The 4 basic political, not personal, reasons Obama cannot choose Hillary for VP

[scheming daemons]

1. He'll lose half his base

Not their votes, mind you... but their enthusiasm. And their cash. A large percentage of Obama support is from people who jumped in with both feet on his message of change. Adding Hillary to his ticket defeats and undercuts his entire campaign theme. The prevailing thought among all the new voters that Obama has brought in would be: "I thought you were against the status quo, and for change. Meh, you're just like all the rest of them. Why did I get my hopes up?" Some would still vote for him. A lot would stay home.

2. He'll lose any chance of winning among independents

Hillary is very unpopular among independent voters. They would flock to McCain in large numbers, as McCain himself does fairly well among independents.

3. He'll lose any chance of getting a significant share of disaffected Republicans

There are a lot of Republicans that are disenchanted with their party right now. They are looking for an excuse to vote for someone else. If we put Hillary on the ticket, all their hatred of all things Clinton overrides their disenchantment with the GOP and they'll hold their nose and vote for McCain.

4. The GOP base will be rallied

There's nothing that the Democrats can do that will do more to get the GOP rank-and-file to open their checkbooks and GOTV for John McCain than to put Hillary on the ticket. Their hatred of the Clintons runs deep. They don't much like McCain, but they'd open their checkbooks for the devil himself if he was running against a Clinton.



Now... I ask you, astute DU political observers, is placating Hillary's hard-core supporters worth all of the above? Yes... she has 16 million or so votes. But a large majority of them would vote for Obama anyway. Putting Hillary on the ticket would only placate those hard-core supporters for whom NOT putting her on the ticket is a deal-breaker.

And I ask you.... concerning the REALLY hard-core voters that hate Obama with a passion... would putting Hillary on the ticket placate them enough to make them vote for Obama? Come on, you know the answer is no. The 20% of Hillary supporters that have said in exit polls that they voted against Obama because of his race are not going to vote for him if Hillary is on the ticket.



The good news: The Obama campaign is smart and they know all of this.