They are pissed. “It’s a slap in the face”… “Who can blame Obama for rewarding Patti? He would never be the nominee without her”… “the biggest f**k you I have ever seen in politics.”
This just deepens the questions I asked yesterday. Obama’s decision to make PSD the eventual VP nominee’s chief of staff is utterly, utterly confusing. His campaign has done much to court Clinton and her supporters since the end of the primaries, and he now praises Clinton regularly on the campaign trail. Hiring a staffer (specifically to that position) that Clinton broke with publicly and that Clintonites love to hate seems both graceless and politically stupid, two things Obama usually is not.
So did they think putting PSD in a senior spot would be a sop to the Clinton camp, only to have it backfire? Did they intend to stick a finger in Clinton’s eye, hoping the press wouldn’t notice? Did Clinton tell Obama in their private meeting at Diane Feinstein’s house that she didn’t want the VP slot, allowing Obama to put the best qualified person in the spot, regardless of past allegiances? Does the Obama campaign know that while many Clinton loyalists sneer at PSD, Clinton worked with her for 15 years and still feels a sense of attachment to her, and might be grateful that Obama offered her a chance to land on her feet?
This is the sort of ridiculous, uninformed, overstretched speculation you get when the chattering class is completely befuddled. It ain’t pretty.
