Newsday takes a look at the idea bubbling in some Democratic circles -- that two are better than one.
By GLENN THRUSH AND CRAIG GORDON
CHARLESTON, W.Va.
There's only one problem with the idea of a Hillary Clinton- Barack Obama "Dream Team" ticket -- neither member of the team is ready to buy the dream.
With Clinton's White House hopes on the wane, chatter of a joint ticket with Obama on the top was making the rounds of Democratic power circles, the media and in the two campaigns themselves.
Obama -- who is said to have resisted the idea privately -- fueled the talk himself Thursday, telling CNN that Clinton is "an extraordinary candidate ... so obviously she'd be on anybody's short list to be a potential vice presidential candidate."
And onetime Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, now ABC's Sunday morning host, reported Thursday top Clinton aides were eager to discuss a peace treaty contingent on the joint ticket.
Clinton advisers deny the campaign is even considering the vice-presidential slot yet. Two people close to the former first lady . . .
. . .were pessimistic, saying she had been emphatically against accepting a number-two slot when the topic had been raised in strategy sessions.
But analysts say neither candidate may have a choice in the matter, particularly if enough of the 260-plus unaligned superdelegates make a dual ticket a condition of their endorsement of Obama -- as a way of mending the racial and generational rifts in the party.
"If Senator Obama is the nominee, it will be a very serious option that he has to give serious consideration to," says Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic party operative in Washington. "She's won a lot of delegates, she's raised a lot of money, she would bring a lot to the ticket."
The "Dream Team" idea is being pushed by Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, and former Clinton staffer Sam Arora. But here are some obvious impediments: the candidates' differing opinions about Washington, bitterness over the campaign and the difficulties of Hillary Clinton playing second banana -- and her husband playing third.
"It's think it's a nightmare," said Andrew Polsky, a political science professor at Hunter College. "There's a long list of her comments [by Clinton] that could be trotted out that would make it a very uncomfortable fit for her to be on the ticket."
A Clinton-Obama alliance seemed like a dream during a Clinton rally in the rotunda of West Virginia's capitol Thursday -- where she touted her ability to attract white voters.
"We need to bring back hard-working people back into the Democratic party," said Clinton, who earned less than 10 percent of the African-American vote in North Carolina and Indiana on Tuesday. "I'm winning Catholic voters, Hispanic voters, blue-collar voters and seniors, the type of people Sen. McCain will be fighting for in the general election."
Those remarks echoed comments in Thursday's USA Today, when Clinton said "whites ... who had not completed college were supporting me."
That characterization didn't bother many in the audience at the capitol Thursday, a crowd that contained only a handful of blacks.
"We have been ignored for so long -- the white, blue-collar people who have to work two jobs and make $20 too much a month to afford food stamps. She is talking to issues that are important to us," said Martha Gibson, 47, an accountant with the West Virginia Highway Department.