The Wall Street Journal revisits Hillary Clinton’s claim to the vice presidency:
Her support, especially in such blue-collar redoubts as Youngstown and southern Ohio, was as enthusiastic as any we have witnessed in modern politics. Lower-middle-class women especially saw her as a pathbreaker, refuting the notion that her symbolic candidacy was limited to upscale professional women. She earned 18 million votes. Joe Biden won something like 9,000. She was on a roll by June, but the Hillary surge began too late. She lost by the brutal math of her party’s own making.
The Journal’s editors acknowledge her considerable baggage and conclude:
Even now, one gets a sense from the Clintons and some of their supporters that the nomination itself was stolen from them because Barack Obama played the race card and the media were biased in his favor. There’s great irony in that since the Clintons were masters of the former and in 1992 were elevated by the same media.No doubt they will put on a good show of support for Mr. Obama this week, and campaign for him through the fall. They will not want to be blamed if he loses. Even so, there is a palpable sense that they won’t be surprised, or upset, if he does lose. Hillary and Bill can then set their sights on 2012.
And that is the reality Democrats and independents are mulling over: she should be on the ticket, but she could be President in 2012. Does this dull their ardor for the candidate who would normally claim their votes and may be closer to their political views? Perhaps. What is certain is that the press is buzzing about all of this rather than the wonders of Barack Obama or the Democrats more broadly.
Hillary’s primary loss and all the bitterness that it brought about have been revived to a far greater extent than many expected because of Obama’s panicky VP choice (i.e. grabbing a gravitas lifeboat without wanting to deal with the Clintons). Hillary’s defeat and the complaints about the MSM now come flooding back as if the last couple of months of fence-mending never happened.
It is ironic that the man the Democrats so idolize, John Kennedy, took a running mate no one thought he could live with, Lyndon Johnson, who helped him to victory. No one thought Kennedy weak when he did it. It was the sign of a savvy and confident politician. Obama hasn’t appeared to be either lately.