The big campaign news story, eclipsing even the fact that John McCain doesn't know how many houses he has, is that Barack Obama's about to announce his choice of running mate. Obviously, I have no idea who it is. I have a vague, based-on-nothing hunch that it won't be Biden, Bayh or Kaine from the "short list;" that it'll either be Hillary C. or someone who'll come as a total surprise. But I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.
What I was mulling was when do you make that announcement? A lot of Obama campaign donors are waiting…waiting to find out via a text message which will be sent to them before the selection is revealed anywhere else. Obama is making a joint appearance tomorrow with the individual so the text message has to come before then…but it also has to come before the news leaks from some other source. If you're Obama, you don't want to rob all those donors of that little, deserved thrill. The closer you get to the time of that joint appearance, the more you risk that happening. So you'll release it today.
When I woke up about half an hour ago, I wondered if it had already been announced. Then I realized it was too early for that. You want to do it when all those donors are awake so the ones on the West Coast don't miss it. Ideally, you want them all at work or school so they can turn to everyone around them and say, "Hey, I have news for you all," and feel special. And you don't want to wait too late in the day because you want it on the evening newscasts. (Late Friday is when you release news you don't want people to notice.)
So I'm going to guess between 1 PM and 3 PM Eastern time and probably closer to 1:00. Let's all watch me be wrong about this.