Paradise Lost.

There is perhaps no one more hated by conservatives than Hillary Clinton -- but it's not an unpleasant kind of hate. Hating Hillary Clinton, as well as her husband Bill, is more like a form of political recreation. It's kind of like golf: you don't really have anything personal against the ball, but smacking it across the field still feels really good.

Conservatives may dread the thought of a Hillary presidency, but deep down inside, they know that a second Clinton presidency would mean a ridiculous amount of fun. The awesome jokes. The legitimate talk-radio rants. Lurid stories of White House scandal and power-grabbing you can finally feel good about. Just like the '90s, only with more YouTube, and less pets.com.

It's not as if Republicans are that worried about Hillary becoming president anyways. Things may be looking down for the GOP, but if any Democrat can lose in November, it's Hillary. Polarizing. Unappealing. Mired in the past. Hillary Clinton is a familiar target, and for over a year, Republican strategists have been looking forward to the prospect of shooting her down in the fall.

But for a while, it looked like Barack Obama would spoil the fun. As Hillary faded from the lead, and the possibility of Obama's nomination began to loom over the political landscape, Republicans were forced to come to two sad realizations:

1. The general election might be incredibly hard to win.
2. Obama isn't that fun to hate.

Or so it seemed. Due to his status as a relatively new player in Washington, Barack Obama was an unknown quantity. All anyone knew about him was that he looked -- as Joe Biden stated -- "bright, clean, and articulate". Oh, and really liberal. Unfortunately, a clean liberal is kind of hard to vilify. There was, of course, the issue of his suspicious middle name (Hussein -- like the Iraq guy!), and a baseless rumor about his secret adherence to Islam, but as far as tangible character flaws, things were pretty slim pickins'.

Luckily for the GOP, it turns out that Obama is less than a political saint. The first chink in Obama's armor appeared with the re-emergence of a story about the candidate's questionable relationship with indicted slum-lord Tony Rezko. It wasn't enough to start a mass exodus from the Obama camp, or even significantly dent his standing with the general public, but it was solid evidence that Barack Obama was just as flawed as the next guy.

Obama's kind-of-scary wife provided more red meat for Barack's growing crowd of detractors. Specifically, she broke the first and greatest commandment of the American religion: be really proud of thy country, all the time. Everyone involved in politics says things that are twisted around by their opponents for political gain, but Michelle Obama's comments didn't leave her much wiggle room. Essentially, she said that during her husband's campaign, she began feeling proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, with the obvious implication being that she's been ashamed of her country for the last 25 years. And this wasn't exactly an isolated incident: a lengthy profile in the New Yorker painted a detailed portrait of Michelle as an aspiring first lady with more than a few negative things to say about her country.

Mrs. Obama's comments sparked the flames of doubt about her husband's patriotism -- but his pastor's comments fanned the flames into a bona-fide firestorm.

Maybe the comments were taken out of context. Maybe Jeremiah Wright is actually a sweet old man who loves children and puppies. But let's face it: the phrase "God damn America" probably won't be showing up etched on folksy, country-store souvenirs anytime soon. The sheer vitriol of Pastor Wright's words shocked people. It just didn't add up that Mr. Nice Guy would choose to attend a church run by Rev. Nut Case. People wanted answers. Obama, with his typically persuasive rhetoric, delivered them -- sort of. Obama's I'm-not-my-pastor's-keeper speech was good, or at least, good enough for Democratic primary voters. Things could be a little different in the general election.

After the Rev. Wright controversy broke out, Republicans were overjoyed. They finally had the ammunition they needed to deflate Obama's Mr. Smith-like image. It was the kind of stuff that could really ruffle the feathers of the GOP's center-right, common sense coalition, and hopefully prevent a wide-scale desertion of the party in November. Who could ask for more?

