I wouldn't pay all that much attention to hints that people like Mark Halperin or Howard Fineman are dropping about the VP selection process.
Why not? Their sources are too good -- meaning too close to the process. There are differences between information brokers, which is what someone like Mark Halperin is, and information seekers,
which is more like what someone like Marc Ambinder is. In a process as
tightly-controlled as the Obama VP rollout, the brokers might have more
information than the seekers -- but all of the information they'll have
will be things that the Obama campaign wants them to know. The seekers are more likely to learn something that they aren't supposed to know.
With
that out of the way, there is exactly one clue that I consider to be
worth worrying about, and that is the timing of the announcement. It is
now Friday morning at 1:12 AM Central Time. The Democratic convention
kicks off in about 75 hours. The identity of the VP is not known. You
can send up trial balloons, send out false information, bluff and
posture and play-act as much as you like ... but you can't get that
time back.
There is very little time left to roll-out and brand the candidate. As Stu Rothenberg notes,
it is actually the norm rather than the exception to have the VP named
relatively close to the convention. Still, there is cutting it close,
and then there is leaving yourself no time at all. Geraldine Ferraro
and Al Gore were named 4 days before the opening gavel at the
convention, Lloyd Bentsen 6 days, Joe Lieberman 8 days, and John
Edwards 20 days ... so this pick will set the modern record for the
Democrats, although the Republicans have sometimes waited even longer.
And
this year, the circumstances are especially poor for a late roll-out.
The pre-convention coverage will have to compete with the Closing
Ceremonies. The convention coverage will have to compete with The
Clinton Show. There isn't really a post-convention period, since the
Republicans will hold their convention the week after.
If you leave yourself with a candidate who hasn't been adequately branded, you give yourself two problems. One, the Obama-Who?
Effect, i.e. underscoring the fact that Obama is inexperienced and
unknown. And two, the fact that the candidate won't have the stature to
draw large crowds on the campaign trail, or to maximize their exposure
as a potential surrogate for you.
All of this points strongly to
the known knowns: Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. In the polling that
Rasmussen conducted last month, these were the percentage of likely
voters who knew enough about the respective candidates to have formed
an opinion about them:
Clinton 98%
Biden 69%
Bayh 51%
Kaine 40%
Sebelius 39%
For comparison, here are some of the Republicans:
Romney 89%
Huckabee 85%
Lieberman 85%
Crist 53%
Jindal 43%
Pawlenty 42%
Palin 30%
Google Trends reveals similar numbers: Clinton and Biden are well ahead of the other candidates:
...and since Clinton was apparently fairly lukewarm
in her support of Obama on the campaign trail in Florida today, that
would tend to point toward Biden ... then again, it's not even clear
that the candidates have been informed of their status yet.
--Nate Silver