It ain't gonna be Hillary

As Barack Obama's search for a running mate enters the final stages, it is becoming more and more clear that whatever shot Hillary Clinton had of joining the ticket, it is now a vritual certainty that Obama will choose someone else.

And now the largest of the the advocacy groups pushing Clinton for the 2nd spot have shut down:

An effort to urge Barack Obama to pick former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate is shutting down under the assumption she is not a contender for the No. 2 spot.

The two former Clinton staffers who started the group Vote Both say Obama's decision to offer Clinton a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic Party nominating convention and other signals suggest Obama will not chose her.

"Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November," Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora wrote in an e-mail they planned to send Thursday to the 40,000-plus supporters who signed onto their online petition.

A longtime friend of Sen. Hillary Clinton said it's "incomprehensible" that Sen. Barack Obama would choose another woman to be his vice-presidential candidate over Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"The selection of either one of those instead of Sen. Clinton I would find completely incomprehensible," said Lanny Davis of rumored Obama vice-presidential contenders Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.

"If anyone thinks that picking a woman will simply placate Hillary Clinton's female supporters, I think that's very patronizing to women and i don't think that that either Gov. Sebelius or Gov. McCaskill would disagree," said Davis, who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Thursday titled "Why Obama Should Pick Hillary."

Indeed, there is a strong and growing movement made up of Hillary supporters - PUMA -PAC - that is refusing to support Obama and continues to push Hillary's candidacy at the same time threatening to support McCain over Obama in November.

If Obama were to pick another woman for the ticket, it just might drive the PUMAs over the edge and see them landing in Mccain's lap. It's hard to imagine that most of those Democrats would vote for McCain but there is little doubt that a sizable percentage of them would.

That might spell trouble for the messiah in November...