The re-focused crystal ball.

Wendell: It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?

Ed Tom Bell: If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here.

- "No Country for Old Men"

Today, I'm more sure than ever that this Democrat race for the White House is going to be a giant mess. As we have seen in past elections, there is a difference between the delegate count and the popular vote. Popular vote can be translated to "what the people want", and we all know what happens to what the people want. We have at least two sets of numbers working, and maybe three if you count political spin...

This is the delegate count:

Obama - 1724
Clinton - 1593
A candidate needs 2024 to get the nomination.

This is the popular vote count:
Obama - 14.4 million
Clinton - 13.9 million
or
Clinton - 15.1 million
Obama - 15 million

Or? There's an or, folks. There's always an or.

Clinton is including Michigan and Florida, primaries she won after all the candidates agreed to boycott the states for holding votes too early for party rules. Obama had his name pulled off the ballot in Michigan, so he doesn't get a single vote from that state. "I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anybody else, and I am proud of that," Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis. "It's a very close race, but if you count, as I count, the 2.3 million people who voted in Michigan and Florida, then we are going to build on that."

If you count as I count. That's a classic. If you count as I count, I make a million dollars a year. If you count as I count, my penis is 12 inches long.

The re-focused crystal ball is saying (1) It will be politics as usual and the old-school politics will win out. Hillary is setting up the numbers so that the party will back her. (2) The excitement created by the Obama campaign will be dashed when old-school politics wins out. All of those sign-carrying Obama supporters will have their tiny hearts ripped out by the Machine. You know The Machine. It's the same machine that ruined Al Gore in 2000, Kerry and Edwards in 2004, pulled the rug out from John Edwards a couple of times and hung Howard Dean out to dry. It's a big machine but it needs a tune-up.

The third and most depressing thing that the ball is saying is that John McCain will be inaugurated in January. This in-fighting is bad for politics, people and elections. Neither one of them will back down and it just makes things worse for people like me who find John McCain a slightly more intellectual version of George W. Bush. That's the best thing I can think of to say about him, and I would say the same thing about my cat.

I am left to amuse myself with a Primary Haiku:

Obama might win,

or maybe Hilliary will.

Let's just hope we win.