The real deal with Joe Biden’s VP pick
Over the past week we’ve seen various major media outlets report that Kamala Harris is the frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s running mate, or that Harris is in trouble because she alienated someone on Biden’s selection committee, or that Susan Rice is now the frontrunner, or that Karen Bass is now in serious contention. So how are we supposed to make sense of any of these conflicting leaks?
The short answer: don’t even try. There’s nothing to decipher here, because none of these “leaks” are real. By definition, they can’t be. If Joe Biden has already settled on his running mate, then there are only a very small number of trusted people who know it – and they’re the very last people who would be loose lipped about it. In such case, anyone talking to the media has no idea who the pick is.
And if Biden hasn’t yet finalized his pick, then the people in his orbit with actual influence over him are going to appeal to him directly and privately. In such case, the “leaks” we’re seeing are merely the people vaguely in Biden’s orbit who don’t have direct influence over him, and who are trying to force him in a certain direction with calculated “leaks” that aren’t even real. And the media feels comfortable printing these “leaks,” even when it knows they’re crap, because the truth of what went on in the selection process will never come out publicly anyway.
Palmer Report warned you at the beginning of this process that you should ignore every single “inside report” you see about Joe Biden’s running mate selection process until an actual announcement is made. The public’s curiosity means that there are easy ratings and page views to be had every time a media outlet claims to know anything about the selection process – and the media knows it has nothing to lose by publishing faulty rumors about the process.
This is one of the rare instances where you’ll know more about what’s going on by ignoring everything that’s published about it. If you ignore all the leaks and rumors, you’ll at least know that you don’t know how Joe Biden is leaning. If you listen to all this posturing disguised as legitimate reporting and you take it seriously, you’ll end up disinformed, and you could end up shocked by the time the pick is announced.
