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Clinton Pullout Likely Saturday
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Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama adviser, offered several names to the list of potential vice presidential choices, including those of former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham; Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a top Clinton supporter; and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, an Obama supporter who could assuage the disappointment of women who wanted the chance to vote for the first female president.
"Senator Clinton is a candidate for the vice presidency, and she should be a candidate for vice presidency," Davis said. But he added that Obama is under no more obligation to choose her than Al Gore was to pick runner-up Bill Bradley in 2000, Bill Clinton was to pick Paul Tsongas in 1992 or Michael S. Dukakis was to pick Jesse L. Jackson in 1988.
"There is no particular tradition in the modern era of the victor picking the second place finisher," Davis said.
Several other prominent Democrats on both sides of the divide panned the idea of adding Clinton to the ticket. Former president Jimmy Carter, an Obama supporter, told the Guardian, a British newspaper, that naming Clinton "would be the worst mistake that could be made" and "would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates." Even Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Clinton's top supporters, knocked down the concept. "There's no bargaining," Rendell told NY1 television. "You don't bargain with the presidential nominee. Even if you're Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don't bargain."
Both Rendell and Johnson noted that a joint ticket would require the Obama campaign to put strict boundaries on the role the former president would play in the fall campaign.
Rank-and-file Democrats are as divided on the topic as they have been throughout a contest in which the candidates split the popular vote almost evenly, with Clinton's supporters enthusiastically embracing a joint ticket but Obama's backers appearing to be far more skeptical.
A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 76 percent of Clinton voters would like to see Obama choose her as his running mate, up from 69 percent in March. But 54 percent of Obama's voters rejected the idea, up from 46 percent earlier this spring.
And the bitterness among Obama supporters lingers. Clyburn said his office has been deluged with racist phone calls since his endorsement of Obama on Tuesday, some so vicious an intern had to be taken from his office crying on Tuesday. Clyburn blamed the dismissive tone set by Clinton and her supporters, a tone that he said continued Tuesday night when she held a "victory rally" and failed to acknowledge defeat.
"At some point, she needs to congratulate the man for having won," Clyburn said before Clinton announced the Saturday event. "Those kinds of things are important to us who grew up in the South with these kinds of slights. That speech cannot be seen as anything but a slight."
