Once again, Kevin Drum uses the passive voice in describing what will happen. "[I]t's going to whip up a frenzy of media speculation." Where will that media frenzy start? Right here on Poltical Animal.

Meet the new media, same as the old media...

Naming Solis Doyle might also signal that Obama has no intention of putting Clinton on the ticket, since Clinton fired her in February and they apparently have not spoken since then.

What did you learn yesterday?

'Confidant' is correct, 'confidante' is a confidant who is also a woman:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/confidante

Kevin, to refer to a male confidant you simply remove the e at the end. It's a French word.

It's like "blonde" and "blond"--one of the few words English still has different spellings for, depending on whether you're referring to a man or a woman.

So is "consigliere" the male counterpart to "confidante"?

The hiring of PSD has been the subject of rumor and probably been in the works for weeks; I am assuming they held off because they needed to figure out a title and so as not to inflame the whole issue of HRC leaving the race any more than necessary. She is reportedly great friends with Axelrod, and, after all, she is from Chicago, where Obama has his hq.

"You learn something new every day."

I find this a useful exercise: every night, before going to bed, I ask myself "what did I learn today?" And I always have an answer. It helps me remember what I learned, but it also helps me notice new knowledge when it occurs. The conscious effort at night seems to translate into an unconscious effort during the day.

He sure as heck didn't hire her for mad campaign-running skills.

I read a few weeks ago that Patti and David Axelrod are big buddies and have worked together in the past.

Must English speakers be constrained by French gender rules?

Strikes me as a little bizarre that the VP candidate doesn't get to choose his/her own staff. Did Dubya pick Cheney's staff in 2000?

My uninformed speculation suggests this means Hillary won't be VP nominee since she fired PSD so publicly not long ago. Thank goodness.

Or maybe PSD was always an Obama plant, deliberately screwing up the Clinton campaign at Axelrod's behest. Oooo...

I'm with Jim Bob - shouldn't the VP nominee get to pick his/her own chief of staff? What if Obama picks someone who can't stand Solis Doyle? Shouldn't the VP's Chief of Staff be someone they have a long standing relationship with, who they trust and know they can work with? Is this customary?

Maybe Obama will hire Mark Penn?

I found out recently that I had completely misunderstood the word "officious," taking it to mean exactly the opposite of what it meant. I thought it meant "formal; in an official tone." It actually means "informal; unofficial."

Naming Solis Doyle might also signal that Obama has no intention of putting Clinton on the ticket, since Clinton fired her in February and they apparently have not spoken since then.

Bingo.

So wait ... this seems to have not gotten enough attention here. Hillary Clinton fired a woman at the end of February, and then people who worked for Hillary were upset that she sought employment with Obama?

The mind reels.

I don't think Solis-Doyle is still on good terms with Clinton from what I have heard.

I think this will have a major impact on the Latino vote...Doyle is very very close with the Hispanic community, and this nod will likely create an even closer bond...

So Kevin, I wouldn't look to this as a Clinton manuever, I would look at it as a manuever to help with the Latino vote...not major, but every bit helps.

I like JimBob's consipiracy theory...

Solis-Doyle also helps court the Hispanic vote as she has many close ties...

Wouldn't it be better if Obama named Huma Abedin as his VIP?

Would hillary approve or be jealous?

http://images.politico.com/global/humaimage.jpg

I agree with comments above that Kevin (and Matt) missed the buried lede as to Obama picking the VP nominee's chief of staff.

Obama intends to have a clearly subservient VP - opposite of Cheney.

Kevin:

Could you tell Yglesias about this "checking your spelling" habit of yours? Because I'm pretty sure he's unfamiliar with it.

-ask

I'm with JimBob on this. And when I point my tin foil hat North, it makes even more sense.

Also of interest: when I looked up "confidante" to make sure I had spelled it right, I learned that it properly refers only to a woman. I had always thought it referred to anyone in which you regularly confided. You learn something new every day.

Well, I'm sure that's formerly what it meant (to look at it etymologically-- the "-e" ending makes it look like a French feminine noun, which, if the noun is one that describes a type of person, like a noun naming a profession, would tend to be masculine noun if it was unisex in French, I think) but I think we can definitely consider confidante to have gone unisex a while ago.

To interpret Barack's move-- I think this will be hard for people to accept, but I think it's going to show itself to be a provocation (that is, he's not going to pick Hillary), and that it was designed to alienate Hillary supporters so Barack will do less well in the general election. Barack's line about black fathers on Father's Day looked like a too-bad move. It reminded me of Hillary's line about the snipers in Bosnia-- which, some of you may recall, I thought was too silly a mistake for her to have made, and more likely a sign someone was able to intimidate her into doing something that hurt her campaign than it was that she really was that crass and clueless. Also many of you may remember that it's my theory that Barack was many powerful conservatives' preferred candidate for McCain to run against.

Now that Hillary's out of the way, it's time for them to start scuttling Barack's ship.

Note also that her brother is Chicago alderman Danny Solis, president pro tem of the Chicago City Council & a member of Hillary Clinton's Illinois Steering Committee. This can't hurt Obama's courtship of the Latino vote.

Swan - your a true-to-the-core shillary fool. The democratic candidate that was the choice of rush limbaugh and kkkarl rove is no longer in the race.

