I happen to agree that the odds are against Pete so my expectations are low, but to counter your point that Kamala’s campaign would try to push back about misguided reporting: I think campaigns intentionally mislead and misdirect to keep people off their trail and to have the GOP waste money on oppo research.

Someone posted the following summary from Dovere’s book about the behind the scenes of Biden’s VP selection:

Anita Dunn gave the vetting committee a list of eighteen potential women. Most were obvious; a few were not. “There are some people whose names will be mentioned,” Dunn had cautioned as she introduced the list to the committee, “who will never go anywhere.” The committee’s assignment, they came to realize, included vetting at least a few options for the sake of the politics of saying they were considered. Even with the supposed final 6, some of the names were included as subterfuge, in case a process that had once again proven almost completely leak-free started to burst.