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Hillary as VP? It’s a situation that has been pontificated upon a lot less in recent weeks because she’s done such a damn good job of bungling every chance she’s had and has compromised every good hand she’s dealt. There are a lot of good reasons why Obama would be wise NOT to pick Hillary as a VP candidate, but one real good one why she should.

First the negatives:

She have her own power base. That’s generally a bad thing for a VP. You don’t want someone that has the ability and the resources to go rogue from within your own administration.

She’s a women. Yeah, I know sexism blah blah blah blah. Can you join me in reality now? You already got the first African-American candidate, adding a female VP to the docket is just too much change in too short of time.

Bill Clinton….until a year ago, he was one of the best players in the political arena. Even if you disagreed with him, you had to admit that Bill was an awesome politician. He played the political game extremely well. For whatever reason, recently he’s shown his flaws and they are many and deep. The fruit has soured on the vine, Bill is now a liability.

She bring nothing to the issues table. Her platform is almost identical to Obama so she brings nothing to the campaign in that regards.

She brings nothing to the table state-wise. She’s a Senator from New York….a safe Democrat state.

No experience. One of Obama’s most glaring shortcomings is a lack of experience. Clinton is barely more experienced than he is so she does nothing to address that weakness.

Obama is rightly ridiculed for being a gaffe machine, but Hillary isn’t much better.

Baggage….Hillary has lots of it. Travelgate to Hillarycare, scandals are aplenty.

Okay I could probably go on more, but you get the idea. There are a lot of reasons why Obama would be stupid to even consider Hillary as his VP. Normally just a couple of the above would be a good reason why Hillary would be immediately crossed off any list of even remotely potential candidates.

However…..

There is one very big reason why Obama probably at least wants to keep that option open. Actually there are about 18 million of them. They are the people that voted for Hillary, and who have become very polarized over the course of this nomination process.

Now many of them at one point said they would never vote for Obama if he were the candidate. Yes, most of them will eventually come around and probably vote for Obama anyway. Just like a lot of conservatives will probably pull the lever for McCain just before they drown in their own vomit.

However, some of them won’t. In fact, some of them may even vote for McCain. Reports are they aren’t exactly a trivial number either, and here is a good example of one of them. Does she sound like she’ll “come around”? No.

And yeah, they make up a very small portion of the electorate, but also remember that today’s elections are decided by very small margins….a few percentage points. Even if 90% of Hillary’s followers vote for Obama, that’s still well over a million solidly liberal voters who’ll either stay home or vote for McCain. That’s enough to turn elections.

And it’s why I don’t think it’s quite time to cast aside the Hillary as VP possibility quite yet.