Why Barak won't be Hillary's Veep

Rush Limbaugh said today,

Remember, the Clinton "southern strategy" is to lose South Carolina to a huge black turnout for Obama and then run around to the rest of the states and whisper, "Of course he won, look at all the blacks there," which is supposed to galvanize the whites in the rest of these states.  I'm telling you there's a race war going on and the Clintons are practicing this racial division in their own party like they are experts at it, and they have been ever since they were in Arkansas. 

Then he went on to discuss why Hillary won't put Obama on the ticket as vice-president.  Unfortunately, I believe that Hillary's political machine is too big and too powerful for Obama to defeat.  Unless something absolutely fantastical occurs, she will be the party's nominee for President. 

I've said for a long time that Hillary would never share the ticket with Obama, simply because he would command all the attention of the press, and his charisma and magnetism would be credited for an election win.  Hillary wants no part of that; 2008 will be her year, and hers alone.  And everyone knows that a Hillary White House will be commanded solely by Bill and Hillary Clinton.  There will be no room for another leader.  Besides, would Obama want to be part of the lies and corruption that will surely infiltrate another Clinton White House?

But there is something deeper, I believe.  Conservatives have long noted that the Democrats' commitment to civil rights, affirmative action, etc. seems to stop at the party leadership level, where rich white males have maintained their hold over the party.  Even though the politics of the party has continuously shifted leftward, there is still a glass ceiling in the Democrat party leadership structure.  Oh sure, the Democrats have been happy with their token diversity "office-holders for life" like John Conyers and Charlie Rangel.  They are happy that the current civil rights "leadership" is nothing more than a group of bought-and-paid-for Democrat shills.  And they have even (perhaps regrettably) given Nancy Pelosi leadership over the House of Representatives.  But it is crucial to remember that these token office holders serve at the pleasure of the party leadership.  And today that means that they serve at the pleasure of Bill Clinton.

I can think of no better example of a politico who has worked his way to the top of a political party's organizational system by using that system for his own gain, than Bill Clinton.  Clinton, if you recall, was mentored into politics by the famous Arkansas segregationist William Fulbright, one of the last truly powerful members of the all-white "good-old-boy" Democratic party political network of the old South.  Clinton knows how to work the system, and he has used the system to gain absolute control of his party.  Even though he left the White House eight years ago, he still controls his party. 

I don't think that Bill Clinton looks at the issue through the lens of bigotry.  I don't think he hates Barak Obama because Obama is black.  I think that Bill Clinton simply feels that he has paid his dues; he has done what his party's political system expected of him, and now he sits in the catbird seat.  And damned if he will allow anyone who hasn't played the same game and won it, to assume a position of penultimate power within the party that could threaten the way that things have always been done, and thereby undermine everything that he has earned. 

And until a new generation of Democrats is ready to push the remaining members of the Clintons' generation from power, that is the way that things will stay.

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1-25-08 - A Bit of Wavelength Sharing - Peggy Noonan writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we've done for you?