Maybe this is all part of some baffling triple-bluff operation, but Howard Fineman at MSNBC says he's spoken to "two of the finalists for the role of Barack Obama's running-mate," and one says the eventual pick will be "Joe", while the other says: "Biden." If by "finalists" Fineman means Biden/Bayh/Kaine (he might not) and if Joe Biden hasn't taken to referring to himself in the third person, that seems to imply that two of the three VP frontrunners are telling him it's not them but Biden. Fineman adds:
One of the contenders also revealed a tidbit about timing. That person says Obama's camp wants to know how to get in touch on Thursday afternoon.
...So, if that means the campaign is going to tell the front-runners on Thursday afternoon, it would point to Friday morning as the time for Team Obama's early-morning text blast, wouldn't it?
Fineman summarises the case for Biden, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, thus:
He is a lively and feisty if unpredictable campaigner with working-class roots and a street-level feel for the hot spots of the globe -- which he can use to go toe-to-toe with Sen. John McCain... Biden has largely escaped any hint of scandal, personal or political, in a long career, even though he was forced to withdraw from the Democratic race in 1988 amid charges of plagiarism. Those charges now seem sadly trivial given all that's happened since.
