Did This Leak Just Accidentally Reveal Biden’s VP Pick?

The Veepstakes (TM) are thankfully soon coming to a close, as presumptive Democratic nominee and former VP Joe Biden is expected to announce his choice of running mate  between August 1 and the start of the Democratic National Convention on August 17. But apparently, some of us just can't wait, because this afternoon Politico reportedly posted and deleted a very big hint: a graphic that reads Biden chose Sen. Kamala Harris on August 1.

Several people on Twitter posted screenshots of the evidence, adding that Politico quickly took it down. The graphic was reportedly embedded in the newspaper's all-encompassing "running-mate tracker," where it lays out all of Biden's VP options, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Susan Rice, and Rep. Karen Bass. Biden has previously pledged to choose a woman for the position, but beyond that speculations have run the gamut.

Politico quickly issued an editor's note: "Due to a technical error, an earlier version of this graphic mistakenly reported that Biden had made his VP selection. We regret the mistake."

It's standard practice for publications to pre-write these types of announcements so that they can publish them quickly when the time comes, the way newspaper writers sometimes prepare obituaries for famous people. But it was curious to some that the text also contains a supposed quote from Biden. In it, Biden calls Harris "a worthy opponent and a worthy running mate," possibly referring to their time sparring on the debate stage.

A Politico spokesperson told CNN that the graphic was mistakenly published. Regarding the included quote, they said, "Our standard practice is to use 'lorem ipsum' as placeholder text, which in this instance obviously did not happen. We regret the error and any confusion that it caused."

So, was this really just an accidental leak of one of the pre-writes? There are tons of opinions on Twitter, but what we do know is that Harris, with her experience as a prosecutor and name recognition, is consistently one of Democrats' favorite choices for the position. In a recent poll, 23% of Democratic voters said they think Biden should pick Harris, with Warren close behind at 22%. Of course, how much Biden's VP pick even matters is highly debatable — but that won't stop armchair pundits from debating it until he finally makes the damn announcement already.