Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Jul 14, 2008 at 3:21 PM Pacific

The veepstakes are ending soon

In all likelihood at some point in the next three weeks, Barack Obama will announce his VP nominee. Although the convention isn't until August 25, the Olympics begin on August 8 and the Obama campaign probably won't want to announce his selection in the midst of the summer games. If I were to bet, I'd say Barack would pick his VP somewhere betwen July 31 and August 5.

As I've noted before, my top choice is John Edwards, who I think would be a terrific compliment to Barack  on the campaign trail, both as an attack dog and as an economic populist. That's not to say there aren't other good veep choices for Barack, however. But since I'm an Edwards enthusiast, please allow me to once again pimp SurveyUSA's polling data on what Edwards could add to Barack Obama's ticket:

In these surveys, McCain's potential VPs were Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, and Lieberman. Of those, Huckabee was strongest -- and Obama-Edwards was strongest against McCain-Huckabee. (Huckabee remains the only potential McCain VP to concern me, though his position against the birth control pill could be a serious problem if he isn't able to flip-flop fast enough.)

Certainly part of the reason that Edwards fares better than the other potential VPs in some these polls is that he has higher name ID, but as this Michigan poll shows, he even outperforms well-established names, though perhaps not by enough.

Against a hypothetical McCain-Romney ticket, Edwards does better than the other Democrats tested, including Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, though all the tickets still lose to McCain-Romney.

(If you're interested in more data, Paul Rosenberg applies available polling data to all the states and concludes Obama-Edwards would win a landslide.)

One of the leading criticisms of Edwards was that he didn't deliver North Carolina in 2004, but as I've said before, if John Kerry had put Dean Smith on the ticket, he still wouldn't have won North Carolina.

Also, in 2004 Kerry-Edwards actually lost North Carolina by a slightly smaller margin than Gore-Lieberman in 2000 (12.4% versus 12.8%). Meanwhile, in every single other southern state, Kerry-Edwards lost by more than Gore-Lieberman (on average losing by 14.9% in 2004 versus 10.6% in 2000).

I think the best argument against Edwards is his lack of foreign policy experience. However, I also think that Barack Obama's foreign policy judgment may be more significant, and if his upcoming overseas trip goes well, his VP's foreign policy credentials will be even less important.

All this being said, although I clearly favor Edwards, I'm not religious about it. There's other good candidates and one them may well prove to be a superior choice. But for now, I'm glad the possibility of Edwards as VP is still on the table.

The veepstakes are ending soon

In all likelihood at some point in the next three weeks, Barack Obama will announce his VP nominee. Although the convention isn't until August 25, the Olympics begin on August 8 and the Obama campaign probably won't want to announce his selection in the midst of the summer games. If I were to bet, I'd say Barack would pick his VP somewhere betwen July 31 and August 5.

As I've noted before, my top choice is John Edwards, who I think would be a terrific compliment to Barack  on the campaign trail, both as an attack dog and as an economic populist. That's not to say there aren't other good veep choices for Barack, however. But since I'm an Edwards enthusiast, please allow me to once again pimp SurveyUSA's polling data on what Edwards could add to Barack Obama's ticket:

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