Nobody asked for more. But Obama was kind enough to give it anyways. Speaking in San Francisco, Barack Obama made a few remarks about small-town voters in Pennsylvania. Remarks that seemed less than flattering. In Barack's estimation, small-town voters have become bitter because of the floundering economy. Due to this high level of bitterness, "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Naturally, the media -- along with Hillary and McCain -- raised the expected amount of ruckus, and Obama gave his expected response. Apparently, when Obama said that people cling to religion and guns, he meant it in a "I will cling to the old rugged cross" sort of way, not in a demeaning sense. I guess he also meant that small-town voters cling to "antipathy to people who aren't like them" in a positive way as well.

Obama is no longer the spotless paragon of virtue he was once thought to be. Some polls even show that a considerable percentage of Democrats will desert the party if he gets the nomination. An invincible candidate? Think again. He's made mistakes in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. And you can count on John McCain to exploit them in the general election.

Even better, conservatives finally have another Democrat they can feel good about despising. His elitist comments about small-town voters, paired with his America-dissing wife, and America-cursing ex-pastor, are the perfect ingredients for a lovin' spoonful of constant talk-radio/blog furor. Heck yes.

Enough Already.

After months of endless speculation, petty bickering, and contrived media circuses, the Democratic presidential primary is starting to make me sad. It's not that I'm particularly concerned about the amount of damage the messy infighting will have on the party. In fact, the sight of the two remaining Democratic gladiators disemboweling each other is the only thing heartening about the current political situation.

No, the problem is much deeper than that. When you get right down to it, the Democratic race just isn't fun any more.

Maybe it has to do with the lack of real news coming from the field. Since the March 11th Mississippi primary, no one has cast a single vote for either candidate. Essentially, the race has become a stagnant puddle of meaningless speculation.

Of course, there have been a few interesting scandals in the meantime, but they've only served as small breaks in the overall tedium. By now, the shock of Obama's Pastorgate has all but faded, Bosniagate is a memory as dim as Hillary's own, and the goldfish-like minds of American voters have returned to a moribund state of equilibrium. Now it seems that the only thing left to do is wait for the scandal reruns of the general election. Meh.

And please, don't even try to give me that stuff about the Pennsylvania primary. If Hillary wins that thing, it doesn't change anything. If she loses, it probably won't change anything either. Hillary is the female, non-pastor Huckabee of the Democrats. Who cares if it becomes statistically impossible to win? That's what miracles are for!

When Obama compared the race to a movie that's gone on for too long, Hillary retorted that she likes long movies. I like long movies too -- but only long movies that happen to be entertaining. Right now, this race is kind of like "Gods and Generals": a slow, preachy, overwrought clunker that leaves you with the terrible feeling that several irreplaceable hours of your life have been stolen forever. No offense to people who actually liked that movie.

As a patriotic American, I don't demand honest political contests, or decent candidates. But when politics ceases to be even slightly amusing, I feel that I have the sacred duty to demand change.

The race needs to end immediately. Howard Dean can decide how to work it out; it doesn't matter how he does it:

Rock-paper-scissors.
Coin-toss.
Arm-wrestling.
Thumb-wrestling.
Bloody-battle-to-the-death.

It's all good.

Please Howard, just make something happen. If you can't end the race, at least make a spectacle of yourself in public. You know, something like attacking a homeless person, or biting off a reporter's ear. Again, your choice. You may never achieve your dream of becoming the president, but you can save the American public from boredom. Sure, it's not much, but it should give you an edge over Jimmy Carter.

Lousy peanut farmer.

Moses Is Gone...

... and suddenly, the NRA is a lot less cool.

Like Those Guys, But Less Fab.

Grassroots movement. Grassroots effort. Grassroots support. At the mere sound of these ubiquitous buzzwords, political operatives everywhere begin to salivate uncontrollably. Everyone wants a grassroots something.

Which makes perfect sense. For political candidates, a strong grassroots simply means: a bunch of people who give you money and campaign for you without asking for anything in return, besides a slightly creepy handshake and/or extended hug. In short, a strong grassroots is a pretty sweet deal.

Unfortunately, like all sweet deals, the devil's in the details.

Campaigns focus an incredible amount of energy on the herculean task of controlling their message. In the era of cable news, YouTube, and the Drudge Report, the slightest misstep, inconsistency, or gaffe is shoved into the unforgiving meat grinder of public scrutiny. Great pains must be taken to ensure that the candidate, and everyone affiliated with the candidate, follows the official script. Yes, this results in boring television, but it sure beats losing an election.

