MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Vice-President

Springfield, Illinois?

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The Obama campaign yesterday confirmed Lynn Sweet’s report that the Illinois senator has reserved the grounds of the old state capital for a major event on Saturday and will appear with his choice for vice president.

Obama’s from Illinois, of course, but he’s already made a big announcement there. Springield strikes me as an odd place to hold a rally with Biden or Kaine unless the announcement comes very soon and the pair hold a rally in Delaware or Virginia somewhere before Saturday. Springfield might not be an unusual place to hold a rally with Sebelius or Bayh, because both of them live within pretty easy driving distance of Springfield.

Maybe he’s not planning to hold a rally in the prospective veep’s home state at all. I don’t see the sense in that unless the pick is someone, like Chet Edwards or Chuck Hagel, from a reliably red state.

Could Obama be considering a vice-presidential candidate who hails from the Land of Lincoln???

As far as I can tell, there’s only one person under serious consideration who fits that bill: Hillary Clinton.

Cross-posted from Facebook.

August 20, 2008
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Tim Kaine of Virginia

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Va. governor could help fill gap for Obama: Centrist seen as dark horse among VP possibilities By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff, June 12, 2008

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – He is the popular governor of a critical swing state. He has working-class roots and a Harvard degree, and strong support from both business and labor. He is a devout Catholic and speaks fluent Spanish, and was the first governor outside Illinois to endorse Barack Obama for president.

Governor Tim Kaine is probably the least well known of the trio of rising Democratic stars from Virginia. The others – US Senator Jim Webb, the flame-throwing author and former Navy secretary, and former governor Mark Warner, the wealthy venture capitalist who briefly flirted with a presidential run – are regularly listed as vice presidential possibilities.

But Kaine’s biography and political resume fill many of the perceived gaps in Obama’s profile, making him for some analysts a dark horse in veepstakes 2008.

“The case for him is Virginia is a competitive state this time around, and he is kind of a centrist,” said Dan Palazzolo, a political scientist at the University of Richmond. “He’s prolife, basically, and he’s got this probusiness background. He’s also a big supporter of Obama.”

But, as Palazzolo notes, Kaine has no military or foreign policy experience, credentials Obama also lacks and that could prove a detriment for Republican John McCain, a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war who has traveled extensively around the world during his 22 years in the US Senate. “I think they’re substantial downsides,” Palazzolo said.

Obama, though, clearly has warm feelings for Kaine, who befriended the Illinois senator when he came to Virginia to stump for Kaine in 2005. (They discovered that their mothers came from the same small town in Kansas.) Campaigning in Virginia last week, Obama appeared with all three of Virginia’s Democratic notables, but he reserved special affection for Kaine.

“When you’re in the political business, there are a lot of people who are your allies, there are a lot of people who you’ve got to do business with, but you don’t always have a lot of friends,” Obama said at a rally, according to the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog. “The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia is my friend.”

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June 12, 2008
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