I'm beginning to get a sick feeling in my stomach that the next president will be John McCain.

The longer the Democratic nomination process goes on, the more likely it is that John McCain will be the next president.
This is not a new observation. This isn't the first time its been said. It seems to be the new "conventional wisdom" floating around the blogs and the internets and among the pundits and talking heads on tv.

Except, for the first time I'm actually beginning to see how it might be true. 

History is not on the side of the democrats. Every time there has been a long, drawn out and bloody nomination process, the political party involved has lost in the general election.

My reaction to this has been, "Well, maybe. But voters aren't really stupid enough, after 8 years of perpetual never-ending war, after 8 years of an economy that sees the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, after 8 years of america's double talk and double standards on human rights and torture, after 8 years of being lied to and deceived almost daily, to elect a Republican president for a third term."

I thought the republicans had blown their chances so far to hell that this time, no matter how long it was until the dems got their nom, that the playing field was still favorable for them in November.

But there's an old axiom in politics: Never underestimate the democrats ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It's not that i don't think voters will want John McCain, its that i think the process has gotten so ugly and nasty on the democratic side, that whomever the nominee is, is going to have a hell of a time putting the party back together again.

It doesn't help things that Hillary Clinton's sole strategy is to make Barack Obama unelectable so that superdelegates will feel they have to go with her, over him. Except that won't ever happen. Ever.

The superdelegates are not going to take this away from Obama if (and when) he's leading among states won, pledged delegates and popular vote. No matter how much Hillary wants them to, they are not going to deny the first viable African-American candidate the nomination in an un-democratic and unseemly way. And if they do...i shudder to think of the fractures that will cause (which is exactly the reason they won't do it).

All Hillary is accomplishing with her "kitchen sink" strategy is making Barack Obama unelectable in November. She is hurting his chances, and she is running the risk of dividing this party.

If this goes to the convention, as Hillary wants it to, the eventual nominee, Barack Obama, will have two months to try to unify his party after what will be an ugly floor fight and to try to make his case against John McCain. Meanwhile, McCain will have had somewhere around 8 months to unify his party, and plan a campaign around the democratic nominee. He's already making his case to the American people.

Now, yes, i am an Obama supporter. But if <em>he</em> was the one behind on pledged delegates (with no hope to surpass or even catch her), states won, and popular vote, and if the campaign was starting to hurt the Democrats chances in November (as it is now) I would have to urge him to drop out of the race. If he used the same tactics Hillary is using against him to divide the party and smear our de facto nominee merely on the hopes that by virtue of his smears alone he would have made her unelectable, I'd say it was time to put the good of the party and the good of the country ahead of his own personal amibition.

There is too much at stake in this election to blow it because someone didn't know when enough was enough.

Now, I realize that's probably too much to ask Hillary Clinton, who has spent a lifetime preparing for her presidency, to do. But ask yourself this question, if Hillary's last name wasn't Clinton, would Pelosi and Reid and Howard Dean, and the superdelegates be sitting around twiddling their thumbs while the Democratic Party burns down around them?

Barack Obama will be our nominee. I am as sure of this as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hillary Clinton's hopes of making him "unelectable" will fail to sway the superdelegates to switch to her and all she is doing is hurting his chances in November.

The cynic in me (and Hillary Clinton has given me every reason to be cynical about her intentinons) says that's her plan: torpedo Obama now so that when november comes, he'll lose.

And she can try again in 2012

At the risk of being accused of hyperbolic exaggeration, Hillary Clinton reminds me of Lady MacBeth. She wants power. She doesn't care how she gets it, or who she hurts, or even if 4000 more soldiers die between now and 2012, because make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if John McCain is the next president.

And thanks to Hillary's refusal to see the obvious, that gets more and more likely every day.