Grassroots supporters, on the other hand, are somewhat lacking in the script department. This isn't usually a bad thing; the unpolished, real-life advocacy these supporters bring to the table is their strongest asset. But, unfortunately, strong grassroots movements can easily take on a decidedly religious aura. The supporters become dogmatic and obsessed, completely sold on the idea that their candidate is a political messiah. Like all religions, these movements are exhilarating for participants, but outsiders are generally repulsed by the fanaticism of their adherents. Gradually, it becomes impossible for observers to mentally separate the secular deity from his followers, tarnishing his image permanently.

The ill-fated presidential campaign of Texas congressman Ron Paul is the textbook example of this concept in action.

While a Republican, Ron Paul's views are more in line with the Libertarian party. This fact alone places him on the fringe of political discourse. Still, there are well-respected libertarians out there, and certain libertarian ideas are appealing to large segments of society. In other words, libertarian politicians aren't always dismissed as nut-cases.

Ron Paul, however, was dismissed as a nutcase, and it wasn't just because of the candidate himself. Early on in his presidential bid, Ron Paul attracted a relatively small, but fanatically loyal core of followers. Most of them were nut-cases. About 50% of them were tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy freaks, 35% were angry students who didn't actually understand what Ron Paul stood for, 5% were members of the KKK, and 10% were normal people -- the least visible group of all. They began flooding YouTube, blogs, and internet forums, singing the praises of the infallible Paul, and attempting to overwhelm anyone who disagreed with a flurry of angry comments. And everywhere they went, these supporters mixed their support of Ron Paul with a heaping tablespoon of conspiratorial nonsense, paired with anti-establishmentarian raving.

Thrilled to have a following, Ron Paul embraced his loyal acolytes. His campaign became one of the most decentralized campaigns in history, totally depending on grassroots activists to spread his message. He raked in tons of money. He was in the lead in every Internet poll. And then, predictably, he lost.

He never had a chance in the first place, but Ron Paul's rabid fans didn't help. To everyone else on the Internet, they were "Paulbots", zealots who attempted to cram pro-Paul propaganda into every nook and cranny they could find. Some forum administrators got so sick of it that they started blocking Ron Paul supporters altogether. Every candidate has unsavory supporters, but these unsavory supporters were the core of Ron Paul's campaign. Everything was fueled by grassroots spontaneity -- a wonderful concept on paper, but something that can turn ugly when it completely replaces a focused campaign organization.

In recent months, some Barack Obama supporters have also crossed the thin boundary between enthusiastic and just-plain-crazy. The grassroots video below, created by will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame, is proof. "Yes We Can", an earlier pro-Obama video from the same source, was inspiring. This one is scary. Supporters describe the utopian dream of an Obama presidency, while repeatedly chanting O-ba-ma, in a fit of spiritual fervor brought on by the holy spirit of progress.



Again, this kind of thing excites voters who are already in the Obama camp, but everyone else sees it for what it is: another manifestation of the growing Obama personality cult. Obama's words may unite, but his fanatical supporters tend to leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Rational people know that a politician can't deliver the perfect society with a few pen-strokes. If this kind of worshipful behavior continues, it will only widen the gap between common-sense voters and Obama's nebulous campaign, a terrible liability in a race against John McCain -- the epitome of down-to-earth American spirit

Grassroots supporters are an essential part of American democracy; every campaign needs them in abundance. But when they take the spotlight from the campaign's official message, and become synonymous with the candidate himself, bad things can happen. Politicians can't solve our problems, or usher in an age of global tranquility. When the average voter sees a candidate surrounded by people who seem to think otherwise, they can get suspicious, and an otherwise decent message can be drowned out by a mob of political true-believers.

Hillary's Back! (kinda)

What Happened.

Last night, John McCain finally racked up enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination.

Neither of the Democratic candidates had such luck.

It was, of course, a fantastic night for Senator Hillary Clinton, who defied all expectations to win Texas and Ohio. But unfortunately for Hillary, the numbers are still against her.

