Editor’s Note: Sen. Clinton announced this week that she is going to give her support to Sen. Obama and give up the race. What happens to the vice presidency now? Who do you think Obama will choose? Do you think he, in order to unite the party, will choose Hillary as his running mate? These are the questions we posed to Liz, Mary, Judith and Jane.

LIZ: I just had lunch with one of Hillary’s backers, a person who is an aide to Hillary. And she says that she always encouraged her to try and get the vice-presidential slot if she couldn’t win the presidency. But now she feels that Obama probably won’t offer it, because they really don’t want her. They just want her to campaign for him, but they don’t want her to be vice president. Imagine the baggage she would have as the vice president – she and Bill. The vice president doesn’t have very much to do – just serves at the will of the president; presides over the Senate. And, while it’s the second most important job, it’s kind of a nothing job. It’s a strange thing.

MARY: But the current vice president has been very powerful.

JUDITH: You haven’t pointed out that it’s second in line to the presidency.

LIZ: That’s right. That’s the advantage.

JUDITH: I think she should go for a good job. She’s got a bargaining position, and the Supreme Court would be ideal for her. But when Sen. Obama gave his victory speech, it sounded suspiciously like he might offer her something terrible, like being head of H.H.S.[Dept. of Health and Human Services].

LIZ: This person, the one who’s her aide, doesn’t believe she would want to be in the cabinet.

JUDITH: I would think not, especially H.H.S., which is such a difficult position.

LIZ: Well, I think she’d make a dandy secretary of state. I can see her traveling around the world to restore the reputation of this country, at the will of her president. Or, she can remain the senator of New York and bide her time and see what happens. My friend believes that whatever her faults were in this campaign should be blamed on Mark Penn who refused to set up any kind of grassroots thing for her and didn’t use the Internet properly. So Obama took all of that away from them. Most of Hillary’s people now really blame this guy. And for all of her faults in the campaign, she remains a very dedicated and capable and driven kind of person. And we’ve got to remember — 18 million Americans wanted her for president.

Look at Hillary’s enormous support among these older, uneducated women in America, and how marginalized they are by everybody else – like they don’t count. And she really made them count. And I don’t think there’s any way they can vanquish her. I think she’ll come back in one way or another. And Obama’s not ignoring that. He’ll do something, I think. He’ll offer her something – maybe something she really wants.

JUDITH: The things on her list of what she wants were on the domestic side — not on the foreign affairs side. What would be more powerful than the Supreme Court?

LIZ: I don’t know, though. I feel, Judith, it’s too sort of sedentary for her.

JUDITH: Really?

MARY: Don’t you have to have some legal background?

JUDITH: You don’t have to have been a judge, no. You have to be a lawyer, which she is.

LIZ: She’s a good lawyer.

JUDITH: Yes, she’s a lawyer. And if she wants to advance those issues, which were all domestic issues, I would think that that would be the place. And it’s a much better job than being president, much less vice president.

LIZ: Well what do you think, Mary?