OK, I just saw the other thread; the above is not new, except the URL for the report on newsweek.com. Triple post!
Funny that Hagel doesn't have any votes yet. I LOVE playing veepstakes. I think it is my favorite game. But I've got a real hunch Obama picks someone out of the blue. Or not. While I've had strong hunches in years past, I've got no idea today. I really hope he doesn't pick Nunn. I know that he isn't picking Clinton. I'm fairly certain that he isn't picking Webb. Edwards was a horrible VP candidate and wants to be AG, so I think that crosses him off the list. Clark has never been elected to anything, so I don't think he is that strong of a contender. Bloomberg intrigues me, but I think it unlikely. Not sure how he plays out West, where this will be won. But he's got a good resume. Business man, executive, elected experience. Pretend Republican. The Jewish thing could go either way. On the one hand, it counters the Obama is Muslim bit, on the other hand, Black And Jewish? I say that as a Jew. I picked Sebelius, in part because I wished I picked her in the last poll. I also strongly considered picking Richardson, who I did pick in the last poll. But honestly, I don't think it will be either of them. I think they would both make great, safe, change picks. I just think it will be someone we haven't thought of. Like Gary Coleman. http://www.236.com/blog/w/lee_camp/obamas_short_list_for_vp_leake_6489.php
If I were advising Obama about electability, I would suggest that he pick a candidate with a simple name. Since the television era, with the "Presname-Vicepresname" slogan being reported ad nauseum for 4 months, we have picked simple sounding tickets that play better. If you just drop the names Bush-Quayle in conversation with Dukakis-Bentsen, even if people don't know the candidates, they are more likely to vote for Bush-Quayle. Since Obama is already a difficult name, he has to balance that with a simple name. The Obama-Sebelius ticket would be dead from jump street.
There may be something to that. I, for one, have no idea how to pronounce Sebelius. Another reason Bill Bradley is coming on strong. This reminds me of one of my earliest political predictions. In 1984, when I was nine or ten, I predicted that America would never elect a person named Gore. His name is too scary. However, few tickets are as white bread and easy to say or spell as Kerry/Edwards, Ford/Dole, and Dole/Kemp.
Maybe I'm over-stating it. Names aren't worth more than a percent or two, but a Presidential candidate should prepare for a race that close.
Obama appoints team to help find running mate Barack Obama named a three-person team including Caroline Kennedy to lead his search for a running mate Wednesday while expressing confidence that the Democratic Party would soon unify after a bruising battle for the presidential nomination. "I'm very confident of how we're going to be able to bring the party together," Obama said after a brief conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton, his vanquished rival. Campaign officials said Kennedy, who is the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, as well as former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and longtime Washington insider Jim Johnson have already begun compiling information on potential running mates. They disclosed no names. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/ap_on_el_pr/primary_rdp
It's always kinda pitiful, but, it looks like someone is campaigning for vice president. Sam Nunn Urges ReThink Of Don't Ask, Don't Tell http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/sam_nunn_urges_rethink_of_dont.php 03 Jun 2008 09:18 pm Some news from California today: Former Senator Sam Nunn told reporters today that "times change" and it is now time to reconsider the ban on openly gay service that he spearheaded as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1993. When "fifteen years go by on any personnel policy," he said, "it's appropriate to take another look at it -- see how it's working, ask the hard questions, hear from the military." Nunn said the starting point for review should be a "Pentagon study." Nunn's comments come as his name is circulated as a possible vice presidential pick for Senator Barack Obama, the likely Democratic candidate for the White House. They also come three days after the death of Nunn's friend, Charles Moskos, the renowned military sociologist who was the chief intellectual powerhouse behind "don't ask, don't tell." Taken together, experts said today, the news has shaken the landscape of the gay ban. "The opposition of two of the three giants behind 'don't ask, don't tell' has fallen in the space of a few days," said Dr. Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow at the Palm Center, a UC-Santa Barbara think tank that studies gays in the military. The third main architect, said Frank, who will publish a book on the gay ban next year, was Colin Powell, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We went from a three-legged to a one-legged dog in the same week," he said. "At this point, nothing but political inertia is propping this animal up."
