Granted, the Olympics messed up the timing, and no one announces his running mate during the convention anymore. But why would Barack Obama tell everyone his choice is Joe Biden “in the wee hours of Saturday morning”?
If nothing else, we’ll get to see how many Sunday talk shows Biden can hit tomorrow. There are — what — five? He can do it. The man does like to talk.
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Tim Allik
Dan, I was thinking about this question myself last night and came to the conclusion that the Obama campaign is bypassing the mainstream media on this latest announcement on purpose. A Saturday morning in August. What about weekends at the summer home (for the tv people at least)? Talk about rubbing their faces in it. So much for a few days off. The Obama people know the blogosphere never sleeps (or vacations) and they also know that regular people meeting in the flesh this weekend – at parties, in the park, whatever – are likely to be talking about this news irrespective of media filtering.By pulling the news tease along all week – and keeping the message controlled,the Obama campaign no doubt added thousands of additional email addresses to their database this past week. No matter what you say about the Obama campaign, they are organized. They kept this under wraps and launched it according to an obviously pre-conceived plan. Now we’ll see how it plays itself out, but so far, so good.
Aaron Read
Someone leaked the news early, and the Obama campaign was forced to make the “official” announcement at such an odd time. I suspect they were planning on making the formal announcement sometime mid-morning to cover Biden’s travel to Illinois.
Don, American
Will he reiterate how “clean and articulate” Obama is? Let the big phony talk, and see how much trouble he gets into this time. McCain didn’t know he was going to get a Labor Day gift this year. I used to think Obama’s “handlers” were smarter than that. Hey, Bill, can you steal that convention for “what’s her name?”
Bill Toscano
I thought the timing was fairly obvious.He did not want it in the morning papers, but he wanted it on the web as early as possible.Did the late editions of the Globe have it?Do you know about the NYT and the Washington Post?This was a clear attempt to control the spin.
Michael Pahre
The text-message went out at 3 am. Doesn’t anyone remember the significance of the 3 am phone call in this campaign? Somebody in the Obama has a sense of humor.I think that the leak (from a high-ranking Democratic Party official) was deliberately made early enough (i.e., late Friday night / early Saturday morning) to make the Saturday morning papers’ publishing deadlines.The text message was sent out in the middle of the night to make sure that all the hipsters saw it before they could step outside the house to pick up the paper.Pretty effective. McCain couldn’t get anywhere in the media the last few days, unless it was a discussion about his houses.
Bill Toscano
Michael: I do not thoink it was in that many papers on the East Coast. It certainly was not in the editions I got in upstate NY.It was probably in later city editions.
Tim Allik
Did not see it in the Metrowest morning deliveries of The Globe and The Times. Direct-to-consumer marketing.
Michael Pahre
The “leak”, not the text message, was reported in an AP story that ran on the front-page of the Boston edition of the Boston Globe on Saturday morning.Your mileage may vary.