As the Democratic nomination contest begins to wind down, The Washington Post is reporting that there are plans underway by top Obama and Clinton fundraisers to merge into a general election fundraising team.
Top fundraisers for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have begun private talks aimed at merging the two candidates' teams, not waiting for the Democratic nominating process to end before they start preparations for a hard-fought fall campaign.
On CNN last night, there was speculation that this was a way for the Obama campaign to help Clinton pay off some of her debt without using millions in small donations to do it. The campaign denies there is any formal coordination, however.
Kirk Dornbush, a member of the Obama national finance team in Georgia, said that while there is no formal effort by the Obama campaign to recruit Clinton counterparts, "many of us have friendships with Clinton donors that predate the 2008 campaign and will last long after this race is over. Given this reality, it should not be surprising that we have received phone calls in the last few weeks" from individuals interested in crossing over.
One top Clinton donor stresses that this should not be taken as a sign that her fundraisers have given up on her.
Mark Aronchick, a Philadelphia lawyer who has raised more than $1 million for Clinton's bid, said that while her supporters have not given up on their candidate, they recognize the need to start preparing for the general election."Only if we do this right, and see this through in the right way, will there be a chance for a full, rapid and largely complete unification of the party," Aronchick said.
He also stresses that unifying the party is a two-way street. While many talk about what Clinton needs to do so as not to harm Obama in the general, rarely does anyone mention Obama's responsibility in the unification of the party.
Aronchick said that in his own discussions, he emphasized the need for the senator from Illinois to stop describing Clinton and her backers as representing the politics of the past."They need to understand how corrosive that has been among her supporters," Aronchick said. "For this to work, they need to correct any impression that he thinks we represent the old ways of doing things or Washington Beltway ways of doing things."
So it would appear that the inevitable shift toward the likely nominee is underway among the large donor fundraising class, one of many steps in the transition we're going to have to undergo as a party to shift from primary to general election mode and come together against a common foe. Another concern is, of course, how to quell the very real resistance to Barack among millions of Hillary's supporters. One way suggested in the article is through a strategic VP choice, although Clinton herself is not seen as the likely pick; rather, the idea is that Obama would pick one of Clinton's top supporters/surrogates.
"There's gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland, [Indiana Sen. Evan] Bayh, and [retired general] Wes Clark almost constantly, and it's no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."
Is this really conventional wisdom among the Obama campaign? Because if it is, it seems to me they horribly mis-understand both the impact of Hillary's being on the ticket (the army of passionate supporters she would bring to bear would outweigh the negative effects of her so-called baggage and would actually serve to mitigate the baggage that Obama brings to the ticket) and the nature of the resentment many Clinton supporters would feel at an Obama nomination (Bayh, really?)
While I do believe the nomination fight will ultimately pay dividends for the Democratic ticket in the fall, certainly the reality is that we're going to have to undergo a delicate unification of the various factions of the party and it's good to see it's beginning now.
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