Thanks for adding it.

I don't know why anyone would write this kind of crap,

To say it's "crap" or "nuts" as someone said above you is just plain silly.

Look at Hillary's poll numbers, the people she would appeal to, her record as an idefatigable campaigner, and the fact that she would add a little spark of excitement to a re-election attempt that could use a little spark -- it may be a useful move for Obama to make, or on balance, it may not -- but it's hardly crap or nuts! Or crappy nuts. Or nutty crap. That's all I'm saying.

You can't take the approval polls for HRC as SoS and assume that she would add anything to the ticket. Nor is it at all clear that she adds "excitement". From the appearances I have watched on TV, Obama himself generates a lot of excitement.

Last week, someone posted something that said compared the Hillary/Biden switch stories with the Paul is dead nonsense - They seem to have about the same amount behind them.

The sad thing is that Jon Keller, who has been an ardent Hillary Clinton fan since the 1990s, when he postulated a potential HRC Presidency, has not gotten over her losing in 2008. I wonder if the NYT's unflattering coverage of Gore and Kerry had anything to do with the editor's desire to see Clinton as President.

postion. This typically is the case when one isn't the president.

:eye:

nt

and Democrats.

She is massively polarizing, and brings in zero new voters. It's not going to happen.

Hillary has been the most popular politician in the nation since the fall of 2009. Oh, and BTW, her husband comes in second place.

Having said that, I don't think that she has any interest in being Obama's VP.

Are we on a right wing site now?

Plus, she'll never be a Justice on the SCOTUS--she failed the bar exam, for goodness sake!

The election where the candidate who won most big state primaries lost to the candidate who won a handful of votes in caucus states, thus giving him a slight pledge delegate advantage?

Great sytem the Democrats have in place. That is why I'm now an Independent. Both parties stink, one just stinks a tad less than the other.

As for the bar exam, she passed the one in the state where she chose to live and practice. Do you honestly think that she wouldn't have passed the bar exam in DC if she had taken it again???? Please.......

Besides, she has zero interest in being in the SC, she has said so for years. Ditto for Bill.

That double-edged sword cuts in both directions.

"Do you honestly think that she wouldn't have passed the bar exam in DC if she had taken it again???? Please......."

That's not the point. Failing the bar exam is indicative of someone who does not possess a first rate legal mind. That might be overcome with a career of distinguished legal practice. But in this case?

I know many an attorney who failed to pass the NY Bar exam the first time out and they are excellent attorneys. I also know a couple of them who not only went to Harvard, but passed the bar the first time out and they are mediocre attorneys. Passing the bar exam the first time out is not indicative of the ability to become a good attorney. Ask anyone in the field.

Like Hillary, she, Powell, and Rice all had approval ratings higher than their President. The ONLY poll that polled Hillary, as a challenger, vs Obama had Obama winning by 20 plus votes.

No one has polled how Obama/Biden and Obama/Clinton would do against likely Republican tickets.

Not to mention, you can not use approval ratings to say who is the most popular. ( Leaving names out - imagine that two people had 55 and 60 approval ratings. Is the second more popular? Not necessarily - it could be that they had 55 yeses in common and all 55 preferred the former. ) In fact, Obama topped the list when people could select just one man - meaning he beat Clinton. (Hillary as you know topped the women.)

Please, you know that it's not a valid analogy. Hillary came close to being her party's nominee. The dynamics are totally different from that of the average SOS who preceded her, including Powell.

It is true that she claim close to being her party's nominee, but she did not become the nominee. Colin Powell was strongly encouraged to run for the Presidency and had he run, he could very well have won in either 1996 or 2000. Hillary was also First Lady - another point you could make. Both First Ladies and SoS almost always have higher approval ratings than the President. (I know of know case where either was not true the conditional language is used out of caution.) I seriously doubt you would be arguing the same had John Kerry, who actually WAS the nominee, were SoS and had similar approval rates.


The fact is that in the only poll that put Obama head to head with Clinton, he beat her by 20 points.

she was ahead by more than 10 points of all of them. Obama didn't fare as well. BTW, the poll that you are quoting from is quite old.

The poll I quoted is the only time anyone polled who Democrats wanted as their nominee.

Hillary is far more loyal than the party deserves. It will be Obama/Biden.

As to her contention that Bill Clinton is number two - he is pretty far behind Obama here and even GWB, who benefits from Obama getting the lion share of the Democrat's "votes".

... of course in different - male/female - categories.

That stuff like this remains a bone of contention here is truly lame.

I really can't believe the high profile HRC deadenders, including Jon Keller.

Could I then say that Chocolate and what ever vegetable are equally well liked if both were the top with 17%?

What the poll does show is that Obama is more admired than Bill Clinton.

