Last night, Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton to congratulate her on her win in South Dakota. Voicemail messages were exchanged and a connection was dropped before the two were actually able to talk at all. And when they did speak, it was kept brief, in part because of some less-than-ideal technical issues.
There’s a campaign metaphor in there somewhere.
In any case, the two reportedly did speak today.
And while it’s safe to assume the two did not speak at all the Democratic ticket, the Obama campaign did announce today that Caroline Kennedy will lead a three-person working group responsible for vetting prospective VP candidates. Kennedy will work with Jim Johnson, who also helped John Kerry with his VP search, and Eric Holder, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and has been a senior legal adviser to Obama’s campaign.
Throughout the day, there’s been ample evidence that Clinton supporters are leaning heavily on the Obama campaign to pick Clinton for the ticket, but I can’t help but think they’re going about this the wrong way.
The Clinton campaign reportedly gave Robert Johnson the green light to push for Clinton as the VP:
“Johnson said he talked specifically with Clinton on Tuesday about his intentions. ‘She said, ‘Go ahead,” he recalled, although asked that he wait until Wednesday to do so.
In other words, Hillary basically authorized Johnson to launch the campaign. This is all pretty suggestive stuff.
Lanny Davis is still doing whatever it is he does:
On Tuesday night, he launched — without, he said, coordination with the Clinton campaign — a petition drive aimed at persuading Obama to tap her as his running mate.
Clinton herself seems anxious to stir the discussion:
Velazquez said that Hillary didn’t bring it up, but also said that Hillary clearly signaled her openness to the idea — suggesting that she did indeed go beyond her previous statements on this.
Some of Clinton’s congressional supporters are organizing to begin pressuring Obama to do the same.
I’ve even heard some veiled threats in some circles, about how Obama won’t be given a choice: no Clinton means no support in November. A TPM reader noted:
Let’s be clear about what Hillary is doing here. By signaling that she’ll take the VP slot if offered — and insinuating that a joint ticket is necessary to heal the party(!) — she is foregoing the normal diplomatic niceties in order to screw Obama. It sticks him with the choice between looking like the bad guy (for not offering) and doing something he really doesn’t want to do (putting her on the ticket). Either way, he loses. And either way, she wins: she gets on the ticket or else she engenders a lot of bitterness in her supporters, hurting Obama’s chances in November….
This strikes me as a very poor strategy, if this is, in fact, what Clinton’s supporters have in mind.
Obama is the Democratic nominee for president. He is now the leader of the party, and stands a reasonably good chance of being the leader of the free world. The very last thing Clinton associates should do is try to seize the VP slot in some kind of brute-force move. That’s backwards — threats, ultimatums, and coercion about what he “has” to do makes it less likely Obama will find the message appealing, not more likely.
My advice: stop pushing and start working. It’s obviously only been a day since Obama clinched — not even 24 hours — so it’s too soon to know everyone’s strategies going forward. But if Clinton wants to prove that she’d be a valuable addition to the Obama team, she can endorse him, encourage others to do the same, and get out there to make his election more likely. Become the kind of asset that the nominee would want for the ticket.
This notion that Obama can be backed into a corner and forced to accept a running mate is foolish. It’s more likely to backfire than succeed.