Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Many people are wondering why Hillary Clinton is staying in a primary race that she seems to have no realistic chance of winning. Here is a possible rationale: she wants Obama to lose in November, and the best chance she has of helping to bring an Obama loss about is to drain his campaign of funds now, as much as possible.

Why does she want Obama to lose in November? Because if he wins, she will definitely never be President. Obama will be the incumbent in 2012 and will therefore automatically be the (D) nominee again, leaving 2016 as the next possible non-Obama (D) President. But that is eight whole years from now, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton will be 69 years old. It is extremely doubtful that by that point, after she has rotted for 16 years in the Senate, the (D)s would turn to a 69-year-old woman whose main claim to fame is a vague 1990s nostalgia.

So she cannot afford to wait that long. She must derail Obama now, and ensure an (R) President wins in 2008. This at least leaves the possibility of 2012 open. Hillary Clinton is simply thinking ahead. If this damages her party, so be it; that’s how important it is to her that she become President.

I would have voted for Obama yesterday, had I had the foresight to:

• register to vote
• foresee that by the time the primary got around to my state, I would find all surviving (R) candidates supremely yawnworthy (or creepy), thus not care much who wins the (R) nomination, and thus
• register as a (D) so as to at least influence the election in a way I cared about.

And, of course, if - after doing all that - I had voted at all.

Why? Well, of course there is the fact that Obama is all kinds of Orwellian cool. But there is also the important fact that he is not Hillary Clinton. I am really tired of having to see/pay attention to Hillary Clinton.