Opinion: Barack Obama plans a little political theater in St. Paul
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Barack Obama has cautiously avoided saying anything that might give someone the idea that he wishes Hillary Clinton would just pack it up and go back to the Senate. But he came close in Thornton, Colo., the other day at the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, just north of Denver.
At the end of a town hall meeting on education issues, Obama told the cheering crowd: ‘All right, everybody, thank you very much. I’ll see back in August!’ That can be interpreted different ways -- a candidate waxing hopefully, a reference to him being a superdelegate and thus in a chair at the Democratic National Convention, or just meaningless pablum from the stump (now that would be a first for a political candidate).
But the plans he’s making for Tuesday night are hard to interpret in any way other than as an act of confidence, with a dollop of provocation. Obama plans to celebrate the end of the five-month Democratic presidential nominating calendar not in Denver, or his home city of Chicago, or straddling the Montana-South Dakota border.
No, he’ll be spending Tuesday evening in St. Paul, Minn. And that just happens to be where the Republican National Convention will be held in three months.
-- Scott Martelle
