Uncle Tom Bob Johnson Lobbies Black Caucus for Obama to pick Clinton as VP

BY ROBERT BEHRE, From the Post and Courier

Clyburn says Clinton should have given Obama Props
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn doesn't plan to get involved in the discussions over which Democrat Sen. Barack
Obama should choose as a running mate, even though he has been asked to.  Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and a prominent backer of Sen. Hillary Clinton, wrote to Clyburn on Wednesday and urged him to ask the Congressional Black Caucus to rally behind an Obama-Clinton ticket. Clyburn, South Carolina's 6th District representative, said the caucus will remain neutral. "I'm not insulted by that idea (of an Obama-Clinton ticket), but I don't see my role as being anyone to be out promoting that idea," he said. Clyburn, who publicly endorsed Obama on Tuesday, said the Black Caucus decided at a meeting Wednesday not to get involved in the vice presidential stakes. "Individual members of that caucus can probably do so, but I don't think the caucus as a body is going to do that." Meanwhile, Clyburn said he was disappointed in Clinton's speech Tuesday, specifically in her failure to acknowledge that Obama had won enough delegates to capture the nomination. "I have gotten nothing but vitriol about her speech last night. People are tremendously upset that she never congratulated him on his victory, only on the way he conducted his campaign," he said. "There's a big difference between conducting a campaign and winning a campaign, and people are very upset about that."

Meanwhile, Clyburn said he thought Obama's speech was one of the three best in his campaign, right up there with his Iowa victory speech and his speech on race in Philadelphia.

Clyburn predicted that Obama will announce his vice president choice at least a few weeks before the late-August convention.

Clyburn has been busy campaigning for congressional candidates in other states and currently has no plans to hit the campaign trail on Obama's behalf. "I will do anything the senator asks me to do. He has not asked me to do anything."