But What's In It For Me?

This has not been a good week.

Can we just assume that Barack loves his grandma and at least thinks highly of his country, and let it go at that? I think that’s reasonable.

Can we just assume that Bill Clinton is neither a closet klucker, nor the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy?

Can we just assume that Bill Richardson is not Judas Iscariot? That guy has been dead for a couple thousand years now – can we stop with the Judas bashing? There should be a statute of limitations on this.

News Item: Hillary is not campaigning on behalf of Barack Obama, so stop expecting her to say wonderful things about him. That’s his job. Both of these campaigns are now in full battle gear, and doing what campaigns do. They are trashing each other full bore. While everybody gets all emotionally worked up about who said what and where to buy the best Super Secret Decoder Ring to figure out what the hidden message is, nobody is examining what’s important here. We can all take a nice long snooze now and check back in after the convention.

Whaddaya wanna bet Bill Richardson is the vice presidential candidate at that point? I’d say the odds are excellent. I’m surprised at how little comment I’ve heard about all the political opportunism inherent in his belated endorsement. Bill Richardson simply held out until it became clear that he’d get more from the Obama camp than the Hillary camp. Why? Obama needs the Latino vote and has consistently failed to win it. The tracking polls have noted a spiking trend toward those voters turning to McCain over Obama. He can’t win the general election without them. Richardson as VP may well deliver those votes. There is virtually no chance of Hillary asking Richardson to run with her. Far from delivering anything she needs, he could actually hurt her. So if he’d rather be a VP than have a nice, juicy cabinet post, this is a no-brainer for him. There’s no big emotional struggle involved, except over whether his defection will be viewed as treachery that could seriously hurt his standing among important Democrats (no, that would not be you) if Obama loses either the nomination or the general election. If that happens, Richardson will be isolated and treated like poison ivy for years to come. No self-respecting bigwig will answer his phone calls or be photographed standing next to him. So it’s a risk. But he finally decided that he thinks Obama can pull it off. Calling for Hillary to step down was a bit over the top, but the sooner she gets out of the way, the safer Richardson will be. She’ll have to support him. So long as she’s running she can tear his ass up. They will never be friends again, no matter how many dazzling smiles they display for the cameras. That’s politics for ya.

The scary part is that many of the superdelegates will cast their votes in much the same manner. Everyone is focused on whether they’ll be afraid to alienate the young, new Obama supporters, or whether they’ll see Hillary as more electable if Obama’s polling numbers keep on sliding. But nobody asks what the superdelegates want for themselves. It isn’t about the voters. It’s about winning the election and having your support be seen by the eventual winner as worthy of rewards. Many of the superdelegates stand to gain or lose a great deal personally. Bill Richardson is just an obvious example. There are hundreds more just like him waiting in the wings to see which of these candidates will give them a little extra candy in their stocking.