Veepstake Monday – The Inside Line: 06.23.2008

It’s been a bumpy few weeks for the Golden Child since he sealed the nomination. Is he exposing himself as a true politician and an Agent of Same, or is he just taking advantage of the ideological LSD trip that is his opponent, and counting on the fact that a flip here and a flop there won’t attract a whit of media attention when the rest of country is witnessing John McCain wandering away from the nursing home and tormenting locals on the city bus?

Nevertheless, all eyes are on him as he makes the first big decision of what could be an Obama Administration and choosing who is going to ride in his rumbleseat on the way to the White House.

Evan Bayh – Governor, Indiana: Uncle. This is where I jump ship, I’m afraid. This was a smart pick before the Senate got so very serious. The Democrats should win handsomely this fall, but a ginormous and filibuster- and cloture-proof Senate majority is more important than ever. No Senate seat is expendable, and if the Dems sacrifice this one in the interests of winning Indiana and possibly Ohio, they are guaranteed to lose one Senate seat, and that’s unacceptable in any equation. Na-na-na-na, hey hey…you know the rest. But this is still sorely tempting. He could very well win Indiana for the Dems, and if it’s close…well, what’s 57 Senate seats versus 56? If it means the Presidency?
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 19 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (6/9/08): 12 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (5/26/01): 5 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (5/12/08): 2 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/28/08): 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: Three words. Patti. Solis. Doyle. That Senator Obama took Hillary’s former campaign chief who allegedly left under rancid circumstances, and preemptively put her in charge of his would-be Vice President’s office, there could be no bigger fuck-you to his storied primary challenger. A Vice President gets the right to choose his or her Chief of Staff. That Obama chose his future VP’s own means only one thing: That Veep ain’t going to be Hillary. And he doesn’t want her anyway, because it’s going to mean he gets a sullen, curmudgeonly Bill Clinton as well, and the ex-Pres is going to be sticking his bulbous nose into every affair of state. Can you imagine what nightmare that would be for President Obama? Every morning, he’s going to wake up and pick up his Washington Post and New York Times and find them already highlighted, annotated, and dog-eared, with copious and overzealous notes written in the margins–and this will have happened hours before President Obama’s Vice President will have awakened. It will have been her goddamned husband. The right-of-first-refusal is gone; Barack Obama has made up his mind.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 144 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: (6/9/08): 12 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (5/26/01): 16 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (5/12/08): 14 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (4/28/08): 9 to 1

Bill Richardson – Governor, New Mexico: Still one of my favorite dark horses. But brown-on-brown, this is irresistible racist fodder to the morons out there, who are still aplenty. I’d like to believe otherwise, but we may not be that far removed from Plessy v. Ferguson when it comes to electing two brown men to the top two offices in the United States. That’s very sad if I’m right, because Bill Richardson is one of the smartest and most-qualified politicians who has walked this terra firma in our lifetime. I heard one comment a week or so ago that Richardson’s involvement in the Wen Ho Lee affair could be a dealbreaker, but that’s so Inside Baseball to most Americans that people are more likely to disqualify him for the silly beard he grew after he dropped out of the Presidential campaign (though, I have to say, he’s made it work). So, he moves up a few notches from two weeks ago. This guy would be an outstanding second-part of the ticket. One caveat: By a number of accounts, this is yet another randy Democratic Bill who is a White House sex scandal waiting to happen.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 8 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (6/9/08): 10 to 1
VeepsBlog 2008 Line (2/18/08): 40 to 1

Tim Kaine – Governor, Virginia: This one’s a strong late-comer, and he was a last-minute addition to the paddock since Ohio’s Ted Strickland gave his not-if-this-were-the-last-custodial-job-on-Earth refusal to even consider the position. It only makes sense: He’s a Democratic Governor in a tight race and from an unbelievably coveted state–the Democrats have not won Virginia since 1964. There’s a prominent Mother Jones study out that suggest that says a home state favorite son chosen as a Vice Presidential nominee can only be expected to sway the vote by 0.5-1.0 percent. But Virginia is damned close, and this is one race where a local boy could make a difference.
VeepsBlog 2008 Line: 4 to 1