Still time to get on Kerry’s e-mailing list, if you want to be among the first to know.
CNN is reporting that the decision is made but Kerry hasn’t told anyone.
They are, however, also reporting that Edwards cut short a family vacation (at Disneyworld, for God’s sake!) to fly to Washington for a private conference with Kerry. Head’s up.
Me? I think Edwards would be a good pick. He’s a good campaigner, reportedly he connects with his audience a la Clinton and he’d look astonishingly good next to Cheney in the VP debate.
If I were Kerry I’d make Edwards the pick now and let a leak occur that Clark would be SecState of SecDef to garner some military credibility. Clark spent some time yesterday (I think) talking positive about Kerry, for whatever that’s worth.
Interesting time.
:shrug; Vilsack spent a lot of time with Kerry this weekend, too, and there may be others whose names didn’t get leaked at all - possibly including The One. The others can be assumed to be On The Team in some capacity, though - I’d expect some other early announcements, like Bush’s that Powell would be at State.
John Kerry will make his choice public tomorrow morning.
Is this credible?
God, I hope so…
It’s Edwards! Good choice. I might have preferred Gephardt, but the people want Edwards. Most importantly, Edwards would make a great president himself.
Bleah. Another slick young Southerner, but without Clinton’s brains. Man only has one speech, which the reporters used to recite on the sidelines, and is very very very programmed.
Oh well, guess the Southerners absolutely must hear a drawl on the ticket or they don’t bother.
Got the email from the Kerry campaign: it’s Edwards!
Yeah. We’re grateful just to be housetrained.
Well, I stand corrected. I had the first name right, and the geography right.
I thought John Breaux, and got John Edwards.
Sounds OK with me…I’m voting Democratic come November.
Law’s sake, but y’all got us pegged! :rolleyes:
Daniel
Snarkiness aside, Edwards is a great choice. He’s not as progressive as I’d like, but he’s a fabulous politician. One speech? Hey, it’s a doozy of a speech, and there’s no reason to write a different speech for each audience during the primary season. Watch him in the coming weeks, see him really go to work. You’ll be impressed.
Daniel
Surely you are familiar with the concept of a “stump speech”? Every presidential candidate has one, including Bush.
Yeah, 'cause you know those damyankees just look down on us.
Well, we’ll see. I was never particularly impressed by him, but what’s done is done.
You have to understand, my earliest President was Johnson. I’ve lived all my life in New York and Boston, two of the largest, most historic, and most influential cities in America, under Presidents from–lessee–Texas, California, Michigan, Georgia, California again, Texas*, Arkansas, and (yee-haw!) Texas! Aside from Nelson Rockefeller as Ford’s VP, I don’t think one politician from my part of the country has been elected to national office, and I get a little tired of it. Think I’ll start a mild Pit thread later today and stop bugging people in this one.
Sorry to sound so snarky, but I was really hoping for Gephardt or Richardson and hope Kerry didn’t take the easy, cynical way out with a good demographic. I hadn’t gotten the impression the men had much in common or really liked each other. Oh well. I’ll vote for them anyway, and I’ll listen to Edwards and see if he learns another speech 
- Bush I moved to Texas after the War, but he was from Connecticut, now lives largely in Maine, and is pretty comfortable in both worlds. But don’t think we didn’t notice how his Yankee roots were downplayed during his Presidency.
The text of that e-mail:
You can read about that in any article about them right now. They’re stylistically different and they may or may not have liked each other months ago, but they were in agreement more often than not, I think.
That’s something that always annoys me about media insularity - the press assigned to follow a candidate wherever he goes complaining that he always uses the same speech. Screw 'em - they’re not the intended audience; the people who come to hear him are, and the speech is new to them, the actual voters. It is actually *better * for the candidate to have a good, practiced stump speech memorized so he can avoid the kind of slips that the media scavengers will jump on. They’d be doing a much better service by reporting how each new audience receives it than whining that they themselves are being subjected to it again. Here’s a hint, gang: Nobody but you cares, except perhaps for the people who infer that the candidate has nothing else to say.
Kerry’s made a good choice, perhaps not the best (I thought he needed a Midwesterner and a governor, and that a Southerner wouldn’t tip any Southern states to Kerry), but Edwards is a solid choice anyway. I look forward to his debate with Cheney, if there is one. Old warhorses like Gephardt and Biden would have been a negative, and Vilsack may not have been a solid enough asset, so this will probably work out well.
The NY Post (a Murdoch rag) reported this AM that it was Gephardt. Wonder who was pulling their chain?