{"id":15894,"date":"2008-06-16T15:00:40","date_gmt":"2008-06-16T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15894.html"},"modified":"2008-06-16T15:00:40","modified_gmt":"2008-06-16T19:00:40","slug":"the-chances-of-an-obama-clinton-ticket-get-a-little-more-remote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-chances-of-an-obama-clinton-ticket-get-a-little-more-remote\/","title":{"rendered":"The chances of an Obama-Clinton ticket get a little more remote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just about a month ago, we learned that Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager and confidante, had begun preliminary discussions<\/a> with the Obama campaign about a role on the team. Today, we see the result of those discussions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Obama campaign is about to make its first big hire out of the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager until she was ousted in a staff shake up in February, will join Mr. Obama’s campaign as the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate — whoever he (or she) will be, campaign officials said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Doyle will take the position before Mr. Obama announces his choice for a running-mate — he has not said when that will be. Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Doyle have a long friendship, and Ms. Doyle has long been one of her closest aides, until she was forced out. Could that mean — tea-leaf reading time — that Mr. Obama is really considering Mrs. Clinton for the No. 2 position, and wants to have an ally of her in place to ease the way? Perhaps.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps not. More likely, the Obama campaign was looking for a high-profile spot to put Ms. Doyle, given her previous position, and most of the major roles in Mr. Obama’s campaign are filled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At first blush, it may seem odd to hire a chief of staff to a vice presidential candidate who has not yet been chosen (at least as far as we know). Wouldn’t the running mate have a CoS of his\/her own? Yes, which is why the title is probably misleading — in this case, the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate will probably be more of a liaison between the VP candidate’s team and the Obama campaign HQ.<\/p>\n

As for how this relates to Clinton possibly joining the ticket, I’ve seen ample speculation that this makes an Obama\/Clinton ticket more likely, but I’m very much inclined to believe the opposite.
\n
\nI’m reminded of this NYT item<\/a> from a week ago:<\/p>\n

Mrs. Clinton dumped her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, who had been with her since 1992, and the two have not spoken since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, if the goal of the Obama campaign was to have a Clinton ally in place to “ease” the transition, the very last person<\/i> they’d pick is Patti Solis Doyle.<\/p>\n

For that matter, I thought initially that maybe this could be spun as a “unity” move — the Obama campaign has placed Clinton’s former campaign manager in a prominent position. See? We can all get along!<\/p>\n

Except, that doesn’t quite work here, either. Obama won’t get credit for hiring a top Clinton aide who Clinton no longer talks to. As Ben Smith noted<\/a>, “many” Clinton backers “view Solis Doyle as a bit of a traitor for having signaled that she’d move to Obama before the primary was over.”<\/p>\n

Obviously, speculation like this should be taken with a grain of salt, because one would need to be on the inside to fully appreciate the campaign’s thinking. But given today’s news, I think the likelihood of an Obama\/Clinton ticket is more remote this afternoon than it was this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just about a month ago, we learned that Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager and confidante, had begun preliminary discussions with the Obama campaign about a role on the team. Today, we see the result of those discussions. The Obama campaign is about to make its first big hire out of the campaign […]<\/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-15894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15894","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=15894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}