I luuuv Rachel Maddow *click*, Part 2

...and we’re back.

As longtime listeners will recall, Rachel Maddow hurt my feelings when she hung up on me. She takes my calls. She talks to me. But before I’ve finished sharing my th*click*

See what happened? I called into her radio show for the third time in two weeks. I know that seems weird but keep in mind that I like to pretend Rachel and I are in 4th grade together... and that we both have Mr. Robey for science class.

I didn’t get much of a chance to tell her how Barack Obama is going to prevent her predicted 10-day death march to May 31st. And now we find ouselves halfway-along this trails of tears. So it is five days to a deadlock that can only be resolved at the convention in Denver. Which sounds much better. It’s no longer a “weeklong death march to Colorado.” It is a “death march work week’s” My supercalifragilisticexpialidocious prediction of a shocking healing treatment remains. It will be revealed. Soon. Before the death march stumbles to a catastrophe.

Thanks to Sen. Clinton’s horrible "gaffe" this all might be moot. But I want to put in my two nickels. That’ll teach my imaginary 4th grade classmate to hang up on me. Did you know that the intestinal track of the rat Mr. Robey dissected is longer than Jamie Fine is tall?

So...
If you are Barack Obama your first priority after you beat Hillary is to keep her voters in the Democratic fold. Fences must be mended, feathers unruffled, knickers untwisted and whatnot. According to Rachel, me, and the lamppost, it will be far too late by the time the convention rolls around to fix any of this. June 3rd will be too late. May 31st will be too late. It is just too late now to start the healing in time for the general election.

So what do you do? Do you give up? No! To quote Hillary (and Jason Nesmith) “Never give up. Never surrender.” (Earth to Hillary: You are out of Omega-13.)

Sen. Obama: do what you have done from the very beginning of this campaign. You do what you have done since you first announced that you were running for the office of President of the United States of America just fifteen short months ago. You do what you have done better than any other candidate in the race.

You strategize... And I know how and what you are doing.

Barack Obama has already started the healing process. It has been going on for at least two months now. That still might be too late. Hillary’s voters might sit out. They may take their ball and go home. What evidence do I have that this strategy is going on?

In late March Sen. Pat Leahy (D-gravelly) called on Sen Clinton to drop out of the race. As far as I can recall that was the last time that any Democratic power broker even suggested that Hillary should get out of the race. (No, George McGovern does not count as a power or a broker.) That was the last time that anyone in the Democratic Party who is even close to the Obama campaign have said anything about Sen. Clinton taking her marbles and going home.

For the past two months there has been nary a peep from the party regulars about Hillary dropping out. Doesn't that strike you as strange and/or cowardly, even for Democrats? “Strange and/or Cowardly” could be the Superdelegatepeople motto. There is a reason why the Democratic Party old white men (and Nancy Pelosi) have remained silent. There is logic behind the Superdelegatepeople remaining timid. It’s not because “Silent and/or Timid” could be a Democratic Congressional bumper sticker. It is because...

It is because this is the only way to get Hillary out of the race without enraging her supporters. Nothing motivates her base more than the thought that she is getting the bum's rush out of the race. The glass ceiling. Mysogyny. These are her issues, not the Iraq War, not the economy, certainly not electability. (If anything she has been running on Obama’s supposed unelectablity.) These are the fumes that the Clinton campaign is running on. Hillary Clinton cannot count on her inevitability or her healthcare program or the gas tax. She is running on the Joe Jacobs Principle: “We wuz robbed!”

...or “We iz robbed!” A vote for Clinton in the past couple of primaries is NOT a vote against Obama. It is a vote for her to stay in the race. More accurately, it is a vote for her to NOT get out of the race. Twenty-four years after Geraldine Ferraro, eighty-eight years after the 19th Ammendment and one hundred and sixty years after Seneca Falls this motivation makes absolute sense to me. And it makes sense to Barack Obama.

