Hardball

Hmmm; maybe the "Florida fucking" wasn't a fluke:

Democrat Barack Obama Monday appointed Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager to his own White House campaign as he beefed up his team for November's general election.

Patti Solis Doyle, who was ousted from the faltering Clinton campaign in February, will be chief of staff to Obama's eventual pick as vice presidential nominee.

That could revive talk of whether the former first lady might become Obama's running mate, although she and Solis Doyle have reportedly not spoken for months and Clinton herself says she is not in the running for the job.

Is there any between-the-lines significance to this hiring?  There seems to be no overt logic to it, given that Ms. Doyle is both indolent and incompetent.

Maybe this will answer that question:

A former bundler to Hillary Clinton just called in to tell me that Barack Obama’s selection of Patti Solis Doyle as chief of staff to the campaign’s eventual vice presidential nominee is the “biggest fuck-you I have ever seen in politics.”

The donor, speaking on background, said that everyone in Clinton circles knows the two have hard feelings towards one another and haven’t spoken since Clinton removed Solis Doyle as campaign manager, and that Clinton loyalists view her with deep suspicion and believe that she is shopping around a book deal and acted as a background source for an extremely harsh Vanity Fair piece about Bill Clinton…

“You don’t hire Patti Solis Doyle for her operational expertise,” said the bundler. “You don’t do that. This is someone who failed dramatically at her job. You only bring her on to fuck someone else.”

The Huff & Puffers think this means Her Nib's chances at the veepancy are officially dead.  I think it's a little more nuanced than that, since Obamanation is going to need La Clinton Nostra to at least not actively undermine them just to be on the November safe side, and bringing Mrs. Clinton in to ride shotgun would go a long way to help ensure that.  But having Ms. Doyle waiting for her to be her Scooter Libby would also go a long way in communicating to the Empress that she's not going to be the man behind the green curtain, pulling Obama's strings like she did her husband's throughout the '90s.

It's a deft bit of forward-thinking political jiu-jitsu, really.  Just how much crap is Hillary willing to wade through to finally get her hands on the total power she's spent her entire adult life dreaming of?  Can she quit?  And if she doesn't, and does sign on as Lucifer's #2, can she actually loyally serve as his vice president for four or eight years?  No games, no manipulations, no maneuverings, no leaks, no backstabbing?  How badly does she want the ultimate prize?

You can almost call it Machiavellian.

Which makes the empty-headed cretin BO is the rest of the time all the more inexplicable.  But we'll get back to covering that sprawling topic soon enough.