Why Friday Night?
I've searched all over but haven't found any discussion of why they announced Biden on friday night/saturday morning. The exception: some wildly worded Aha! comments on right-wing blogs saying that
the Obama team was forced into the announcement by a leak. (The leak,
presumably, being secret service arriving at Biden's place?)
It's common wisdom that friday night is the news dead zone, where everything gets announced that the announcers don't want discussed.
Not that this question matters much. It's just a curiosity about the Obama team's tactics.
I have no clue. But I'd be very interested to receive one.
Update 8/25: Via TPM, the Obama team says they were going to send the text at 8 am Saturday, but rushed it out after CNN got ahold of it. No, the 3 am text was not a jab at Hillary. That would have been just stupid, and these guys may be many things, but stupid is not among them.
Related posts:
I think what happened is that an Obama staffer stupidly and anonymously told an AP reporter, and the AP reporter then promptly reported it.
So, you mean that the Obama team actually meant to announce at some later date? When?
They kept everyone interested all Friday night, had reporters and bloggers (and blog readers) up early Sat morning to get/spread the news, and has everyone talking about all weekend leading up to Monday when the convention starts.
Since it was well understood ahead of time that the announcement would be before the Sat. Springfield appearance, they transformed the weekend from being a dead zone to being, well, not a dead zone.
Smart, smart, smart.
That makes sense! Turned the dead zone into a live wire.