Democratic strategist Bob Beckel appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and dropped a bombshell. Beckel says he believes a “shoe will drop” as early as tomorrow, and that it involves Michelle Obama. This will, he says, be “significantly” bigger than the earlier college-thesis issue, which implies that the supposed “whitey” video exists. Here’s Beckel sounding strangely out of breath while delivering this “news”:

Once again, we hear how this is a Republican dirty trick, this time from Beckel, but that makes no sense. If the Republicans had the video, they wouldn’t have even intimated it exists until after Obama had the nomination. All due respect to Operation Chaos, but why lay this out when the Democrats can still nominate someone who would therefore be the stronger general-election candidate? They would wait until after the convention, maybe all the way to late October, before springing it.

No, this sounds much more like a Clinton operation, both in timing and in style. I suspect that the video doesn’t even exist, but that the rumor of it is intended to worry the superdelegates enough to support Hillary. Supposedly the video contains footage of Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan at a public conference, with Mrs. Obama using the term “whitey” in a pejorative context. In a search yesterday of the archives of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, I find no mention of any such conference, let alone the use of that kind of provocative rhetoric by the wife of a politician with presidential aspirations. Even for a complacent media — and that really doesn’t describe the Tribune or the Sun-Times with respect to Barack Obama — this would have made news.

Even if it did exist, its publication in the next few days doesn’t help McCain. Who benefits from it? The woman who wants the Democratic nomination, that’s who. If that shoe drops, it will have stiletto heels — if the video exists at all, which I’m sure it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, the rumor helps Hillary, too … but it won’t be enough.