Hillary suspends her campaign
She may not have made any decisions on Tuesday night, in spite of Barack Obama's victory in Montana having bagged him the delegates he needed to claim the nomination. But at some point between then and now reality has kicked in; and I'm glad to say Hillary has finally put an end to the deathmatch. It's not been the most noble ending from her point of view, and her apparent hesitancy to get behind Obama feeds doubt about whether Hillary's supporters really will be reliable Democrats, come November. But at least she's making the right motions now. That's vital. Because John McCain will be a formidable opponent and if her party is going to put its man in the White House, it needs all of Hillary's backing and all her demographic. She and her husband have a big responsibility to deliver, just as others would have had to deliver for her had she won.
Will she be on the ticket herself? I hope not. Obama's appeal rests on his being new and different from Democrats of the past. While his inclusion on a Hillary ticket would have injected something fresh to her campaign, she just can't return the compliment. Far from it. Her involvement would simply sully his brand with the politics of the machine and the politics of the past. He needs to do without her. She does have a role in campaigning for him in some key states she won during the primaries - but that's all.
So who will he pick? A sure bet is that it'll be a woman. What was clear in the US when I was there recently was that liberal women had got behind Hillary en masse, as the personification of women's aspirations, and that a lot of them were intensely loyal to her. Now those people are bound to be feeling very deflated; but they'll feel dissed and ignored if Hillary's campaign doesn't bring with it a visible step forward for women in politics. Obama needs to choose a female running mate, someone who fits credibly with his profile but who also reaches beyond it, if he's not to throw away votes that should be his later this year.
Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas, has been mentioned most often, and my money is on her; Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill are also possibles.
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