Yes, an interesting contradiction in terms there. Hillary has consistently proven the more moderate and progressive to both Obama's previous liberalism and newfound conservatism.

But, you can't spend 6 months calling folks racist, and accusing them of calling for your assassination, and then say, "never mind".

Obama didn't force Hillary to make a HUGELY inartful and clumsy comparison between MLK and LBJ. Yeah, the MSM soundbited it to death (sur-prise!), but that was her gaffe. It's infuriating that some of her supporters think black people were only offended because Obama said to be offended. That's an amazingly patronizing view of that issue. I still can't believe anyone would put MLK in a sentence with "but". Here's the FIRST clip that comes up on a Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7QsY-WJ- 9Y

Do you see any Obama surrogates running a teleprompter while she talks? God. Everything he does is his fault, and eveything SHE does is his fault.

With her on the ticket, Obama would be blamed for his mistakes AND hers. He'd spend 4 years either sallying to her defense from the GOP or taking hits because he didn't sally fast enough. It wouldn't be unity, it would be an eternal rehash of the primaries.

Look at this thread. You'd have expected a "Yay, she's on the list!". Instead, it's MORE "Obama sucks". Ok, we get it. He will never meet the bar.

- Newsweek Poll last month:

Obama 51% McCain 36%

- Newsweek Poll this month:

Obama 44% McCain 41%

Key finding: 85% of undecided voters are non-Hispanic whites, and the vast majority of them do not have a college degree - the demographic that Obama has had sustained difficulty gaining traction.

but they seemed to care deeply about who was giving him head in the oval office. Americans love to tear people down.

BTW, first paragragraph was snark.

Quite a few polling organizations have asked about how adding Clinton to the ticket might affect the preferences of respondents, whether they wanted to see herr on the ticket, etc., and they all point to what I'm suggesting.  

The Dems who supported Clinton during the primaries (approx. half of Dems overall) would like to see her on the ticket, and for half of this group this is a strong preference.  The fraction of Dems overall who don't think she should be picked is also approx. half (though the percentage who express this as a strong preference is pretty small, I think it's around 15%).

Once one moves to indies, though, the situation changes.  Most don't want her on the ticket (think the fraction is roughly 3/5).  Not all of these voters express this as a strong preference, but it's more than 15% (and those who do want her are approx. 10%).  Most Republicans, of course, really don't like the Clintons (and half express this as a strong preference).

I've been following these polls for a month, looking for some sign that Clinton would bring votes to the ticket, and what you'd probably get is a trade (some Dems who are on the fence would come home, other indies who would have voted for Obama would go for McCain instead, like I said, it's a wash).

If you'd like I'll search for one of these polls (because the questions aren't ambiguous, eg. "Would an Obama/Clinton ticket make you much more likely, more likely, less likely, much less likely, to vote Dem, or would it make no difference).

If Clinton had become the nominee, btw, her big problem would have been winning indies (even today she's a popular figure within the Democratic party, ie. not just among those who supported her in the primary, the number of Dems who are "Hillary haters" is vastly overstated, it's basically the 15% mentioned above).

Move beyond this group, though, and her numbers go down significantly (and not for any one reason, for all of the talk about personality and baggage a lot of this, I think, is just about her being seen as a member of the Democratic and DC establishment, and it's easy to forget that this doesn't play well in much of the country--think this is why Obama has a very good shot at states llke Iowa, Colorado, etc., but Clinton would have had to battle for states like Wisconsin, there's a variety of indie voter who seems to like him but not her).

the thing with edwards is with his losing the Presidential nomination twice and losing the VP election, not getting kerry within single digits of NC, he is an empty suit. The fact is he is a political lightweight who didn't even run for re-election in NC for the senate in 2004 because he knew he'd lose. People see thru him. Save him for Solicitor General where he can litigate for the White House. He is a superb litigator, one of the best in the world.

That's it, twist my words to imply criticism of Bill C. Acknowledging the complications having an ex-president adds to the mix is not in any way a criticism of that ex-president.