Veepstake Monday: The Inside Line – 04.28.2008

Time to skip that house payment, kids–don’t worry, they’re too busy foreclosing on the real deadbeats to worry about an otherwise-upstanding citizen who misses one payment because it’s Veepstake Monday again. They’ll understand.

THE REPUBLICANS – JOHN MCCAIN

Mike Huckabee – Former Governor, Arkansas: Huck was back on a campaign trip with McCain this week after his Mitt Romney-denouncing letter of two weeks ago drew crickets and little else. Nothing would make him happier than forestalling his return to obscurity with a spot on the Republican ticket. There’s very little upside for McCain in this, though. He doesn’t bring much to the ticket save a vague likability (“He wasn’t as bad as the others. Seems like kind of a nice guy.”). Would reassure Tyson and WalMart execs who aren’t sure that McCain has a clue what to do with the economy. “Before” fat pictures could bring Nutri-System demographic. Still, Arkansas doesn’t deliver Veeps and isn’t going to start this year. Unless Hillary agrees to join Barack, but then again she’s from eleven different states.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 16 to 1

Rob Portman – U.S. Trade Representative: This was Bob Shrum’s prediction for McCain on Meet The Press two Sundays ago. And this is why everyone says Shrum has a weird blind spot when it comes to Presidential politics, and why this is the only level on which he can’t win. Rob Portman isn’t a Congressman, but a former Congressman, and a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget. And Bob Shrum thinks he’s going to be McCain’s choice. This man isn’t going to deliver Ohio, especially if Obama or Hillary pick Ted Strickland or Evan Bayh. He’s got a rotten YouTube moment against him in his jocular applauding of AM hate jock Bill Cunningham who pulled the “Barack Hussein Obama” slander during McCain’s fundraiser in Ohio in March. Bob Shrum needs a drug test.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 107 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 line (3/3/08): 77 to 1

Charlie Crist – Governor, Florida: McCain needs young, and McCain needs Florida. And gays wouldn’t hurt. Crist plays big with all three.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 2 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line  (4/14/2008): 3 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (2/18/2008): 6 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (3/31/2008):4 to 1

THE DEMOCRATS – BARACK OBAMA

General Wesley Clark: Barack made something of a rebound, so to speak, with footage of his pickup game this weekend, but he still needs some Y Chromosome cred. There are a lot of men in this country who have a non-sexual man crush on Wesley Clark, much like they did with Chuck Yeager a few decades ago. There are still some questions whether he’s found his campaign feet that he never did in 2004. Anti-war or not, Obama needs some military heft to blunt criticism of being a McGoverndalekakis wet noodle. Ain’t no Swift Boating going on with General Wes on the ticket.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 3 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/14/08): 4 to 1

Evan Bayh – Governor, Indiana: Keeps going up, especially with Indiana getting huge play in the primaries. I’ll put him at practically equal odds for either Hillary or Barack, with an edge to Hillary because he’s been in her camp since he dropped his own White House bid in December 2007, perhaps as a quid pro quo for a promise of a spot on the ticket with Hillary in 2008, since she was all but anointed at that point. He’s got to shed the Hillary yoke, but that isn’t out of the realm of possibility, since Hillary still isn’t stopping the bleed in spite of her big Keystone State win. He’s handsome and brings the gay, too. Obama needs the gay, especially if McCain picks Charlie Crist.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 4 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/14/08): 8 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (3/31/08): 15 to 1

Hillary Clinton – Senator, New York: You laugh, but we’ve come full-circle again. The Clintons are seeing the very real possibility of being blacklisted from the party if they continue burning the village. They’ll continue doing so until they don’t win the nomination, but as Bill Clinton says, the general election is where you fall in line. Hillary can have a possible post-2008 career as Senate Majority Leader, but that’s another campaign, and not a sure thing. She can sign on with Obama and she’s heir apparent in 2016. She’ll be 68, but that’s going to be 2016′s 63.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 9 to 1

THE DEMOCRATS – HILLARY CLINTON

Crickets…Take some smelling salts. This still isn’t going to happen.