Dream Ticket: the return of the rumor (Politics)

Rev. Wright’s voice has stopped reverberating in the media, former President Clinton seems disinterested with making waves, Barack Obama seems comfortable, and Hillary doesn’t seem to be rattling her sabers as often; a strange thing on the eve of a West Virginia primary that she’s expected to win by a mile.

With the exception of Tim Russert’s anything-but-tepid predictions, the media has sheepishly begun to declare Obama the inevitable Democratic nominee. Since a projected win in West Virginia won’t be enough to remedy Sen. Clinton’s ailing delegate math, political talking points have shifted to the consolation prize—the veep.

Over the weekend, CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider wrote an article exploring the significance of a decisive win for Sen. Clinton in West Virginia.

Schneider predicted that the Democratic constituency in West Virginia represents a serious problem for the Obama camp during the general election if he ends up winning his party’s nomination.

So much of a problem, concluded Schneider, that “If Obama gets the nomination and it looks like the only way he can win is to get those West Virginia Democrats back, you can be sure he will think seriously about asking Clinton to go on the ticket.”

This topic has been dealt with before, but once is never enough. Just like those really annoying inextinguishable trick birthday candles you buy your friends, the issue has flickered back to life again.

The “ticket” being referred to here, of course, is the Obama/Clinton “dream ticket” that so many love to fantasize about, but perhaps the notion of an Obama/Clinton ticket should be called the “pipe dream ticket” instead.

Media speculation that Clinton would seek, or that Obama would offer, the veep position on the Democratic ticket is a great way to fill airtime, but that’s about it.

Referring ad nauseam to a bad idea will never turn it into a good one, and this is especially true if there isn’t any concrete evidence to base the discussion on.

Let us not forget that despite an impeding sense of doom, Sen. Clinton has no intention of dropping out of the race. On “Fox News Sunday,” Clinton’s top strategist, Howard Wolfson, said that “We think Sen. Clinton is going to be the nominee,” and that he has “seen no evidence of her interest” in the veep position.

There is also an inherent fallacy of the “pipe dream ticket” that isn’t getting the attention it deserves: the “pipe dream” would make both candidates appear soft.

Sens. Clinton and Obama have spent a great deal of time and money debating change versus experience and how Washington can’t possibly endure both.

So to place themselves on the same ticket, in any order, would immediately cancel out both arguments, communicating only that neither candidate was serious about their political philosophies from the start.

It would, in short, be a terrible mess.

Still, this discussion has endured with complete disregard for the only two individuals that actually need to have it, and in the future, when this “pipe dream” fails to become a reality, I’m sure it will continue in the past tense.

“Can it happen” will become “Should it have happened”.

In either case, the answer is no.

–Joey Alfino, RED Editorial Staff