She has topped that poll every year since she became first lady, except for 2 years when Laura Bush came in first place and Hillary came in second place (one of those times was right after 9/11).

Keller says it's "kicking around the blogs". No, that's not what I'm seeing, I'm seeing pundits keep pushing the rumor and the blogs saying "whatever."

Do you think the media will play with this as long as they played with the idea of the Beatles reuniting?

whateva

It's not going to happen......

1) The air of desparation that would surround such a move would do more harm to Obama's chances than any good Hillary could do. But more importantly...

2) VICE PRESIDENTS DON'T MATTER. Seriously. There isn't a shred of evidence that vice presidents do anything to help or hurt a ticket (even Palin; does anyone think McCain would have closed that 7-point gap with someone else?). The there's a single voter on the ticket who might not vote for Obama, but would reconsider if Hillary were occupying the largely powerless position as veep, is ludicrous on its face.

I do think that Palin actually hurt McCain because I know people who were on the fence in my majority old money Republican county, who reluctantly voted for Obama because she was pretty scary.

I also agree on the air of desperation.

In addition, it ignores that Biden has - often quietly done an excellent job on important issues. For instances, in an anti-Romney foreign policy oped that Kerry wrote this weekend, he says:

"Our presence in Iraq now is a diplomatic one because our challenge there now is diplomatic; we’ve left behind a robust civilian presence to help the Iraqi people shape their future. It will require frequent and frank discussions with Iraqi leaders that Vice President Biden has had time and again, urging them to make smart decisions."

Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2012/01/08/kerry-reporting-for-duty/#ixzz1izFwBOjb

This is a rare public mention of the fact that it was Biden, who was the point man for Obama in Iraq. This was an important job and although initially there was talk of one of the special envoys handling this country, it was Biden who handled it, instead of the state department.

respect, Biden was the ONLY Democratic party presidential candidate on that stage who got it right regarding Pakistan.

I'll take my chances with him.

Kerry and Hagel took a long trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2008 with Biden - where they were forced to land due to snow in the mountains. Supposedly, this was when the three of them designed a plan to try to improve relations with Pakistan that was a key part of the Obama Pakistan policy - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23279522

Other than Kerry, whose positions have often influenced Biden's, there are very few Democrats who got more right than Biden in recent years. The same can not be said of Romney.

For a DU JK discussion of Romney's very, very weak foreign policy knowledge, I gathered some DU2 links. Forgive the fact that all of these relate to times Kerry and Romney have fought on foreign policy - they were selected for the DU Jk group and because I could easily find them on DU2 JK. The oldest article from 2006, speaks of the the war on terror - and even then Kerry was speaking - as Biden did in 2007 - about Pakistan.

Here is what I wrote there:
Here is a Boston Globe article on Kerry and Romney sparring on terrorism in 2006. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=273&topic_id=98771

The BG article in the OP is interesting and now that 5 years have passed, it is clear Kerry could not have been more on target - and David Wade was right in saying, "Mitt Romney's command of national security is about as real as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" (If you read down the thread, there are other links and some excellent anti-Romney facts from the MA people here.

In 2006, the Boston Herald went after Romney for leaving MA in the midst of devastating floods to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to get foreign policy creds - pointing out that it won't work -
[div class = "excerpt"]
So there’s no way Gov. Mitt Romney isn’t going to take advantage of his last year in office to engage in this utterly shameless exercise - made all the more amusing by the attendant spin. The governor’s visit to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba a month ago was supposed to be a chance to update officials there on Massachusetts’ “best practices” in its prisons.

His current trip to Iraq and Afghanistan is “about seeing our men and women from Massachusetts” serving there, he said. Although he’ll also be stopping in Pakistan and getting some face time with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. All so at some appropriate moment he can say, “As I was saying to Hamid Karzai last time I was in Kabul. . .”

Of course, Sen. John Kerry could so one-up him on that score. In brief remarks last Friday to the New England Council, Kerry dropped enough names of foreign leaders to fill several rows of the U.N. General Assembly, including that of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Karzai (who was the star attraction at a Georgetown dinner party thrown by John and Teresa).

Although it is disappeared from the Boston Herald site - not even showing up as archived - it is saved in TAYTAY's post. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=273&topic_id=88188&mesg_id=88266

Romney is smarter than Perry and Santorum, but he has very very little knowledge on foreign policy.

Kerry in 2010 also completely demolished Romney's stupid oped against START. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2010/12/new_start_debat.html?comments=all#readerComm ( from the comments, the BG buried this response - not including it in the published newspaper and not front paging it on line.)

with visceral Hillary-hate!

