Package Deals of Prejudice for November

As vice-presidential searches start, Democrats and Republicans are in a position to offer voters full-course menus to express their fears and hatreds.

The growing clamor for a Clinton-Obama ticket would give mysogynists and racists a joint outlet, while ageism and anti-Mormon intolerance would be provided by McCain and Romney, who are sharing barbecue in Arizona this weekend.

When the issue of a Catholic president was up in 1960 or a divorced man in Reagan's 1980 run, discrimination was relatively primitive. Now, in the era of anything-goes, ballots can proffer demographic breakthroughs wholesale.

The only problem would be disentangling which prejudices drew the most votes for or against each ticket, but that will be a job for the pollsters and pundits.

The LBJing of Hillary Clinton

Now that the question is coming front and center, Barack Obama may want to turn to his backer Ted Sorensen for advice about putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket with him, as John F. Kennedy did with his chief rival for the nomination, Lyndon Johnson.

Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, reports today that she "is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket."

After a bitter campaign, it won't be easy. Obama supporters, notably his wife Michelle, are reportedly opposed, but as Sorensen notes in his new memoirs, so was JFK's brother Robert. Yet Kennedy offered Johnson a place on the ticket, mostly to help win Texas and other Southern states in what would turn out to be a close election.

Moreover, Sorensen could also enlighten Obama about the virtues of converting a former enemy into an ally or at least neutralizing possible opposition. If Johnson remained as Senate Majority Leader, JFK told him in 1960, he "would be just impossible...Lyndon would screw me all the time."

Unpalatable as the idea may be to Obama's most fervent supporters--ironically, even Ted Kennedy has publicly opposed it--this could be another time when the Democratic Party needs unity more than a balanced ticket.

True believers in both camps will offer fervent arguments about why it wouldn't work but, in a year when so much is at stake, neatness may not count.

Hillary's Last Hurrah

So it ends not with a bang but a whimper, the slow dribbling away of her "tiebreaker" victory in Indiana as Barack Obama seals the nomination in North Carolina, "a big state, a swing state," as he put it, and more to the point, a state that gave him a resounding margin after the Jeremiah Wright disaster brought his viability into question.

The chatter about Florida and Michigan, the blather about remaining primaries should start to fade as the superdelegate slide toward Obama begins in earnest and the Democratic Party gets itself together for November.

Obama, in effect, gave his acceptance speech last night and began the campaign against John McCain. Clinton talked gamely about fighting on, but there was a valedictory tone in her voice. Both started the painful process of reaching out for unity and, if Obama chooses, sharing the ticket.

The New York Times headline, "Options Dwindling for Clinton," is an understatement. The campaign is running out of money, running out of arguments about electability and out of contortions to make the primary process look closer than it has been.

What Obama has accomplished in little more than a year, aside from the racial breakthrough, is unprecedented in modern American politics--coming from relative obscurity to take the nomination from a dynastic opponent who was almost universally believed to be unbeatable.

In the past month, he has been tested and toughened by the Wright stuff and surmounted it. John McCain is facing a long, hard summer and fall.