The Missing Candidate

The candidate for Vice-President is nominated by the Democratic party convention, as is the candidate for President. That said, effectively the formality impinges on the practice of the nominee choosing the running mate only most indirectly, if at all; an extreme case boundary, nothing more.

So who should the Democratic nominee choose? A political clone, a complementary politico/socio/ cultural figure, a contrast, a weakling, a reassurance to voters of the other party, a consolation prize for the runner up and their primaries' voters, or a defence against assassination by choosing someone so potentially horrific as a replacement the threat is removed?

Obama wants to win the election (twice, so he has to think four years from now as well as November), stay alive, do stuff for America. So he has to have strategy that runs unbroken from getting out the vote this time, to reaching into power centres and governmental areas where he has no constituency, to getting stuff done, for eight years.

Hillary Clinton's claim that she can deliver the Wimmin and the blue-collar workers is clearly another case where she misspoke herself; two more incompatible constituencies would be difficult to devise. The only reason the blue-collar workers voted for her was because they were voting against Obama. That cause is now lost, so the vice- presidential nominee must be someone to attract their votes, not just scoop up protest votes. The Wimmin will vote only for Clinton, as they say, (the harridans), and should be written off as a lost cause in the interests of the blue-collar worker vote. Clinton is irrelevant for the four years hence elections, unless Obama loses this time, which is a wholly different set of considerations.

She has no noteworthy contacts outside of democratic politics on any kind of scale sufficient to affect the outcome of the November election, particularly after her public declarations that all must now unite behind the candidate. As she is to the left of Obama, and in a rather last century way, she is relatively unnattractive to many voters; neither can she be considered socio/culturally interesting to most - she's just an elderly woman with out of date ideas about women and their social status, and anyone staring in despair at our NHS will be determined to refuse entry to her health provision projects - how many times does she have to be told 'No'?. She offers no reassurance whatsoever to wavering small 'c'conservative voters. Her foreign relations 'experience' is laughable, and has been laughed at very widely.

The only grounds, then, for her current claims seem to be that she's so awful that as Vice-President she would act as a good shield to any assault on the President, and that she wants a runner-up prize because she was robbed.

Not good enough. Obama needs a reliable, likeable, political clone who reassures the undecided and doubtful, yet will step into the breach and carry on doing stuff for America in the spirit of the political will expressed in Obama's selection as candidate, if need be, and back him to the hilt throughout his years in office otherwise. If he can be also a link into areas of governance that add to Obama's reach, that will be a great bonus.

Hillary Clinton should never have been alllowed to stand for the Democratic nomination, and Obama needs to find the missing candidate that she displaced, in choosing his vice-presidential companion.