Will Hillary run (as VP)?

Biden is a never-ending source of delight -- for those who don't like Biden. Whether he's chastising reporters for being out of shape, demanding that the wealthy show their patriotism by transferring their money to the middle class, making bizarre and ill-informed pronouncements regarding Catholic doctrine and abortion, or offending Ohioans en masse, you can really count on the guy to get it done (or, should I say, to get it done wrong). Nothing about this is new; it's just Biden being Biden.

If gravitas means being old, gray, and a Congressional seat warmer, Biden is the ticket. However, if gravitas means being thoughtful, informed and wise, Biden is, and always was, the comedy man in this straight man's role. Although Obama must have known going in what he was getting with Biden, you can't help wondering if he's suffering from buyer's remorse right now. That's especially true given the legions of women who took umbrage at the way he cavalierly insulted Hillary and who, in response, fled to McCain.

The question then, at least in the blogosphere, is whether Obama is going to pressure Biden to withdraw for some sympathetic reason, such as health or a family crisis, enabling Hillary to come in and save the day. While everyone with any sense will know that Biden's withdrawal is manufactured, some women may be so glad to see Hillary back on the ticket that they'll yield to the Democrats' siren song. Frankly, I've been one of those worried about this.

Noemie Emery, however, is much more sanguine. She thinks that, whether Obama wins or loses (and, of course, especially if he loses), she'll come out on top if she sits this one out:

If Obama wins, she gets to see her party in power, if that is her object. The problem is that the party is no longer hers. Or hers and her husband's. If Obama wins, the Clintons become history. They also slip down considerably on the great grid of power: She is eclipsed by a president who defeated her, a first lady who hates her, a loquacious vice president with a large, lively family, and a legion of people who early on threw in their lots with Obama, and have prior claims upon him and his loyalty. She becomes in effect a footnote to history, remembered perhaps for her personal dramas, her historic run in the primaries no longer remarkable, but overshadowed by Sarah Palin's run for vice president. Win or lose, Palin becomes the country's most visible she-politician, culture phenomenon, as well as the best bet to succeed John McCain at the head of her party. Hillary is yesterday's news, and has the rest of her life to brood on the mistakes that caused her to lose--very narrowly--the great prize she wanted and pursued, some will tell you, for the past 30 years.

This changes, however, if McCain wins. At once, she becomes the most important Democrat, the shipwreck survivor, the frontrunner for her party's 2012 nomination; the road not taken; the one that, if followed, would have led to the outcome for which her party has struggled so long. For four long years, she will be saying "I told you so"--to the super-delegates who didn't flock to her even when she won all those big primaries; to Obama, now back in the Senate, who didn't name her when he had his big chance. A deflated Messiah, a wünderkind who couldn't quite hack it, Obama would join Al Gore and John Kerry in the weary line of pitiful losers who tried and failed to match Bill Clinton's success. Bill Clinton himself becomes the Big Dog again, the one shining light in the overall darkness, the only Democrat to be elected twice since Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most successful Democrat since the mid-1960s, when Lyndon Johnson's luck, along with his party's good fortune, ran out. (Granted, this is a fairly low bar to get over. But still.) If you were Hillary Clinton, which prospect would you find more appealing? Let's guess.

That sounds like a reasonable Clinton-esque calculation to me, and one that is given more heft by the fact that Hillary's emissary (that would be Bill) has managed to trample all over Obama by heaping lavish praise on both McCain and Palin. The current Clinton tribe plan, therefore, seems to be to support generic Democratic issues, while building up the opposition. It's a long range plan, but certainly one that may benefit McCain/Palin in the short term, and one that seems antithetical to a Hillary October surprise.

The tide is turning

It's always fun to flirt with the edge of a cliff. We dance up to it, proud of our courage in getting so close to the that knife's edge between security and oblivion. But when we actually look into the abyss, well, that's when sensible people start getting nervous. Right now, sensible people are backing off of the abyss that is the Democratic party.

