Veepstakes Wednesday, Plus Haysbert

My personal theory to explain Wesley Clark's spectacular flameout from veepstakes contention this weekend is that Clark (a) knew he was an if not the obvious candidate for Obama's VP and (b) he nonetheless suspected, knew, or had been told outright that he wasn't going to get the slot—so in order to protect the Wesley Clark Brand he chose to quite publicly remove himself from consideration in such a way as to endear himself to the Democratic base in the process.

Just my theory.

But regardless of how it happened, Clark is almost certainly out, which I think ups the odds for some version of my prediction of a Virginia Strategem considerably (especially the Jim Webb version). Stepping in as a proxy for Clark in the Foreign Policy Ploy is apparently Joe Biden, who Walter Shapiro at Salon hypes today.

Personally I think a bolder choice is called for, but Shapiro could be right. If nothing else it will give right-wing trolls an excuse to call Obama "clean and articulate" in every comment thread on the Internet for the next eight years.

Elsewhere in Obamaland, the nation's third black president, 24's Dennis Haysbert, is taking credit for the Obama phenomenon, as well as for any other non-white-Christian-male presidents who may come along later. Is Morgan Freeman really going to stand for this?