So I got the text message announcing Joe Biden as the official VP pick about 20 minutes ago – and the irony of the moment didn't strike me until I saw it pointed out in the open thread over at DKos – 3:00 am!! Where were you when you got the call text message?
Please share widely!
They touted it as cutting edge and groundbreaking. “Be among the first to know.”
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p>Well, of course, I was among the first to know, because while my friends and family were sleeping, I was checking to see who the hell was texting me at 3am.
…and you lay the blame on the campaign? Give me a break – personally, I think they wanted to do the announcement on Thursday, but with “I-don’t-know-how-many-houses-I-own-gate” exploding across the news media, they decided not to announce until today. That gave the media time to find out about it, if only by a couple of hours.
Really, it makes no sense to announce news like this late on a Friday night — unless there was something going on earlier in the week that you didn’t want to squelch.
Give Hillary! less time to go Nuclear. Watch tomorrow’s papers they are going to be fun. Obama strung Hillary! along all week so she wouldn’t drop her last A-Bomb. It’s coming mark my word. Enjoy Denver the fireworks should be outstanding.
She was never in serious contention for VP. They never even asked for her financial records.
She could have been a VP contender, but chose to continue her campaign and go hard against Obama after it was clear she only had a very slim chance of winning the nomination. In short, she assholed herself out of being the VP.
I would think that you could have sent the text message before dispatching the Secret Service to his house and filing the flight that would take him from his home to Chicago. ..
…had nothing to do with Biden being the pick:
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p>Source: http://marcambinder.theatlanti…
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p>As to the Secret Service, I think they wanted those guys in place before informing the world, discretion being the better part of valor and all that…
Yes, I’m blaming the campaign for sending a text messages at a time when people IN EVERY TIME ZONE were sleeping. This is 2008 and every media organization in the country was checking and reporting on the comings and goings of every possible candidate. If the media caught wind of it (it obviously made the Globe, which was being printed when the message went out), then it’s too late. Use some discretion.
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p>I don’t know if you were awake at 3:24 am, but I wasn’t until I heard the familiar chime of a text message. Messages at 3:30am usually aren’t good news, so you’re inclined to check it out.
and I just received it some time in the last hour. The time stamp on it says 5:09AM.
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p>I learned via the Globe headline this morning, which is pretty much what I expected would happen.
My wife points out that of all the VP choices discussed Biden looks like the most like McCain? in appearance. Could that have been the decisive factor?
“Vote for Biden — he’s a white-haired old-ish guy too, but he knows that Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist any more!”
I personally think choosing Biden has its downsides. Granted he has allot of good name recognition and is a skilled speaker and campaigner. At the same time he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shot and being caught plagiarizing opens a pandora’s box. I also think this choice questions Obama’s credibility as someone who is outside the beltway. My fear is that Obama will meet the same fate as Spitzer, he will try to change thinks and will have people inside his administration (who come from the status quo world) working to undermind him.
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p>Still, no one will really knows how much an effect this will have until McCain picks a VP. I hear from some friends of mine that McCain is considering Joe Lieberman as VP. Doing so would counteract Obama’s choice of a Blue Dog Dem implying that McCain is also about change and working across the isle. In all likely hood he will choose Rudy G or Mitt. I really hope he chooses Rudy G because I would love to sink that ship considering Rudy ruined the city I grew up in so much to the point that average people can’t live in the ghetto. Mitt would be the kiss of death.
Riffing on this post, which links to this analysis of Biden’s favorability #s (not good generally but high among older women):
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p>Joe Biden is your mom’s new boyfriend. He’s a hair-plugged cheeseball who talks too much, he’s all up in your business and acts like he knows everything, he has a mysterious scandal in his past, but your mom seems to hang on his every word and you have to admit he is smart and basically a very nice guy. At some family event in the future you will have one too many and tearfully admit this to him. Hopefully at the state of the union, circa 22014.
whether the choice of Biden will cause even cranky ol’ David Brooks to rethink his reflexive backing of McCain.
Just, how is that, exactly? The major foreign policy decision of the last decade was the Iraq War. Biden blew it. I know that the media decides who was these “foreign policy credentials”, from Biden to Dick Lugar to, somehow, Rudy Guiliani, but it doesn’t seem to have much bearing on reality.
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p>He seems to generally be supportive of an American right to go invade wherever we want, as shown by his argument that Iraq was a mistake merely because of “we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan”, in addition to his support for American military intervention in Sudan.
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p>In addition, he supports a residual US force in Iraq, going against the majority of Iraqis and the Iraqi government who want US troops gone.
Does this improve Sen. Kerry’s chances of becoming Secretary of State? It seems like he and Biden were among those most mentioned for that position and now Biden, of course, is spoken for.
I think it means Kerry will be Foreign Relations Chair in the next Senate. I suspect this improves the chance of Richardson, Holbrooke, or Lake being SoS. He could also pick Lugar or Hagel for bipartisanship.
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p>I also think Obama should pick moderate Republican Senators like Snowe or Specter for cabinet posts-if picking them opens up a 60 seat Senate.
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p>If Kerry is picked we’d be stuck with no senators though…
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p>Also Deval Patrick for AG now that Johnboy stuck his Johnson in the wrong places…
used sparingly probably. I found it surfing on net around (at 3am).
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p>O & Joe
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p>Fired up and ready to go.
Interestingly, the gambling book collapsed on Bayh on the 15th and 16th of August, and the book rose on Biden at the same time.
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p>If gambling was regulated by SEC and I held Bayh Common Stock, I’d be pissed right about now, because I’d figure someone shorted Bayh and went long on Biden shares on the inside.
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p>I’ve reviewed the news, Obama was just returning from vacation, there was general speculation whether it was Bayh or Biden or Hillary. There’s just no news (other than to those in the know) there that I can find, to explain why the book on Bayh, on the 16th just vanished, while Biden’s rose.
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p>So Obama guys. Fess up. Who cashed in on the insider info?
did you ever notice before a choice is made for many things a person or “thing” has no clear advantage but once they are chosen it becomes a “no brainer”. I didn’t read an overwhelming amount of reports on why Biden was a great VP contender, didn’t hear how he would help the ticket… in fact heard a lot of things about him that made him contentious for the ticket (The war, ties to banking…).
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p>But that has all changed… NOW?
Wall Street Journal confirms the timing of it all. On Thursday, August 14, Obama aides contacted Biden, and although the information was kept from the media, some ‘in the know’ apparently parlayed the information into $$$ via the various legal and illegal ‘prediction markets’. It would be so interested to know who place the big bets on the 15th and 16th of August.