No unity here now move along

It's clear that the rift between Hillary and Obama is far from being repaired, and both sides are complaining in Denver. Bill Clinton isn't happy with the speech he has to give on Wednesday, and Hillary's supporters are vowing to make a floor fight. The Politico is on the scene, and they're reporting that there is no unity in Denver:

As Democrats arrived here Sunday for a convention intended to promote party unity, mistrust and resentments continued to boil among top associates of presumptive nominee Barack Obama and his defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

One flashpoint is the assigned speech topic for former president Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday night, when the convention theme is “Securing America’s Future.” The night’s speakers will argue that Obama would be a more effective commander in chief than his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

The former president is disappointed, associates said, because he is eager to speak about the economy and more broadly about Democratic ideas — emphasizing the contrast between the Bush years and his own record in the 1990s.

This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms.

Some senior Democrats close to Obama, meanwhile, made clear in not-for-attribution comments that they were equally irked at the Clinton operation. Nearly three months after Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the nomination contest, these Obama partisans complained, her team continues to act like she and Bill Clinton hold leverage.

Technically, they do hold leverage. Obama doesn't have the nomination, yet, and if she and her supporters can weasel a few superdelegates away, there could be a floor fight provided they can guarantee that the balloting goes beyond the first one. Saddling Bill with that speech, on a subject he's not strong on, is a mistake. In having to talk about Obama's foreign policy experience, it'll either be the shortest speech of the convention, or it'll hype up his campaign rallies in Europe and the Middle East. Remember, this is a candidate that admitted the surge worked, but that he wouldn't change his vote on it.

This is also a candidate who talked about invading Pakistan to get bin Laden. He screwed up his thoughts on the Russia/Georgia row. He said he'd meet with the tyrants of the world "without preconditions." (Of course, he's trying to make that stance more nuanced, but it's really not working well.)

He's wasting Bill's talents. No one can talk middle America and economics better than Bill can. Instead he's being forced to give a speech on a subject that he's not comfortable with, and didn't really pay all that much attention to when he occupied the White House. Instead, Obama's people thought that Arizona governor Janet Napolitano would be better off giving a speech on the economy despite the fact that she has overseen a budget deficit in the state for the last couple of years.

There is no party unity. There won't be when this farce of a convention is all said and done. And as for the post-convention bounce, don't hold your breath on a big one. We predict it'll be much like the Kerry bounce from 2004 which was virtually non-existent.

Publius II