Last week, Hillary suggested that she could run on a ticket with Obama--provided she is at the top of the ticket, of course. Bloggers were mostly skeptical of the idea of this "dream ticket." This week, the Clintons are continuing to push the idea on the campaign trail: Bill said the duo would be "an unstoppable force."
Bloggers wonder why Hill is pushing this idea. Slate's Christopher Beam says it is strange: "To deliberately plant the idea in people's heads is at odds with the campaign's never-say-die ethos. It's the equivalent of saying 'if I win' rather than 'when I win.'" Marc Ambinder agrees: "When Bill and Hillary Clinton tout the virtues of a joint ticket with Barack Obama, they're trapping themselves in a bit of a box about the qualifications necessary to be vice president. The subtext of HRC's 'ready from day one' argument is that she IS, and he ISN'T."
So what is she trying to say? We can always count on Bill to clear things up. MSNBC's First Read reports his answer to these questions:
But given the Clinton camp's implicit argument that Obama is not ready to be commander-in- chief or handle a 3:00 am phone call, Clinton was asked why then would she consider Obama for the No. 2 spot. "That's politics," Clinton said, not taking the bait, as he would put it.
Meanwhile, Allahpundit reports the speculation that Hillary might want to be VP herself, and wonders why: "Even if you assume the worst, that she's after power any way she can get it, arguably she'll retain more in the senate as a Moynihan-esque Democratic counterbalance capable of thwarting Obama's legislative initiatives than in the vice presidential sinecure, where he's bound to try to marginalize her. Is this just her way of leaking bogus info suggesting she's a good soldier, willing to do what's best for the party if need be, so that she can chide Obama later if he refuses to be equally 'magnanimous'?" Along those lines, Blake Dvorak at the Real Clear Politics blog wonders, "does Hillary keep mentioning a unity ticket for Obama to knock it back down in an effort to look conciliatory?"
Regardless of Hillary's intentions, I'm not so sure that this "dream" ticket would be unstoppable. Left-leaning Marty Kaplan at the Huffington Post describes his long journey to choosing a Democratic candidate: "I was for a Clinton-Obama ticket, or an Obama-Clinton ticket, because who wouldn't want a best-of-both-worlds dream team? Then I was against a Clinton-Obama ticket, or an Obama-Clinton ticket, because the risk of combining their negatives is scarier than the upside of combining their constituencies."
