...a dangerous man trained to run 20 miles in soft sand...

Ellis Weiner, over at What HE Said, hits upon a nice counter to the Hillaryspin so prevalent in the media post-PA:

Saying that Obama can’t win Pennsylvania in November because he lost to Hillary is like watching an intra-squad practice game among, say, the San Antonio Spurs, and concluding–after one team “loses”–that the Spurs can’t possibly hope to compete in the playoffs. “A team consisting of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Brett Barry lost. How can they hope to prevail against Phoenix or Boston?”

Now, leaving aside the fact that, due to the defensive liabilities of Steve Nash, a team consisting of TParker, Manu, and Barry would, in fact stand a small chance against Phoenix at least, I'm pretty much in full agreement with this analysis. Assuming that, because he doesn't win among Democrats in a state where the very well known de facto incumbent/heir has the backing of the state political apparatus, he can't win in the general is just silly.

But what about the Hillary supporters who won't vote for Obama? I've heard it said that "the primaries are when you fall in love, the general is when you fall in line." And, yes, that's some lesser-of-two-evils shit right there. but it's true. And, again, Ellis is in agreement:

Naturally, at this juncture, someone will point out that X percent of Obama voters and Y percent of Clinton voters have told pollsters that they will refuse to vote for the other side’s candidate if she/he gets the nod, and will instead vote for McCain. Fine. Whatever. Let’s say they really mean it–today.

Does anyone really think they’ll all feel the same way after three months of hand-to-hand, hand-to-mouth, and foot-in-mouth combat in “the general”? When McCain, with all his history and tax cut switcheroos and lobbyist-infested staff and iffy wife and photo-of-him-hugging-Bush-with- his-eyes-lightly-closed and Iraq-for-a-hundred-years mischegoss and Sunni-Shia confusion, has finally been challenged and shamed by the Democrats, who have thus far been busy eviscerating each other? And when a single gaffe, scandal, “misspeaking,” or revelation can torpedo a campaign overnight?

Granted: only the Democrats could find a way to lose this election, and we should never underestimate their fuckupability. But, that said, I'm kind of in agreement with BillyClint, to an extent. We need to chill out.

When this thing is over, we will have had a national campaign with full airing of Obama's dirty laundry. Well, most of it, anyway. And McCain will still be old and doddering and unable to tell Shiite from shinola. He'll still be clinging to tax cuts as a solution to everything after a summer of 4-dollar-a-gallon gas, and he'll still be proposing upping military expenditures to 4% of GDP while our bridges and levys collapse and our schools rot. The Democrats will still be the party of the future.