LAS VEGAS, NV., 4 June 2008 — Once a long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, earned enough delegates Tuesday to claim his place in history.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, his never-say-die rival, however, has yet to give up. She said she needs more time before making her next move, and set off a rush of speculation this week when she openly hinted that we would be open to becoming Obama’s vice president — an option not warmly embraced by Obama supporters but welcomed by Clinton backers.
An Obama-Clinton ticket is an option that could heal the serious rift that has split the Democratic party.
That news didn’t stop an ebullient Obama from delivering a powerful victory speech in which he complimented the former first lady and firmly set his sights on defeating the Republicans in November, declaring, “America, this is our moment.”
In his first in the presidential election as the presumed Democratic nominee, he received a prolonged standing ovation yesterday in Washington at AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, after he gave a tough talk about Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Results from the party’s final two primaries in Montana and South Dakota Tuesday helped Obama secure the necessary delegate numbers to confirm his victory over Clinton.
Obama only won six of the 13 races in the last three months, and trailed Clinton in total votes. His victory owes a lotto the 11 consecutive wins after Feb. 5, analysts say. For Obama, the top priority is to mend fences with Clinton and unite the party as soon as possible. Clinton’s reluctance to concede the race has made the healing of wounds difficult and put party’s unity at risk. However, Clinton supporters lobbied yesterday to get their champion onto Barack Obama’s Democratic White House ticket.
Having banked nearly 18 million votes from the five-month primary campaign, Clinton told a rally here that her ardent supporters deserve “to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible.”
Those votes, amassed from blue-collar workers, women and Hispanics who proved resistant to Obama’s charm, could represent a powerful bargaining chip in the days to come.
“Obviously, it’s on the table,” Clinton’s campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN about the VP talk, listing all the swing states won by Clinton during the five-month nominating epic.
“She has always said, I will do whatever it takes to win in the fall. Whatever that option may be,” he said.
In any case, does Obama want to risk undermining his mantra of change by running with a candidate that he has said represents all that is wrong with Washington? And would the Illinois senator, the first black nominee of a major US party, want to have Bill Clinton looking over his shoulder in addition to the former president’s formidable wife?
“The vice presidential process is a serious process that will begin in earnest now, as we have become the presumptive nominee,” Obama’s Communications Director Robert Gibbs told NBC.
“I feel confident in saying that this party will be unified in moving forward, to make sure we have a Democratic president come November,” he said.
