But like I said, thinking about this over the past couple days, I’ve really started to hate the idea of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  First of all, a lot of Obama’s primary campaign support came from Democrats who wanted to keep the Clintons as far away from the White House as possible.  But now he’s voluntarily bringing both of them, along with their unbridled ambition, their penchant for backbiting, and all of Bill’s undisclosed foreign donors into the heart of his administration.  If there is a major scandal that brings down Obama in 2012, I can easily see it coming from Clinton’s State Department.

As for the Team of Rivals concept Obama keeps talking about, according to political science professor Stephen Teles, that may be a misreading of history:

I am not at all sure that I understand Obama’s reasoning in considering HRC for Secretary of State, but my gut tells me that we may be seeing an instance where politicians get in trouble through the misplaced use of historical analogy, in this case the “team of rivals.” Abraham Lincoln really had to have a highly inclusive cabinet because: a) the Republican party was still not a completely institutionalized entity, and to keep it together in its first shot at power Lincoln needed all the major figures in the party to be represented and; b) the country was at war–a real war–and that almost always calls for inclusivity, even to the point of having governments of national unity. Neither of these factors apply in this case. Obama has massively more control over the Democratic party than Lincoln did, and while we are in an economic crisis, it’s not nearly as bad as the Civil War or WWII. So the conditions that necessitated a “team of rivals” don’t apply. I’m increasingly wondering if this will turn out to be a “circular firing squad of rivals.”

Not to mention the fact that Americans overwhelmingly voted for undivided government.  Butting heads is fine up to a point, as long as all those heads are pointed in the same general direction.  With Clinton, nobody knows where her head is at, as it tends to change frequently, dramatically, and without warning, depending on the circumstances.  Teles goes on to voice more of my concerns about a potential Secretary of State Clinton:

[F]rankly, I just don’t trust Hillary. There is no evidence based on the historical record that she is a competent manager (and plenty of evidence to the contrary–her campaign and the Clinton health care process are only two examples), or has the best interest of our chief executive at heart. So given that the structural conditions that necessitate a “team of rivals” approach don’t apply, I find the argument for this idea extremely weak.

And that’s really what this all comes down to: Does Obama trust Hillary Clinton?  Does he trust her to be the competent manager that she has yet– in 35 years of public service– to show herself to be?  Does he trust her not to say one thing to his face and then do her own thing behind the scenes?

Again, the politics of this are brilliant.  The move singlehandedly caucus blocks Hillary’s presidential ambitions for the next eight years and moves her and her camp– who might otherwise take it upon themselves to lead the criticism against the White House– firmly into the Obama tent.  And it puts the Clinton brand– still beloved around the world– back on American foreign policy.  But in practice, it could turn into an unmitigated disaster.  I have a feeling that this decision will be seen as the first real turning point of Obama’s first term.  Clinton will either be a spectacular success or a spectacular failure.  There’s likely no middle ground here.

The host predicted that President Obama would have a miserable term and face a challenge from within his own party in 2012, likely from Hillary Clinton. “You watch,” he said. “In a year, the Clintons will orchestrate a campaign to declare this a failed Presidency.”

Another guest, a trader and market strategist who had voted for Ralph Nader, agreed about 2012, but according to a different logic. He expounded on a belief he held regarding the cycles of history and the markets. … According to pi-cycle theory, after a failed attempt at a rally between now and next spring, the market will not hit bottom until June, 2011, so Obama may be doomed to muddle through a deepening recession and the unpopularity that comes with it, and whoever succeeds him in 2012, should he lose, will then have the chance to ride the recovery—to be, in the public’s untrained eye, the transformative F.D.R. or Ronald Reagan that people dearly want Obama to be now.

I tend to agree that things are going to get worse before they get better.  It’ll take Obama at least past the midterms in 2010 to start seeing some tangible economic results from everything he’ll be doing to dig us out of Bush’s hole.

What better way to defuse a potential threat from the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party than by making Hillary Clinton your main international spokesperson?  As Secretary of State, neither she nor Bill Clinton would be able to even hint at discontent within the party.  Much as Colin Powell didn’t go public with his concerns about the Iraq War until well after Bush broke everything in Pottery Barn, Hillary Clinton would also not deviate from her role as the good soldier.  And for a sitting Secretary of State to mount a run against the incumbent president would be logistically impossible (she would have to resign first, and do it within the first two years to begin building the necessary support).  Obama would essentially be neutralizing the greatest threat from within his own party until 2016.

