I’ve been out of commission the last couple of days. My daughter had a tonsillectomy on Tuesday, and she’s been miserable ever since, miserable enough that my ex-wife and I have been watching her full-time ever since. It’s not easy being five and recovering from surgery, even one as relatively benign as getting your tonsils yanked out, so we’ve been doing our best to convince her to eat food, to drink liquid, that we are not giving her Tylenol-3 just to torment her, and so forth.
That’s vital and important work, and it’s given me the benefit of not having to pay a lick of attention to the news since Monday night. And that is actually beneficial.
Barack Obama’s campaign is doomed right now, as it has been for about seven days, and everyone knows that whether Obama or Hillary Clinton earns the nomination, they’re not going to beat John McCain. Snap polls taken over a one-day period prove it.
But you know, out here in the real world, far from the fevered pitch of the blogosphere, people aren’t talking about Obama’s Tuesday speech, or Clinton’s old agenda, or McCain’s gaffe. Oh, they may have heard this or that about that or this, and it may affect what they think today. But that’s today.
Tomorrow, something else will happen that will change the calculus so that only Barack Obama can win the nomination, and John McCain is doomed. And next week, Clinton will be on her way to certain victory. And the week after that, McCain will be on top again, and so it will go until the ultimate Democratic nominee is selected, and heor she starts targeting McCain directly.
At that point, polls will start to have meaning. We will see if Obama supporters will really turn against Clinton should she win the nomination, or vice versa. We will see if sharp and direct attacks on McCain force the press to notice that he’s got a lot of room to be attacked. We will start to see only then, and we will not know for sure who will win until November.
But this week’s story is this week’s story. It is not the story of the campaign. Settle down, everyone. There’s a lot of time between now and then.
I’ve been out of commission the last couple of days. My daughter had a tonsillectomy on Tuesday, and she’s been miserable ever since, miserable enough that my ex-wife and I have been watching her full-time ever since. It’s not easy being five and recovering from surgery, even one as relatively benign as getting your tonsils yanked out, so we’ve been doing our best to convince her to eat food, to drink liquid, that we are not giving her Tylenol-3 just to torment her, and so forth.
That’s vital and important work, and it’s given me the benefit of not having to pay a lick of attention to the news since Monday night. And that is actually beneficial.
Barack Obama’s campaign is doomed right now, as it has been for about seven days, and everyone knows that whether Obama or Hillary Clinton earns the nomination, they’re not going to beat John McCain. Snap polls taken over a one-day period prove it.
But you know, out here in the real world, far from the fevered pitch of the blogosphere, people aren’t talking about Obama’s Tuesday speech, or Clinton’s old agenda, or McCain’s gaffe. Oh, they may have heard this or that about that or this, and it may affect what they think today. But that’s today.
Tomorrow, something else will happen that will change the calculus so that only Barack Obama can win the nomination, and John McCain is doomed. And next week, Clinton will be on her way to certain victory. And the week after that, McCain will be on top again, and so it will go until the ultimate Democratic nominee is selected, and heor she starts targeting McCain directly.
At that point, polls will start to have meaning. We will see if Obama supporters will really turn against Clinton should she win the nomination, or vice versa. We will see if sharp and direct attacks on McCain force the press to notice that he’s got a lot of room to be attacked. We will start to see only then, and we will not know for sure who will win until November.
But this week’s story is this week’s story. It is not the story of the campaign. Settle down, everyone. There’s a lot of time between now and then.
