The full article
Democrats need to stop second guessing: Joe Biden was 100% the right choice for Obama’s vice presidential running mate.
For some reason, the Monday morning quarterbacks are out in full force, lamenting over Obama’s decision to pass on Hillary Clinton (“if only he’d picked Hillary, Sarah Palin would be no problem!”). First and foremost, that claim is downright absurd. As Gloria Steinem said, the only thing Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin share “is a chromosome.”
But people seem to forget that just a few weeks ago, the Obama/Clinton ticket was universally a bad idea. Had Obama put Hillary on the ticket, he’d be in a world of trouble, far worse than he is now. He would have alienated thousands of people who simply do not want to see Hillary Clinton anywhere near the White House. Don’t be mistaken: there are a lot of them.
Here are ten more reasons why Obama made the right choice:
10. An Obama-Clinton Ticket Would Have Lacked Experience
Hillary Clinton is just under two years into her second term. Barack Obama is just under four years into his first. An Obama/Clinton ticket would have less than two Senate terms under its belt combined. The fodder that would have created for Republicans would have been never ending, especially considering that McCain’s chief charge against Obama up until now has been his lack of experience. Not so for the Obama/Biden ticket. Biden has been in the Senate for six full terms. That’s more than 35 years of service- more than enough to be a learned counselor to a young president with relatively little experience dealing with the complexities of American government.
9. Clinton Would Have Undermined Obama’s Message
Selecting Clinton would have directly undermined his message of change. By George W. Bush’s selection of the very men who ran the presidencies of his father, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford (i.e., Cheney and Rumsfeld), it was very clear that change was not on his mind. Obama’s mantra in the Democratic primary was that while the 90s were good, the best years are ahead of us. He hammered the point that he didn’t want to go back to the way things were then, he wanted to go a new direction. Hillary Clinton is a vestige of her husband’s administration. And while one knows exactly what kind of success they were signing up for with Clinton, theoretically, an Obama Administration knew no bounds when it came to potential. Picking her would have been a direct contradiction of his intent to bring new ideas to Washington.
8. Clinton’s Presence on the Ticket Would Have Galvanized the Right
There are a lot of conservatives who simply do not like John McCain. He alienated the religious right by calling their pastors “agents of intolerance.” He shot himself in the foot when it came to advocates of immigration reform with his support of the amnesty bill. Gun advocates? He burned that bridge when he effectively neutralized the NRA’s ability to donate to the campaigns of Second Amendment supporters. But put all that aside: if there is one person the right could not stand, it was Bill Clinton. Hell, they impeached him. There is no doubt that Republicans and conservatives across the country would have swallowed their pride and pulled the lever for McCain, if for no other reason than to prevent another Clinton from getting into executive office.
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