NEW YORK (AFP) — The dust barely settled on Hillary Clinton's agonizing primary defeat, her supporters lobbied Wednesday to get their never-say-die champion onto Barack Obama's Democratic White House ticket.
The New York senator did much to stoke the speculation, refusing to concede late Tuesday as Obama wrapped up the nomination and informing colleagues that she was open to running as his vice presidential pick.
After a barnstorming victory speech in Minnesota, the Democrats' new heir-apparent said in Washington that he had spoken with Clinton Wednesday morning, but said it was not a "detailed conversation."
"We are going to be having a conversation with the coming weeks. I'm very confident about how unified the Democratic Party is going to be to win in November," he told reporters.
Having banked nearly 18 million votes from the five-month primary campaign, Clinton told an election-night rally here that her ardent supporters deserve "to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible."
Those votes, amassed from blue-collar workers, women and Hispanics who proved resistant to Obama's charm, could represent a powerful bargaining chip in the days to come.
Clinton's campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said she would carry crucial swing states that had rallied to her candidacy and that together, the pair would be an "unstoppable" force.
"I think we would have the White House for 16 years," he told MSNBC television, anticipating two terms each for Obama and an eventual president Hillary Clinton.
Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson said he had written to African-American leaders in Congress demanding that Clinton be placed on the Obama ticket.
Another Clinton supporter, New York Representative Charlie Rangel, said Obama needs to reach out to her "broken-hearted" voters.
"But if we see that her candidacy is treated with respect and that we're going to have one ticket, the Obama-Clinton ticket, I think that would bring us together like no other political ticket in history," he said.
But does Obama want to risk undermining his mantra of change by running with a candidate who he has said represents all that is wrong with Washington?
And would the Illinois senator, the first black nominee of a major US party, want to have Bill Clinton looking over his shoulder in addition to the former president's formidable wife?
Exit polls from Democratic primaries, including from Montana and South Dakota Tuesday, found mixed feelings among Obama supporters about seeing Clinton on his ticket.
But for their part, many Clinton supporters anguished at her loss are threatening to vote for Republican John McCain instead of Obama in November.
Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs side-stepped the VP talk, saying that the choice of running mate was "a serious process that will begin in earnest now."
One end-game question revolves around the 20 million dollars in debt that Clinton has racked up in her doomed quest for the White House nomination.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said Obama might need to help resolve those arrears for the sake of party unity.
But Rendell, whose loyalty to Clinton has been unimpeachable, also warned her against "bargaining" for the number two job.
"You don't bargain with the presidential nominee. Even if you're Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don't bargain," he said on NY1 television in New York.
Obama would have to be an "enormously big person" to pick Clinton as his running mate, and the former first lady "couldn't help but upstage" Obama on a joint ticket given her own national prominence, Rendell said.
There were also cautionary words from former president Jimmy Carter.
"I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made," the Democratic elder was quoted as saying in an interview Britain's Guardian newspaper.
"That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates," said Carter, who was part of a late flood of Democratic "superdelegates" to help Obama over the winning line Tuesday.
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