I hope you're right. I think she's a good choice for a variety of reasons, and right now Obama is looking a whole lot like John Kerry. Senator Clinton turned into a great campaigner in the spring (too late for herself, of course) and I would love to see her doing the same for an Obama/Clinton ticket. Now all we have to do is keep her spouse under control :-)

Biden would be my choice for a guy that hit hard and leave Obama to take the high road. Plus he doesn't come with any of the Clinton baggage and media distraction.

Obama better get it right:

Per MSNBC and REUTERS:

WASHINGTON - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

You're pretty fickle Karole! I don't see it happening, but it would certainly be newsworthy and quite clever.

So, are you getting worried? Starting to think we need Hillary to win? You know Indiana's latest polls now put McCain in the lead there: http://www.electoral-vote.com/icon.html? If Virginia flips over to McCain then, by current (and not very predictive) polling, McCain is in the electoral college lead. Now that would be news.

That said Karole, I think Obama's recent decrescendo is nothing to get too excited about. But I do think it has some nexus in the animosity that exists between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters (see Bowman et al). Listening to the downright contempt some people on our side have for Hillary really takes the wind out of my sails. I can't believe I'm unique.

And would anyone inclined please spare me the silly questions along the lines of "do I want Obama to loose because Hillary didn't win?" That's the kind of irrational contempt that puts space between Hillary supporters and Obama supporters.

But anyway, back to Obama's sag . . . Andrew Sullivan pointed out an interesting take on the McCain campaign's recent success that gave me reason to smile. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/hows-mccain-doi.html

Karol...Sorry i misspelled your name above. I'm a little thickheaded. In the morning especially.

Obvioulsy McCain's lead is a result of his cheating at Saddleback. Right Hartman?

Karol - I had the same thoughts while letting my mind wander on a road trip to Montana this summer. I figured he should wait until the last minute and announce Hillary as his VP. The media would hardly notice the republican convention.

If he announces on Saturday though, that gives the media a full week (during the Dem convention!) to do nothing but talk about the Clintons.

Re: Clinton

Here's how I put it yesterday to some friends who were discussing the same general topic.

"A million times no. A slightly better chance for a win in November is not worth hamstringing your presidency for the next 4 years.

This is not specifically about Hillary, but about the people she has surrounded herself with. I want Carville and Begala, Wolfson and Ickes, Penn and Williams, MacAuliffe and Bill, Ferraro and the rest out of work and hopefully out of Washington entirely, never again to play a role in fashioning platforms and policies for the democratic party."

If you want to quote polls, please don't quote Zogby, the least regarded of all. Why not quote Quinnipiac who gave Obama a 5 pt. lead nationally just yesterday?

National polling is pretty ridiculous anyway.

Obama has been so good at keeping this under wraps. I absolutely have no clue who it will be. For purposes of uniting the party and bringing in senior women in particular, making Clinton the VP may make good sense. I think the offer would have to be contingent on Bill Clinton not setting foot in the White House, and keeping his mouth shut for 8 years. Tall order. Clinton would have to face those commercials she made for McCain and dissing Obama, but dealing with contradiction seems her forte.

As this new poll shows, Obama's amature hour/minor league reality is coming home to roost. Sure the Obama flock thinks he is unbeatable but with McCain looking as a defeat for Obama to the real world, Hillary may find a way to seize the nomination afterall.

The McCain trolls have climbed out from under the rocks today. Don't feed them!

I'll bet Bayh turned Obama down and it will be Biden because the guy loves attention.

I am thinking "dark horse" on this one and on another blog saw an interesting prediction on the DH side. Feingold or Feinstein. I find those two options very intriguing. This is gonna be a fun one!

McCain might seem to be getting closer to a lead, but it isn't because he is amassing much of a following. It seems to be coming more out of additional undecided's straying from a weak commitment to Obama. But those people are not signing onto McCain. That's got to be a troubling sign for the GOP ticket.

I think the last trend I saw was McCain up 42% vs 41% last month. That's not much of a result. Maybe I'm not being very clear, but what I'm trying to say is McCain isn't closing the deal on people who have doubts about Obama. They are drifting, but not toward McCain.

Still, the Obama camp needs to get it together fast. They have lost control the narrative for the moment. Let's hope they will get it back and not repeat Kerry's brain numbingly flat-footed responses to predictable attacks. (ugh...painful to remember) In fact, I think we are STILL waiting on a response for most of them.

Thinking along the dark horse line, I have this sort of unlikely and half-serious hope that it'll be Kucinich. Nobody expected the Spanish inquisition, and nobody expects Kucinich to "beat a rigged game," as he likes to say.

Again, only half-serious; as much as I support his policies, he doesn't particularly have broad appeal.

My dark horse pick is David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States. He's smart, well-respected and, as near as I can tell, post-partisan. And no one could speak with more authority on economic and budgetary issues.

Hillary's greatest weakness is Bill. If Bill Clinton were out of the picture then it would be a pretty reasonable ticket.

If he does nominate Hillary, I hope that he also offers Bill the ambassadorship to Licheinstein surrounded by cute girls and lots of beer for the next eight years.

If Hillary gets the VP nod, I will run - RUN - to Division and 30th(ish) to get my very own Obama Clinton bumpersticker. I genuinely appreciate and admire them both - and enjoy hearing positive things about Hillary from Obama folks.