Sen. Obama has kept out of Sen. Clinton’s way. It looks as if he has turned his attention to Sen. Campaign McCain and the swing states. This is actually a strategy that is geared toward Hilary supporters. It is geared toward uniting the Democratic Party. Just look at the return-to-the-scene-of-the-upset speech in Iowa

"It’s the spirit that sent the first patriots to Lexington and Concord and led the defenders of freedom to light the way north on an Underground Railroad. It’s what sent my grandfather’s generation to beachheads in Normandy, and women to Seneca Falls, and workers to picket lines and factory fences. It’s what led all those young men and women who saw beatings and billy clubs on their television screens to leave their homes, and get on buses, and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery – black and white, rich and poor." -- Barack Obama on the night of the Oregon and Kentucky primaries but he's in Des Moines, Iowa

African-Americans, women, labor unions, Jews --- Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Democratic Party!

Did you catch all of that? Did you notice how Obama links the birth of America, the freeing of African-Americans held in bondage, his personal narrative, Women’s suffrage, the Labor movement and the traditional alliance between Jews and African-Americans. That’s the definition of healing. It is also the perfect counter-argument (without arguing) to Clinton's increasingly desperate rhetoric. He isn’t waiting for Hillary to leave the room. He’s working the room with her standing in the corner like a potted plant. A plotted plant determined to take it to the convention and married to a former President.

The Clinton campaign is gently being smothered to death. The MSM is the only thing dumb enough to tell Hillary to get out of the race. Any attempt by Obama (or anyone else) to suggest that Hillary Clinton should drop out will be met with righteous fury by women. These are the same women who asked her how she COULD TAKE IT when the Clinton campaign was saved in New Hampshire. Obama and the Democrats can’t allow that sense of outrage to be aimed at them. They must allow the Clinton Campaign to burn itself out and make their own decision to leave. With no Democrats to rant and rail against the Clintons are reduced to railing and ranting at the media.

Running against the media might work for most Republicans, but not for Democrats, not for Hillary (and certainly not for John McCaign.) The MSM is still distracted by the horse race between a thoroughbred and a broken-down nag. (That’s as close as I will get to a Big Brown/Eight Belles reference. And that's enough of that.) Obama is focused on merging fundraising organizations, taking over the Democratic Party, forcing the Apparatchniks into line, taking the fight to Campaign McCaign and tying him to President 27%.

How is Barack Obama able to do this? How is he able to get Hillary out of the race, wrap up the nomination, heal the party, campaign in swing states and start roping McCaign to President 27% all at the same time? How can he do all of this simultaneously? Is he Batman? Is there an evil genius cranking out an army of Obama-bots? What in the world will be the Mack the Knife coup de grace to this campaign? What is the very thing that I tried to tell Rachel about before she hung up on me? What is the shocker that she refused to hear?

please stay on the line for part 3 in my endless three-part monolog.

I luuuv Rachel Maddow *click*, Part 1

Arrrrgh! I cannot believe that you hung up on me ! (again)

Dear Dr. Maddow:

I wasn't finished. I had more to say.

I try to be concise, to be polite and let others get a chance to talk. I try to be interesting and insightful. I do this mostly so that you keep taking my calls. I like pretending that we hang out at recess and sit at the same table during lunch period. In my imagination I always give you cuts, even when it's Pizza Day.

So you can understand how much it hurt when you hung up on me. [insert your own "hung up on you" joke here. I'm going with old-school Herbie Hancock.]

I wanted to give you my prediction for the super-secret, party-unifying, M. Night Shyamalan, surprise way that Barack Obama is going to wrap up this Long March to the Democratic Nomination. I swear it wouldn't have taken up too much airtime. Cross my heart. Pinky promise.

But it is too late for that. You have struck me down and I have become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Now I can flesh out the details. I can lay out my reasoning. I can explain why Hillary Clinton has chosen Russell Crowe over the field of Mathematical Determinacy. More on that later.

You say that the Democrats are on a ten-day suicide watch counting down to May 31st. You say that they are in danger of losing the election if it hasn't already been lost. As I've said before: I think you are mostly exactly correct. This means that I also think you are slightly inexactly incorrect. I was the first caller on your May 21st Air America Rachel Maddow Show broadcast and I tried to convince you that there was a way to short circuit this electoral electric chair. I'd like to think that I played a small part in the faint ray of hope you see in getting 90 of the Superdelegatemans and Superdelegatewomans to declare for Obama before May 31st.

