Weigel

As the White House had not-so-quietly been hoping . (The hopes got slightly more fervent after Rep. Bobby Scott, bored in the House, said he might run for the open seat himself.)

There's a real cognitive disconnect in this launch video. "There's a lot Washington could learn from Virginia," says Kaine, who has been chairman of the DNC since 2009. (He resigned that position today.) Virginia's got more suburban transplants than it had when Kaine won his last election six years ago; in 2012, it will have more black voters coming out to re-elect Barack Obama. But Kaine was one of the last Democrats able to run the "I'm like you, not like the others" game in the South, something he can't do now.