Who else is going to challenge him in 2012?  John Edwards?  Dennis Kucinich?  Mike Gravel?

UPDATE: Nico Pitney at HuffPo is reporting that Obama offered Clinton the Secretary of State position in Chicago yesterday.  I had a feeling the fact that Obama’s interest in her was leaked at all meant the story was real.  Politically, it’s a brilliant move, whether she accepts the offer or not.  On the merits though, I’d rather have John Kerry or Bill Richardson running the State Department.  All the arguments I made in the primary season against Clinton’s foreign policy credentials and managerial skills– or lack thereof– still stand.

But she’ll be at least adequate in the position, if not surprisingly better, and the value of so explicitly putting the Clinton brand back on American foreign policy can’t be overstated.  There’s really no clearer way to say to the world, “The America you once knew and loved is indeed back in business.”

The most entertaining take on today’s news comes from Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics, who earlier today– before news of the offer was reported by HuffPo– strongly criticized what he called “an obsessive political press corps” for jumping on the Clinton rumors in a post titled “The Silly Season Continues.”  Again, this was written today:

Just how desperate for news is an obsessive political press corps now trying to find its way after one of the biggest elections in history? Exhibit A is the mindless speculation that Hillary Clinton is being considered for Secretary of State, a story that’s now been picked up by just about everybody.

We don’t know where this nugget of information came from or whether it’s legitimate, but in today’s media environment – especially on matters such as cabinet appointments and the like – things like accuracy and solid sourcing are irrelevant.  All we know for sure is that Hillary Clinton is in Chicago today.

Oops.

www.HillaryClinton.com

No group was more loyal to them than African-Americans; and in the end, like everyone else, African-Americans realized that the Clintons are frauds, disloyal to the core, cynical to their finger-tips, and finally, finally, returned the favor. … This will be history’s verdict: in the end, the Clintons were defeated not by Republicans, but by African-American Democrats. How wonderful. How poignant. In the end, the karma gets you. Maybe it had to be this way. But this final coup de grace against these awful, hollow, cynical people is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Many Clinton supporters and conservatives continue to downplay the importance of African-American voters by treating their near-unanimous support of Barack Obama as a foregone conclusion. But how quickly they forget that as late as November, it was Hillary Clinton who enjoyed the overwhelming support of the African-American community, leading Barack Obama in this demographic by 25 points. (This is back when Obama wasn’t black enough.) Here’s the lead from one CNN story in October:

Poll: Black support helps Clinton extend lead
Wed October 17, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s lead over Sen. Barack Obama, her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, is growing among African-American voters who are registered Democrats, and particularly among black women, a poll said Wednesday.

Among black registered Democrats overall, Clinton had a 57 percent to 33 percent lead over Obama.

That’s up from 53 percent for Clinton and 36 percent for Obama in a poll carried out in April.

But sometime in December, as Barack Obama first took a serious lead in lily-white Iowa, the Clintons began launching an inexplicable and increasingly deliberate series of race-baiting attacks in an attempt to turn Obama into “the black candidate”– culminating in the apocalyptic aftermath of South Carolina. It was then that the Clintons decided the black vote was lost to them for good, and that they would make no serious attempt to get it back. Not only that, but they decided that as long as the black vote was out of play, as long as the same black Democrats who saved Bill’s presidency during the impeachment years and affectionately crowned him “the first black president” were now useless to them, then they might as well double down on the race-baiting.

The fact is that by conceding the support of African-Americans– a group that is statistically overrepresented in Democratic primaries– Hillary Clinton lost the nomination in January. It was the equivalent of running a 100-meter dash and giving Barack Obama a 25-meter head start. Had Clinton won even 25% of the black vote throughout the primaries (instead of the 10% she ultimately did), it wouldn’t have been enough to entirely close the elected delegate gap, but it would have gotten her close enough– maybe within 100 elected delegates, 50 if you count Michigan and Florida– to plausibly make her case to superdelegates.

