Thursday, August 09, 2007
(10:28 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Armchair Political Consulting
It seems to me that Hillary is not non-Republican enough. Both John Edwards and Barack Obama would, it seems to me, be significantly better. Obama may be able to pull ahead, but Edwards doesn't appear to have a realistic shot.So here's what they should do: Obama should immediately declare that if nominated, he will selected Edwards as his running mate, and Edwards should tell all his supporters to switch over to Obama. It seems likely to me that the majority of Edwards supporters would choose Obama over Hillary anyway. To sweeten the deal, Obama could say that he'd put Edwards in charge of policy in his key areas -- poverty, labor, whatever.
I don't know if the numbers add up to the point where Obama would then become the front-runner immediately, but even if they wouldn't, it would allow the Democratic candidates to break out of the current impasse where if candidate A attacks candidate B, it ends up benefitting candidate C -- perhaps allowing real differences to come out more clearly. Of course, given that Hillary is a rank opportunist who will say and do literally anything to get elected, maybe that wouldn't make a difference.
If an Obama/Edwards ticket ends up carrying the day, that's the best outcome that could conceivably come out of this election -- both are young, so we potentially wind up with 16 straight years of pretty good presidents. The alternative is that we're forced to choose between Hillary and a Republican, and I fear that Hillary might not be "less bad" enough to stave off disaster.
