ELECTION 2008: Obama-Biden, CONFIRMED

From the Obama website... Confirmed that Joe Biden is the VP nominee for the Democratic party.



Also, the McCain camp is expecting a 15 point+ bump in the polls for Obama after the Convention. From the above newstory:

“Barack Obama is more similarly situated to Bill Clinton in 1992 than any other candidate in recent history,” Sarah Simmons, a director of strategy for the McCain campaign, wrote in the Friday memo. “Bill Clinton was a new candidate on the national scene; he was running in a ‘change’ oriented election cycle and the economy was voters’ top issue — a dynamic he was able to capitalize on.”

And the expectation is that Obama will get a 5 point bump from the Biden announcement.

Update @ 7:50am: This was posted, btw, at 3:40am (the time I clicked "Publish Post"), so I saw the announcement around 3:00am (I know because I had to restart the computer before I put it up, at that happened at 3:02am). The time the text message came in? 3:15am. The text message in toto from the Barack Campaign:

Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first
Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on http://www.barackobama.com/. Spread the word!

So there you go.

And this seems to be the graphic they are "setting up" -- or, at least, are on Facebook for now:


Don't for get to join the 10million strong Facebook group.

Update to the Update at 8:00am: Electoral-vote.com has a great, great discussion of Biden and why he's probably best for the ticket. But let's focus on what this does for the Republicans and McCain and see why, perhaps, Biden was the best choice:

Every serious observer of the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, readily admits that few, if any, senators know as much about foreign policy as Biden. He shores up a critical weakness in Obama's CV--lack of foreign affairs experience. When McCain attacks Obama for lack of experience, Biden is going to say: "John, Barack and I are a team and I've been in the Senate 14 years longer than you and I'm chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a job you've never held." This alone is worth the price of admission. It makes it hard for the Republicans to attack the Democrats on foreign policy when the Democratic ticket has more experience than the Republican ticket (short of McCain picking Colin Powell as Veep).

From an electoral point of view, Biden also has virtues. While Obama would carry Delaware even with Dick Cheney on the ticket, Biden's working-class roots in northern Appalachia are going to be a big plus during the campaign. He is going to campaign in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and North Carolina extensively. He will also appeal to ethnic Catholics in the rust belt. He certainly brings gravitas to the ticket. He is one of the most senior people in Washington and about as prepared to be President as one can be. . .

Other than plagiarizing one speech, Biden is clean as a hounds' tooth. His first wife was tragically killed, then he remarried. He has never been mentioned in any kind of sex scandal, financial scandal, or anything else. If there had been any dirt on him, it would have come out during his many campaigns. . .

McCain plus Romney allows the Democrats to attack the Republicans as the Plutocrat Party. With the experience issue partially nullified by Biden, it is not clear what their best strategy is. Profiling McCain's war heroism will obviously be front and center, but will America's admiration for his personal courage in Vietnam be enough to offset their personal economic worries? McCain could offset this by picking a Veep who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, rather than the son of a wealthy CEO who was later three-term governor of Michigan. But except for Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), who is only 37, he doesn't have a lot of good choices.

There's so much more, but those are great basics. I'm feeling a little better.