Democracy for Vancouver

When is a concession not a concession? When it’s Hillary Clinton doing the conceding:

Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.
…
The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City.
…
The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.
…
On NBC’s “Today Show,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, “I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee.”

In a formal statement, the campaign made clear the limits of how far she would go in Tuesday night’s speech. “Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination,” the statement said.

“A strategic decision not to formally end her campaign” sounds a lot like her “strategic decision” to leave her name on the ballot in Michigan.

And the article is Clinton parsing at its finest: She won’t concede the nomination, but she’ll concede “that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.”

We haven’t heard the last of this.

I will say again: even if having Clinton as VP wins him the oval office, it will gravely undermine Obama’s actual presidency. Bill Clinton can’t see a parade without wanting to be the drum major, and there’s no way anyone’s going to set him in a corner and expect him not to be triangulating with VP Clinton every day, in every way.

Promise her a Supreme Court seat - anything but the VP slot. There are many things this country needs right now, but one of them most definitely is not another VP with a separate, power-hungry agenda.