This is perhaps the most blatant indication to date that the McCain campaign is going to make a play for disaffected Hillary supporters:
With Hillary at least putting on the good face and appearing to endorse Obama wholeheartedly, I have to wonder whether an ad like this is really going to do any good, and, I agree with James Joyner’s point about the McCain’s apparent attempt to appear to the PUMA’s and other disaffected Hillary supporters:
Stoking the lingering resentments of the Hillary camp is probably smart politics, although doing it so brazenly could backfire and cause more of them to realize that they’re playing into the Republicans’ hands. But the idea that Clinton was somehow owed a VP offer is silly.
(…)
Did Obama take “seriously” the idea of putting Hillary on the ticket? I can’t imagine he didn’t given the delegate math. But he and his team surely came to the conclusion that giving her the nod would be a disaster, given the hundreds of sound bytes she gave the GOP and the complications that Bill Clinton brings to the mix. Having decided that, pretending to interview her for the gig would have arguably been more insulting than moving on to other candidates.
And, please, let’s not pretend that Hillary Clinton has anything like Joe Biden’s foreign policy gravitas. It’s been his bread and butter since Hillary was in law school. She’s a junior Senate backbencher whose “experience” until eight years ago consisted of being married to a powerful man. Did she learn a lot as a result of that partnership? Sure. Is it comparable to chairing the Foreign Relations Committee? Not hardly.
Not only wasn’t Hillary owed anything, the arguments against picking her far outweighed any arguments in favor.
As I noted back in June when the Democratic primaries finally ended, and before that in March when the idea of the so-called “dream ticket” was first floated, Obama picking Hillary as his running mate would have been seen as a sign of weakness on his part and would have amounted to political suicide.
Say what you will about Barack Obama, but he was clearly politically savvy enough to realize that , if he wanted to win the election and be an effective President, Hillary Clinton could not be his running mate.
August 25th, 2008 at 7:09 am
[...] this, it’s no wonder that McCain is making a play for Hillary supporters. [...]
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