After all the dust had settled, Hillary's victories in Ohio and Texas still left her over a hundred delegates short of overcoming Obama's commanding lead.

Hillary needed to win Ohio and Texas by huge margins in order to close the gap; ultimately, her margins just weren't big enough. Hillary's ten-point victory in Ohio was respectable enough, if not quite as impressive as the near 20-point victories Obama had earned in February, but her slim three-point lead in Texas was too weak to dent Obama's presidential prospects.

Now, both campaigns will be forced to dig in for a grueling, prolonged struggle that will come to a head in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary.

Which candidate will benefit from this brutal, political trench-warfare?

Barack H. Obama.

As last night's final delegate tallies clearly showed, the lead Obama gained in February is going to be hard to beat. All Obama has to do from here on out is make sure most of the upcoming races are close, and his roughly 100 delegate lead will cushion him to a narrow victory. If Obama wins a fair amount of the upcoming contests, with decent margins, it will all be icing on his cake of electoral hope.

That is, unless the superdelegates decide to shake things up. Even if Obama retains his pledged-delegate lead at the end of all the primary contests, he still won't have the 2,025 delegates needed to completely secure the nomination. While most people expect the majority of superdelegates to side with the candidate who wins the overall popular vote, anything could potentially happen, especially if Obama's pledged-delegate lead becomes razor-thin.

However, the superdelegate factor could presumably work in Obama's favor. Party insiders tend to consider electability the paramount quality when selecting presidential candidates, and Obama is the only Democratic candidate who consistently beats John McCain in national polls. Hillary will need to improve her national standing against John McCain if she wants the superdelegates to throw their support behind her at the convention.

Why it Happened. (Probably)

Early this morning, The Politico's headline flaunted the conventional interpretation of last night's results:

"Clinton's Lesson: Attacking Obama Works".

Hillary Clinton's increasingly intense attacks on Obama may have had some impact on the election results, but let's be honest here: some of her attacks were pretty lame. Unless the residents of Ohio and Texas have a collective IQ of 42, I highly doubt that Hillary's laughable, oft-mocked "red phone" ad, and similar attacks, really tapped into the psyche of the voters in Tuesday's primaries.

Maybe they were simply sick of being told who was supposed to win.

It's a pattern that seems to be showing up frequently in the current Democratic presidential campaign; whenever a candidate is proclaimed inevitable by the media, a voter backlash occurs. We saw it in Iowa. We saw it in New Hampshire. Now we're seeing it again.

Being the underdog is often politically advantageous; in this case, it was. Obama's coronation was perceived as premature, and combined with his youth and alleged-inexperience, his aura of inevitable could have been interpreted as arrogance. Hillary may not always be the most likeable candidate, but her fall from grace helped win the sympathy of voters.

The media, with its typically soft coverage of Obama, and their endless stream of negative stories about Hillary, didn't help matters. Complaints of biased media coverage often make candidates look like pathetic, whiny losers. But in Hillary's case, her not-so-subtle claims of media bias actually resonated with voters, mainly because there was a great deal of truth to them. A surprise flurry of harsh questions directed towards Obama at a press conference on the eve of the primaries was unable to atone for the widely perceived slanting of election coverage.

In the end, the message was clear: voters will decide who gets the nomination, and the contest is far from over.

Deja Vu?

When Rudy Giuliani decided to skip the traditionally important contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in favor of a strategy focusing on big states like Florida, New York, and California, nobody knew whether he was making a brilliant move or the biggest mistake of his life. After Giuliani's candidacy imploded in Florida due to a lack of momentum, it became clear that it was the latter.

Using 20/20 hindsight, we can see the obvious reason for Giuliani's strategic failure. Simply stated, winning is a good thing. When voters across the country see someone losing pathetically in state after state, he gets branded as a loser, even if he wasn't really trying to win those states in the first place. And no one wants to vote for a loser.

Apparently, Hillary Clinton didn't get the memo.

