Hillary's Choice: Quit Now For VP, or Risk Losing Everything...

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Wednesday February 13, 2008 · 8:22 AM PST

2008/02/13 · 08:22

I'm predicting that Hillary Clinton will soon accept a 'deal', perhaps in the next couple of days, perhaps in the next several hours, that will effectively end her campaign for President. The deal? She quits campaigning NOW---optimizing the Dems chances in the fall (think $$)---in exchange for Barack Obama's agreement to accept her on his ticket as his VP. This deal would virtually guarantee her place in history as the first female VP. If she waits too long, and plays out her long-shot chance to win it all instead, Barack will no longer have any compelling reason to consider her for the VP position.

If it is not already obvious within the Clinton campaign (and within the DNC leadership), it will soon become abundantly clear that they have nothing in their bag of campaign tricks that is going to give her the strong finish she needs to beat Obama.

Here is Hillary's dilemma: if she waits until Barack wins the nomination outright, she will then have zero leverage to make any kind of deal. Obama would then have complete freedom to select anyone he wants to run with him. But if she makes the deal now, she becomes the Heroin of the Party, all of her investment and sacrifice over the years will provide her with some very satisfying fruit. If she can't pull off some kind of face-saving maneuver like this, then the final word on her 2008 campaign will be that of embarrassment and failure.

Right now she has leverage. The longer she waits, the greater the odds turn against her, and the more she risks losing everything. She really couldn't make a play for this kind of deal prior to last night, because she was still leading in delegates and no one in her campaign would have accepted it, but now the chances of a deal are very, very strong.

I may not be an insider, but I don't think there's much doubt that she is contemplating this fateful decision right now. Having said all that, I'm not even sure that Barack will accept such a deal. But then again, it's pretty certain that all of the Democratic Party leaders in the DNC are going to be pressuring him to accept it.

What do you think?

UPDATE: A lot of those commenting seem to think that I am proposing this as a desirable outcome. NOT TRUE. I'm simply saying that I think HC will decide---at some point---that such a deal would be desirable AND that Dem Party insiders will try to persuade BO to accept the deal. Those are the only predictions I'm making.

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