Well, somewhere around 1AM EDT last night the Obama campaign started running into problems hiding the private plane and the police escort in Delaware. Thus it was that AP first reported Joe Biden as Barack Obama's pick for Vice-President.
Those of us who were waiting for two days for a text message or email got the shaft. My email came at 4:44am although I've heard reports about the text message as early as 3AM. Of course, I got about 9 emails from the Obama campaign yesterday, which was, of course, the idea. Fundraising leads.
This pick, as Chuck Todd explains in the video, makes the most sense. He says the Obama campaign was all about avoiding a drama pick.
My explanation is rather simpler. The Obama campaign wants to spend as little time as possible introducing the VP candidate to the American people. Kaine, Sebelius and even Bayh to some extent suffered from a need for the campaign to mount a "Meet ...." campaign that they didn't want to waste time on.
That is why I was pretty certain that when Chet Edwards' name popped up on the radar it was either a red herring or some reporter suddenly realized that he had already been vetted and was trying to find a story to report on. C'mon! I been following the House and Senate for years and Chet Edwards isn't usually on MY radar screen.
That is also why I wasn't completely ruling out Hillary. Picking her still carried a lot of advantages for the Obama campaign. Those advantages did not outweigh the negatives enough, however.
I am happy with the pick. I wanted to vote for him twenty years ago, before the whole Neil Kinnock plagiarism thing came up. He knows his way around foreign policy and was also a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He will be a great attack dog on McCain and whomever he chooses.
C'mon, this is the guy who said of Rudy Giuliani:
There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11.
How can you not love that!
I think Obama made a safe but correct pick here. I look forward to seeing how much of a bump they can get out of the convention.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
