I just bopped over to InTrade’s political futures market to see the current betting on Obama’s VP pick. As of right now, their top five are Kathleen Sebelius, Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, and Chuck Hagel.  Hovering right in the middle of the pack, between Sam Nunn and Chris Dodd, is Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania.

I sure wish someone could explain to me why he’s on this or for that matter anyone else’s list.

Ed Rendell is the worst vice presidential candidate ever.  Worse than Dan Quayle.  Worse than Andrew Johnson.  Worse than Thomas Eagleton.  Worse than William Wheeler, an obscure Congressman from upstate New York who was named Rutherford B. Hayes’s Vice President as a practical joke.

Why?  I could list plenty of reasons.  But I won’t.  All you really need to know is this:

To be fair, then-Mayor Rendell appeared at this event in return for the Nation of Islam calling off a scheduled march through a racially troubled neighborhood in Philadelphia.

So I recognize that he was trying to defuse a difficult situation.  I also acknowledge that we should not criticize someone for failing to realize that they might someday be on somebody’s short list for the vice presidency.  And I recognize that race relations in Philly have been difficult at best, and that there’s a long history of bad blood between the police and the African-American community there.

But… there’s no nuance here.  In fact, Rendell bends over backwards to portray the NOI as just another devout family-oriented, education-centric, drug-hating religious group.  The only thing he didn’t do is give Farrakhan a warm fuzzy.

As far as I’m concerned, his comments represent a bridge too far.  As Lou Reed once said of Jesse Jackson’s infamous quip about New York,

The words that flow so freely
falling dancing from your lips
I hope that you don’t cheapen them
with a racist slip

Oh Common Ground
Is Common Ground a word or just a sound
Common Ground
Remember those civil rights workers buried in the ground

If I ran for [Vice] President
and once was a member of the Klan
wouldn’t you call me on it
the way I call you on Farrakhan

Or as Rendell himself put it, his presence at that pulpit “speaks louder than all the words that we can say.”

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