As it stands now, she’s got no case and no claim to the nomination. And black voters did it.

In the long and sometimes ugly history of the United States, rarely has justice for African-Americans come so swiftly and so unanimously. Rarely has democracy been so neat. Black voters around the nation saw a wrong and righted it, they saw the Clintons and their Republican-imitating, racially-divisive, Southern strategy politics, and knocked them cleanly off their pedestal.

With the upcoming nomination of Barack Obama, the first black major party presidential nominee in American history, 2008 will be seen as one of the great moments in black history. What should never be lost in that accomplishment is the near-equally impressive triumph of African-American voters over a would-be political dynasty that did everything it could to trivialize, neutralize, and silence their voice.

UPDATE: The New York Post reports that August 28th, the night Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, is the 45th anniversary to the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Obama will win North Carolina by 10, Clinton will take Indiana by 5.  African-Americans and the under 40 crowd will vote for Obama, white women and everyone over 90 will vote for Hillary, nothing will change, and we’ll learn nothing we didn’t already know two months ago.

As the cratering of newspaper circulations accelerates (thousands a week are now abandoning the Times) and network-news audiences continue to shrink, for big-time mainstream journalists to seem even more out of touch makes some of them panic. And … so … it’s all … his fault, that highfalutin Obama! Certain journalistic stars these last few weeks … reacted by parroting the Clinton campaign’s faux-populist talking points about Obama’s condescension toward the yokel class. But pandering to the yokels, pretending to share their tastes and POV? That goes pretty much unchallenged.

If the wellborn New England Wasp George W. Bush (Andover ’64, Yale ’68, Harvard ’75) could be successfully refashioned as a down-home rustic, why shouldn’t Hillary Clinton (Wellesley ’69, Yale ’73) be talkin’ guns and drinkin’ Crown Royal shots and droppin’ all the g’s from her gerunds whenever she speaks extemporaneously these days? Naked disingenuousness apparently isn’t as off-putting as, say, failing to pin a tiny metal American flag to one’s lapel.

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Is it just me or does Hillary seem to have trouble with predictions?

Their latest tactic is to convince people who don’t know what they’re talking about that the race should be decided not on delegates, but on the popular vote.  And Pennsylvania primary votes were still being counted Tuesday night when Clinton and her surrogates began making this argument:

After last night’s decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama. Estimates vary slightly, but according to Real Clear Politics, Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama’s 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes. ABC News reported this morning that ‘Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama’ in the popular vote. This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan.

To people who know what they’re talking about and who have been paying attention to the race, this is literally one of the stupidest things ever written.  Even ABC News slammed the Clinton campaign for misrepresenting what their report actually said.  But to people who don’t know what they’re talking about, this popular vote argument makes a lot of sense.  It could resonate especially with Democrats who feel that this situation echoes the 2000 presidential race, where Al Gore won the popular vote but was denied the presidency.  In each case, the Clinton campaign would argue, arcane electoral rules and regulations overruled the popular will of the people.

This argument is such nonsense that it won’t convince more than a handful of superdelegates that Hillary Clinton has any rightful claim to the Democratic nomination, and any superdels who are convinced by this line of reasoning should be promptly stripped of their duties, if not their high school diplomas.  But the problems this argument could cause Barack Obama in the general election– where a large number of former Clinton supporters, especially women, could be convinced that she has been denied what is rightfully hers– cannot be understated.

The longer Clinton and her surrogates are allowed to peddle this popular vote myth among the masses unchallenged and unchecked by facts– while Obama and his surrogates waste time talking about the now moot points of delegates and math– the more difficult it will be for Obama to win Clinton’s quickly hardening (that’s what she said) constituency in the fall.

The argument against the popular vote myth is a simple one to make, and there are two main points that should be hammered home repeatedly:

1. The 2008 Democratic race is and always has been a race for delegates, never for popular vote.  If the race were in any way ever about popular vote, no one would campaign in Iowa or New Hampshire.  And as I recall hearing from one Obama surrogate last week, if popular vote mattered in the least, Obama would have spent the two weeks prior to Super Tuesday camped out in California (population: 36 million) or Illinois (pop. 12 million), running up the score in those highly populous states.  He certainly wouldn’t have spent time campaigning in Idaho (pop. 1.4 million) or Delaware (pop. 850,000), and neither would Clinton.  Wyoming (pop. 500,000) would not have been the battleground state it was, with both campaigns criss-crossing the state for a week to win votes (read: delegates).