Andrew Riley: The DP elites would support McCain or even Bush (who received 11-12% of registered DP votes in the last two elections) before they would allow Kucinich or anyone close to him to be so near to the presidency. They feel the same way about Dennis that they feel about Nader, McKinney, or anyone to the left of the DP center (the right if international standards are employed).

Marshall Collins: There's a lot of political distance between Feingold and Feinstein, even if there isn't much difference in their names. Feingold is a true liberal and Feinstein is a true hack. In that context, Feinstein is far more likely to be chosen by a candidate whose first Supreme Court nominee is likely to be Cass Sunstein.

And what good is polling when hundreds of thousands of likely DP voters are being scrubbed from the rolls and voting machines are unverifiable?

Why doesn't anyone remember that Obama went on vacation for two whole weeks. He lost a couple of points napping on the beach in Hawaii. It was the only way to make McCain appear comptetitive. Now he's back on the news and I predecit he will take back some ground. I enjoyed the way the VFW opened their minds to accept him as a contender. Unexpected for their generation, but they are the greatest...still...for as long as they last...maybe....

Obama stuck around glad handing the men and women their and reminded them of his convention speech where he reminded everyone that we have neither red states or blue states, only the United States and we are our strongest when we remember that. Those warriors understand that completely having lived through the most unified time this country has ever known.

For the past 8 years it has been Red vs. Blue. We have dismantled ourselves in this absurd reach for power. Fantastically, millions of people thought the Republicans were grabbing for power, but no one recognizes this Republican Party, even a lot of Republicans. The power was seized by Bush, Cheny, and the Mincs [Mult-I National Corporations]. These countryless entities that seek their own profit in dollars, yen, roubles, marks, whatever. Divide and conquer is their strategy and they did it. They've been winning for 8 years. They get US Soldiers doing their dirtiest work and their corporations rake in millions of dollars. Now the old school Republicans are wondering what happened to their party, and now, finally, some will even say this out loud.

These disenfranchized Republicans will find that while there are many differences, the Democrats more resemble what they thought their party was then what that party now is. Obamacans will take Obama to the top, I HOPE, like the reagan democrats who began this mudslide we/ve been riding since Reagon took the solar panels off the White House and Americans bought SUVs to avoid the most farsighted legislation ever to come out of Congress during, dare I say, President Carter.

VP?!? Oh yeah, this was about the pendng announcement. Cookie Monster?!? Yes, just about anyone will work.

The polls? Well, there was that vacation, and, has anyone noticed they're not asking anyone about the Green Party. The Republicans not coming to Obama will likely go Green and no one has been counting that. But this enables the media to create news about an election they believe, as most people probably do, whether they want him or not, that Obama has already won. If that was the news every day, who would watch?!?

So Dennis Kucinich blathered about "interchangeability of matter and spirit". So he lifted a couple of lines from ex-Governor Moonbeam, now mayor of Oakland, as I recall. BFD. Make KUCINICH the ambassador to Liechtenstein instead of picking Bill Clinton (as someone earlier suggested) for this elite post. Gawd knows that someone has to stop the Swiss from invading Liechtenstein again.

Lately I've been coming around to the same view as Karol. Put Hillary on the ticket. Have them both take the high road. And have Bill be the attack dog. If Bill's tirades backfire, they can just say there he goes again, out of control.

By the way, Jerry Brown is now California's attorney general.

Kari: Okay, you convinced me. No Democrat is worthy of support.

Those who want Hillary on the ticket are forgetting 1984. Sure Geraldine Ferraro had many good qualities, but she had a husband with questionable finances.

Do we really want to hear questions all fall about the donors to the Clinton Library?

Joe Biden is ferocious, Jack Reed (West Point grad who knows he doesn't need to prove his patriotism by saying McCain's magic words THE SURGE WORKED--he's got good judgement about Iraq being a mistake from the beginning) would drive McCain nuts.

Yes, LBJ drove JFK nuts but got picked anyway. He brought the state of Texas. Does anyone really believe that all women want Hillary on the ticket? Or that she is a latter day LBJ?

Hillary did not manage her campaign well (feuding staff, how money was spent, etc.) but she is ready on day one to be president?

I was an ardent Hillary supporter for president, but I'm not feeling it for her as VP. Maybe I'm not to Karol's level...yet.

However, what about Wes Clark? Besides his comment about how "riding in a fighter plane and being shot down doesn't qualify someone for president," he seems to offer a great package to Obama. In fact, I see little to no detractors to Obama's campaign if Clark is the VP candidate. Well, he did support Hillary before Barack.

One of the problems about Hillary as VP is the vetting. It means a complete transparency on the finances, and Bill's would be under close scrutiny, in particular the multi-millions he has received for lobbying for foreign govts., corporations and fat cats. He made a lot of money from the govt. of Colombia, and from a Kazachstan interest. Bill was unwilling to release the list of contributors to his library. Tip of the iceberg. What I have heard is the Clintons would not have been willing to submit to that kind of vetting, if indeed they were asked.

If HRC=LBJ, then keep Obama the hell away from Dallas if she's the pick...

According to Drudgereport, "Obama-Bayh '08" campaign literature is being printed at known Obama Vendor's plant named Gill Studios. They also claim to have invented the bumper sticker.

<h2>Wicked disinformation? Maybe.</h2>