I hope Jim Webb is the pick. He's got the military credentials to balance Obama and he's just an impressive guy. Plus, he's a former Republican in a change election. That has to encourage some people that it's okay to switch parties. Look ma! Everyone's switching!
Webb is exceptionally weak on economic issues. He's borderline Marxist on that front. Just horrible. Given the significance of the economy in this election, I'd be surprised if it's Webb. Plus he wrote that book that included graphic descriptions of the behavior of pedophiles.
I don't see Webb... too much of a loose cannon at times. I really like him as a Senator... but when it came time to rally votes for the Obama administration, he'd be a bull in a china shop. I think he's much more valuable in the Senate and I don't want to give the Repubs another shot at a big office in VA, which will soon have another Dem Senator to go with Webb and a Dem Gov.
I toyed around with other VP preferences in the time between last night and now, but I'm really starting to hope he picks a woman. Thinking best case scenario, whomever he picks will be the likely nominee in 2016 and would win and serve until 2024. With Clinton having come so close this time around, it would be a shame to wait that long to break this barrier. And there are more viable woman candidates for VP this year than ever before, by far. Clinton, Sebelius, Napolitano, McCaskill, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Klobuchar... There are probably more that would fit the bill, but that's just off the top of my head. It's looking like Clinton's off the list due to her and Bill's resistance to the vetting process (which would include details of Bill's business dealings and donors to his foundation) regardless of whether he'd consider her otherwise. But I hope Sebelius, Napolitano and McCaskill, at least, will get very serious consideration.
Who knew that Clark and Sebelius were in town? http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/Wes_Clark_floats_ObamaSebelius.html Wes Clark floats Obama-Sebelius Wes Clark stopped out in Texas yesterday to drop by a fundraiser Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius headlined for Michael Skelly, a Democrat running for congress in Texas. Clark introduced Sebelius and, according to a regular correspondent and reliable source who was there, said: "The London odds-makers say that Kathleen Sebelius is the odds-on favorite to be the next vice president. I can tell you, she'd make a great vice presidential choice. He then introduced her as "The next vice president of the United States...." Sebelius is typically considered for the slot only if Obama is the nominee. A sign of the times from a Clinton loyalist.
I think that the chance-of-losing-a-seat-to-the-Dark-Side is an issue for most of the VP candidates. Webb also might be better suited to the executive versus the legislative branch. Webb would also appeal to the independents, who may have some concerns wrt how Obama will deal with Iraq and the military in general. With Webb as VP, Obama can attack McCain's only "strength", his military service.
A good column about considering Joe Biden for VP, from E. J. Dionne, Jr. - A List Biden Belongs On __ By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, June 10, 2008; A23 The scene has stayed with me for six years: Democrat Jill Long Thompson, in the midst of a fiercely competitive race in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District, was being pressed by supporters to criticize what they saw as President Bush's rush to war in Iraq. She would have none of it, explaining that her differences with Republican Chris Chocola were on domestic economic issues, not foreign policy. In her district, she said later, "we will support our president, and we will support our troops." It was like that all over the country in 2002: Democrats in large numbers ran away from foreign policy or just said "me, too." Many, including Long Thompson, went down to defeat, though last month she won the Democratic nomination for governor. Things have changed in the past six years. For one thing, Chocola was voted out in 2006 when frustration over Iraq helped the Democrats sweep to power in the House. Barack Obama is unabashed this year in repeating everywhere he goes that the Iraq war "should never have been authorized and should never have been waged." But with economic distress so high, and with John McCain claiming national security as his trump card, Democrats may again be tempted to play down foreign affairs so they can turn the election into a fight over domestic questions about which McCain has had little to say. Evading national security, says Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), would be a disastrous mistake. "The only way we lose this election is not to engage this issue head-on," Biden said during an interview in his Capitol office the day after Obama clinched the nomination. Democrats, Biden said, should be "proactive" and not "play defense on foreign affairs" because "the case against McCain and Bush on national security is so overwhelming. . . . It should be an essential part of the case for the Democratic nominee." I visited with Biden because he should be at the top of any list of vice presidential picks for Obama. Why Biden? In part because of where he took our discussion: Few Democrats know more about foreign policy, and few would so relish the fight against McCain on international affairs. Few are better placed to argue that withdrawal from Iraq will strengthen rather than weaken the United States. The worst thing in a running mate is the fear of muddying his or her image in political combat. Biden would be a happy warrior. He was born in Scranton, Pa., an essential state for Democrats, and has been a regular in the Philadelphia media market. