1115.org

So my two-year-old prediction about Jim Webb being chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee is apparently not happening, and with the official announcement due any day now, I figured I’d better make another pick. The only futures market bet I made on the Democratic side was to go massively short on Chuck Hagel, as I don’t believe Obama would want to piss off his (Democratic) base that badly. I’m pretty confident that I’ll win that bet big, but wow, it will be painful financially if it goes against me. So painful that it will not be of any comfort to listen to the heartbroken gripes of the hard core Obama crew.

Out of all the rumored names, I’m going to go with Tim Kaine because Obama is all about Brand Obama and Kaine is about the only one left who fits. Picking Evan Bayh certainly flips a Senate seat, Joe Biden said he’s “not the guy,” and Kathleen Sebilius is not someone I can take seriously. Of the four, only Biden is wholeheartedly pro-choice, and if you don’t think that’s telling, you’re simply blind. I never thought I’d think this, but Obama should pick Hillary and be done with it. He’ll pick up the 20% of Democrats who currently don’t support him, and take away the media’s ability to write stories about how she isn’t helping him win.

This week is when I stopped thinking that Obama would win the general election. There are a ton of reasons why I think he is a bad Democratic candidate, but until now, I figured he’d still win. But after letting McCain run him down without an effective counter, I don’t think he will be able to open enough of a lead to avoid the now usual election day “irregularities” that claimed the Gore and Kerry bids. I read a quote from Obama’s campaign manager that boiled down to ‘voters won’t make up their minds until late in the game.’ That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that storylines don’t calcify long before that, and it certainly doesn’t make irrelevant everything that happens before Obama’s campaign thinks that the game starts. John Kerry lost the 2004 election in July. And Pew just did another poll that found that nearly half of the electorate thinks that they are hearing too much about Obama. I’d love to hear the wise and sharp Plouffe explain how he plans to convince people to vote for his guy when they’re sick of hearing about him. Should be a neat trick.

In the last two Presidential elections, Gore and Kerry both maintained small polling leads, only to lose. Neither closed the deal, and Team Obama’s annoying focus on attempting to maximize relatively trivial stories (overseas trip, accepting the nomination at a football stadium, playing timing games with the VP announcement, and ooooohh, TEXT MESSAGES!) seems to miss the point. I get the same feeling I had in 2000 where most voters didn’t really understand that Bush wasn’t a moderate. I kept seeing lists of Bush advisors and wondering how he was getting away with a moderate message when he was surrounded by psychopaths and criminals. Gore never was able to define Bush, so Bush was able to define himself, monumentally inaccurately. McCain has been given largely free reign to do the same, and despite being surrounded by psychopaths and lobbyists, he’s be able to paint himself as the sensible, honorable choice. Obama hasn’t even bothered to disabuse people of that notion, and it’s hard to tell if it’s because he lacks the stomach for it or he has boxed himself in with his cutesy “different kind of politics” schtick. Either way, he’ll rue the day he ordered the independent Democratic 527s to sit this election out. Just watch.

It’s at this point I’d open the floor up to betting, but Sac the welcher ruined that for everyone.