If you want to slander Obama, go ahead, but most of us see you for what you are - a fool.

I suspect Cheney picked Bush's staff.

I'd assume that huring PSD is just one more New York Hello from Obama to Hillary.

Swan - your a true-to-the-core shillary fool. The democratic candidate that was the choice of rush limbaugh and kkkarl rove is no longer in the race.

Rush Limbaugh made a living off of degrading Hillary, her child, and her husband before he oddly (re: IT WAS A RED HERRING!!!!) endorsed her. The Secret Service-- a bunch of idiotic, date-raping, nerd-bullying, jingoistic jocks-- rummaged through Bill's and Hillary's bags with their permission and then left them unpacked, in a mess, without Bill or Hillary's permssion, the first time the couple stayed at Camp David during Bill's first term in office. I know about this because I read where Hillary wrote about it (probably to tip people off). During Bill's terms of office, he oversaw big budget cuts at the CIA.

For all you or I or anybody else knows, the CIA who were not honorable enough to be pursuing Osama, and who (even though they are supposed to be so awesome at spying) closed down their Osama-hunting office a few years ago (until public pressure made them re-open it) for "lack of leads," did not reasonably see these budgets cuts as a natural result of the end of the Cold War, but became irrationally upset that someone was down-sizing them when they spent their whole lives champing at the bit for a war with Russia that now is never going to happen, and are spitefully and irrationally taking revenge against Bill and Hillary instead of working to fight real threats (i.e., perhaps they are just a bunch of Rush-Limbaugh-loving freaks who are more worried about liberals, just because they don't like liberals, than they are about Osama) and who are aware of their image of professionalism and exceptionalism and who purposely trade off of it, even though it is not true, and they are more like the typical idiotic, date-raping, nerd-bullying, jingoistic jocks than they are like James Bond and the Impossible Missions Force.

TV and movies are TV and the movies, but in the real world, people act like people from the real world.

rummaged through Bill's and Hillary's bags with their permission

That was supposed to say "without their permission," but I just had a typo.

Confidante is absolutely feminine, it hasn't merged into a unisex meaning. The confusion is probably due to the fact that in English the male and female forms are pronounced essentially the same, except that sometimes people will give the female form a little "French twist" (in Safire's phrase). Using "confidante" for a male is just wrong, though, like using "hostess" for a male. Ugly, don't do it.

Misplaced Patriot, careful of "officious." While it can mean "informal," I think the far more prevalent usage is substantially different: meddlesome, intrusive, impertinent, etc.

Confidant/confidante and blond/blonde are indeed French words in their masculine and feminine forms respectively. Please note also that if I see a man referred to as a fiancée one more time I shall scream. The woman he has agreed to marry is his fiancée; he is her fiancé.

it's obviously a big fuck you to Hillary. Hubris like that will come back to haunt - Hillary is a much meaner SOB than The Chosen One.

How is it such a big "fuck you?" He hired someone she fired. And?

In Time Magazine's account of the Clinton campaign, Solis Doyle was fired for bucking Mark Penn and the disastrous direction he was leading the campaign in. In other words, she isn't a loser who screwed up the campaign, she was trying to salvage it and got scapegoated after Iowa. The Time story is at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811857-1,00.html.

Nonetheless, hiring Solis Doyle seems like a strange way to heal the rift in the party.

The mind reels.

It's scary when you realize the real world seems to run on a junior high school level, eh?

It's scary for me, at least.

Maybe for a concession, Hillary was pressuring Obama to hire HRC's staffers... and Obama didn't like her tactics, so he said: Ok, I'll hire your staffers... first one is PSD! ...that would certainly remove the problem of hiring any other Clinton staffer, who all detest PSD.

New Obama senior advisor Patti Solis and her husband's $192,500.00 compensation package from his tax exempt entity filed from their home address

www.webofdeception.com

Hillary's staff considers Doyle a traitor for working for Obama? Give me a break.
Doyle was publicly fired and scapegoated for Mark Penn's lousy strategy. They treated her like crap.

What did they expect her to do? Find a new profession? Remain unemployed? Disappear?

Hillary and Co. think they OWN people.

As an outsider (a Brit living in the UK but with a strong interests in US affairs), I breathed a sigh of relief when Hillary Clinton lost (note: not when Barack Obama won, although I feel he was the best candidate from the off). I thought Clinton was the worst kind of candidate: her support seemed to be far too rooted in irrational enthusiasm, there was always the spectre of Bill looming behind her, and she was, to me, far too transparent and, dare I say it pragmatic to the point of outright cynicism. I think there is nothing 'going on in the background': Obama hired Solid Doyle because she is capable - forget the nonsense that she mismanaged Clinton's campaign: Clinton must take the blame for that and she is now a busted flush. Solis Doyle is of Latino extraction and that, what with the extraordinary publicity her appointment as caused, is worth several tens of thousands of votes where they will count; and finally because it can be interpreted as an insult, but thereby Obama wins even more Brownie points. He can now be portrayed as a man who does what he thinks is right despite difficulties it might cause and he can be portrayed as a brave man. I don't think he will choose Clinton as a running mate in a million years. He would be certifiable if he did.

iGV6HQ