his lack of experience. It’s also one I find a hard time imagining Obama would entertain of his own volition. When I asked him about it last week he clammed up. His advisors were quick to point out that he’s ahead in pledged delegates and, as far as they’re concerned, in a better position to win. Their strategy has been to ignore it, but I can’t help wondering why they don’t push back and outright shoot it down unless they want to leave the door open to it. Letting the narrative continue only helps her.
As the insurgent, it’d be awkward for him to conversely offer Hillary the role. She’s 60 to his 46 and she pretty much already played the part of VP in her husband’s administration. But, suspending reality for a minute and imagining Obama’d be willing to consider such a move, there are many reasons why the ticket would be problematic. Obama would likely be a third wheel as Bill Clinton would be the natural No. 2 in her administration. Plus, she’d spend the next four or eight years nervously looking over her shoulder. As this game of chicken intensifies between them, it’s harder and harder to imagine the loser being willing to swallow their pride and accept second fiddle, not to mention campaign on the other’s behalf in the general.