Team Biden now says he won’t be announcing his VP choice until just before the convention

Team Biden now says he won’t be announcing his VP choice until just before the convention

The screengrab from CBS news above includes just about all the women who have been been linked with being Joe Biden’s running mate for the November 3rd presidential election.

There had been hints from Biden team that an announcement could have been made this last weekend but now we hear that we have got to wait. My guess is that it will be deferred until the couple of days before the Democratic convention is due to start on August 18th.

The reason is quite simple: just as soon as the choice is announced then the Republicans will start with releasing the opposition research on things in the chosen person’s history that could possibly be embarrassing now. They want to move the narrative on from Trump’s handling of the pandemic which is costing him dear. Thus we got a taste this weekend with the reports about the current emerging figure in the race, Karen Bass, and what she said when she was much younger about Fidel Castro and the Cuban issue. She’s third favourite.

If it is the former US American ambassador to the United Nations and national Security adviser under Obama, Susan Rice, then expect to hear her attacked over controversial comments about the Benghazi raid and the fact that her son is an active campaigner for Donald Trump.

No doubt the record of odds-on favourite Kamala Harris in her previous job as Attorney General of California has been looked at with a fine tooth comb and issues will be brought up.

This is all just politics but my understanding from the US media at the moment is that Biden is aware of the challenge and will seek to minimise the timing for such a development by not saying who it will be until maybe a couple of days before the convention starts. Then the media focus will be on the formal party nomination.

In the betting I’m all green on Betfair so for the first time since PB was founded in 2004 I will end up a winner on the VP choice. My sense is that Harris is over-priced and that Bass and Rice are worth punts if you can get decent odds. It could be someone other than the three I’ve mentioned.

Mike Smithson

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