Politic On, Politic-ers...

The Democratic nomination is getting a bit nit-picky these days. There hasn't technically been a contest between Hill and Barry for a long time, so we pundits, we pontificaters, we pioneers of print, we proprietors of public periphery have been desperately searching for anything, and I mean anything, to fill the airwaves/blog pages with. It isn't easy, that's why we make the big bucks. We came up with the Jeremiah Wright thing when no one would have noticed were an actual primary coming up. But Obama had to cock-block us by diffusing an issue while making history and probably effectively winning the nomination all at the same time.

We were given some nice news earlier today. It turns out the winner of Texas was not who we originally thought it was. Caucus delegates have been appointed, and Obama has ended-up with five more than Clinton. So we were able to talk a little today about how much worse it is getting for her, and what she'll do now that she's losing shit she thought she'd already won (I'm guessing she'll go to Mr. Webster and ask him to redefine the term winning, being that she's spun her losing in just about every way possible).

But does that stop Hillary from fighting to fulfill what I'm sure she thinks is her God-given right (why else would she stick by her husband)? It's kind of sad to see someone's spirit broken. Regardless of whether she deserves the nomination, she certainly has been through a lot. My sympathy is one of many reasons why I want her to stick in the race. Besides the fact is this all makes for "good" journalism, Bill Clinton was right when he said that Obama will need to toughen up if he is to take on the Republicans. Consider some of the things said during their shorter, much less interesting nomination process:

• Mike Huckabee (a baptist minister) said he would really like to put Hillary on a spaceship to blast her off the planet. It was received with the usual reception Huckabee has grown used to receiving for his jolly, "good-natured" humor.
  
• When a woman (a woman!) asked McCain how he was planning on beating "that bitch" in November, McCain was smart enough not to verbally agree, but he certainly wasn't offended enough to indicate any inappropriate behavior on her part, and took his sweet time to disavow her words after his talk. He probably felt that indicating Hillary wasn't a bitch would lose him his constituency.
  
• When Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, he stated his opinion that if the Democratic party took the White House, the terrorists would surely burn this planet to the ground.

And, by the way. If you don't want to be accused of hating your country Mr. Obama, I would start wearing an American Flag lapel pin, and putting our hand on your heart when you pledge your allegiance to the flag. That's just a no-brainer. As of September 12th, 2001,no man or woman in any county of any state on any level of government will ever win an election without obeying these two basic laws. What the hell kind of point were you trying to prove, anyways?

This is all pretty tough rhetoric, and right now, all the Clintons are doing is calling him dishonest. What will he do when a McCain surrogate asks us if we really want an Islamic terrorist hopped up on cocaine running around the White House, sleeping with all the white women, turning the Situation Room into a basketball court, and using the presidential seal carpet in the Oval Office as a Salat prayer mat he shares with Wright while they discuss ways to keep the white man down. They probably won't say it like that, but they'll certainly nod towards it in a "I was just caught up in the heat of the moment; my comments don't reflect the views of the candidate; I hereby resign my post from this most auspicious campaign in shame and apologize to the candidate for causing him any trouble with this most egregious miscarriage..." Or something like that. I know Carville is getting tired of it, but there are many resignations to come, none of which mean anything.

But I have digressed, as you will learn I often like to do. To get back to my last point, I think Hillary should stay as long as she wants. It will mean a few more weeks of inaction, but we reporters will always find things to bitch about (I plan to launch a full-throated argument this week, calling for her to leave the race). As for the concern over splitting the party, I have no fear that John McCain will do something to bring us all running back together in a dramatic, warm, end of a romantic comedy-type embrace by saying something racist/sexist/Europhobic/homophobic/antisemitic/or just fucking mean. You can see it in his eyes, and I wouldn't want to be the butt of any of his jokes. He'd probably try to give me a wedgie (or make me listen to Joe Lieberman give a lecture on the nature of democracy as pertaining to Noam Chomsky) if I ever ran into him in the middle of the street. So I'll just hope that he doesn't happen to read this column (he won't) and cross the street if I see him walking towards me.

And if we can't think of anything to talk about this week, we have the Final Four coming up this weekend. There will be three basketball games, so don't tell me we can't fill 100 hours of airtime bullshitting about who will win, who will lose, and why anyone with half a brain knows that North Carolina will win.

I'm sad to say that I'm currently in third place in my bracket at work and I stand no chance of winning. But the Great Magnet Loses Nothing! Our Bracketmaster (Copyright!) is pretty strict and I think he'll be interested to know about two little computer hacks who just happen to be doing well in our bracket, whilst possessing an unnatural knowledge of how the Internet works, and more importantly, how to manipulate it. If that doesn't work, I'll plant some weed in their offices and call the cops.
Until we met again...