If President Obama makes the bold and historic decision to run with Hillary Clinton in 2012, an Obama-Clinton ticket would launch a rocket of enthusiasm throughout a rejuvenated and mobilized Democratic base. He would send a powerful message of reassurance and confidence to political independents, seniors, blue-collar workers and all women who deserve and should win equal pay for honest work after an Obama-Clinton campaign that would champion this cause throughout every corner of the nation.
An Obama-Clinton ticket would increase the president's popular and electoral votes. It would increase voter turnout for Democrats and elect more Democrats to the House and Senate.
An Obama-Clinton team would bring a powerful new momentum to Democratic fundraising. It would rally small donors to a campaign that would regain the spirit of a powerful cause for historic, continuing and lasting change. It would motivate the wealthiest Democratic donors, who are now being dominated by their competitors among power-hungry Republicans, super-wealthy special interests and far-right billionaires who would destroy the legacy of every enlightened president since Teddy Roosevelt.
An Obama-Clinton team would reduce the dangers of a generation-long Supreme Court rightist majority on a court that is already far to the right of two centuries of American jurisprudence with decisions such as Citizens United, in which five unelected justices have put under aggressive and hostile attack the core American notion that our founding fathers shared. Our republic should be a government of all of the people, all of the time, not a government owned or run by self-interested factions with the most money or the greatest greed.
An Obama-Clinton ticket could take a great cause and great case to the nation.
We are not a nation in which partisans slander their opponents and neighbors by calling them fascists or communists. We are not a nation in which money buys democracy or greed buys Washington. We are not a nation in which the rising tide lifts a few to great heights of luxury while the many sink to the pain of joblessness and poverty, and are then blamed for their suffering, and would be hurt more even by some who invoke the name of Christ.
In a campaign now dominated by competing smells of sludge, an Obama-Clinton ticket could highlight the very best of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the American idea. They could run a campaign that speaks respectfully and intelligently to voters for a presidency that is standing "on your side" and working to "lift all boats."
Obama and Clinton could champion great capitalists who lifted the nation, such as Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett, and challenge great wrongs that are not capitalism but the abuse of capitalism, which must be reformed in the name of true capitalism, real democracy and patriotic Americanism.
An Obama-Clinton team could explain both the president's successes and his unfinished business, and explain both the president's plans for a second term and the layoff-heavy business practices and disastrous governorship of his opponent, who was one of the four most incompetent job creators among all 50 governors who served when he did.
Vice President Biden would emerge as a heroic and hugely popular figure championing an Obama-Clinton team and then serving as secretary of state or White House chief of staff in the tradition of Howard Baker or James Baker under Ronald Reagan.
President Clinton might sometimes make the White House nervous but he, and Hillary Clinton, stand for a Clinton presidency that was a great and well-remembered economic triumph and for an Obama presidency that has done great good, with much more great good to come.
Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden would create a first-ever, history-making, five-star bully pulpit that would win the election for the president and a mandate for the Democrats.
This column was originally published at The Hill.