Richard Whalen

After a slow but steady media buildup of the Clinton’s “Dream Ticket,” Senator Barack Obama arrived in Columbus, Mississippi on Monday, March 11 and suggested that the Clintons were being duplicitous in their [Vice Presidential] offer, implying on one hand that he was not ready to be president but that on the other, he could solve the party’s political impasse by joining together. “I don’t know how somebody who’s in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone who’s in first place,” Obama said http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/us/politics/11clinton.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=obama+vice+president&st=nyt&oref=slogin. His point was hammered home by his Mississippi win over Clinton 60 – 37 percent.

And so, it is official: the battle will continue well into the summer. The question remains how do you really determine who is “winning.” Obama rightly says that he has won twice as many states as Clinton and he has won more of the popular vote. He also claims that he has more delegates. But despite the outcome of future contests, especially the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, it is looking more and more like the Democratic super delegates will decide the nomination.

And now that Bill Clinton has been muzzled, Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign appears steadier. Hillary has it where it belongs, on top and unseen in the campaign’s backroom. According to a senior Washington journalist, Clinton’s counselors are a pair of smart, tough veteran Democrats: Dick Gephardt, 67, and Tom Daschle, 60. If she can win the nomination, their savvy expertise will count most heavily on issues against McCain.

Dick Gephardt twice ran for the presidency and lost badly, but learned useful lessons. He is a favorite of the unions – hence he turned to his base for Hillary’s string of union endorsements and volunteers. He is a convinced trade protectionist and economic nationalist, whose themes are attuned to the deepening recession. As House Majority Leader, he held hostage President Bill Clinton’s most important bill, the North American Free Trade Agreement until he got anti-Japan “fair trade” amendments. Hillary is cool to NAFTA, on Gephardt’s advice.

Daschle, a South Dakota liberal, rose swiftly to become Senate Minority Leader and risked everything to oppose Bush’s invasion of Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Daschle denounced Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and delivered an impassioned speech on television: “I’m saddened, saddened that the president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war.”

The Iraq war is a personal as well as a political issue for Daschle, who narrowly lost his Senate seat to Republican John Thune in the 2004 elections that re-elected Bush. He’ll bring intelligent, energetic commitment to shaping Hillary’s anti-Iraq war strategy.

So Obama has made it very clear – there will be no “Dream Ticket” -- he is running for president, period. But despite his large victory in Mississippi, if he wants to pull it off, he has got to know that campaigns are won by candidates wise enough to listen to their backroom strategists and filter what he needs to win his party’s nomination.