Last night, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed me (and everyone else on the campaign’s general e-mail list):

Barack Obama is about to make one of the most important decisions of this campaign — choosing a running mate. You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be the first to know his choice. Sign up today to be the first to know: http://my.barackobama.com/vp You will receive an email the moment Barack makes his decision, or you can text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone. Once you’ve signed up, please forward this email to your friends, family, and coworkers to let them know about this special opportunity. No other campaign has done this before. You can be part of this important moment.

Based on this, The Los Angeles Times concludes, “However, if hypothetically the announcement was to be made dramatically via cellphone texts, e-mails and the Obama website, the two candidates would not need to be together. And if it came, oh, say, sometime this week. it would instantly dominate the news stream and erase any advantage Republican Sen. John McCain might have gotten from a week of campaigning without the Democrats’ competition. Then, the two Democratic running mates could appear together later at another event and get a bonus second publicity boost.”

I think a campaign would be mad to announce the running mate during the Olympics. And particularly with the news cycle we’re having right now. The day of the announcement, we could have Russian planes bombing the Georgian capital, or some Cinderella story of a little-known American winning gold, or some detail in John Edwards’ story being contradicted further…

UPDATE: A reader calls this a fundraising ploy – I thought that was obvious, but yes, once you send them your e-mail, they will indeed ask you for money…