Hillary the Veep: Told Ja So!

The AP is reporting the following:

Clinton says she’s open to being Obama’s VP

By BETH FOUHY and DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writers 44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton told colleagues Tuesday she would consider joining Barack Obama as his running mate, and advisers said she was withholding a formal departure from the race partly to use her remaining leverage to press for a spot on the ticket.

On a conference call with other New York lawmakers, Clinton, a New York senator said she was willing to become Obama’s vice presidential nominee if it would help Democrats win the White House, according to several participants in the call.

Clinton’s remarks came in response to a question from Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who said she believed the best way for Obama to win key voting blocs, including Hispanics, would be for him to choose Clinton as his running mate.

“I am open to it,” Clinton replied, if it would help the party’s prospects in November. Her direct quote was described by two lawmakers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for Clinton.

Clinton also told colleagues the delegate math was not there for her to overtake Obama, but that she wanted to take time to determine how to leave the race in a way that would best help Democrats.

“I deserve some time to get this right,” she said, even as the other lawmakers forcefully argued for her to press Obama to choose her as his running mate….

This comes as no surprise to me. This is what I told you on MARCH 9 (precisely 86 days ago):

The pushing of the “Dream Ticket” idea would seem to me to be a win-win, from [The Clinton Campaign's] point of view:

1. They (as noted by the newsies) mute somewhat the (probably correct) perception that Hillary’s camp hates Obama on a personal level, and that the “politics of personal destruction” being leveled at him in the “kitchen sink” Battle of the Statistical Bulge is “just business” — as they say in Godfather movies.

2. They begin to create an “inevitability” for Hillary in the Vice Presidential slot, so that she can make “history” (as it says on her website, and shouldn’t that be ‘herstory’?)

Now, personally, I think that it’s more the latter than the former. If Hillary is, in fact, the “steely-eyed realist” that her spinmeisters attempt to portray her as, she probably realizes that her shot at the nomination comes down to slim and none.

BUT, she CAN be the first woman VICE-President, and there seems to be a screaming need for her to “make history” and, it assures her a shot at the presidency after any Obama presidency, be it one term or two.

Of course, being me, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and added this non-Kumbayah observation (which you can further understand by clicking on the “Barking Moonbat of the Month” animation, The Cute Dog.)

In other words, by pushing this hideous (IMHO) idea of an Obama-Hillary ticket (rather than, say, an equally electable Obama-Kim Jong Il ticket), the Clintons have created a terrific pressure to give the girl the “Miss Congeniality” award for “personality.”

Of course, as John “Cactus Jack” Garner said (who, as FDR’s Vice President, knew of what he spoke): “The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

[* Note: the actual quote was, evidently, bowdlerized, according to Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Salon: "an office that Franklin D. Roosevelt's first vice president, John Nance Garner, said was 'not worth a bucket of warm piss'..."]

I’m not kidding, even though you might think I am. A copy of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince is sitting two inches from my mouse as I write this (I thought I ought to finally read the damned thing and really understand GOP politics) and old Nicky boy would have heartily approved. (Of course, he’d probably have advised that Hillary should poison her rival, but it IS the early 21st Century, after all, and not the early 16th Century, although sometimes it’s hard to tell, without a calendar. Waterboarding is still, after Bush’s ‘brave’ veto Saturday, legal, and it, like Machiavelli’s Prince, dates to the beginning of the 16th Century, as well.)

So, in chess, we call it a “forking” move: you simultaneously threaten two pieces and, with only one move, your opponent can only protect one.

Obama can’t churlishly reject Hillary’s “noble” offer, as in, say, “Piss on the bitch. She and her hatchet-men are trying to kneecap me, like Tonya Harding’s goons kneecapped Nancy Kerrigan.”

It would be true, but you can’t say it.

And, if Hillary SHOULD turn out to be the loser, they’ve stoked the fires of enmity and hatred so high that ONLY by inviting the lamprey onto the ticket could “party unity” be ensured.

Yeah.

But you have to put yourselves inside the heads of the Clinton campaign, and in so doing, I’m pretty well convinced that this is a tactic to create that fall-back position (98%) and to push Hillary’s slim chances of stealing the nomination by proving she’s NOT a knee-capping everything-for-me, grubby, amoral politician of the cliché kind (2%).

You might also want to check out these two Cactus Jack quotes for aptness.

Neener neener pooh-pooh.

Courage.

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