Yes, Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday gave me a sinking feeling.  Electoral calculi logic are always a little odd to me – firstly, I or you or anyone can be comfortably out of step with the American public and psyche and that simply does not matter except with regards to Electoral politics.  The other thing is how much elections figure off on the fringes — the bulk of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are going to be voting for Obama, but nonetheless it is with Clinton’s support that McCain is going to drive around to try to shift out some supporters from her base of “women over 50 earning less than $50,000” believing Obama is running an “anti-woman cult”– insane as the idea of McCain getting this demographic that tends to be — for grabbing a nomination from what looked like it was rightfully Clinton’s.  What does it mean that Hillary Clinton continues her campaign?  How many of those Hillary Clinton voters does she “own” and is able to wave around and give to the other candidate?  (That last question would work the same way for Obama, or for that matter anyone else.)  Chin up, Democrats, from Harper’s Index for June 2008:

Portion of Barack Obama supporters who said in April they would not vote for Hillary Clinton if she became the nominee:  1/5.
Portion of Clinton supporters who said this about Obama:  1/4.
Percentage of John McCain supporters in March 2000 who said they would not vote for George W Bush: 51
Percentage who said this in October 2000:  39

If I could find this piece of writing on the logic of Hillary Clinton’s campaign over the past few weeks, I would lik to it.  Basically the idea was that Obama was not going to win was a rock solid factoid, and because of that even if you are hurting Obama’s chances, it does not matter because he can’t win anyway.  When he inevitibly loses, the niave Obama supporters will have learned that lesson.  And the Clintons, who have the only key the presidential election and who are sold on that election strategy and that one only, will be in the ascendary of the party again.  But this piece ended with Hillary Clinton going through the ritual at the end of the day of campaigning for Obama and gracefully stepping aside when Obama clinched the nomination.  Parcing through the electoral criticism of Barack Obama, which is that his narrow base in many ways looks like George McGovern’s base of support, Hillary Clinton’s in many ways looks like Walter Mondale’s.

Hillary Clinton cannot possibly be the vice-presidential pick.  It is easy to overthink these things, and I tend to think that thinking about vice-presidential possibilities is a pointless exercise — we are all out of the loop and have no control over the matter — but consider this :

We are at this ugly moment where Hillary Clinton is getting pillored with various sexist stereotypes and tropes, with a closed loop by her most media-sensationalistic supporters.   The problem with Hillary Clinton is — what sarcastically negative popular trope can I throw out that doesn’t play to this tendency?

Can Obama pick Kathleen Sebelius or Janet Napolitano or some woman unnamed, or has Hillary Clinton assuredly shut down any possibility for a female vice president?  Mind you, this is the surest route to having a viable female presidential possibility in this generation — otherwise, this rumor of how Hillary Clinton is brokering her power (and her power base) has just shut down that possibility.

And for all the problems Obama may or may not have with “hard working white people” of the lower-middle class, I suddenly have this thought that one of the logical picks — Jim Webb — is inoperable as well.  Something about past women in combat issues and book excerpts…

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