The selection of ex-VA Gov. Mark Warner to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention comes on the heels of a secret, last-minute effort to convince Warner to submit his name and record for vice presidential vetting.
Sources close to Warner say that the Virginia Senate candidate was subject to fairly intense pressure by Obama advisers to allow the team of Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy to open an account and begin their work.
However, let's assume for a moment that it is all true, and that the Obama campaign asked Warner, Webb, and Kaine to submit vetting papers for the short-list portion of the search. That would mean that three of the seven people who were asked to submit short-list vetting papers were from Virginia. The other four confirmed have been Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Kathleen Sebelius.
If Virginians composed nearly half of the Obama campaign's short list, then Tim Kaine, not Evan Bayh, is probably the favorite to become Obama's Vice-President. In fact, Kaine is the only member of the short list not scheduled to speak at the convention yet. I don't know if this necessarily means anything, since rescheduling would be pretty easy. However, given that Kaine was the first Governor to endorse Obama, and that many Clinton supporters, like Charlie Rangel, are not being slotted into speaking roles in order to make room for Obama supporters, his absence is very, very conspicuous.
I wonder if the Evan Bayh trial balloon was sent out in order to help soften up the base for Kaine. From what I could tell, the netroots did not much like the choice of Kaine (see here and here for two good takedowns), but really, really hated Bayh. By comparison, and as a reinforcing pick, Kaine doesn't look quite as bad. Kaine was an early supporter of Obama, supposedly opposed the war from the start (although he was terrible on withdrawal for a while), worked on housing rights issues as a lawyer, has experience abroad (as a missionary, though), and comes from one of the three most important states (Colorado and Ohio are the other two). So yeah, he isn't very good, but he is a lot better than Evan Bayh.
Not many good options on the short list. I lean toward Sebelius, but Dodd and Biden wouldn't be too bad. No matter who it is, we will probably find out in the next week. In an attempt to maximize a convention bounce, Obama will probably announce his vice-presidential choice on or around Thursday of next week. The best bet is that they are looking for continual coverage between the VP pick and the convention, while also not giving McCain a chance to announce his VP before the Democratic convention (the McCain campaign has indicated they will probably announce their pick after Obama). As such, next Thursday makes the most sense. You don't make announcements on Fridays, so next Thursday is probably the best way to both prevent McCain from announcing before the Democratic convention, and to also guarantee a string of continuous coverage between the VP announcement and the convention.
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