Based on the impression you’d get from the analyses of the major media stars and GOP shills everywhere, they’ve never seen a party having a healthy, respectful, and constructive debate over who’d make the best standard bearer. With every win or strength shown by Senator Clinton supposedly “exposing the weaknesses” of Senator Obama—and vice-versa—to them it’s all a Perfect GOP World we live in, after all.

“What just happened? Oh, that’s good for Rethuglicans! Oh, the opposite just happened? Why, that’s even better for Rethuglicans! It’s ALL good for Rethuglicans!”

This is serious whistling-past-the-graveyard.

In fact, the special election that just installed a new Democratic Congressman in a Mississippi +10 R district bodes very badly indeed for the party of Lincoln. We can bet hundreds of thousands of young, newly registered Democrats surely did not come on board just to cast their votes for

http://static.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/mccaintourist.jpg

 the guy who picks up the TV remote when the phone rings, or stands in the grocery store aisle comparing high-fiber breakfast cereals, or, for that matter, hired a lobbyist to run his campaign.

The GOP shills consistently identify Obama’s “inability” to attract white blue-collar voters as somehow applicable to an Obama/McCain matchup. It’s not. Its only relevant to an Obama/ Clinton choice. Older, white, blue-collar voters, and older white women, are convinced Hillary is tough enough to beat John McCain, and they fret that Obama might not be. When rivals disagree so little on ideology, electability and style take over.

Despite adoring uncritical media coverage (which he can fully expect will continue) and a lack of attention while the Democratic contenders beat each other up, the antique husband of a drug-stealing beer heiress is only about even (or less) with them. We can expect that fairyland to end abruptly when a nominee does emerge and begins to focus on a fact so far roundly ignored:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120882415111033181.html?mod=blog

Century Man’s economic numbers don’t add up. Not even close enough to fudge it.

You can’t promise tax cuts as far as the eye can see and war without end, all the while preposterously claiming you’ll fund them both with the relatively few billions represented by earmarks, or, even more absurdly, claim Magic Fairy Pixie Dust Tax Cut Free Money ™ will save the day. No serious person believes this, though many ‘Nooshans do.

McCentury’s grasp of matters economic is shallow to begin with. Clumsy efforts to pull a fast one on this stuff will deeply damage his carefully constructed but fragile image as a “Straight-Talker.” Despite his fabulously wealthy wife, he seems unable to raise a buck, while the Obama cash machine looks unstoppable.

Anyone who thinks large swaths of Hillary’s base—or Obama’s, if it comes to that—are going to migrate to John McCentury in November, despite how enthusiastically the major media will work to engineer it, must be smoking something pretty good.

It’s just not a year the electorate is saying “Thank you, sir, may we have another?”