The Buzz

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• No news coming from the campaign trail even comes close to touching the Veepstakes for sheer buzz and excitement. Rumors and speculation had been swirling (about as much as Fay was swirling off of our coast this weekend)  for weeks about  the specifics surrounding the running mate picks of both McCain and Obama. “Target” dates cam and went without a word and without even a clear favorite. No longer. The New York Times reports that people within the Obama campaign have confirmed that a day this week will be when the Dem nominee announces his VP choice with an “elaborate” series of rollout events and moves set to create some buzz around a name that will probably be no surprise (sorry, Hillary supporters…). Meanwhile, the McCain camp is eagerly listening to the Obama Veepstakes chatter and smiling broadly that they managed to hold out long enough to let their hated opponent make the first move. Nevertheless, thee campaign has admitted that they also have a timetable picked out for unveiling McCain’s final, pro-life, Veep pick. It is set to be August 29, a day after Obama’s Denver nomination speech. Talk about fighting for attention…

• “When” had become as fascinating a debate and question as the all-important, “who,” but that comes to an end with both sides setting a general time frame for the Veep announcements. So who will Obama pick? He;s up first and in need of some fresh energy in a campaign that has amazingly become stuck in neutral and teetering on the edge of disaster. Unfortunately for Dems, his running mate pick will not bring out the fireworks. It’s down to Bayh, Biden or Kaine - and the VA Governor is the easy pick (it would appear) since the first two names have been given convention speaking slots on the Veep’s night already. That could be a smoke screen from the Obama campaign, but we’ll side with the CW and pick Kaine. He’s not a bad choice - strong moderate record, potentially lock up a swing state and is a more “common man” in appearance than another Senator would be (although Kaine is Ivy League material). But his name has been bandied about for weeks now and his selection would be a bit of a yawner for most voters as well as the media. And the liberal base will surely raise a temporary ruckus over Kaine’s stated pro-life position and those moderate tendencies we mentioned.

• On to McCain: His innocent floating of a pro-choice Veep was strafed down by the religious right; only a strict pro-lifer will be on the GOP ticket. Word is that McCain himself was set on either Joe Lieberman or Lindsey Graham for his Veep, but Lieberman’s politics and Graham’s way-too-close relationship with McCain (as well as eerily similar resumes) made them impossible choices. Romney and Pawlenty are said to be the final two viable names on the McCain short list. Cantor and Portman were merely interesting names to chat about and get the conservative base really excited. But their positions as mere House members, as well as Portman’s ties to the Bush administration, make them unlikely picks. So Mitt and Pawlenty are the last two standing. Very few leaks about preference between these two have come out of the McCain camp; Pawlenty is well known as a friend of McCain and thus always favored, but a Romney selection could soothe ruffled conservatives (not evangelicals, though) and put to rest any worries about base turnout. It’s truly up in the air.

• Palpable worries from Democrats about how Obama and his campaign are responding to McCain’s incessant attacks have forced a major shift in strategy right out of the gate following Obama’s Hawaiian vacation last week. With Obama’s team is also skittish over the success of McCain’s negative strategy and the apparent traction of Corsi’s “Obama Nation” fable, making them open to looking over what had been a playbook full of “above the fray” moves and a plan that would have McCain portrayed as an out of touch meanie who was basically background noise to Obama’s coronation. The polls and reaction from voters makes it clear that Axelrod and Plouffe miscalculated and underestimated the GOP’s ability to stoke real or false doubts about Ohama and let them fester with voters. So Obama has tweaked his stump rhetoric to take on McCain directly and sow some character and judgment doubts of his own. The fiery speech at the Orlando VFW convention this morning is something you never would have heard from Obama as little as a month ago.

• A central cog of Obama’s strategy to win over moderate evangelicals is falling apart. Obama has always been unabashedly pro-choice, but that message has been consistently muted by his campaign in that effort to portray the Dem nominee as at least open to pro-life ideals in order to get some key November votes. But some major faux pas’, like the very public one last weekend at Rick Warren’s Saddleback forum, have turn off the very voter bloc he wanted to impress. Instead of winning over evangelicals with talk of “reducing abortions,” it only brings to the surface the very strong differences in position between Obama and religious voters, not to mention getting Obama into the tight spot he entered at the Warren event, being forced to clumsily wriggle his way out of a direct answer to the eternal question of when life begins. These mishaps and te general closeness of the election is starting to bring up some buyer’s remorse among pro-Obama evangelicals. While his numbers with religious voters are still better than most Dem presidential candidates, there is a danger of a steep decline as November looms and it gets more difficult to gloss over his abortion stance.

• News out of the Denver preparations is that Al Gore has officially been invited to deliver a rousing address just before Obama goes on stage to accept the official party nomination on the final night of the convention at Invesco. Yes, Gore will be the warm-up act for Obama before a screaming mass of 70,000 Dems in Denver. And Hillary stews…

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