Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Reaction to Yesterday's Outcome

Here are a few key pieces worth sharing - two about the prospect of Hillary being VP, one about the significance of Hillary's defeat (which adds weight as to why she can't be on the ticket with him). And then a few other opinions and takes worth sharing....

Roger Simon at Politico Obama's First Test: Handling Hillary:
But her fighting words only increased the need for Obama to show that he can be strong, tough and in charge. Clinton’s unwillingness to recognize Obama as the victor only increased the need for Obama to act like a president and not like a doormat. And denying her a vice presidential slot may be a way of doing that.
Marc Ambinder, Atlantic Monthly, Questions to Ask About the Unity Ticket. She wants it but,

(3) Would Obama consider her, seriously?

At this point, no. Judging by the attitude of those who are advising him, what turns Obama off the most about the Clintons generally is the sense that the party was hers and her sense of desert that she is owed something. Some Obama advisers were very much turned off by the presence of vice presidential talk yesterday although they attribute this more to Clinton's advisers than to Clinton. From my first interviews with Obama advisers and members of his family, I've gotten an overwhelming sense that President Clinton's Oval Office dalliance with Monica Lewinsky deeply offended them and that the incident, its effect on the country, and its aftermath, shape in many ways the Obama family's view of the Clintons today. (It is certainly true of some of his staff members.)

So basically, the answer to the original question is: if Obama can coalesce the Democratic Party before he needs to pick a vice president, there's almost no chance that he will pick Hillary Clinton.

That's pretty much it, yes.

John Dickerson at Slate
Barack Obama didn't just run against Hillary Clinton. He ran against Clintonism. The assault started indirectly in his book, The Audacity of Hope, which spoke about moving past the generational fights that had consumed baby boomers in the 1990s. He was attacking both parties for their preoccupation with Vietnam and the warmed-over cultural battles of the '60s and '70s, but on the Democratic side, this was an explicit effort to push away from the biggest boomer of all, Bill Clinton, and the turmoil of his reign.
This is the reason, most of all, on why I am so grateful to Obama.

James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly calls Hillary's lack of concession a new low:

You HAVE LOST the nomination. There are NO MORE primaries. And you're urging your supporters to nurse their bitter feelings on your web site, and keep selling their bikes to give you money that you'll spend on... what? The unseemliness -- and, yes, destructiveness -- of this is too obvious to mention, though perhaps not obvious enough to have occurred to you.

This is a new low.

Noam Scheiber, The New Republic, posted That Outrageous Delusional Clinton Speech
So she's going to leave it to her voters to decide whether she should accept defeat after having, you know, lost? What if every losing candidate left it to their supporters to decide whether or not to accept the outcome of a race? Who would ever accept defeat?

What good could possibly come of this? With Hillary proclaiming herself the legitimate winner, they're clearly going to say "keep going." If she actually does keep going, that's a disaster for the Democratic Party. And if she doesn't, you've just drawn a ton of attention to the fact that a large chunk of the party doesn't accept Obama as the legimiate nominee. No, worse: you've encouraged them to think that, then drawn attention to it.

What a disaster.

Jonathan Chait, New Republic, writes:

I don't know what the fallout will be, but at minimum, I'd say that anybody on her staff who cares about their party has a moral obligation to publicly quit and endorse Obama.

Micheal Crowley, New Republic, In the Clinton Bunker:

These people will undoubtedly tell her to carry on. That much was clear from the chant of “Denver! Denver!” which came up tonight, and which drew no strong rebuke.
Yeah, that bothered me too - she should have sushed them. Suggested otherwise.

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