Hillary's Next Mate

It’s been like waiting in line to get tickets for a rock concert. Yesterday the “Hillary Is 44” site promised: “Tomorrow we will address potential Vice President choices. Don’t miss it!”

So here we are with knapsacks, water bottles and eager faces, and the winner is...

James Webb, the junior senator from Virginia, who makes Barack Obama look like Robert Byrd when it comes to experience in elected office--less than six months—although he did serve as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan years.

After considering Obama (“many questions he must answer, soon and thoroughly”), Bill Richardson (“solidifies the Latino vote for an already popular with Latinos Hillary”) Evan Bayh (“made some dumb personnel decisions for his campaign but quickly corrected them, which we found impressive”) and Tom Vilsack (“might bring in Iowa’s 7 electoral votes”), the Pink Brain Trust decided on Webb, citing “Republican David Ignatius,” a Washington Post columnist, commenting on Webb’s Wall Street Journal OpEd titled “Class Struggle”:

“’The Democrats need to embrace the fact that the greatest issue in America today is economic fairness,’ he says. He argues that if the Democrats construct a ‘fairness agenda’ that tilts toward workers and away from corporations and the rich, ‘they will win big.’ John Edwards hasn’t had much luck so far with the issue, which he has made the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. But some influential Democrats, including former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, share the focus on fairness.”

Senator Webb, decorated Vietnam war veteran, author of eight books and philosophically an admirer of the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, is an impressive man who, on his first Senatorial trip to the White House had a publicized run-in with the President about Iraq, where his son is serving.

Vice President? Sen. Clinton may want to wait until she wins the nomination before thinking too much about it.