Unity Is...

I was inspired to do a little satirical copyright infringement by today's Love Is... How many people can make that claim?

I hope you'll forgive the image of the two aspiring Democratic nominees as naked midget adult children, as I hope the strip's copyright holder will forgive my trespass. Despite its being in turn silly, irrelevant, treacly, morose, and occasionally erotic, I still read Love Is... every day in the Citizens' Voice.

The battle will end soon, and I think we are seeing the true nature of the Superdelegates. As many of them are still active in politics and are (by definition) members of the Democratic Party, I believe they are seeing which way the wind is blowing and doing their best to get in the good graces of the person who will very likely be the next President.*

But Hillary slogs on, in what has amounted to the greatest voter registration drive in recent history. As both candidates are forced to campaign in every state, voters of every state are having the spotlight turned on them in turn.

Unless he screws up to a degree far worse than he has so far, Obama will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. The question then will be, who will he choose as a running mate? If you want to see a diehard Obama supporter's mood suddenly turn dark, suggest that Hillary would make a good Vice President. One questioner suggested just that to Barack Obama at a recent event, and the air was instantly filled with raucous laughter. Hillary as VP will be a harder sell for the Obamanites, who have been feeding on Hillary Hate for months, than it will be for the Clinton supporters.

If Obama chooses Hillary Clinton as a running mate I believe they will form an unbeatable ticket, with enthusiastic support across a broad range of voters who will be happy to see their candidate in office. If Obama chooses anyone else, he will have two tough sells ahead of him: first, he will need to work that much harder to get the most ardent Hillary Clinton supporters on board, the ones who, like many ardent Obamanites, are supporting the candidate but not necessarily the party; and then, he will have to sell his VP choice to all of the voters. It would be a much more difficult, time-consuming, and risky enterprise than going with the woman he has been trying to convince for so long to give up.


*Thanks to this past weekend's opening skit on Saturday Night Live for making this clear. It was a parody of General Petraeus's latest report to whichever Congressional committee he's been reporting to. The funniest part: the chair calmly announces "And we will now be interrupted for fifteen seconds by two Code Pink demonstrators," at which point two women in pink T-shirts holding a banner rise up and begin to shout semi-incoherently. After ten seconds they stop, and one asks the chair if they still have time. He responds that yes, they still have five seconds, and they proceed to shout for five more seconds. (Turns out this was a rerun from last month.)