If you're interested in the debate over whether Jim Webb should be Obama's running mate, my friend Eve Fairbanks' profile of the Virginia senator is a must-read. (It also has the best headline ever -- "Mad Skills.") Eve is fairly sympathetic to Webb, writing that his much ballyhooed hotheadedness is more of an intellectual stance than a personality flaw. She doesn't delve into what's evolving as the central argument against Webb as the running mate: A history of misogynist statements that many pundits assume would alienate Hillary Clinton supporters. But if Obama does choose Webb, Eve writes, it will be because of what the men have in common, not because of Webb's supposed (and unproven) appeal to working class whites:
Thanks to their analogous symbolic roles, Webb and Obama have one more politically important and bizarre similarity: They appeal to the same voters, wine-track Democrats who come out in unprecedented droves to vote for a black man or a hillbilly white because they want their party to be bigger than themselves. While you'd expect Webb to attract poor, rural beer-trackers, in his 2006 Senate race he didn't do any better than the previous Democratic candidate had among Appalachian voters in southwestern Virginia; instead, he was propelled to victory by Northern Virginia suburbanites--Obama's base.
In the end, if Obama picks Webb to be his running mate, it will probably be more on the basis of their affinity...
--Dana Goldstein