So the point here is simple: If popular vote was really a legitimate measure of the Democratic race, why did Bill and Hillary Clinton spend the same amount of time (about a week) campaigning in Wyoming as they did in California– a state with 70 times more popular vote?  Conversely, does it even make sense that California should count 70 times more than Wyoming?

2. Hillary Clinton’s current claim to the popular vote lead assumes that the vote tally in Michigan is legitimate.  This is a state where neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards’ names were on the ballot, due to an early-state pledge that all the candidates– including Clinton– made while campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire (Clinton left her name on Michigan’s ballot but insisted it was just for show).  This is a state where Dennis Kucinich came in second.  This is a state where Hillary Clinton herself made this crystal clear statement last winter:

It’s clear. This election they’re having is not going to count for anything.

But most dubious of all, Clinton’s claim to the popular vote in Michigan assumes that the following vote tally is absolutely, straight-faced legitimate:

Clinton: 328,151, Obama: 0.

The point here: Does the Clinton campaign– or anyone– really believe that Barack Obama would have received zero votes in Michigan had that state followed the rules? (The case against Florida is just as strong, but probably too complex to sell to the masses).

Lastly, here’s the simplest and best way for the Obama campaign to put a stop to all of Hillary Clinton’s claims to the popular vote lead: Take it from her in every possible measure.  Run up the score.  Stop going after delegates.  That race is over.  You won.  A lead of 150 delegates is exactly the same as a lead of 140 delegates.

So for the next two weeks in North Carolina and Indiana, forget about picking up those one or two extra delegates in blue-collar districts that are demographically tailored to Clinton’s strengths.  Let her have the delegates.  Campaign non-stop in African-American, affluent white, college, and rural communities, and focus on nothing but turning out as large a vote as possible in those areas.

If you win the popular vote in those states, you take away Clinton’s last halfway-marketable claim to the nomination.  Even if she convinces the entire Democratic Party that the popular vote is the most important measure of the race and that the results in Michigan and Florida should count double, it won’t matter if she’s behind even then.

The argument the Obama campaign has been making since February 5– that the leader in pledged delegates should be the nominee– is the right one, and makes for an ironclad case to the superdelegates in August.  But if the Obama campaign tries to make the same semi-complex argument to the masses– people who don’t know what they’re talking about– as they do to the superdels, the race very well could go until August.  Popular vote may be one of the least legitimate measures of the race, but because it involves the simple art of counting, it will resonate with a lot of people– especially Clinton supporters who want desperately to believe that their candidate is still in it somehow.

If the Obama campaign lets this ridiculous popular vote argument fester much longer, then not only will Obama be– by Hillary Clinton’s carictures of him– too inexperienced, too black, not black enough, both too hawkish and too dovish on foreign policy, and maybe but we can’t know for sure too Muslim, but he’ll also be a thief– just one more man who took what rightfully belonged to a woman.  And no doubt, he’ll have a lot of very scorned, very vindictive former Clinton supporters to deal with in November.

Those who fail to learn from history will be doomed to four more years in Iraq:

“Every day they run a primary campaign, we run a general election campaign,” explained Mark McKinnon, McCain’s senior media adviser, as the campaign bus rolled through Kentucky. “And every day we run a general election campaign is a good day for us.” That was not all. McKinnon, who used to work for George W. Bush, said he saw an historical analogy. The spring of 2008, he claimed, was shaping up to be as fruitful for Republicans as past cycles.

“In the Bush campaign we used to say that we won the campaign in 2000 and 2004 between March and June,” McKinnon said later in the day. “And I think the way things are going we could say that McCain won this election between March and June.”

If she had won by 15, the race changes.  If she wins by 3, the race changes.  But like we’ve seen in pretty much every contest since Super Tuesday, the race has decided to remain steadfastly and stubbornly stagnant.  Obama wins, but only where he’s supposed to; Clinton wins, but only where she’s supposed to; and neither wins by enough to bring anything approaching decisiveness to the race.  Clinton will pick up 15 delegates tonight, meaning that her chances of winning the nomination and her chances of dropping out of the race both just went from none to none.

