Now that Hillary Clinton has all but locked up her party’s nomination, the political press corps is in search of a new Democratic parlor game to pass the time until the general election. Enter the Boston Globe, which provided just that on Thursday with a report about how Clinton is—gasp!—open to having a female vice president:
Clinton wants “the best person to make the case to the American people,” her campaign chairman, John Podesta, told the Globe. “We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list,” he said, adding that staffers are still focused on clinching the primary.
“The development immediately injects liberal darling Senator Elizabeth Warren’s name into the growing speculation about whom Clinton will choose as her running mate,” the paper writes in one of the most self-fulfilling sentences you’ll read today. Within hours the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Jezebel, Mic, and countless other outlets had joined in on the fun with their own stories wondering aloud about a Clinton-Warren ticket.
Clearly this is all just wild speculation. There was no “development” Thursday. Will Clinton ultimately choose Warren or another woman as her No. 2? Maybe, maybe not! But Podesta’s comments offer no insight. All he actually said in that nothingburger of a quote—“there is no question that there will be woman on that”—is that Clinton isn’t willing to publicly impose a gender litmus test when considering potential running mates. Or, put another way, there are women who are qualified to be vice president. That wouldn’t be a surprise coming from any major presidential hopeful in 2016; it’s even less of one coming from an adviser to the candidate running to become the first female president in the nation’s history.
