I'll start by saying I have no inside information on whom Obama is going to pick for Vice President.  Neither does anyone else, except Obama and maybe a few close advisors, and anyone who tells you differently is lying.

  Likewise, I'm not going to tell you whom I want as Vice President.  I have ideas, but they may look quite silly in a few weeks.

  However, I do have a few ideas about the kind of Vice President Obama needs to pick for this election, if he wants to make winning easy and fun.

Here's my best guess as to how the Presidential election will play out in November 2008:

The striking Obama victory, historic as it was, has left some of his supporters in a state of unrealistic euphoria.  

I understand that they take great joy in winning and beating a tough opponent.  But today's round of front page essays pretending to "analyze" the past race -- and especially focusing on Hillary Clinton's mistakes, real and imagined -- is not at all relevant to the road forward.  Hillary Clinton is not going to be the Democratic Presidential candidate.

Obama is.

Back in early February, as the Democratic primaries began to heat up, I took a vacation from Daily Kos.  Too much of the blog had become an evil-minded slander match between the supporters of two candidates that I liked and respected.  There was too much impugning of motives, too much attribution of fictional malevolent characteristics to both candidates, and a failure to appreciate that both Obama and Clinton were, in terms of positions, very nearly the same, and that they both represented historic opportunities for change.

When I took my vacation, I thought that it would only be for a couple of weeks; that by Super Tuesday, at the latest, the primary season would be effectively over.

UPDATED with new figures.  See below.

Yesterday, and still today on the rec list, you could find the following claim made:

   Analysts at the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

   Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
   Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

   Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
   Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

   The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the least.

Unusual indeed.  

Here's what the Presidential candidates are saying about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto today on their blogs:

The preamble to the United States Constitution states that the Constitution of the United States is  "ordained and established" to "establish Justice, insure [ensure] domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence...".

To ''ensure domestic tranquility''.  What does that mean?  It means that it is the government's purpose, duty, and responsibility to make sure that people can live peacefully within the boundaries of the nation; that they will not be afflicted by riots, rebellions, or wanton criminal activity.  The government exists ''to that end'', and insofar as it fails to achieve that end, it is a failure of the government.

Yesterday's murders at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University are direct evidence of just such a failure to ensure domestic tranquility.  And while some talk about nationalities and psychologies and social pressures, the focus on the individual who did the shootings is a distraction and a misdirection from the basic failure in governance.

According to this article, a recommendation has been made to create a "forever stamp", a stamp which is good from the time you buy it "forever", regardless of whether the price goes up.

That's a long overdue bit of sanity in the postal department, which has been requiring people to buy extra .02 or .03 stamps for marginal increases in price.

The bad news is that they want to raise the price of a stamp to .41.  I realize that it's "only" two cents, but we are getting pretty close to outrage territory.  It should not cost half a dollar to send a letter.  Postage was never supposed to be a serious burden on the ordinary person who likes to send friendly letters, or has to send mail to pay bills.  Ordinary people who buy stamps are not sending out bulk mail solicitations or jamming up mailboxes with advertisements -- they should not bear the brunt of postal expenses.

   What Lamont won in the primary was the right to the Democratic Party label.  This was a very significan win: in the first place, it gets his name on the ballot, and it opens up endorsements and checkbooks which wouldn't have been available to him otherwise.  Lieberman isn't smiling today about his loss.

   Nonetheless, Lieberman still has grounds for optimism.  What we saw in the primary was the opinion of Connecticut Democrats.  Now we have to throw Republicans and Independents into the mix.

   For more analysis, see the flip:

If you are of a certain age or older, you might well have had The Dream too.  If you were born after, say, 1985, you might not know what I'm talking about. I'll try to explain.

The Dream is a little hard to describe, because its particulars never are the same twice.  The precise events of which it is composed, however, are not the point of The Dream.  Perhaps it is a manifestation of a deep-rooted psychological trauma; perhaps it is, in some sense, a warning.  But The Dream is not about its story.  The Dream is about a feeling.  The Dream is about fear.

I'm not interested at this point in debating the desirability of this development; it seems to me that the time for debate has passed.  Instead, I would like to call for those who agree with me to take some practical steps toward founding a new party that has the internal cohesiveness and willingness to staunchly oppose both the daily more extreme Republicans and the useless rump of the Democrats.

Please read  below the fold:

My Fellow Germans,

I address you today to awake you to an alarming danger that threatens the Security of our Fatherland -- a danger that comes to us, not from any foreign enemy, but from those here at home who are hostile to our war effort.  I need hardly remind you who they are: radical Socialists, pacifists, revolutionaries who have been waiting years to overthrow the Empire.  What they contemplate is no less than treason.

It is with tears in my eyes, therefore, that I see weak-willed, craven politicians surrendering to their extremist demands; that I see deputies to the Reichstag - even those who have fought bravely in our previous wars - standing on the floor calling for the end of our noble effort, seeking to break our Will-to-War.   It is as if a madness has overtaken the German state.  I address you here to stiffen your resolve, to encourage you to stay the course until all is won.

    After reading the discussions and considering the results of the 2004 elections, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that a new party is needed.  Not a "Third Party", like the Greens or Libertarians or Reform, nor an "Independent" running for President, but a new First Party, replacing the Democratic Party.  The reasons are these: problems in the structure and organization of the Democratic Party; problems in the loyalty and cohesiveness of Democrats; 'branding' and image problems related to the Democratic Party.