Veepday?

Drudge sirens: "PAPER: OBAMA MAY ANNOUNCE VP IN AM." Specifically, tomorrow AM. Maybe.

(Posted via cell phone using Flickr.)

UPDATE: Drudge's initial scoop pointed to Tuesday, but now he says "the pick is more likely to come early Wednesday morning," and the New York Times article that Drudge is referencing -- now online -- says the same:

Senator Barack Obama has all but finalized his choice for a running mate and set an elaborate roll-out plan for his decision, beginning with an early morning alert to supporters, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, followed by a trip to swing states by the new Democratic ticket, aides said. ...

Mr. Obama had not notified his choice — or any of those not selected — of his decision as of late Monday, advisers said. Going into the final days, Mr. Obama was said to be focused mainly on three candidates: Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. ...

Mr. Obama’s advisers said he reached his decision while on vacation in Hawaii. ...

If all goes according to plan, the announcement will be made with text and e-mail messages to supporters early in the morning, in time to capture coverage on the morning news shows and take advantage of a full day’s news cycle. Mr. Obama and his new running mate will than begin a cross-country tour; current plans call for them to on the trail together for most of the time between the day of the announcement and when Mr. Obama arrives in Denver, a week from Wednesday. ...

Aides said the announcement would come at the earliest on Wednesday morning, and no later than Friday.

There's one problem with the "text and e-mail messages to supporters early in the morning" concept: it could wake up supporters out west, where "early morning" Eastern Time is still basically the middle of the night. Five Thirty Eight discussed this earlier:

[W]hen you send a giant, millions-of-people text message, you set off a bunch of text message ringtones that make noise. That means you ought to wait as long as possible during a day so that people are awake. While most people texting VP to 62262 are self-selected Obama partisans who won't hold a ringtone with breaking news against Obama, nobody likes to be woken up prematurely. It's a tiny, but definite negative freeroll. In terms of battleground states, only Nevada in the Pacific Time Zone and Alaska in the Alaska Time Zone pose any kind of early ringtone risk here.

Personally, I'm looking forward to receiving the big text message, whenever it arrives. ;)

P.S. BI-DEN! BI-DEN! BI-DEN!

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Politico reports that McCain's Veepday will be Friday, August 29 -- the day after the Democratic Convention, and McCain's 72nd birthday. He'll attempt to immediately deflate Obama's post-convention balloon by naming his runningmate at an early-morning, 10,000-person rally at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

To really make this work, in terms of wrenching the media spotlight fully over to him on Friday (and, even before that, disrupting the Dems' big week with rampant speculation about what he'll do), McCain will need to keep the name a complete secret until the 29th, to prevent an anticlimax. Can he do it?