I got noticed by Markos on the front page of Daily Kos!

Unfortunately, it was to attack and take out of context what I wrote in this post at MyDD yesterday.

Markos didn’t like my opinion that it would be a political mistake for Barack Obama to choose a woman running mate other than Hillary Clinton.

Actually, “didn’t like” is a bit of an understatement:

This is such a crock of shit. After all the talk of Clinton breaking glass barriers, are her supporters still so hung up on her loss that they’re willing to create a new glass ceiling for women candidates, one that excludes anyone not named Hillary Clinton?

Fact is, the party is united behind Obama. In the latest Research 2000 national poll shows that Obama wins Democrats 82-9 percent, which is little different than McCain’s 83-10. In 2004, Kerry won Democrats 89-11, and Obama will be up in that range when all’s said and done. There are no more “party unity” concerns.

Throw in the fact that Obama has locked down the Latino vote, is winning women handily, has shown surprising strength in the Mountain West, the midwest, and even parts of the South. He has locked down the Democratic strongholds. It’s clear that Obama doesn’t need Clinton on the ticket.

I never said Obama needed to choose Hillary or that he is having problems uniting the party.

And of course I was not a Clinton supporter at any time and have not been advocating for her selection as VP (though Obama could do a lot worse).

Markos goes on to say,

I’ve got several people on my list of veep possibilities that would certainly reinforce Obama’s core message of change, and several are women (mainly Sebelius and McCaskill). I don’t have any inkling where Obama is going with this thing, but I do know that being forced to take women off his shortlist lest he offend some Hillary supporters is asinine. I doubt Clinton fought to shatter one glass ceiling to replace it with another.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius makes sense in that she is a two-term governor. I also like that she stepped in to block coal-fired power plants from being built.

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill would be a terrible choice in my opinion. She has less relevant experience than Obama and is on the right wing of the Missouri Democratic Party. She has a much less progressive voting record than Hillary Clinton in the Senate.

My comment in this thread at Daily Kos:

for the record, here is what I said

and did not say.

I did not say Obama needs to pick a woman. In fact, at the end of that very post I said I’d offer it to Wesley Clark if I were Obama.

I did not say Obama has a problem with women voters.

I did not say Hillary is the only woman qualified to be on the ticket.

However, she is the only woman who was the preferred presidential candidate of 17 million plus voters.

I do think that in light of this year’s extraordinary primary battle, it would be a political mistake for Obama to choose a woman running mate other than Hillary.

If Hillary were the nominee, I would also advise her against choosing a black man for VP other than Obama (though many would be qualified, such as John Conyers or Charlie Rangel).

To do so would be viewed as a slap in the face to Obama.

Also, Hillary wasn’t my first, second or third, choice, so I appreciate not being referred to as one of her supporters.

This comment got buried under an avalanche of comments agreeing with Markos and misrepresenting what I believe, but I wanted to set the record straight here.

Use this as a thread for more idle speculation about whom Obama should and should not choose as a running mate.

Several commenters at MyDD made the case for Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, who was an early Obama supporter. I don’t think we have a very deep bench in Virginia. It’s not worth giving up a governor to put Kaine on the ticket.

I still think that if Obama does not want to choose Hillary (and it looks like he doesn’t), he should choose someone close to the Clintons–and not Florida Senator Bill Nelson or Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. Not only are they both too conservative for my liking, we would lose a Senate seat if either of them became vice president.

UPDATE: Yet another report indicates that Hillary Clinton is not on Obama’s short list for VP. As I’ve said, I don’t think he would choose her unless he felt he couldn’t win without her, and he probably can win without her.

Today John Yoo, the great legal mind who shaped the Bush administration’s policy on torture when he worked at the Department of Justice, testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Look how he evaded a simple yes-or-no question from Committee Chairman John Conyers:

Conyers: Could the President order a suspect buried alive?

Yoo: Uh, Mr. Chairman, I don’t think I’ve ever given advice that the President could order someone buried alive. . .

Conyers: I didn’t ask you if you ever gave him advice. I asked you thought the President could order a suspect buried alive.

Yoo: Well Chairman, my view right now is that I don’t think a President . . . no American President would ever have to order that or feel it necessary to order that.

Conyers: I think we understand the games that are being played.

Click the link to watch the video at TPMMuckraker.

The Bush administration’s policy on torture is an international disgrace. One of its legal architects won’t even concede that the president  can’t order a suspect to be buried alive.  

Unfortunately, John McCain has supported laws that give the president the discretion to define torture however he wants.