In that vein, I can go ahead and predict the next several results with absolute certainty.  On May 6, Obama will win North Carolina, Clinton will win Indiana.  May 13, Clinton will win West Virginia.  May 20, Obama wins Oregon, Clinton wins Kentucky.  June 3, Obama wins South Dakota and Montana.  The superdelegates will trickle in at a painfully pointless speed for Obama, every meaningful Democratic party leader will stay on the fence, John McCain will continue his cross country tour on the Free Ride Express, and both Democratic candidates will have more baggage and be less popular than they are now.  There.  There’s the race for the next six weeks.  I just saved us all 42 days of our lives.

And a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.

These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.

Of the state’s remaining 84 slots, only 55 pledged delegates will be distributed based on the statewide popular vote, with the state’s remaining 29 seats going to unpledged “superdelegates.”

The 103 district-level delegates are not distributed evenly. Democratic-leaning congressional districts are awarded more delegates than Republican-leaning districts. The state’s 2nd District, a Democratic bastion centered in Philadelphia, has nine district delegates to divvy up among Clinton and Obama. The heavily Republican 9th District, in the south-central part of the state, has just three.

In other words, no matter how badly Clinton trounces Obama in the rural middle of the state– and it could be by considerable margins in some parts– his stronger support in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh will count for more and erase most of the delegate gains she picks up around the state.  CQ Politics’ analysis has Clinton winning the popular vote by double digits and only picking up three delegates across the entire state.  Regardless of what the popular vote will be, if she doesn’t pick up at least 20 delegates in Pennsylvania– something she failed to do in Ohio and Texas– it’s a massive loss for her campaign.

The simple math is that Clinton is currently 160 delegates behind Obama, with 570 delegates up for grabs.  If, on Wednesday morning, she is 140 delegates behind with only 412 delegates left for both candidates to win, the race is over (even more over than it is already; definitely way more over than it was back in February).  In that post-Pennsylvania scenario, she would need to win more than 65% of the remaining delegates, which would require 70% to 80% of the popular vote in most states with no losses anywhere.  Which part of North Carolina– where polls show Clinton to currently be down by 25 points– is Clinton going to win by 70% of the vote?

But beyond the numbers, there’s also the narrative.  Obama’s campaign– or common sense– has already won the expectations game, with the conventional wisdom being that Clinton needs a win of ten points or greater to truly claim victory.  Part of the sting of the Ohio and Texas losses was mismanaged expectations; doing too much highlighting of the few polls that showed Obama closing fast or winning.  The pre-primary polls look similar in Pennsylvania as they did in Ohio, but no one is going to call Clinton “The Comeback Kid” if she wins tomorrow.

So here’s the prediction: The late undecideds will break for Clinton as they did in Ohio, newly registered voters will break for Obama.  Philadelphia will go heavily for Obama, they’ll play Pittsburgh to a statistical tie, and Clinton will win everywhere else but not by the landslide margins she needs.  I’ll stick with my original prediction and say that Clinton will win, and it won’t be close.  But it won’t be big enough for her to make any appreciable gain in delegates.  I’ll say Clinton by 8.

I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran.  In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

I’d love to see the full context of this quote, which we won’t get until the interview airs tomorrow on Good Morning America.  I’m guessing the first sentence is specifically in response to whether America would defend Israel from an Iranian attack.  Fair enough.

But the second sentence is mind-blowingly irresponsible.  What kind of attack on Israel exactly would lead a Hillary Clinton-led America to “totally obliterate” a country of 70 million people?  In what worldview is that an acceptable real-life response, let alone something that’s even appropriate for a presidential candidate to think?

Again, I’ll have to see the full context of the quote before I declare that Hillary Clinton– with her latest Bushian display of foreign policy testosterone– has officially moved from “at least she’s better than Bush” to completely unfit to lead the free world.  But with or without context, I’ll take John McCain’s temper over Hillary Clinton’s calm and in-control threat to kill 70 million people any day.