Why does Drudge get brought up here at least twice a day?

@1, Because, like him or not, the site is an important aspect of the overall media picture. And since Eli is charged with reporting the story, he's likely to visit numerous sources, one of which would be the Drudge Report.

Why would it not be brought up twice a day, particularly in campaign coverage? Are we supposed to only quote HuffPo and pretend Drudge doesn't exist?

Why is it that Barack is not considering any African-Americans for Veep?

If Obama's VP pick is not someone that voters can say "Oh yeah, that's a good choice - it will add gavitas" and is somone relatively unknown like Chet Edwards, then Obama is really pushing his luck.

Does anyone else think it might have been wiser for Obama to have announced this earlier in the week...

YES.

Dear Barack:

Ok, now you're just being a dick.

This better be a damn good VP choice.

And there damn well better be punch and pie.

- Me

PS: Really good damn pie, too. None of that store-bought shit.

@2, is Drudge still really a significant part of the media picture in 2008? I concede that he was a decade ago, if only for leaking the spiked Newsweek investigation.

In the past few hours, we have two Slog posts linking to Drudge - one to report his completely wrong horseshit story about the bumper sticker, and one to say that Drudge noticed a story on MSNBC. What value was added to "the media picture" by Drudge in that equation?

Also, factor in that Matt Drudge remains a sad, closeted shithead.

Does anyone else think it might have been wiser for Obama to have announced this earlier in the week...

Totally, unless they are up to something. However, it seems to me that Obama has had days of prime media coverage just THINKING about a VP.

I think there's some logic to holding off until after the Friday news dump to make the V.P. announcement.

For one thing, it will provide a very strong lead-in to next week's Democratic Convention, which will in turn push out pretty much any other story - barring some horrible natural catastrophe, or, shrub declaring war on Russia - so, McSame and his cronies in the GOP are going to be spending the week sitting on their hands AFTER having had a pretty dismal week this past week with the whole "how many houses" fiasco.

That makes for two solid weeks of Dems dominating the news cycle going into the GOP Convention starting on the 1st. Clearly, they know they can't dominate the news that week, but they'll have enough momentum going into it, including, presumably, a decent post-convention "bounce" in the polls, that they'll be able to marginalize, or possibly even negate, any post-convention bounce the GOP might be expecting.

That, in my mind, sounds like a pretty good strategy.

@7, Drudge is one of the most efficient aggregators of "buzz" and real stories available. I think the Republicans will leverage him for all he's worth so, yeah, that makes him important. Take it all with a grain of salt, but there it is.

I'm not too tweaked by references to Drudge or even stories that turn out to be wrong. This is a blog -- it survives by being constantly updated. And sometimes that means less-than-Pulitzer quality work, or stories later proven incorrect.

No. The McCain houses story has been of more benefit to Obama than announcing his VP would have been. Plus, he can announce tomorrow and be the headline on Sunday and the topic of discussion on the Sunday talk shows. Saturday is perfect.

I'm with lorax @11.

I for one - I am losing interest.

Every time I think I have it all figured out, I realize I have no fucking clue who it will be. That said, I hope it's Biden.

I'm betting that it's gonna be someone huge. Kerry or Hillary or Gore. If they made me check my phone every ten minutes since Wednesday morning, it's gonna be a huge disappointment to wake up to Bill Richardson's beard. I'm hoping for a big veep, coupled with a huge policy agenda. My money's on Billary.

As NPR pointed out, if Obama had announced his VP pick earlier, he'd have gotten maybe two days of coverage before the attacks and negativity began. This way, he's gotten over a week of media speculation, and he'll be riding the tide of his announcement right into the convention.

Jack Reed, yo. It's going to be Jack Reed.

I hope this doesn't turn out to be another Geraldo in Capone's vault. That said, I think it will be something big for the cover of every Sunday paper. Obama/Clinton Dream Ticket or Gore Strikes Back with Obama

I has to be big. Otherwise people will be pissed if it's a nobody they might have gotten all worked up over. Personally I think it's Hillary or Biden.

Expect the text message to wake us all at 3am (Chicago time), finally settling the issue of whether Barry can "take the call" at that time of the morning.

And it will probably tell us it's Clinton or Clark. Ya know the designers are just dying to market them as "The O-C"

Let's see, you make an announcement Saturday morning in time for the Sunday newspaper and Sunday political talkshows. And this, you wonder, is unwise? Why???

As of 9pm the Secret Service was dispatched to Joe Biden's house.

As of 9pm the Secret Service was dispatched to Joe Biden's house.

MSNBC just announced it is Biden. Obama-Biden 2008!!!!!

@6, I would settle for mediocre pie.

Uh, so much for being the first to know! This text message BS was just hype. I'm fairly pissed, having spent the last 2 days obsessively checking my cellphone.