Marc Ambinder takes a stab at predicting Obama's VP, but misses the smart bet completely: Gen. Wesley Clark. Clark might well have been Clinton's VP and was, I think, the most likely choice for Obama VP even before the race took the shape it has. But Clark's vocal support for Clinton just makes the likelihood of his being picked as Obama's VP all the more likely—picking Clark now becomes a unity move that brings the party back together.

Biden has an outside chance, and Bill Richardson probably has a slightly better chance than Biden—but I still think it'll be Clark.

If it isn't Clark, I think that will be because Obama has decided either that he needs to double down on "change" and pick someone else who represents the future, or else decides the better unity move is to select a woman, or both. In this case look at Obama endorsers like Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, or Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill.

But Obama should keep in mind, if this is indeed his thinking, that there's only one way to lock up now and forever the Jaimee Hills/Larry David demographic, and that's to pick California Senator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Barbara Boxer.

UPDATE: Right, Republicans. Can Huckabee get enough support to edge out Romney? Condoleezza Rice has already said she won't do it, and it would have been hard to imagine the Republicans really picking her despite the obvious demographic advantages she brings to the table.

Is there anyone else who is even on the radar screen over there?

Barack Obama has announced his three-person vice-presidential search committee: Caroline Kennedy, Jim Johnson (the man responsible for Edwards in '04 and Geraldine Ferraro in '84), and Eric Holder. With that in mind, it seems like a good time for another edition of veepstakes.

I'm throwing out Edwards, despite how well he polls, because (1) I think that's 90% an artifact of name recognition and (2) I don't think he'd actually take it. And I'm throwing out Clinton because I think we all recognize what a disaster that would be.

I'm not even going to mention my secret hope that Al Gore will take the job.

So with that in mind, the people I see right now as The Big Five Strategies:

* Wes Clark (The Foreign Policy Ploy)
* Kathleen Sebelius (The Female Gambit)
* Tim Kaine Jim Webb or Mark Warner (The Virginia Strategem)
* Brian Schweitzer (The Western Experiment)
* Chuck Hagel or Sam Nunn (Wild Card)

The Foreign Policy Ploy
As I've mentioned in the past, Wes Clark is in some ways the obvious, even default choice. He's not a particularly great campaigner, but he's definitely got the Foreign Policy Gravitas and he's a loyal Clintonite (a huge plus). He fills a gap in Obama's resume and is an answer to the charge of inexperience, though as I've spoken about with my wise friend Shankar lately there's also a percentage in Obama refusing the expected fills-a-gap frame by pointedly picking someone who's got nothing to do with foreign policy. Wes Clark also doesn't especially look like the future, which means a visual disconnect with the expected campaign message.
Runner-up: Bill Richardson, who offers literally everything you could want in a VP except for a crippling case of Costanza-itis.
Honorable mention: Joe Biden.

The Female Gambit
I think there's a lot to be said for the idea that Obama needs to pick a woman to balance the ticket with regard to gender, and right now Kathleen Sebelius probably leads that list. She's a popular governor, albeit from a state that most likely isn't in play, and it's well-known that she and Barack are friendly. But she's not perfect: I don't think she's especially good on TV (peep her State of the Union response) and she'll be 68 in 2016, probably too old to run and win.
Runner-up: Arizona's Janet Napolitano. I hope she isn't picked simply because I don't want to hear six months of "She let in all the Mexicans!" from the right-wing.
Honorable mention: Claire McCaskill. If only she wasn't a Senator...
Crazy longshot that would make Jaimee crazy happy: Barbara Boxer.

The Virginia Strategem
Virginia is so close to tipping our way that putting Tim Kaine on the ticket would almost certainly push it over the top, which by itself is probably enough to guarantee McCain can't win. Assuming Obama's people conclude they don't need to play either the foreign policy ploy or the female gambit, the only real strike against Kaine that I can see is the likelihood that Virginia will turn blue regardless. [WEEKS-LATER UPDATE: Given that the Lt. Governor of Virginia is a Republican, Kaine is much more of a longshot than I originally thought. Webb or Warner are still very likely picks.]
Runner-up: Sen. Jim Webb. I just don't think we'll see a double-Senator ticket.
Seemingly ruled out: Mark Warner, already running for Senate.

The Western Experiment
If Obama's team decides not to pick any of the other candidates, it's because they've decided to go West and try and pick up some of the on-the-bubble states out there: Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona-if-McCain-weren't-running. If this is their strategy I'm really coming around to the idea of Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana being the candidate: what's been going on in the Montana Democratic Party seems pretty exportable to other states in the Western U.S. It'd sure be nice if Montana had more people, though.
Runner-up: Bill Richardson again. Seriously, has there ever been someone with such a good resume and so little gravitas?

