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...and other thoughts on the campaign.
VP Selection
Rather than throw out names of people I think would make good VP choices I'm going to try to outline the criteria I think should be central to the decision making process without trying to match those to any specific candidate. As I see it there are three primary factors that need to be weighed and balanced when the decision is made
1. Appeal to Independents.
Obama's has great strength among independents, but I think he needs to shore that up with his VP pick for one major reason. I think a big part of Obama's appeal to independents is based on his message we all got the first look at in the 2004 DNC speech. "There is not a liberal America, and a conservative America, there is the United States of America... " etc. I think many of us are aware of the prevailing sentiment among the portion of the voting population that identifies as neither Democratic or Republican... they can't stand the partisanship. If he picks someone far left as a VP choice he's going to undermine the authenticity of that message and give the independents doubts about how much he means it. So my concern here isn't so much about him picking a VP the independents like, it's about how the independents view Obama as a result of his choice. In the end the independents will not vote for a VP, it's how the decision reflects on Obama himself that will have the greater impact. They're either going to see him as genuinely pursuing a larger tent style of governance, or they'll see him as saying he will while stacking his administration with the most liberal people he can just like Bush did eight years ago on the other end of the spectrum.
So his VP pick must be extremely centrist, and visibly so. If a suitable such animal could be found, an outright honest-to-goodness Independent would be wonderful. That would send the message that Obama is the real deal on the "uniter not divider" front very very clearly but I can't think of any potential candidates who really fit there.
I know there's a faction here that will have the opinion that "OMG! But... a VP like that won't agree with us on everything!!!". Get over it. It's the VP. Obama's going to be setting policy.
2. Appeal to Women.
The damage Hillary has done with her choice of campaign tactics the last many weeks and months needs repair, and the place to focus a lot of that effort is among women who are going to be understandably bitter (that's right, I said it) and disappointed that the best shot they've ever had of seeing the first woman president just got shot down and some of whom are going to be resentful of the man that they'll perceive took it from her. Here I think the person chosen themselves will have a larger relative impact than what the choice says about Obama. A female VP choice, possibly even setting up a potential female candidate on '16, would go a long way provided it's the right person. Before the mind even begins to wander down that path, absolutely NOT Hillary. Her negatives far outweigh any positive effect she would have on this criteria. I maintain a Clinton VP choice would be an outright disaster. Her ability to mobilize the Republican base against her is practically legendary, and when we've got a Republican nominee who has serious issues getting that done we don't need to hand it to him on a silver platter by letting the right wing spend the next 6 months telling their base about the Clintons back in the White House if Obama wins, which also screws over the potential crossover vote Obama would be looking at otherwise. Additionally picking the iconic image of old Washington politics among the Democratic party as the running mate of the change candidate whose campaign is based on the need for new people and approaches in Washington is just purely stupid. And to top it off, with the campaign she has run against Obama too much animosity has been created between those factions to instantly reconcile and go into a GE campaign without it showing through and giving the constant impression of insincerity, which we definitely don't need. So, a female VP pick by all means... as long as it is NOT Clinton.
There is the argument to be made that picking a female VP to go with the black presidential candidate is going too far too fast. I say over 50% of voters are women and I'm not terribly worried about the "too much change" angle. If we're going to go for the historic candidacy anyway might as well go all out and put it all on the table.
3. "Experience"
I almost didn't factor this in as being on a level with the first two, because honestly I don't think it really will be. But enough people do that I'll throw it in the mix. As I see it the experience line of attack against Obama isn't really something that's designed to work all that well for one simple reason. The "experience" people are talking about is experience doing things the way Washington has always done things... as in, the way a lot of America is completely fed up with. And that's an argument Obama can easily make that defuses the entire "Oh he's inexperienced!" hand wringing nonsense. Obama has plenty of experience outside Washington that will serve him perfectly well. I think the demographic factors in the first two criteria are going to eclipse this in importance, but let's say it is an issue on a level with the other two just for argument. In that case there are two routes he can go.
Foreign policy/National security.
Domestic/Economic .
On the one hand he's up against John "we can stay in Iraq 100 years not taking casualties" McCain. There's definitely room to score on that front. On the other hand he's up against John "I don't understand the economy" McCain when the nation's economy is going into the toilet. So we have an embarrassment of riches here really. I would personally think he should go economic/domestic. First, because I don't think Iraq is going to give him much trouble at the end of the day. Most of the country is already on board or getting there that the thing to do is to get the hell out... Obama wants out... it really shouldn't be a hard sell there. On the economy it's a lot more nebulous. It needs to be fixed and everyone recognizes that, but it's a lot harder to convince people you know how and actually can. McCain is hopeless here, Obama can best capitalize on that with a dominating showing on exactly how to proceed and picking a VP with good domestic policy/economic credentials goes a long way there.
All that said, there are candidates who don't quite fit here who could be great assets. Any 2 out of 3 would be doing pretty good really. I'd love to see a pick who could hit all three points but we take what we can get.
With that wrapping up my thoughts on that topic, a few miscellaneous comments:
Primary Demographic Projections to the GE
I've seen a lot of talk about how Obama should pick Clinton because she's winning the white working class voters he "can't seem to connect with". This is pure nonsense. What is actually happening is that white working class Democrats are voting for another Democrat more than they're voting for Obama in a Democratic primary. It's been said over and over and rightfully so, that does NOT mean that anyone voting for Hillary in the primary won't vote for Barack in the general. And I said it quite a while ago: those people saying "if my candidate doesn't win I'm voting McCain!" in the exit polling are to a large degree full of crap and trying to influence the polling results to advantage their candidate. If anything, the demographic problem is Clinton's not Obama's, and it's coming from the other side of that divide in the AA vote.
The people telling us to panic because Clinton outperforms Obama by 25 points or so among white working class voters tend to turn a blind eye to the 75 or so points Obama has been beating Clinton by in the AA vote. And where among the white working class most of it seems to be they're just preferring Clinton as a democratic candidate, among the AA demographic the more Clinton campaigns as she has chosen to the more it has become a case of them not just preferring Obama but also being pissed with Clinton. If anyone is going to not fall in line in the GE it's the AA democratic vote for Clinton, not the white working class democratic vote for Obama. ESPECIALLY when you also factor in that if Clinton were to take the nomination it would be AGAINST the outcome of the primary process and the almost 40 million people who will have voted in it since it's now impossible for her to get the nomination in any way except a super delegate reversal of those results. So we have an AA voting block who is royally pissed at Clinton, and who would ALSO have had her have the nomination given to her even though their preferred candidate actually won the primary process. No... they would NOT fall in line after that. I'd love to see a GE poll that did a Clinton vs. McCain match-up on the premise "If Clinton loses the primary pledged delegate race and is given the nomination by the superdelegates..." and see what effect that has on her support levels. Anyone think it would be a positive? No? Didn't think so.
West Virginia and Kentucky
"Blowouts here for Clinton can put her back in it!"
No, they can't. When effectively the entire world of political news media basically called the race for Obama after Indiana and NC it was with expected blowouts for Clinton in these races already factored in. Clinton will obviously try to spin them for everything they're worth when she takes them, but it's not going to have much effect. It's going to be like when Obama took Mississippi, to large degree a non event. The commentators will watch the results come in on all the news networks, then it'll be:
"As we already knew would happen, Clinton gets a big win in West Virginia. Does this change the race panel?"
"No"
"No"
"No"
"We already knew about this last week, nothing's changed".
Blah, blah, blah. Then a week later Kentucky and Oregon will weigh in and Obama will officially have the pledged delegate majority in hand. Game. Set. Match. No way the supers go the other way at that point.
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