My first VP guess was Bill Richardson. Regardless he has the most sterling résumé of any presidential contender, including Senator Clinton’s death-defying, bullet-dodging triumph in Bosnia and ending the Hundred-Year War in Ireland, nothing about him moved the voters to him during his presidential nomination aspirations. He’s a good guy you’d much rather bowl a few frames with than miss a game bowling to see him on the hustings. He just doesn’t inspire. Acknowledge that his Hispanic heritage and bilingual skills would be definite advantages for the Dems among Latino voters, they would not compensate for the larger 50+ year old, single-female demographic that may flee — at least that’s what they’re threatening — when Hillary falls. Furthermore, all public pronouncements to the contrary, Good’ol’-Boy, red-meat-eatin’, pickup drivin’, gun-ownin’, Caucasian Joe Sixpack is likely to feel uneasy enough pulling the lever for a brownish minority at the top of the Democratic ticket, let alone two!
Nope! Barack Hussein Obama is going to have to pick a white person as his running mate. (By the way, I intentionally included the senator’s middle name because the Righties absolutely will! So we better get used to hearing it, and learning how to combat it.) Not only must Senator Obama pick a white person, he’s going to have to pick a woman.
The party is suffuse with highly qualified, double-X chromosomed members; representatives, senators, and governors. So it’s got to be just the right one; not too liberal, and one with “executive” experience to balance that which Senator Obama lacks, and from a state and region the party must carry, if they’ve a hope of winning.
Arizona’s Governor Napolitano meets every imaginable criterion, demographic and résumé based. A former no nonsense prosecutor, she’s articulate, mentally sharp and the fact she is not — as is Sarah Palin — a former beauty queen, her presence and responses on the debate stage will bring home to the American electorate and disappointed Hillary supporters precisely why she won every county in a state that no Democrat should have won. Say it again, aloud this time, “every county” in a very red state. Governor Napolitano is currently a member of the Democratic Governors Association, previously served as Chair of the Western Governors Association and as Chair of the National Governors Association. The lady has the bases covered! Additionally, supporting my thesis that she will be the VP pick, she is a strong Barack Obama supporter.
— Ed Tubbs
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