Barack Obama inched closer to the Democratic nomination last night despite a thumping in Kentucky and a predicted win in Oregon.

In his victory speech from Iowa last night, Obama offered praised to both Hillary Clinton and her supporters for their effort to seat a Democrat in the White House.  Obama is going to need both if he wants to win the White House in November.

Naturally, there will be even more attention focused on when Clinton will suspend her campaign and who Barack Obama will select for vice-president in the coming weeks.

I’ve suspected for some time that Obama’s VP nominee will have to be somebody who is a more established political leader (i.e., “older) than Obama with impeccable foreign policy credentials who is not named Hillary Clinton.   I’m now leaning toward Joe Biden (DE), Wesley Clark or Jim Webb (VA).

I don’t see HRC giving up her Senate seat to run for vice-president in 2008 but Obama faces the same problem as every nominee selected in a close race faces: he has to at least offer a place on the ticket to the runner-up.

In the case of John F. Kennedy in 1960, the offer of the vice-presidency to then-Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson backfired when LBJ unexpectedly accepted the offer.  The Kennedys assumed that the offer was a formality and nobody as powerful as Johnson who give that up to be second bananna.

James Andrew Miller of the WaPo offers an interesting solution to the “what about Hillary?” problem for the Obama campaign: offer her the next vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

I think this would have to be done rather stealthily — Hillary has already raised more money for the RNC over the years than most Republicans.  If HRC were publicly touted for a seat on the Court, more than a few conservative heads would explode.

But it’s a good idea and would go a long way toward shoring-up support for an Obama-______________ ticket in the Democratic base.