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Rich,
I’m a liberal democrat and enjoyed your … take on Obama’s likely candidacy (I also get the feeling people will just be saying “Barack’s…” in a few months). H. Clinton has been a liberal stalwart since her husband took office and has survived a perfect storm of withering criticism and scorn, but I’ve been convinced for years that she lacked the charisma and regional base to hold a place on a presidential ticket.
What she lacks, and what Obama has in abundance, is the courage of her convictions. Reagan spoke to the gracious, optimistic hopes of conservatives, Obama speaks to the same impulses in liberals, and the independents and moderates who tune in to his message can easily get hooked by his tone of intelligent, gracious sanity. Now, he’s a serious liberal, and he’s black and he’s got no executive experience and it’s 23 months til the presidential election, so there will be many potential points of failure, but there’s no more compelling, positive figure in the mix today. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t appear on the 08 ticket, top or bottom.
Hillary is just too compromised, too much of a lightning rod, and too tedious to win the nomination, and when you think of what she brings to the VP slot you get ‘not a whole lot.’ The Dems don’t need to shore up the northeast, they need help in the midwest or the southeast, and our lady senator from New York is just not going to get that done.