After mediocre results on not-so-super Tuesday, and decisive defeats in places as varied as Washington state and Washington DC, it's getting harder and harder for Hillary to poise herself as the inevitable nominee. But she's still trying to do just that.

As each loss rolls in, the Clinton campaign haughtily dismisses them:

The state was too black.
Too white.
Too red.
Too blue.
That state? She was planning on losing that one.

But regardless of how she spins the latest round of losses, Hillary can't sweep them under the rug. They're still losses. They still hurt. And slowly but surely, they're undermining her frontrunner status.

Did I say undermining? Allow me to correct myself: they have undermined her frontrunner status.

Obama now leads Hillary by around 100 pledged delegates -- delegates selected democratically through primaries and caucuses. Hillary still retains her lead among super delegates, high-ranking members of the Democratic party who can change sides whenever they want to, but even when these delegates are added to Hillary's column, Obama has a 22 delegate lead.

More importantly, Obama has momentum on his side. Following his majestic sweep of the Chesapeake bay primary contests yesterday, Obama can claim a grand total of 8 wins in a row. When Hawaii and Wisconsin vote next Tuesday, that number is expected to rise to ten. Needless to say, Hillary has plenty to worry about.

In fact, Hillary only has one path to victory open to her: landslides in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, three delegate-rich states she currently leads in.

But in a presidential race where double-digit leads have evaporated overnight, betting an entire campaign on a few big states is a risky strategy.

Just ask Rudy Giuliani.

Et Tu, Coulter?

The story of John McCain's life has always been full of drama, but now that McCain seems to be the clear frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination, some people are determined to turn it into a Shakespearean tragedy. Namely, Julius Caesar. Frightened by the thought of an ambitious, moderate Senator like John McCain seizing the leadership of the American Empire, a veritable who's who of the conservative movement has gathered to plunge their verbal daggers into McCain's political chest.

The first stab came from Rush Limbaugh, who proclaimed that a McCain nomination would spell the end of the Republican party as we know it. Ann Coulter, refusing to be outdone, proclaimed that she would campaign for Hillary if McCain became the Republican nominee. Talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingrahm have openly endorsed Mitt Romney, a step that blogger/talk show host Hugh Hewitt had already taken months ago.

All of them cite the same reason for their fervent opposition: John McCain is a Kennedy-hugging liberal.

There's nothing wrong with opposing a candidate you disagree with, but the recent flurry of anti-McCain vitriol has a disingenuous ring to it. For eight years, the same conservative commentators who are currently heaping contempt on John McCain have continuously defended a man with strikingly similar positions: George W. Bush.

The notorious McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law? Bush signed it.

The even-more-notorious McCain-Kennedy immigration reform law? Bush supported it.

On the issue of taxes, it's true that McCain sided with the Democrats against Bush's tax cut packages in 2001 and 2003 -- but it's also true that McCain has a strong history of battling pork barrel spending, while President Bush has passed hundreds of pork-laden bills without the slightest threat of a veto. That's not to mention the fact that John McCain now supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. It may be a flip-flop, but Mitt Romney, McCain's only viable opponent at this point, has more than a few of those in his recent past.

And yes, John McCain vehemently opposes torture -- something he personally endured in Vietnam. But if conservatives have become so out of touch with basic decency that support for torture is considered a positive thing, call me a liberal.

The reality of the situation is that when you look at the respective political records of President Bush and Presidential candidate McCain, they both have roughly the same number of liberal and conservative positions. If conservatives want to raise a ruckus about a moderate Republican getting a shot at the White House, they ought to apply the same standards to the moderate Republican who already occupies the place.

Today, Republicans in 24 states will decide for themselves who they want to represent their party on election day. If Mitt Romney goes down in flames, a score of vocal conservative commentators will have two courses of action to choose from: they can swallow their pride and support a Republican they detest in order to stop the Democratic nominee, or they can keep beating up on John McCain and pave the way for President Hillary or Obama. Something tells me that there'll be more than a few talk show hosts eating crow on February 6th.

Unfortunately, if Romney does pull off a miraculous victory, we'll all have to suffer through hours of talk radio gloating on the subject. No matter who wins, America always seems to lose.