Props to M. Takhallus

I dispense props where they’re due.

Obama’s VP selection, at long last, was revealed to be Joe Biden at about midnight. I’m not a huge fan of Senator Joe myself but I think he provides some needed wisdom and gravitas to the governing team, and as I wrote a few days ago I think he brings a level of both steel and foreign policy knowledge that Obama will need should he win and take up the reins of government. So sitting here as a moderate sort of Republican, obviously I’d prefer members of my own party, but if something happened to President Obama, that would hardly be my first choice, but I could live with it.

The tease of “who’s it going to be” got dragged out for a long, long time yesterday and it seems to me that the campaign should have announced the choice right around 5:00 p.m. eastern time to hit the news cycles. So I’m not sure the media handlers played it right — Saturday at 3 a.m. on the east coast is not the time to release Big News. Obama and Biden will appear together this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois, and then make their way to Denver for the convention.

But the big props go to blogbuddy Michael Reynolds. He predicted this ticket nine months ago, back when I was saying the race belonged to HRC and she’d have to club a baby harp seal to death in order to lose the nomination. (As this month’s Atlantic Magazine describes, it was more a case of internal campaign personality clashes than the result of any failure by the candidate herself or even the brilliance of the Obama campaign’s unorthodox strategy.) The idea that Obama could actually win the nomination, much less have the ability to find someone to complement him like campaign rival Joe Biden, was a foggy and improbable notion back then. But that’s the fun of sticking your neck out with a prediction — sometimes you get proven exactly right.