Well, despite some excited reports last night of Obama-Bayh ‘08 buttons and bumper stickers, it has been announced that Obama has picked Joe Biden as his running mate (via CNN): Obama-Biden ticket ready to debut.
The official Obama campaign e-mail states:
Friend –I have some important news that I want to make official.
I’ve chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.
Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois — the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago.
I had noted a good pick of speculation last weekend on various Sunday shows that Biden would be the guy, but I honestly didn’t believe it. At a minimum, Biden likes to talk and often says things that get him into trouble (the whole “articulate”/”clean” business and the “Indian accents” bit both come to mind). Those types of sound bites will certainly be exploited (along with things like the plagiarism problem he had back in the 1988 campaign) by the McCain campaign and associated groups. However, none of those are going to be death blows.
My sense is that Biden was picked specifically because of his foreign policy expertise, which addresses Obama’s key perceived weakness (and McCain’s main perceived strength). It also means that despite the one bad poll this week, that the Obama campaign didn’t panic and didn’t take the ill-advised suggestion in some quarters that he would have to pick Hillary Clinton to jump-start his campaign.
If you are looking for a round-up of early response, check out James Joyner and for a lot of posts on the subject, cruise over to The Moderate Voice (just click ‘n scroll).
And btw, is the earliness of the announcement yet another example of Democratic Party east coast bias?
Sphere: Related Content
Filed under: 2008 Campaign, US Politics | |The views expressed in the comments are the sole responsibility of the person leaving those comments. They do not reflect the opinion of the author of PoliBlog, nor have they been vetted by the author.
One Response to “Sleep Late, Miss the Big Announcement (It’s Biden Edition)”
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
[...] Amaze (+Video Evidence of His Foot-in-Mouth Problems) which includes two video clips, including the aforementioned one about Indian-Americans (it originally had three clips, but one is not longer available, and I [...]