It might already be too late, too self-immolated, too fercockt for (any of) the Democrats to win in November. But, unlike you, I think that Barack Obama has a strategy for what is happening. More importantly I think that he is executing that strategy even as we speak.

This strategy is so crazy that it just might work. Hillary has certainly left him no other choice.

I must say that Hillary Clinton is staying in the race for reasons that make sense to her and those around her. She is looking to take it all the way to the convention. Heck, if she doesn't win there I wouldn't be surprised if she showed up on December 15th when the electors meet for the Electoral College still insisting that she is more electable than President-elect McCain. 

All of this makes complete sense to her and is totally, totally worth it. As you've so rightly said, if what you really want is to be President of the United States -- a slim chance of becoming President (a fight at the convention) is better than no chance of becoming President." Even the phrase 'President-elect McCain' is not enough to deter you.

I have been saying something for a long time. No, not to you. At the time I started you weren't even my pretend pal on WRNX, let alone WRSI. I have been saying this: Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton met at Yale Law School. During passionate late-night wonking sessions, fueled by uninhaled marijuana and unbaked cookies, the two of them decided that they both should be President. This was in a world before state legislatures could vote down the Equal Rights Amendment. The path to their presidency obviously went through her husband. This is why a Wellesley commencement speaker moves all the way to mid-1970s Arkansas.

At this point I would like to point out that if Hillary Rodham hadn't sacrificed her career for her husband's political ambitions Bill Clinton would be a gas station attendant today. Women of a certain age understand this to their core. They make up her base of Tammy Wynette-loyal voters.

In the thirty-three years since she moved to Fayetteville the world changed and Hillary Rodham Clinton played a significant part in that change. We now live in a world where both Clintons have a chance to be president, just like they dreamed. This is why Hillary will throw good money after bad, burn every bridge, climb every mountain, ford every stream...

I can't say that I blame her. I may resent her, despise her, and accuse her of ruining the Democratic Party's best chance in 75 years to permanently realign the American political landscape thereby handing over the Supreme Court to the wingnuts for another two generations as well as making me write very long sentences. But I won't say that I blame her.

It all makes sense in Hillaryville. It takes a village to destroy a party. In Hillary Clinton's experience there are always more time bombs ticking out there to destroy a man's candidacy. Skeletons in closets. Bimbo eruptions. Whatever. The Democratic nomination goes to the candidate with the will and the gumption to continue when everyone around them is telling them that they should quit. That is the lesson of the '92 campaign.

The lesson of the '96 campaign is that it is easy to redefine and defeat an underfunded grumpy old war hero GOP opponent. This means that if she can get the nomination she absolutely will win in November. Hillary and her larger half, Bill, know exactly how much being president is worth and they are willing to spend their own money to get it back. This ain't beanbag. This ain't Texas Hold 'Em. This ain't Florida and Michigan hold 'em. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around.

This is Life During Wartime. You do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.

Oh, and the Russell Crowe v. Mathematical Determinacy contest? Let me lay some hunky math on you. Determinacy is part of something called fancy-pants, ivory tower, very confusing mathematical set theory. Simply put: Determinacy is the study of games, whether a strategy to win a particular game exists and the significance of that strategy's existence.

Russell Crowe, on the other hand, is a rich handsome temperamental actor who won an Oscar for his portrayal of John Forbes Nash. "Of the eponymously named 'Nash Equilibrium'?" I hear you cry. Yes, that John Forbes Nash. They also made a movie of his life called A Beautiful Mind. A Nash Equilibrium is arrived at in a game when, "each player must answer negative to the question: 'Knowing the strategies of the other players , and treating the strategies of the other players as set in stone, can I benefit by changing my strategy."

Hillary Clinton is not changing her strategy. This proves the axiom: When in doubt always go with the hunky Oscar-winner.

So the question is now: What do you do if you are Barack Obama? And what is your plan for a June Surprise? I think I know.

please stay on the line for Part 2