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, himself a plausible No. 2, has called Biden "a perfect fit." The senator has been through two of his own presidential campaigns, in which he experienced what an acquaintance of his called the "white-hot heat" of scrutiny. Biden is Catholic and hails from a blue-collar world, two constituencies with which Obama needs help. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden speaks with real learning on international affairs and the judiciary -- the next vacancies on the Supreme Court should be a big issue in this campaign -- while never sounding like an elitist. But the central reason to pick Biden is the message the choice would send about Obama's readiness to contest national security issues and his understanding that fixing American foreign policy must be one of the next president's highest priorities. Biden has been critical of Bush's approach to Iraq and the world for the right reasons, and from the beginning. In the fall of 2002, he tried, with Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar, to pass a more modest war resolution that put additional constraints on Bush. Richard Gephardt, the House Democratic leader then, short-circuited the effort by cutting a deal with the president. Even before the war began, Biden was warning of the costs of a lengthy occupation and predicting a decade-long intervention. He is also frank about his misunderstanding of what Bush would do. At one point, he thought Bush was reluctant to start a war. "I vastly underestimated the total incompetence of this crew," he says. "I could not fathom that they would do what they did under the circumstances they did it." To restore its strength and influence, the United States needs to return to the realistic internationalism of FDR, Truman and, yes, the first President Bush. Whether or not Obama picks Biden, he should listen to what Biden is saying. Obama can't sidestep the foreign policy debate. He has to win it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../06/09/AR2008060902237.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 Amen. Biden has always been intelligent, articulate, and unafraid to speak his mind. As Dionne says, he is right at the top in Congress in his understanding of foreign affairs and the role the United States should play. While Barack Obama was speaking as an outsider against the looming Iraq fiasco, Joe Biden was fighting for an intelligent approach in Congress. As a matter of fact, this column points out why so many in Congress voted the way that they did. Few believed Bush really intended to invade Iraq. In my opinion, and I'm not alone, many saw the congressional resolution about Iraq as a way to get Saddam to open up any parts of the country the UN inspectors still hadn't explored to their satisfaction, not as the equivalent of mobilization in the classic sense, where once you mobilized, war was seen as inevitable. See the opening moves of WWI for an example of what I mean. The more stridently members of Congress spoke out about the use of force, the better the chance that the threat of force would work to get Saddam to open the doors that needed opening. Little did Congress know that Bush and company never intended to negotiate, but rather were laying the groundwork for a war they wanted all along. Biden would be a forceful voice in an Obama government that would command the world's attention. Barack Obama could do far worse, in my opinion. And if not VP, the man should be on the short list for Secretary of State. Impeach Bush.
I think Biden would be a great fit in either the VP role, or more likely, I expect him to be SecState if Obama wins. MSNBC released a list of people the Obama VP team has been talking about - it's quite long: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/10/obamas-vp-list-msnbc-gath_n_106373.html The conversations are free-flowing but one name the vetters are inserting in the conversations is one that is not a household name... Ret. Gen. James Jones, the former Marine-turned-NATO Supreme Allied Commander. ... Besides Jones, the other names on the list bandied about with congressional Dems include (and not in any order): Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Sam Nunn. You'll notice a few names NOT on this list (that's not my exclusion -- hint hint). Besides Jones, I'm told the two other names that invited extended discussion were Biden and Strickland. I'm assuming Kerry is a mistake - there's no way he's being considered. Strickland came out pretty hard today and said no: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/ohio-gov-doesnt-want-to-be-vp/ Asked if he was angling to become Senator Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, he told NPR: “Absolutely not. If drafted I will not run, nominated I will not accept, and if elected I will not serve.”
Good god... Kerry is on the list just to be polite. I can't see Edwards running in the slot again, either. He had his shot at it and didn't impress. Give him a cabinet position. He has given a lot to the Democratic Party. I really like the idea of Mark Warner, except that he's about to capture a Senate seat my party needs. Otherwise, he would be terrific and give us a state we may take anyway, Virginia. Impeach Bush.
