Obama Has Not Yet Made the Sale -- To Hillary Diehards

So it doesn't look like Barack Obama made the sale to Hillraiser Jill Iscol of Westchester County, New York when he called her last week. According to this morning's Wall Street Journal, Carly Fiorina, the most prominent female surrogate for John McCain, met with 25 Hillary supporters at a private home in Westchester County on July 15 over iced tea and "finger food."

Fiorina, former chief of Hewlett-Packard, told WSJ reporters Christopher Cooper and John Emshwiller that that these Hillary devotees, all unnamed and presumably all women, were "intensely uncomfortable with the notion of a President Obama." The meeting came at the request of the Hillary loyalists, Cooper and Emshwiller write, many of them presumably Hillraisers (which means that they raised over $100,000 for Hillary during the primaries).

The event was officially hosted by Together4Us, which lists Jill Iscol as a founder. Susie Tompkins Buell of San Francisco told me during a recent interview that she is also involved in that website/organization, although she is not named yet on the "About Us" page which promises "50 more [names] to be added very soon."

Buell also told me when I interviewed her on July 7 that she would welcome a call from Fiorina or former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. At the time she had heard from neither. Buell has not yet answered an email I sent her this morning asking for comment.

The comment every reporter would kill for would be a candid, honest comment from Hillary Clinton. What does she make of these meetings?

The second-most intriguing comment, and one that would surely be delivered in the most colorful language, is what does Bill, busy again with his foundation work and still keeping his distance from Obama, make of all this.

The WSJ reports elsewhere today on the kind of great work that Bill was doing before involving himself in -- and, I believe, messing up -- his wife's run for the nomination. "Former President Bill Clinton's foundation is set to unveil a pricing agreement Thursday that it hopes will make malaria drugs available to millions of poor people," reads the story's lede. It looks like Bill, at least, has found his groove.