Why?  Because this election  has proven that sexism is as strong a factor as racism.

This selection will not make Hillary supporters come to Obama and it might even turn off some men.  If Obama wants to win this, he needs a white man from the South or Midwest.

I don't know, Jeralyn - I will anxiously await your take on this, but I have to say that I think blindsiding us with a Sebelius pick would be a really tone-deaf move on Obama's part.

And the fact that Hillary is not even a choice - the person who got the most votes ever in a primary - just shows the arrogance and lack of understanding the Obama team has.  If he's afraid of the big bad Clintons, how is he going to handle the leaders of Iran or North Korea? Whine that they are too mean and can't be trusted?

The flaw in this is that the Republican Party does stand on their values (regardless of however twisted I may think they are). The end result will be the new Democratic Party will be seen as even weaker and less effective than the old one.

It's amazing to me that the man who claims to want to bring people together is using the most divisive and manipulative and dishonest tactics to do it - tactics that are creating a veneer of "unity" that is so thin and so fragile that when it finally breaks, it is going to be as ugly and as irreparable as anything I have ever seen or experienced in my almost-55 years.

Barack Obama's vice presidential vetting process has moved into a new stage in which a larger than previously reported group of candidates is being exposed to a "deeper dig" into their backgrounds -- in the words of a source familiar with the process.

My worry is what will happen during the 4 years of a McCain presidency. But I am on the edge when it comes to a vote for Obama, as I've been voting lesser evil for a long time.

Picking her is just another cynical and patronizing move by the O campaign, which really thinks women, and Hillary supporters in particular, are that simple-minded, that unsophisticated, and that easily manipulated.

I find it ironic that your claim is sadness because people would not look on Sebelius as an individual when the Obama campaign would specifically offering her up not as an individual but as a big 'Look!  I picked someone with girlie parts!'

Only Joe Biden comes close.  But, as Jeralyn noted here, he has his harshly punitive anti-crime/drug side, to go with his work for Big Banking in the senate.

On personal issues, she's also ahead of the pack -- she's a fresh face and an historic candidate, if selected; likable personality overall and nice to look at.  No obvious personality quirk or track record of making serious faux pas (Biden).  

Exciting public speaker?  No, but that's about as irrelevant a matter for choosing the #2 as you can imagine.  Edwards wasn't a great public speaker either (formal addresses), and yet he was warmly embraced as Kerry's VP last time.  Bill Clinton screwed up his 88 convention speech, droning on endlessly, yet Dems didn't reject him in 92 because of some stupid speech he gave yrs ago.

Boy, did she get an earful.

There seems to be a notion embraced by Obama supporters that women voters should be over-joyed to support and vote for ANY woman the leadership suggests, simply because she is a woman. But, contrary to the myth these Obama supporters have sold themselves, the vast majority of women won't vote -- and those who supported Hillary didn't vote -- simply on the basis of gender alone.

A Sebelius pick would be a mystery in this sense; she  doesn't add anything to the ticket in terms of bringing in big and important swing states. Plus, her midwestern conservative style says old-time "moderate" politics (the kind of politics long associated with her region) not "change."

So what is the big advantage Obama sees in her?

My big fear about his choice of Sebelius, if he does choose her, is that his major reason for doing so will be her rather uninspiring persona -- that she is someone who won't upstage, someone who will play the traditional womanly role of chief supporter for the great man without bringing attention to herself as a powerful politician in her own right. In other words, she'll be useful for fluffing up his image, but she won't deflect the spotlight from him even a little bit. Rather than a traditional VP role, I fear that Obama wants Sebelius in a feminine role that is  someone familiar one many remember another era -- the 50s & 60s role of "office wife;" that is, the devoted, protective Executive Secretary or Assistant whose most important job was making the Great Man look good  -- a devoted underling cheerfully handling all the details the boss found boring or beneath him, cleaning up any messes, correcting (and when necessary taking responsibility for) all the mistakes, and, most of all, incessantly buffing and fiercely protecting the public image of the Great Man she stood so loyally behind.

Hmmmm....

Clinton would be a good choice not because she is a woman, but because half of the voter's chose her in the primary. No primary in recent history has been this close. She is what people want. No other candidate would be as right, and any other woman would be a kick in the teeth toward her and anybody who voted for her.

2.)  She stopped the construction of coal-fueled power plants.

3.)  As Insurance Commish, she stopped an IN-based firm from taking over the KS Blue Cross and Blue Shield (which is owned by its policyholders - so was accountable to them).

4.) With a heavily Republican legislature, she passed the largest increase in education funding in the history of the state.

5.) She opposes to capital punishment, and opposed the anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution.  Again, in Kansas.

6.) She has mad political skills, able to convert high profile Republicans (i.e. the ex-Chair of the KS GOP) into Democrats, and was re-elected by 18%.  Despite points 1-6.

Then we'd know how much of a say 'the campaign' is going to actually let Obama have in choosing a veep to run with.

Not much is my bet.

Of COURSE it won't be Hillary.  He couldn't choose her even if he wanted to.  The whole point of drafting him was to take over the party and get rid of the Clintons...even if the Dems lose doing it.

There is nothing that Obama can do or say to please some disgruntled Hillary supporters.  I doubt very seriously that Hillary would want  the VP slot, she seems to enjoy calling her own shots.  I doubt very seriously that she would want to play second fiddle.  

If Obama can succeed in creating that illusion, then Sebelius might work.  I think he is confident that he can create any illusion he wants, so he just may do it.

It seems pretty clear that if Obama is not going to pick Clinton as his running mate, he'd better not pick a woman at all. That, Sarah made clear in our conversation Tuesday, would be unfair.

If he intends to lead the sort of movement that The Nation and some Kossacks seem to think he does, then he chooses Sibelius and shoots for those unregistered disaffected voters who want something entirely new in a ticket. They want BIG symbolic change and will be content for that to come in the form of a black man and a white woman on the ticket. This presumes that a lot of disaffected voters are progressive at least in the sense that they are socially liberal. I'm not so sure that's the case.

If, however, he thinks it's more prudent to expand his coalition by picking off moderate-to-conservative independents and disaffected Republicans, he'll pick Kaine. I think it's more likely that there is a larger number of disaffected voters in this camp. Just a gut feeling based on experience: most "progressives" I know are not really disaffected voters. They may be disappointed voters, but they follow the political process and they vote. If Obama seeks to get to the polls people who tend NOT to vote, then he's not thinking of these people. He's putting them in the same wagon with the Hillary-supporters: who else ya gonna vote for?

Americans are simple and conventional.  They vote for people they know - people who have names they can spell.  Bush, Clinton, Carter, Nixon, Reagan, Johnson, . . . Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington  - all the way back.  Notice anything about these names?  The strangest name that has ever been attached to a President is probably Van Buren.

It's hard enough getting people to accept a non-conventional name like Obama, although people are doing pretty well.  Putting a name that people can't pronounce or spell on the ticket is political suicide.

So Sebellius is still in the running because she doesn't bring much in the way of necessary experience (e.g., foreign policy) to the table.  But Sen. Change wants to be the Star and doesn't want anyone else on the ticket that will upstage him in the Change Category. And Obama doesn't need to pander to progressives or women - the campaign already knows that those groups won't allow a McCain victory.  So Sibellius is out.