Veep! Veep!

It’s 10 pm. Do you know who your vice presidential nominee is?

It started with a phone call at 7 p.m. (give or take half an hour.)

Friend who worked for important Democratic operatives, some of whom might once have been president: “Drudge is saying its Bayh. There’s a factory making Bayh Obama bumper stickers.”

Me (after having absorbed weeks of spin by pundits who know nothing but like to make up something): It’s not Biden???

Friend: Why would it be Biden? I told you – Bayh.

Why Bayh and not Biden? Why not Kaine? Oh wait, CW says only one person from a state can speak at the conventions and that went to Warner. Huh? Who made up that rule? Why not Sebelius? She’s boring as hell, but gosh she’s popular with those Republicans! And all those 90 year old grannies who told Hillary they could remember when they couldn’t vote can now vote for a woman. But oh wait, CW also says that feminists only want a woman who’s initials are HRC.

(CW stands for Conventional Wisdom. It’s a favorite shorthand by some of DC’s most eminent pundits. It’s also been upended, uprooted, and beaten over the head in this election cycle but no worries it’s still given its due homage in the morning notes and talk show roundps so we here – mere chroniclers of the decadent and depraved elite of DC will refer to it with equal reverence. It’s also taken a hold of the wait for the vice presidential nominee like a starving dog to a bone of meat, ripping every little morsel of information and chewing it as if it’s a last meal. What’s been left is this: grown ups, in suits, who appear on TV, and who have important jobs with important titles, clinging to theories about bumper stickers and writing about kids selling lemonade at a dollar a cup to the television crews staking out the houses of the possible contenders.)

Same friend an hour later: “AP’s reporting the factory’s making bumper stickers with four different names on them.”

The CW says after all that having a catchy last name combo is as key to a successful presidential team as let’s say foreign policy experience or the ability to win a state. To stress to you how critical proper schwag really is – John Kerry had two teams ready to go to paint his campaign plane until just hours before he decided to announce his Veep. But that also just showed John Kerry being John Kerry, afterall once he picked a name he couldn’t flip to the another one. (Oh but didn’t you read that profile where he crucified Edwards post-election and said he wished he’d gone with Gephardt?) Once a wishy-washy pol, always a wishy-washy pol.

But I’m a sucker like the rest of them. We talk on the phone as I Google frantically online. Ben Smith reporting that Bayh-Obama website does exist. But there’s a catch, someone bought it in 2005. Now that’s foresight. Or maybe not?

Back to convo. Friend in know tells me that those in the know in the know say that two of the names (she names two names but I can’t because she won’t talk to me again and I’m relying on her for tix to Kanye at the convention) have been told that they aren’t getting it.

“How do you know?” I ask. She names names but neither one of us is quite sure that those names she’s named would know the people who are really naming names.

“How close are you keeping your bberry near you tonight?” I ask.

“Under my pillow,” friend replies.

So let’s rephrase the question. “It’s near bedtime. Where will you keep your blackberry tonight?”

Cupped in your palms, waiting for that soft beep beep beep to alert you of a 3 a.m text message announcing the Democratic vice presidential nominee?

CW says little about irony. But this may be the best red phone moment of this election.

UPDATE: So the text message came at 11:05, and I raced to my phone. But it was from M. Hunter, telling me that CNN by process of elimination had concluded that Joe Biden would be the veep pick. And here I was all ready for that pre-dawn pick me up. On a humorous note, CNN is calling Biden the blue collar senator because he rides Amtrak to work everyday. Amtrak = blue collar? Obviously, not everyone has Joe Biden's or John King's tavel budget.