'Dream Ticket' Meets Reality: Obama Looks Beyond Clinton

July 31, 2008 — -- Some supporters of Hillary Clinton are voicing anger that Barack Obama may choose another woman for his vice presidential running mate.

Rumors that other high profile women politicians -- such as two-term Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and first-term Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- are fueling a backlash of sorts from some of Clinton's most ardent supporters.

"Hillary Clinton in not a political lego block, easily replaced by another woman candidate," Allida Black, a former Clinton national fundraising committee member, told ABCNews.com Thursday.

"Governor Sebelius, while a good leader for Kansas, is not, in any way, an acceptable substitute for Senator Clinton," said Black, who is also director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University.

"Women voters know this," Black said. "Hillary is not interchangeable."

"Here she is a candidate that received more votes than anyone in primary history and why would he discard her for another woman vice president; that would be insulting," said Democrat Will Bower, co-founder of PUMA, which stands for Party Unity My A**, a Washington, D.C.- based group urging Clinton to fight for the nomination all the way to the party's Denver convention in August.

"I really don't care who he chooses as vice president because I'm not going to vote for him regardless," said Bower, who said he'll vote for Republican Sen. John McCain if Clinton isn't at the top of the ticket.

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and a longtime friend of the Clintons dating back to their time together at Yale Law School, also blasted the idea of another woman running as Obama's vice presidential pick.

"The selection of either one of those instead of Senator Clinton I would find completely incomprehensible," Davis told ABC News.com.

Davis argued that while he respects Sebelius and McCaskill, Clinton supporters would have a hard time accepting another woman on the ticket.

"If anyone thinks that picking a woman will simply placate Hillary Clinton's female supporters, I think that's very patronizing to women and I don't think that that either Governor Sebelius or Senator McCaskill would disagree," he said.

Davis, who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday titled "Why Obama Should Pick Hillary," said he hasn't given up the "dream" of an Obama-Clinton ticket.

"She helps him more and she's more qualified," he said, "why would he pick two females, both who are very admirable public servants, why would you pick them over her?"