"Team of Rivals" Revisited: Hillary for Joe

Bag is in summer mode this week, recharging for the conventions. In the spirit of “what goes around, comes around,”  we have curated a group of posts that say as much about where we are or what we’re seeing now as what we saw at the time.   On each, we’ve added a few current thoughts. As always, we are interested in your take. We will be back in real time on the 20th.

Now that I look back on it, it feels like Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of State instead of Vice President was a wise one. There were few doubts that Clinton could handle the job and, if the Obama presidency went south, less blame for Clinton. The Obama presidency didn’t go south, necessarily, but Clinton turned her stint at State into a platform from which her popularity is not diminished if she runs in 2016.  Not only that, in removing herself from the fray, the extreme right wing got something else to concentrate on. Nice Call.

Here’s the original October 7, 2010 post.

******************************************

So they’ve talked out the Hillary-for-Biden 2010 swap and Joe’s fine with it.

Actually, though, it’s hard to completely dismiss the idea if the move, in energizing the women’s vote, also “protected the public’s taste” for Obama.

(caption 1: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, walk from the West Wing to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Dec. 1, 2009. caption 2: Vice President Joe Biden speaks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outside the Oval Office, June 10, 2009.  White House Photos by Pete Souza.)