Wild Card
Both Hagel and Sam Nunn offer credibility to Obama's claim that he can reach across the ideological aisle. Sam Nunn in particular is attractive insofar as the recent announcement that Bob Barr is running as the Libertarian Candidate potentially puts Georgia in play. (Shankar remarked to me just the other day that he was favoring Nunn at that particular moment, though in a separate email from a few days before he'd bet the ranch on Kaine.) Honestly the Wild Card strategy rubs me the wrong way. Compromise? In our moment of triumph? Not only are we likely to win this time, we're likely to win big—we should be looking forward to 2016, and if we are we shouldn't lock in a Blue Dog or a liberal Republican, we should get as progressive as we can.
Runner-up: Ed Rendell. He didn't comport himself especially well as a Clinton supporter during the PA primary, and though Pennsylvania is a key state if we're losing there we're probably getting blown out anyway. Still, he's a prominent Clinton supporter with "working class" bonafides, and I could see the Obama camp deciding they need to go in that direction, though I hope they don't.
Runner-up runner-up: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. (Thanks to demosthenes2007 from the Daily Kos cross-posting for the reminder.)

THE FINAL WORD: It all comes down to strategy. If I were placing my bet at 3:45 PM on June 4, 2008, I'd probably place the bulk of it on Tim Kaine, the rest on Kathleen Sebelius, and just a little bit on Brian Schweitzer. But what do I know? Rest assured the campaign's eggheads are working on this, and when they've crunched the numbers and made their pick we'll be able to tell which campaign they've decided to run.

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?

More veepstakes: Is it Galactus?

Galactus, Eater of Worlds

Pros: Balances out Obama's troublingly semi-dovish past with tough, muscular "eat the world" policy.

Cons: Will eat the world.

Politics Monday.

* The tea-leaf readers say the Patti Solis Doyle hire is a coded message from Obama to Clinton that she is not being considered for VP. Elsewhere on Planet Veepstakes, Open Left is pushing hard for Wesley Clark.

* Armchair analysis from Poblano and OpenLeft still points towards an Obama landslide.

* 'One Angry Man': Keith Olbermann profiled in the New Yorker.

I guess today's the day for the final, final, actually final veepstakes prediction. On a long-term strategic level I still favor the Virginia strategy, and so when I was throwing down my predictions in the Edge of the American West thread last night that's what I went with: Warner / Romney, second choice Kaine / Romney.

But the longer this goes on and is dragged out the more it seems to me they need a huge name, and there's really just a handful people on that list: Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, maybe a wildcard like Colin Powell or Chuck Hagel. Expectations are at a fever pitch; the fact that's it's the Friday before the convention and I expected a Kaine announcement Tuesday or Wednesday (if not weeks ago) makes me think it may actually be Hillary.

If that's the way Obama's behind-the-scenes geniuses think it has to be, I guess that I'm at peace with it, but good lord if it going to be a crazy famous superstar I hope that it's Al Gore.

Despite another big defeat in Appalachia, Barack Obama now has an absolute majority of pledged delegates, all-but-guaranteeing that he will be the Democratic nominee. Here he is tonight in Iowa:



Meanwhile, SurveyUSA is playing the veepstakes game, running likely VP picks head-to-head in various swing states. Here's Pennsylvania, a key state for Obama which shows Edwards as a surprisingly (and, I think, deceptively) strong pick:



The real frontrunners, though, apparently aren't being polled: Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, Arizona's Napolitano, Virginia's Tim Kaine. And I still like McCaskill.

It seems like everyone is chattering today about who Obama's vice president will be. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post strongly favors Kathleen Sebelius. Ezra Klein likes Biden. This from The Page—Some names “are out of the box, but I think would be very well received by the American people, including former top military leaders.”—literally screams Wesley Clark to me, but Chuck Todd says it's really all about former NATO Supreme Commander James Jones. In fact, Todd actually has what seems to be the actual short list, and Clark's not on it:

Besides Jones, the other names on the list bandied about with congressional Dems include (and not in any order): Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Sam Nunn. You'll notice a few names NOT on this list (that's not my exclusion -- hint hint). Besides Jones, I'm told the two other names that invited extended discussion were Biden and Strickland.

I've struck the names of people who I suspect are only being fake-considered.

So, given this, I'd say my earlier veepstakes bet is looking pretty good—the only change I'd make is swapping Kaine for Webb or more likely Warner, because I don't see any reason to let the Republican Lt. Governor take office in Virginia.