Lots of buzz on the internet last night about rumors that Hillary Clinton might become Barack Obama's Secretary of State. I'm with Josh Marshall on this: being a senator, even a senator with comparatively low seniority, seems like a much better gig both in itself and in terms of her potentially running for president again in 2016. But maybe there's an angle we're not seeing, or maybe—maybe—she just genuinely wants the job...

The Sarah Palin pick has crystalized what I'll throw up here as my Boldest Prediction Ever: the next elected president of the United States, after Obama, will be a woman. Hillary Clinton exposed not only the potential political advantages of a female candidate—a surprising reversal of historical trends that she simply failed to capitalize on early enough—but also a palpable hunger that the "highest, hardest glass ceiling" be broken. And Palin's selection proves that this hunger extends even across the aisle.

We can't know right now, of course, but from where I'm sitting it seems likely that the next totally open election will take place in 2016, when Barack Obama steps down after his second term and presumably-still-VP Joe Biden (being just a few months older than John McCain is now) will be too old. I'd actually take odds, if that does come to pass, that both parties run women at the top of the ticket in 2016. In game theoretical terms there's just too much net potential advantage to be lost in allowing the opposing party to run a woman while you run a man. That hunger won't be getting any smaller in eight more years of waiting.

I hope I'm right. It'll be a very good day for America, and a better day still if she's a Democrat.

Everybody's raving about Brian Schweitzer, who managed to get the crowd fired up about energy and about Obama after Warner put them to sleep. (Everybody! Benen, Marshall, Kos, Giordano.)

One of the still-underappreciated stories of this election, I think, is the national hunger for a honest conversation about energy and the environment, something we've been entirely denied by coal-industry-sponsored debates in the primaries and Exxon-sponsored convention coverage in the general.



In the cheap seats, stand up!