Seriously, maybe because this has been such a ground-breaking primary season, the old rule of allow the winner to pick their mate should be re-evaluated.

I agree with you 100% that the fact is that we are a coalition of varied interest groups.

I fear I will never see the day when Dems finally decide to accept politics for what it is: a blood sport in the pursuit of power.

I have already concluded that Obama will lose the GE in a devastating defeat should he get the nom., so it would be foolish of Clinton to take that ride (she clearly also believes he will lose catestrophically). Having said that, Obama needs to publicly offer her the spot and she needs to (and surely will) campaign vigorously for him after declining. I think Bill would also campaign for him if they approached him with dignity and respect.

The persistent failure to include competence issues in this discussion is to misunderstand and come up short analyzing these issues accurately.

Just a real basic way of isolating the issue.

Two baseball players.  One's an AA.  The other is a latino.  They each have the same set of policies with respect to game of baseball (see, stay with this OK), in otherwords, they both have the goal of getting base hits or hitting home runs when they come up to bat.  

And, truth be told, though no one would ever want to talk about it, the demographic of this particular baseball team's fans is made up of primarily equal parts AAs and latinos (if you don't think baseball teams take this sort of thing in consideration to some degree check out the LA Angels of Anaheim), but we still haven't talked about the most obvious thing.

The fact that one of these players is an unproven rookie who has shown some flash in triple AAA, and the other is a proven veteran still consistently hitting .340 in the bigs.

The bottom line is Clinton supporters, (Maybe we're deluded) have a baseline set of expectations from Clinton that we feel confident can be met based on historical data points.

The Republicans can't stand McCain, but they feel they need to back him up to keep Republicans in the White House.

But I'm not sure that this pairing will work as well as you'd like it to.

2 - Sen. Obama fears that Bill and Hillary would be running things behind his back if he was #1.

3 - Sen. Obama fears that Bill and Hillary would give him very little to do in office if he was #2.

4 - Sen. Obama would rather find a white guy with minimal baggage who can win over working-class white voters than to have Sen. Clinton as VP.

5 - Did I mention that Sen. Obama absolutely loathes the Clintons at this point?

Maybe ya' had to be there, but some of these #2 picks just boggle the imagination.  Eagleton secretly told Count Novakula in Apr 1972 that McGovern was "for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot."  Fine running mate, hunh?

I would argue that, using a broader definition, there are large differences (beyond the most obvious which is in health care).

First, I have no proof for this other than my eyes and ears, but Hillary seems to truly know what she wants to do.  Over and over again she has demonstrated mastery of a wide variety of issues.  You can see it in her answers to questions.  They are concrete.  Obama, to me at least, seems much more like Bush.  I can practically see him trying to remember what it was about the subject in question that he is supposed to say.  Think about the Fox interview where he hemmed and hawed about the capital gains tax, and finally fell back on, guess who's policy?, Reagan.  This in spite of the fact that he had given a specific, and different figure, than Hillary to Gibson's question in a debate that had not occurred all that much earlier.

Second, but related, is a work ethic.  No matter where Hillary is speaking, she has facts at her fingertips about the city or state.  She knows what the major issues are, what matters to people.  Obama seems to give pretty much the same speech everywhere.  (I noticed this first way back in the Iowa/N.H. days.  The speech Obama gave after New Hampshire was, minus the first sentence or two, the same speech he would have given had he won.) Yes, it shows off her competence, but it also indicates a respect for the people whose vote she is trying to get.  

Third, Obama is hung up on this "unity" thing - although he never explains how he is going to unify Reps. & Dems. in Washington other than, of course, by the sheer power of his presence. (Yes, I'm being snarky, but the only time I've seen any interest on the part of Republicans to "work together", has been when they were out of power. You'd have to have been living on a desert island for the past 15 years or so to think that both parties are equally responsible for the current climate of Washington politics.)

As far as I can tell, there is nothing Obama cares enough about to really fight for it. I suspect he'd be just as likely to throw his health care plan under a bus as his grandmother.   Hillary, OTOH, is not so naive.  I'd be willing to bet that for every program she wants to implement, she knows who will be for it, who will be against it, and what arguments she could make (or deals she could do) to win over enough of the latter to get what she wants.

I bought into this concept back then when Hillary was way ahead, and I still have the same enthusiasm for it. The perfect piece to the puzzle for me is that Hillary is Presidential material. The tough one to get us where we need to be before W screwed it up.

The Huzzah! is for any and all attempts at healing and coming together, thanks BTD!

Bottom line the VP must be able to take the reigns and he cannot. It's more than his lack of experience, it's his lack of judgment.

Having said all that, I agree the campaign has fractured the party. Obviously either African Americans or women would feel disappointment in zero-sum game for top spot. That means the winner reaches out to the other coalition for a candidate. Nor will I stand for this to be called"pandering" because it involves gender and race. After all we call it "political reality" when we pick VP candidates by geography.

We must find a way to avoid nominating a sure loser whose campaign so cynically deliberately divided the party and made racism, sexism, ageism. identity politics and class warfare the new face of the Democratic Party.

The only way I can see is for Hillary to nominate Al Gore, ask her delegates to vote for him, with the understanding that he will select her as running mate.  That would heal a huge rift in the party...put the grownups back in charge...tamp down the AA hysteria over 'stealing the nomination from Obama who deserves it'...for everyone knows that Al was the guy who had the election stolen from him and if anyone is 'entitled' to be the Dems president, it's Al.

I think it's possible...not likely, maybe...but possible.