Regardless, it was close enough that he should have picked Clinton for vice President. Particularly for a guy who was supposedly running on reconciliation and unity and a new kind of politics- he just had to let the bitterness of the campaign lock her out of the ticket. That was one of my major disappointments with him, though I was pretty mute about it at the time because I didn't want to damage his chances of winning the general.
It doesn't sound like it was bitterness at all so much as worries about what effect Bill Clinton would have as the husband of a potential running mate or Vice President. Before giving her State, there were complicated negotiations over his role in the world and looking at his foundation's donors. It would have been leaked if she were considered for VP (as it was for State, probably by her people) and it would have made any VP rollout, Hillary or otherwise, super sticky. Reports of Obama's deliberations on VP suggest he considered Hillary late into the process.Do you have a link to this? The news reports I remember claimed that she was not even considered for VP. McCain even made an ad about it. In fact, it would have been better if it had seemed like an agonizing decision, but that is not how it was reported. Further, the announcement was sent out at 3am, which seemed to some like a juvenile jab about the primaries.
True, no one is contesting his right to pick Biden. But Tsongas and Brown were never that much threats to Clinton. A better comparison would be Ford/Reagan in '76.
Actually, most pundits were expecting him to pick Kaine, Bayh, or Biden, so there was no overwhelming pressure or even particular pressure for him to pick Clinton. Clinton was trading at like 10 in Intrade. Had he picked her, it would have look magnanimous, not weak. His position of strength was indisputable at that point. By not picking her he looked like a sore winner. It would have been another thing, again, if Biden had been a spectacular VP, but mostly he has distinguished himself for his trademark 'gaffes'. He has lower favorables than historical VPs. It's not clear what he added to the ticket. All the talk about him being dropped in 2012 speaks for itself.
Well, we might have been spared Palin, for one
. Also, there is the matter that Clinton's profile as SoS was very low until a Politico article about a month ago that claimed she was being pushed aside in the administration. The article was later picked up widely in the MSM. I have no idea whether it was a real story or whether the media is just making things up (as the administration claims), but it certainly feeds into a continuing tension. We'll see what happens as things move forward.
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