Your focus on Hillary at the top no matter what betrays a contempt for Obama as a candidate who has earned the right to the top of the ticket through his support of voters across the US in this campaign. You are trying to cement Hillary's place on the top of the ticket while she is struggling just to break even with him in the delegates headed for the convention.

Your assumptions are what make the "dream ticket" less dreamy for those of us who support Barack for President.

How wrong you are. I waited 4.5 hours in the cold just to caucus for Obama in Houston on March 4. Obama is my personal preference.

But we have to face facts. We need a solution that will unite the party and win in November because we are most likely going to be going to the convention deadlocked, with no rules to cover the situation.

It's unity or defeat. Does anyone want a repeat of 1968 or 1980?

I am also not following your "too old" argument. Hillary would be 68 in 2016. At 68, she would still be nearly 8 years younger than McCain is now.

McCain is 71.

I noticed though that you haven't commented on the links to the research polls that I posted. All of them suggest that Obama can beat McCain in the general election and Hillary can't. The Rassmussen polls are the only ones that I've found that suggest that McCain will beat either candidate. I have not found a reputable polling firm that is projecting that Hillary will win the general election against McCain.

Do those polls factor in a bloody intra-party schism that leaves half the party so alienated they stay home on election day? Read some of comments here. It's shocking. It would seem a unity ticket would be the strongest one possible to face the Republicans.

I agree that the ultimate goal should be party unity and victory in November. I also agree that compromises may need to be made. However, I don't think this is a fair compromise to either candidate.

If you have a better idea, lay it out.

Now that Hillary Clinton is so close to McCain, wouldn't we still have Bush back in the White House? Am I the only one who is mad as hell that Hillary now says McCain is better than Obama?

That quote was unbelievably stupid of her -- really, really bad. She'd better crawl back from that one and fast.

But what if Hillary serves as a cabinet member or VP. If Obama wins the nomination, taking it away from him by some kind of fenagling behind closed doors really will split the party. I can't imagine that the hard-core Democrats, the base of the party would not by a large majority support the president who wins the nomination fairly. Suggesting that the base of the party would follow Hillary or vote for McCain doesn't make sense to me.

That's the problem, nobody can win under the rules -- there aren't enough delegates and they're too evenly divided.

Further, nobody can "take" anything from Obama. It's either a freely accepted compromise, where we have unity and victory, or we war it out, with who-knows-what the outcome will be?

A unity ticket would be the absolute worst thing the Democrats could do. The candidates are not suitable for each other, they won't work well together.

They each represent approximately 50% of the party. I suspect they can make arrangements. They do have mutual interests.

As to the embittered Clintonites. Most Clinton supporters aren't bad people,

I'm glad you will concede that.

On the other side you do have people like me, who have just seen issues upon which they would struggle to support Hillary, but in the end what matters is who ends up sitting on the supreme bench and what happens to the economy.

I suspect there really isn't that much difference between them on domestic issues. Neither is willing to embrace universal, single-payer healthcare -- yet.

The difference between Obama and Clinton's situation is that Clinton cannot get to 2025 under any circumstances, and Obama can and will.

How do you figure?

I think you've got it.

Our M$M seems to be suffering from collective amnesia and is too focused on the day-to-day minutae to see the big picture.

Balance may be great, but from the sheeps' point-of-view, the hyenas' interests may be a bit over-represented.

Aside from the suspicious nature of the federalizing of a prostitution case, the wiretapping, and the prejudicial release of sensational details, there remains the double standard.

Senator David Vitter (R-LA) continues to be applauded as a paragon of moral virtue despite nearly identical circumstances.

The Bush regime's profligate spending untethered from any form of fiscal reality, i.e., taxes, is having its inexorable result: inflation and devaluation of the dollar.

It's just happening faster than these bandits anticipated -- before they could make their getaway and pin the blame on their successors.

It's the GOP's cycle of tax cuts for the wealth-holders, which causes economic anemia, which necessitates tax increases by responsible politicians who must take the heat from the voters, but which then results in economic health, and then Republicans repeat the cycle by pandering for more tax cuts.

Only this time we've had the combined effects of a ruinous war and wholesale exporting of American manufacturing capability and millions of jobs, combined with runaway energy prices.

It's a formula for disaster and the tax cutters can only crank-up the printing presses to print more and more, cheaper and cheaper dollars.

These boobs are no better at economics than the third-world despots they emulate in every other respect.

I'm sure White House lawyers are now crafting the language to pardon everybody even peripherally associated with this outlaw regime -- including the pardoner-in-chief himself.

What's to prevent Bush from simply adding a clause to the inevitable blanket pardon to "persons and corporations both named and unnamed" that would extend telecom immunity by this method?