I think your second point may be the most valid of the two -- Vice Presidents don't matter, at least not that much usually. However, do we have to go back to FDR to find a sitting President changing up his VPs? Just because that was so long ago, perhaps if Obama changed his VP, the novelty of it these days would in fact create a certain amount of excitement. Hillary is popular, and of course, the prospect of electing the first female VP might energize a lot of normally not-too-political women.

I think you're right that it WOULD seem "desperate" IF Obama was drastically behind in the polls right now, but he isn't. Current polling of Obama vs. Romney generally shows a tight race, with Obama up a couple of percentage points, which is how I think this race will go in the end -- Obama vs. Romney, a close race, with Obama the favorite. But because the race will be close, I think picking Hillary would be a nice way for Obama to pick up a point or two, to give himself a little insurance of victory -- that would work, in my opinion, but wouldn't seem desperate.

There are also those that would withhold their vote if she was on the ticket especially if Obama pushed Joe Biden aside to accommodate her. At best, it would be a crapshoot.

So, there's that.

Obama has already asked Joe B to be his wingman again and that's that.

I cannot WAIT until the Dem Convention is finally over and Obama/Biden is rolling.

What stupid, stupid conjecture when this was quietly and matter-of-factory settled months ago.

What's the GOP paying these shills to stir up the PUMAs?

Hillary would attract a lot of flak from the Limbaugh crowd. No. No. No.

And Hillary has a harshness about her that a lot of people don't like. Biden is a great VP.

Hillary comes across as opinionated and unyielding.

I will never forget that ugly video of her with the Code Pink ladies. She was rude. The ladies were not. The Pink Coder ladies seemed to expect Hillary to at least listen to them and respond with respect when they told her they had been to Iraq and that Bush was wrong about what was going on there. Hillary would hear none of it. She did the grown up equivalent of stomping her feet and leaving in a huff.

No. Not Hillary. She is an excellent Secretary of State. But don't put her in the position of vice president. She would not play second fiddle very well. Biden does.

and he's not going to dump Joe Biden. So get over it!

Must have been a slow news day.

I'd ask to recommend me.

Given that he was editor when Judith Miller aided Cheney in pushing lies about WMD. He was STILL editor when the NYT praised Bush's second inaugural to the heights. Totally ignored was that Bush essentially spoke of Iraq being an attempt to "spread democracy" - which was exactly what Bush had denied for two years - and if said would have cost him the election.

What seems clear is that he is either a neo con or flirted with it - and that may explain the really biased coverage of the 2004 race - where Bush was covered by Elisabeth Bumiller, who always gave him the benefit of the doubt - even when there was none and agreed with the public editor, Okrent (sp?) who backed a reporter who justified writing that Kerry was a social loner by saying that she spoke to 20 long term friends from at least college days - because apparently, you can be a social loner and have more than 20 very close almost 40 year long friendships.

She was on WJ one morning and managed not to know anything about the Ohio recount.

Deal already!

SOS is a much better gig and she has chosen to leave that job early next year.

Furthermore, if she changed her mind and chose to run for president in 2016, she doesn't need to do it as VP. Not too many VPs have become president.

them get the nomination used it to get name recognition and status. Hillary already has near 100% name recognition.

her office as she sees fit.

There are a couple of responses that are fair-minded, practical considerations of the idea.

I myself am open to the idea, but not wedded to it. I think, on balance, it would help Obama's re-election campaign. Would it be a magic bullet? No. It may not even be, on balance, the best move to make. I think reasonable people can disagree about it.

But the vast majority of the opposing responses don't even consider the plausibility of the idea -- they engage, instead, in visceral Hillary-hate.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the great majority of those who can't get past the Primary Wars these days are not the old Hillarites -- they are instead the "sore winners" of the 2008 primary season.

Obama may decide to make the switch. Whether he does or doesn't I'm sure he will make the decision on practical, dispassionate grounds. I don't think he's a sore winner.

Is this "political scientist" Bill Keller "knows" seriously suggesting that Obama might consider appointing the Vice President to the post of Secretary of State? At the same time?



This is trollery by Bill Keller at its most epic.

First of all, this isn't want Obama or Hillary for that matter want to do, or even thought about. Its just some radical Hillary supporter still pissed she lost in 08. Second of all, Obama has already proved that he doesn't need her or anyone else besides Biden to win. Also, how pathetic would that look to voters out there? They would probably be thinking, he is desperate and is afraid he's going to loose. Obama would be ripped to shreads by the media as well. Just imagine the hate that would manifest from the blogs, media fauxnews etc, the wingnuts would have a field day. This will never ever happen!!!!

And by "it" I mean the ignore thread function.

This has to be the dumbest fucking idea since Kriss Kross tried to convince kids it was cool to wear their pants on backwards.