The Grapevine Says It's Kaine ... Or Is It?

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia is apparently the hot prospect for Barack Obama's running mate.

He's the smart money's choice to be chosen by the Chosen One.

Erick Erickson says so. He writes, in RedState.com's blog, that Kaine is the pick. "I'm perfectly open to being wrong," he writes, "but I do not think I am."

Kaine's stock does seem to be rising, Fox News reports, along with Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

It's hard to tell if that's due to what potential running mate Joe Biden said to reporters in the driveway of his Delaware home.

"I'm not the guy," Biden told the reporters earlier this week (in spite of his high-profile trip to the state of Georgia recently). Then, when asked if he had received any calls, he drove off after saying, "Good talking to you guys."

My father, for one, would like to see Biden on the ticket. He's been a Biden admirer for a long time. And I remember being impressed with Biden when, as a student reporter at the University of Arkansas, I covered a speech he gave in Fayetteville, Ark., in 1981.

Apparently, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh would like to see Biden on the ticket as well. But I wouldn't exactly call Limbaugh an admirer.

"I really hope it's Biden," Rush apparently said yesterdy (according to the RealClearPolitics blog). "You don't want to say that too loud, but I really do hope that it's Joe Biden, because we've got a mountain of archival audio on Joe Biden. Plus the arrogance factor times two. Biden and the messiah would be just delicious."

Time magazine's Karen Tumulty says Obama has been dropping some hints about the identity of his running mate — which she proceeds to dissect in an attempt to find out what he's thinking.

But I'm not sure how helpful her conclusion is: "[I]f I were to guess who it would be based strictly on what Obama himself has said," Tumulty writes, "I would say the pick is either Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana (low profile, both executive and foreign policy experience, but a supporter of the Iraq War), or a surprise whose name has not been circulating on the pundits' short lists."

Her most insightful remark may be this — "we'll know the answer soon."

Well, Obama is scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech a week from tonight. So we'll need to know who it is soon, won't we?

And it appears that Obama has made up his mind.

At least, that's what CNN is saying.

"I won't comment on anything else until I introduce our running mate to the world," he reportedly said today. "That's all you're going to get out of me."

I wonder if he's discussed this with his presumptive running mate yet.