Like it or not, Barack Obama should beseech Hillary Clinton to be his vice presidential running mate, because he can barely close the deal with Democrats without her on his team. And let's be honest: without stronger party support for his candidacy, many Democrats would question his nomination's legitimacy.

However, Hillary now has no realistic possibility of heading the Democratic ticket, as her Pennsylvania "win" was too small, too diminished from the 20-point edge she held six weeks ago in the Keystone state. It was simply too little, too late by any objective measure.

(And her fundraising lags far behind his campaign coffers. See the most current fundraising statistics for Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton .)

Hillary is the working-class ying to Barack's college-educated yang, and the two halves make one whole Democratic party in 2008. And it's looking increasingly like neither can make to the White House without the other. As my About.com Conservatives counterpart correctly observes, "McCain is making in-roads in turf normally claimed by Democrats."

That, of course, is due to two factors in Pennsylvania:

• Obama's wrong-headed remarks that working class folks resort to religion and guns as paranoid medicine to bitterly soothe their economic woes; and

• Using every divisive political tactic and trick in the playbook, Hill and Bill have triangulated, aggravated and separated enough blue-collar workers, senior citizens and older white women from Obama's message to ensure that he can't politically survive without them.

Clinton: Bullying and Whining to Diminished Victory
Reminiscent of Karl Rove's campaign strategies, the Clinton's bully behavior in Pennsylvania has again been been replete with fear-mongering, whining, smear-tactic robocalls, trash-talking, and and their trademark self-pity. The New York Times observes today in The Low Road to Victory :

"It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

"If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race...

"Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead."

Obama: Offending His Way to Wider Loss
While Pennsylvania is the perfect storm of conditions for Clinton victory, Barack Obama made matters far worse for his cause by uttering behind closed doors to wealthy supporters in sophisticated San Francisco:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them...

" And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

These callous remarks are a permanent problem for the Obama campaign. His words convey an essential lack of empathy for white working-class woes, as well as a shallow understanding of the role of religion in the personal lives of the faithful.

In short, Barack Obama, a brilliant, coolly sophisticated, Ivy-League educated, urban-raised black man, has little in common with the white, blue-collar Americans who live in small town America. He knows. They know it. And John McCain knows it.

Hillary Clinton as vice presidential running mate is the obvious antidote to this, Barack Obama's most glaring and painful electoral weakness. And it's becoming clear that it may be his only victorious pathway to the White House.

Obama Arguments Against VP Clinton: Deal with It!
I can just hear the Obama team arguments against Sen. Clinton as Vice President: She's too divisive. She takes too much money from too many lobbyists. She's too controlling and pushy. Then there's the Bill baggage: scene-stealing, whiny, and far too uncontrollable.

To which I respectfully respond to Sen Obama and staff: Deal with it. And get over yourself. You're not perfect either. And in Pennsylvania, we finally realized that alone, you, too, aren't the whole package.

After the revealing and important debacle of the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama should beg Hillary Clinton to be his vice presidential running mate.

For the sake of the Democratic party. For the sake of the country.

If partnering with Hillary Clinton involves eating some crow coupled with humble pie, so be it. All the better character-building preparation for being President of the United States.

(Photo taken in 2007: Wim McNamee/Getty Images)

Related Reading
After Pennsylvania: What's Next for Hillary Clinton?
Learned in Pennsylvania: Core Truths about Obama and Clinton
New York Times, April 23, 2008: The Low Road to Victory