Clinton as running mate could deliver key voters to Obama but should he select her with all her political baggage and record of attacking him? asks Denis Staunton.
STANDING BEFORE thousands of cheering supporters in St Paul, Minnesota, on Tuesday night, Barack Obama savoured the moment he has worked towards for 16 months as he secured his party's nomination. His moment didn't last long, however, because while Obama was celebrating in St Paul, defeated rival Hillary Clinton was addressing supporters in New York as if the race was still hers to win.
Clinton, who didn't acknowledge the fact that Obama now had enough delegates to put the nomination beyond doubt, was introduced as "the next president of the United States of America". But her focus has shifted to a new campaign - to persuade Obama to take her on as his running mate.
Obama had hoped to pivot neatly from the primary campaign to a five-month battle with John McCain, portraying the Republican as a standard-bearer for the unpopular policies of president George Bush. His campaign has been looking at venues in northern Virginia for a second victory rally this week, where the entire Democratic leadership would appear with the party's presumptive nominee.
First, however, Obama must work out what to do about Clinton and as soon as he stepped offstage on Tuesday night, he called the New York senator to arrange a meeting. Meanwhile, Clinton's surrogates have been talking up her credentials as a vice-presidential pick, arguing that putting her on the ticket is the best way to secure the support of the 18 million people who backed her in the primaries. Nobody in Obama's circle expresses any enthusiasm for Clinton as a running mate, partly on account of bruised feelings after a long, closely fought campaign but also because they fear she could undermine Obama's claim to offer a fresh start. Some are anxious about the role of Bill Clinton, who played an aggressive part in the campaign and whose private life is again under the spotlight following an unflattering profile in Vanity Fair.
Candidates seldom choose running mates on the basis of friendship or warmth of feeling and not a few presidential tickets have been characterised by mutual loathing. Traditionally, a running mate should offer one of three things: the prospect of winning a state that might otherwise not be in play; an appeal to voter groups with whom the presidential candidate is weak; or personal qualities that complement those of the presidential nominee.
Clinton's backers claim that she can deliver a number of key voter groups to Obama - older voters, especially women, Hispanics, Catholics and white voters who earn less than $50,000 a year. Obama has performed poorly among all these groups, particularly in big, industrial states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania and in the Appalachian states of Kentucky and West Virginia.
The most difficult group to win over could be older, white women, many of whom identified intimately with Clinton's bid to be the first woman president and some of whom believe she was unfairly treated by the media. Many American women over 45 recognise in Clinton's failure to win the nomination their own experience of being passed over for promotion in favour of younger men.
Speaking in New Orleans on Tuesday, McCain made an unsubtle play for such voters, praising Clinton and suggesting that "party elders" had handed the nomination to Obama. Obama must calculate if the perils of choosing Clinton as his running mate - which include her record of criticising him as well as her own political baggage - are outweighed by the danger of losing key groups to McCain.
With Bush's approval rating in the 20s and polls showing Obama ahead of McCain nationally, 2008 ought to be an excellent year to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Obama's path to the White House is far from assured, however, and many within his own party believe he will have great difficulty in securing the 270 electoral college votes he needs in November.
The contest between Obama and McCain will focus on 14 battleground states, with each candidate hoping to win all the states their party won in 2004 while adding a few others. McCain hopes to retain Florida and Ohio and to make a play for Democratic-held states in the Great Lakes such as Wisconsin while picking up others such as New Hampshire, where he is popular.
Obama will compete hard in Ohio and Florida, which have decided recent elections, but he believes he can transform the electoral map by winning states the Democrats have long written off, especially in the south and west. Among his prime targets is Virginia, which has seen big demographic changes in recent years that have helped Democrats to win two state-wide contests in recent years.
Obama also has high hopes for Colorado, which has seen an influx of young, liberal voters, but his most audacious plan is to pump resources into the four southern states of Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The Obama campaign is preparing to channel its exceptional organisational skills into a massive voter registration drive, much of which will target African-Americans, more than 80 per cent of whom supported the Illinois senator in the primaries.
Obama expects to raise more money than McCain, allowing him to advertise more heavily and to establish more field offices and the long primary campaign has left him with a bigger network of volunteers in most states.
If Obama's race presents a problem for some voters, McCain's age is a deal-breaker for others and the Republican will struggle to avoid being tainted by association with Bush.
McCain is unlike most Republicans in that he is popular among Hispanic voters on account of his support for immigration reform and among Independents because of his record as a maverick in the senate.
A poor public speaker who struggles with an autocue, McCain is no match for Obama at big, stadium events, but the Republican shines in intimate settings, enjoying the banter with an audience. McCain is also a brilliant and ruthless debater, which is why he suggested adding 10 joint town-hall debates with Obama to the standard three presidential debates. As a veteran senator whose personal story of wartime heroism is well known, McCain has a further advantage over Obama, whose exotic background has given rise to wild rumours.
As the Democratic primary campaign has shown, however, Obama is a tougher politician than many believed, with a message of change that resonates with an American public that is tired of war and battered by economic uncertainty. As he wound up his speech in St Paul, Obama looked ahead to the challenges he faces in the next five months but concluded that his moment has come.
"The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people," he said. "Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."
Denis Staunton is Washington Correspondent