Republicans only hope to keep the White House is

[Sam Spade]

I fundamentally agree with your reasoning. 

However, if Obama is her closest competitor (or adversary) for the nomination when the primaries hit, she cannot fundamentally take the chance of not picking him as VP and pissing off certain parts of the black community (see 1988).

[Sam Spade]

However, if Obama is her closest competitor (or adversary) for the nomination when the primaries hit, she cannot fundamentally take the chance of not picking him as VP and pissing off certain parts of the black community (see 1988).

Finally someone agrees with me! I've been saying this but everyone says it won't happen.

Actually, I've been saying this for nearly forever also.

Btw, best of luck, b/c I'm about 99% sure Tommy Thompson won't be a candidate after this weekend.

[Sam Spade]

That's a good point, but isn't it true that according to most polls blacks are pretty strongly supporting Clinton over Obama (by an even larger margin then Clinton's national lead, i.e. blacks are more strongly for Clinton over Obama than whites are)?

The polls that I've seen that actually provide those internals show black voters evenly split for now.

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I doubt it would have changed much in terms of actual %, but I can't see any states that Dukakis won b/c of Bentsen.

The states that I'm thinking of which have a significant black population and which Dukakis lost by 3% or less are Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania.  I know for a fact the blacks didn't bother to show up Election Day in Maryland.  I also wouldn't be surprised if in some way that contributed to his massive defeat in Florida - losing Broward County, which hasn't changed that much since 1988.

In other words, the numbers may not have changed much, but having a black man on the ticket certainly could have moved the numbers in these states around a bit (definitely Maryland, less sure about the other two).  Sure, Dukakis would have lost Texas by 60-40, instead of 55-45.  Big deal.

[Sam Spade]

Bentsen didn't help with white voters in those states, sorry.  The Farm Belt was not voting Republican that year regardless of who got nominated.  I also simply don't see the western PA/WV axis reacting negatively against Democrats at that time, regardless of who's on the second part of the ticket.

Also, some people (b/c they weren't alive then) have seemed to forget that Jesse Jackson was nowhere near as negatively viewed then as he is now.