Hillary's Price and Obama's Faulty Judgment

"We need [Bill and Hillary Clinton] badly. Not just my campaign, but the American people need their service and their vision and their wisdom in the months and years to come because that's how we're going to bring about unity in the Democratic Party. And that's how we're going to bring about unity in America."

-- Barack Obama praising the Clintons during a "unity" rally in, well, Unity, New Hampshire.

"To anyone who voted for me and is now considering not voting or voting for Sen. [John] McCain, I strongly urge you to reconsider."

-- Paid endorser Hillary Clinton urging her supporters to sell out for free while she gets paid $10 million for her endorsement.

Obama, Clinton appeal for Democratic unity in N.H.
Jun 27, 10:09 PM (ET)

By SARA KUGLER

UNITY, N.H. (AP) - Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Friday to turn the page on their bitter, history-making fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, declaring the next chapter is about beating Republican John McCain.

Choosing a small New Hampshire community aptly named Unity for their first joint appearance since the campaign ended, Obama and Clinton stood on a platform before thousands of cheering, shouting supporters and took turns praising each other and urging party solidarity. She called the nominee-in-waiting a standup guy and he declared: "She rocks. She rocks."

They came together in this hamlet where each won 107 votes in January's primary. Body language rivaled campaign rhetoric as attention-getter of the day. And a pair rendered distant by a marathon campaign acted like teammates, alternately exhorting the rank-and-file to put any recriminations behind them.

Clinton noted that they had stood "toe to toe" against each other in a primary season fight that began almost two years ago and declared the time has come to "stand shoulder to shoulder" against the GOP. They seemed equally determined to regain a White House that their party hasn't seen since her husband, President Clinton, left at the start of 2001.

If there was ever any doubt that Barack Obama's judgment is faulty at best, this should be it. America needs the Clintons as much as she needs another nuclear accident at Three Mile Island or another Civil War. Even the leadership of the national Democratic Party turned the chapter, to steal a metaphor, on the Clintons this election season by backing Barack Obama and urging Hillary to drop out of the race.

Über Liberal senators Patrick Leahy, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy as well as former Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson are only a few of the many Democratic Party luminaries to give the freshman NY senator the boot. If they rejected her, and Bill, why should America take them?

Like it or not, those of us who had hoped we had heard the last of Hillary after she "conceded" to Barack Obama, are sorely disappointed she will be a visible part of the Obama campaign. She has to. She is being paid $10 million dollars to publicly "endorse" her former rival.

I think it's ironic that Oprah, arguably the wealthiest and one of the most powerful Black women in America, is no longer campaigning for Obama while Hillary "Hard Working Americans, White Americans" Clinton is.

But then again, Oprah doesn't need the money. Hillary does.