The Washington Post has just reported that McCain had his top fundraising month to date, although he's still not achieving financial parity with Obama:

Republican Sen. John McCain posted the best fundraising month of his presidential campaign in July, bringing in $27 million, but his supporters are bracing for the near-certainty that he will be operating at a severe financial disadvantage in the two-month stretch between the end of the party political conventions and Election Day.

Even the bad news in that paragraph -- that Obama is way ahead in the money game -- isn't quite as bad as it looks. To begin with, while the media has carefully looked the other way whenever someone tries to flag its attention about Obama's fund-raising irregularities, it's becoming apparent that at least some of Obama's money is actually funny money -- very funny. Thus, after spending countless hours pouring through Obama's public information, Pamela Geller discovered that all is not as it seems:

Half a million dollars had been donated from overseas by unidentified people "not employed".

Digging deeper, all sorts of very bizarre activity jumped at us. Dr and JJ continued to break it down and pull data from various sources. We found Rebecca Kurth contributed $3,137.38 to the Obama Campaign in 112 donations, including 34 separate donations recorded in one day,

How about this gibberish donor on the 30th of April in 2008.

A donor named Hbkjb, jkbkj

City: Jkbjnj

Works for: Kuman Bank (doesn't exist)

Occupation: Balanon Jalalan

Amount: $1,077.23

or the donor Doodad,

The # of transactions = 1,044

The $ contributed = $10,780.00

This Doodad character works for FDGFDGF and occupation is DFGFDG

The more questions we answered the more questions we discovered.

This means that Obama may not have quite as much spending money as he's been boasting about. More to the point, despite having had for some months enough money to make Midas jealous, Obama simply isn't moving up in the polls the way he should. The media is in love with him, the activists are wildly excited about him, and he's spending money like water, but he just can't seem to get that bump he needs to lock onto the White House.

Obama is also facing the ever present Hillary threat. Jonah Goldberg sums up that problem rather nicely:

For months now people have been saying to me, “Do you really think they’re gone?” “Is it finally over?” “Is the coast clear?”

The questions have been in response to Barack Obama’s supposedly yeoman service in putting an end to the Clintons in public life.

My response to those who believe our long national nightmare is over has always been: “Have you seen no monster movies?”

I suspect that there's going to be a fair amount of buyer's remorse at the Democratic Convention, and that gives Hillary the chance to pop back into her "rightful" place as the Democratic nominee. When I first realized this was a possibility, I got quite nervous. After having painted Obama as the worst of both the old and the new Left, Hillary was actually starting to look pretty good. I could see conservative Democrats who had gotten fearful of Obama, and who were eying the possibility of voting for McCain, heave a sigh of relief as a palatable Democrat took over the ballot.

The problem, of course, is the same old Hillary problem: While she may be better than Obama, vast numbers of American voters deeply dislike her, and they find unsavory the thought of her husband getting a second chance at those poor White House interns. In addition, the Democrats as a whole will have a problem with disaffected black voters who will be offend that the party, having first embraced Obama, then summarily rejected him when the going got a little tough. Just as hard core Hillary voters became hostile when the party dumped her for Obama (see this blogger, for example), the African-American community is not going to appreciate seeing that same little dance played out in reverse.

In other words, the Democratic party is caught between a rock and a hard place, both of its own making. Obama's money hasn't helped his candidacy as much as it should have and the fact that McCain is starting to see real money flow in is a sign that Obama's popularity is waning as McCain's rises. Even if McCain doesn't see any more substantial sums flow in, he's already well-positioned -- not by virtue of his own policies and campaign spending, but because of the myriad failures coming from the Democratic party. It was true, then, that this election was one for the Democrats to lose.

Believe me, I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. I know that there is still a very real chance that Obama will win and we'll see the Carter Presidency redux. Nevertheless, while a few months ago I was experiencing flat despair at the thought of the Obama juggernaut, I now feel a cautious optimism that the tide is turning and that sanity will prevail amongst the American voters.