8 Reasons Why Hillary Should Not Be VP

[digg-reddit-me] [The bulk of this is a re-post, because it seems that the issue is newly and especially relevant.

After last night’s non-concession – in which Clinton revved up her crowd of supporters as they began to chant, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” – and in which she conceded nothing to reality, it seems clear that Clinton wants something. That something – according to reports from various news sources – is the vice presidency. Others indicate that she just wants to be offered the vice presidency. Either way, rather than graciously bowing out (as I rather prematurely asked her to do in January when she had won two of the four contests), she is bitterly clinging to her candidacy: pretending to win in her defeat, avoiding Barack Obama’s phone calls, and putting off the meeting that it is reported he requested.

There are better candidates out there for Obama to pick. Hillary Clinton has undoubtedly run an historic and groundbreaking campaign – and has come into her own as a political figure in her own right. She is a force to contend with. But it is time for her to withdraw unconditionally and endorse Obama. And she must let him choose his own Vice President – based on who would make the best ticket. Clinton is not it.

So here, modified and expanded, are eight reasons why Hillary Clinton should not be chosen as Obama’s vice presidential running mate:

1. Her eerily familiar refusal to concede to reality.
   She still refuses to admit that she has lost after Obama has mathematically achieved the required number of delegates.
2. From Rachel Maddow on MSNBC’s Inside the War Room two weeks ago:

[It would be] very awkward for a vice presidential candidate to be on a presidential candidate’s ticket after she has made repeated references to his potential death. Yes, that would be weird.

3. It will undermine the rationale behind Obama’s candidacy and make Obama look weak. As Reihan Salam of The Atlantic wrote:
   

   A backroom deal with Clinton would make a mockery of Obama’s language of hope and change. It would make Obama appear weak, and it would reward Clinton for running a campaign more vicious than anything Lee Atwater could have cooked up. More importantly, Obama would be choosing a fundamentally weak and unpopular running mate who has masked her marked executive inexperience through endless misrepresentation of her role in the Clinton White House – a role that begins and ends with a healthcare debacle that would have gotten anyone other than a First Lady fired.

   Or, to put it as John Edwards did:
   

4. She doesn’t put a single state or demographic group on the board for Obama.
   She is a highly polarizing figure. The demographic splits in the primaries so far have been best explained by the Peabody award-winning Josh Marshall over at the Talking Points Memo: The only areas where Hillary has decisively beaten Obama are in the Appalachian region of the country. But Hillary is far from the best candidate to appeal to this group. Former Senator John Edwards, Governor Ed Rendell, Governor Ted Strickland, and especially Senator Jim Webb all would seem to have greater appeal to the Scotch-Irish Reagan Democrats of the Appalachia. Clinton’s base is entirely in the Democratic party where she is relatively popular, while Obama has substantial support among independents and even some Republicans. That is why Clinton has done better in closed primaries than ones open to independents or all parties (at least until Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos gained traction).
5. Bill.
6. She’s run a terrible campaign so far. Would she run a better campaign if she trying to win for Obama?
   Her campaign is already $21,000,000.00 in debt. She squandered enormous institutional and name recognition advantages. Does anyone still remember that she was the prohibitive favorite before “a skinny kid with a funny name” expertly managed one of the hardest fought campaigns in history?
7. She shouldn’t be rewarded for trying to bully her way onto the ticket (after being told no “politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably“, threatening an “open civil war“) and for her bullying tactics during the rest of the campaign (threatening to withhold funds from the DNC; attacking Nancy Pelosi; lying about Obama’s record on abortion, NAFTA, and other issues; using voter suppression tactics in Nevada and Iowa; and undermining the legitimacy of the delegate selection process she agreed to when she thought it was to her benefit.) And all this was before she lost the race and still refused to concede, suspend her campaign, or endorse Obama.
8. Her sense of entitlement.

As a bonus:

Let’s get on to the main event already.

Drop out, Senator, and settle for becoming the next Secretary of Defense or a Supreme Court Justice.

The zeitgeist, the Force even, is with Obama in this American moment.

So, let’s get on to November before Obama loses his opportunity to get in the requisite attacks on McCain and his dangerously misguided policies before the entire country goes on vacation for the summer.

This is a fight we can win, and one we must win:

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

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