The Dish

Matt on Clinton as veep:

…you don’t need Clinton on the ticket to unify the party unless Clinton wants to make it the case that you need Clinton on the ticket to unify the party but if she does want to do that, I think she probably has it in her power…But I remain skeptical that Clinton actually does want to be Vice President. My take is that a substantial swathe of her staff wants her to be Vice President because they think a "unity ticket" is now their best realistic shot at getting jobs in the executive branch. As I’ve observed before, Bill and Hillary have great fallback jobs — as multimillionaires, and the head of an important foundation and a U.S. Senator respectively — but that’s not at all true of lots of their campaign staffers.

The Clintons have no fallback jobs. This is their entire life. Losing is simply unimaginable to them. It’s been decades since it happened, and it was traumatic for them even then.

A reader writes:

I am a conservative leaning independent, who has long supported John McCain.  Over the past twelve months I have been captivated and inspired by the rise of Barack Obama.  When the primary process began, I assumed if either of these men could possibly (they were both such long shots) win their respective party’s nominations, I would vote for them.  Now I am truly torn between the two, as each embodies various aspects of what I expect from a commander in chief. 

That said, if Obama adds Clinton to the ticket as VP, the choice is clear and I vote McCain.  I know many friends who feel this same way.  Hillary must not be a heart-beat away from the Oval Office.

Greenwald takes on Ben Wittes. My response to Wittes is here.

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, 2 pm.

Up by nine over McCain.

After the Packer piece, James Joyner responds to Drum and Jonah Goldberg.

Matt Welch writes about McCain’s polyps. By the way, peniciilin is younger than John McCain.

One of many, many readers writes:

No! First of all, there’s a real chance that the VP would become president.  So if you think she wouldn’t be a good president, you can’t support her for VP for political purposes. Second of all, she’s been totally and thoroughly dishonest during the campaign.

Third of all, she’s trying to blackmail Obama.

They were doing a scorched earth campaign to win, then got quieter when it became clear she had lost.  Then over the past couple of days, she turned it back on again — talking about counting all the votes, and that sort of thing — to let Obama know that was her lever.  She’s saying, I’ll take my people and go home if you don’t put me on the ticket.  Caving into that sort of thing betrays weakness, and a president can’t afford to be weak.

Obama has to impose discipline on the party. It has to come from him. The Clintons have refused to get on board, and if they continue to behave in this way, they’ve got to get smacked down.  Not just because hillary as vp is bad for the country, and not just because she’s an awful person.  But because it has to be clear who’s running things.

People are saying that obama has to put Hillary on the ticket in order to solve an artificial political problem that’s all of hillary’s making.  And she’s pumping that problem up to increase her leverage. Obama simply can’t cave in to that.

If I wanted to vote for someone who would betray his core beliefs for political expediency, I’d vote for McCain.  We don’t need that sort of thing from Obama.

Jonathan Cohn on the McCain medical record release:

By the time you read this, a select group of reporters–apparently numbering about a dozen–may be inside a conference room at a Phoenix resort hotel, going over some 400 pages of Senator John McCain’s medical records….rather than make all the records public, the campaign has chosen to make them available to the pool reporters for a three-hour window. According to this account in the New York Times, the reporters can take notes but not make photocopies. The campaign is also making McCain’s doctors, from the Mayo Clinic, available for interviews.

This is absurd. Release all of it online. When a man is a cancer and torture survivor at 71, the health question is sadly relevant. I wouldn’t want this for almost anyone else – but he’s running for president of the US. You give up your medical privacy under those conditions. And any attempt to conceal anything will only fuel worries, not allay them.

Heh:

Obama insisted on a campaign with a low-drama quotient, and that’s basically what he’s gotten. If he wants to see a flurry of outrageous memos, suicidal bullying of the press, and prolific backbiting, he should pick Clinton.