Everyone knows that Barack Obama is not going to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Given the acrimony of the primary contest it was never likely that Obama would tap Hillary, but any hope that he might was wiped out in the days before the last contests in Montana and South Dakota when Clinton said:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

To which, Michelle Obama responded:

“Send us good vibes. Pray for us. Think positive thoughts. But most of all, be vigilant. Be vigilant about stopping this kind of talk. It’s not funny. You don’t have to like Barack to dislike that kind of talk. Be vigilant about stopping that kind of talk.”

In other words, Michelle Obama took Clinton’s words very, very personally. And that should really settle the issue of whether or not Hillary Clinton will share a ticket with Sen. Obama. She won’t. But that has not prevented people in the Clinton Camp from keeping the pressure on. This morning it comes via David Paul Kuhn in the Politico. Here we are faced with specific threats.

“If he picked Claire McCaskill or [Janet] Napolitano [or Kathleen] Sebelius, I think it would annoy women,” [Geraldine] Ferraro said.

Ferraro added that “those are women who we spent our lifetime helping run for office” and that “a lot of us are not happy with these women for not supporting Hillary because they came to us for help based in large part on their gender.”

“I would be very concerned about his judgment if he offered the position to another woman before offering it to Hillary Clinton,” [Marcia] Pappas, [who heads the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women] said, “or any person.”

To truly understand this mentality, you have to look at this:

Pamela Sumners, who directs the Missouri chapter of the abortion-rights group NARAL, added that Clinton “is now seen as the reigning dean of the women’s movement. It’s sort of Moses gets all the way to the mountain and doesn’t get to the promised land — and I think there would be people really
angry about that.”

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is keeping the pressure on both by reinjecting race into the conversation at a time that McCain is working the issue hard, and by refusing to say that Obama is qualified to be president.

[Bill Clinton] says Obama ran an excellent campaign and is “smart as a whip.” But asked if he is ready to be president, responds: “You could argue that no one’s ever ready to be president.”

What’s significant is that the Clintons, with full knowledge that Hillary doesn’t have a chance, are setting Obama up. No matter who he picks as his running mate, Clinton’s die hard supporters will not be satisfied and they are supposed to be doubly outraged if Obama picks a woman because that will knock Hillary off her perch as the ‘reigning dean of the women’s movement’.

From a strictly ideological point of view, Evan Bayh represents the Clintons by proxy among members of the known short-list. He’s the only person under serious consideration that endorsed Clinton during the campaign. He’s a former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. There’s a very good chance that Bayh would staff up the Naval Observatory with a bunch of also-rans and cast-offs from the Clinton campaign, giving them new life and hope for a role in a future presidency. For Team Clinton, Evan Bayh represents their best hope for jobs and significance in an Obama administration. These attacks on Obama are sending a clear message that they can make trouble for Obama if he shuts them out. As I see it, this is not really a lobbying campaign for Hillary, who they all know is persona non grata in the Obama household. It’s an oblique campaign for Bayh.

And they just might get what they want. Just this morning, Bayh joined with Obama in sending a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him to dedicate more money to address brain injuries. Obama will appear with Bayh on Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, and people there are buzzing with excitement and speculation that Obama will tap Bayh as The One. One theory is that Obama will want to get some coverage for his pick that doesn’t have to compete with the Olympics, which start on Friday in Beijing.

Needless to say, the selection of Bayh would be met by stony silence at best within the Progressive Movement. Many would be outraged and consider it a betrayal of trust. For my part, I’d be bitterly disappointed. But I wouldn’t read it as anything more or less than a strategic calculation. What I find really offensive are the arguments being made against the several well qualified female candidates for vice-president. Hillary Clinton may well be the ‘reigning dean of the women’s movement’ but she has no right to let her own sour grapes create another glass ceiling for other women that are under consideration. Does the women’s movement want a martyr or a seat at the table in the National Security Council? The question should answer itself.

I am hoping that Kathleen Sebelius gets the nod. If she doesn’t, I am hoping that Jack Reed or Chris Dodd do.