Given the circumstances, once is an accident. Twice is a trend.<\/p>\n
Hillary Clinton gets asked about the possibility of a ticket with Barack Obama with some regularity, and has, for many months now, ably dodged the questions. On Wednesday, she raised eyebrows, however, by straying from the script<\/a> — asked on CBS about running with Obama, Clinton said, \u201cThat may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think that the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.\u201d<\/p>\n It was possible that Clinton just spoke her mind without any real forethought. This strikes me as highly<\/i> unlikely — Clinton is probably the most disciplined presidential candidate I’ve ever seen — but it was early in the morning and maybe she slipped.<\/p>\n Or maybe not<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday again raised the possibility that she might run with rival Sen. Barack Obama on the same Democratic presidential ticket.<\/p>\n Speaking to voters in Mississippi, where Sen. Barack Obama is expected to do well in next week’s primary, Clinton said, “I’ve had people say, ‘Well I wish I could vote for both of you. Well, that might be possible some day. But first I need your vote on Tuesday.”<\/p>\n It is the second time this week that she has hinted at a joint ticket with the Illinois senator; he has not ruled it out but says it is premature to be having those discussions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You’ll notice, of course, that Wednesday’s comment came in response to a specific question. This morning’s comment, if the AP report is accurate, was unprompted — meaning Clinton specifically wanted to raise this point for emphasis.<\/p>\n I think understand the strategy, but it’s a little convoluted. But there’s also the broader context to all of this, which makes Clinton’s comments rather … confusing.<\/p>\n Just over the past four days, Clinton has publicly suggested that John McCain’s experience is preferable to Obama’s, and McCain meets the “Commander in Chief threshold” that Obama does not. They were, at least to me, some of the most disappointing attacks Clinton has made in this entire campaign process.<\/p>\n And yet, interspersed with these criticisms, Clinton is also publicly raising the notion that she’d strongly consider Obama for her ticket. Isn’t there a disconnect here? Obama, Clinton tells us, isn’t prepared for national office, and at the same time, Obama is also vice presidential material?<\/p>\n Based on this morning’s remarks, my sense is that Clinton is pushing this notion of a “dream ticket,” will continue to do so. But in order for this to make any sense at all, she’s going to have to dramatically scale back her attacks and her suggestions that she prefers the Republican nominee to her Democratic rival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Given the circumstances, once is an accident. Twice is a trend. Hillary Clinton gets asked about the possibility of a ticket with Barack Obama with some regularity, and has, for many months now, ably dodged the questions. On Wednesday, she raised eyebrows, however, by straying from the script — asked on CBS about running with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nClinton, especially campaigning in a state in which she’s the underdog, subtly seems to be arguing, “You may like Obama, but if you vote for me, you can get Obama anyway — he’ll be on my ticket.” Indeed, a month ago, longtime Clinton apparatchik Lanny Davis and Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe floated the same idea<\/a>, rather explicitly. If you like Clinton and Obama, the argument went, the only way to get them both is to vote for Clinton (because she’s more likely to tap him as a running mate than the other way around).<\/p>\n