Hillary’s Options and Denver
This is the year America elects a female President. Well, if not this year, then when?
That is the problem that Hillary and her supporters have. In a year that was made to elect her, a black man is running against her and to her left.
Hillary has little to lose by taking this campaign to the convention. She retains her seat in the Senate and can probably be re-elected repeatedly from New York. If she stands firm until the convention, she places a great deal on the shoulders of the men and women in the committees who will be deciding on seating delegates.
There are always problems, and this year is no exception. Two large states have delegates that may not be seated, because those states chose to hold their primary at a different time than the Democratic National Committee wanted.
The decisions on seating delegates will be a way to tell which way that the wind is blowing. If Hillary succeeds in having her delegates seated from Florida and Michigan, the city of Denver will be alive with the sounds of coats turning.
The superdelegates will have to face two equally unpleasant choices, voting against the strongest woman candidate in history or voting against the strongest black candidate in history. I predict ulcers and small strokes.
Could either Obama or Hillary swallow their pride enough to take the VP slot on a unified ticket? If Hillary does, it almost certainly rules out any chance of her running in 2016, due to her age. Hey, I said almost.
Obama, on the other hand, would still be young enough to run in eight years, should he settle for VP. But, why should he? Vice-president is far less than it’s cracked up to be, and that’s not much.
The good thing about a serious convention fight is that the far left that has pushed Obama forward is weak at the convention. The elected delegates and the super delegates are, for the most part, party functionaries and loyalistas. The netroots will have less influence in the decision making, thus, oddly enough, making the final ticket much stronger.
The delegates are the people who go home and get out the vote. The netroots can brag all they like, but the last several elections demonstrate that young people do not turn out en masse to vote for the far left. Nationally, mind you, not in local or state elections. Nation-wide, young people vote in no greater numbers than they have for many years despite the puffery of the left on the Internet.
The best situation for Republicans, as I see it, is that Obama or Hillary become the presumptive nominee well before the convention. We need a fixed target in order to inspire our people and in order to begin to affect the undecided voters. We do not need a unified Democratic Party marching arm in arm out of the convention center in Denver.
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