Brazenly defying logic, momentum, expectations, poll numbers, gravity, and the old wives advice not to venture into the water within an hour of eating, Hillary Clinton unaccountably still lives. She's like one of those zombies you shoot and stab and knock upside the head with a nail studded two by four dipped in some rare poisonous South American giant toad secretion. And she just keeps coming at you. Slowly she turns. Inch by inch. Step by step. I don't know if she sold her soul to the devil or Bill had unnatural congress with a Voodoo Queen or the voters in Texas and Ohio were subjected to subliminal messages in their cereal ads or what. Perhaps she's just plucky.
I do know this must be frustrating as hell for Barack Obama, who has to be imploring the gods (none Muslim as far as I know) for a hint of exactly what its going to take to put this soulless banshee permanently down. Decapitation, a silver bullet in the ear or wooden stake through the heart; but even then, he'd best be advised not to turn his back on the remains. Because every time he straightens up, brushes off and looks directly into the camera reaching out to take the Democratic damsel triumphantly in his arms, Hillary's face pops up behind him with an evil gleam in her eye and some superdelgate entrails hanging out of her mouth stretching out both hands for his neck. She walks the earth as one of the undead.
To add insult to injury, in her morning- show, victory- tour the day after convincing the electorate in both must- win states that she was most ready to straddle the fence on Day One, the junior senator from New York strongly hinted she'd be willing to share the ticket with the junior senator from Illinois. Of course who would be on top is still up for debate. But isn't that pretty much true in every relationship? And to say that each side believes their candidate deserves to head the ticket is surprising in the same way as discovering vampires think daytime is overrated.
Her musing stirred elements of the Democratic base into a frothing mob brandishing torches ad pitchforks screaming for the realization of what they breathlessly refer to as the Dream Ticket. And it's called that because if you even for a minute, think that America would elect both a black man and a woman at the same time, you are too deep in the throes of REM slumber to think straight and are just begging for 30,000 volts applied to the bolts on the side of your neck.
As for a candidate promising things they don't plan to deliver, well, that is not a new element in this campaign: Is it Mr. Canadian ambassador NAFTA reformer guy? Nonetheless, until he sews this thing up tighter than the wrappings of a mummy in an Egyptian tomb, Mr. Obama might want to sleep with one eye open, under a canopy of crucifixes inside a holy water moat on a bed of consecrated garlic. In a church. Not a Mosque. You know. Just in case. Better safe than sorry. Ounce of prevention and all. And I'd be extra special careful in Pennsylvania. After all, their primary is April 22nd, only two days after the full moon. I'm just saying.
Political comic, author, former radio talk show host and margarine smuggler, Will Durst, laments that no one ever addresses the heartbreak of lycanthropy.
Catch his new book, The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing, available from Ulysses Press on April 15th. New? First.