Pontifications! Political Edition!

     You didn’t think I was kidding, did you? No, no, dear reader, there are more pontifications coming! Let’s get started.

CELEBRITIES NEED TO CALM DOWN ABOUT SARAH PALIN. Matt Damon, Lindsay Lohan, Michael Moore, I’m looking right at you, not to mention many others. Take it easy, seriously. You guys have been enjoying the limelight with Barack Obama, and now there’s someone else getting attention, and you can’t take it, so you fly off the handle. Calm down, she’s a fundamentalist Christian, not the queen of the damned. I know that many of you find Christianity ridiculous, and that’s your business, but the white-hot lightning of scorn you are tossing at this woman for having different ideas than you makes painfully obvious your potential to be stuck-up jerks. Also, she is an attractive female Republican, and I know that breaks your mind’s conception of what her party is supposed to look like, but this isn’t a freaking movie for which you’re getting paid $20 million to lounge in an air conditioned trailer. You don’t have to get so threatened. Even if she did think dinosaurs were around 6,000 years ago (and I have no reason to believe she really does), you don’t need to freak out and mess your diapers. Next time you’re on your blog or you have an interview, take a deep breath, and repeat this sentence: “Not everyone who disagrees with me is a complete fool.”

I know, I know, you’re crazy liberals (not Democrats, two different things), and as such you feel that you have a copyright on all the “cool” minorities and the majority of women, but it’s time to get over it. We get it, you don’t like her, you’re threatened that Barack has to share the spotlight, you can calm down now. I wouldn’t worry about it anyway, she still has to play second-fiddle to the charisma-less wonder that is John McCain, and Obama’s political machine has already taken down a far more formidable politician. I think you’ll be okay, so stop it. Speaking of which…

UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING TO SWAP PLACES ON THE TICKET, MCCAIN, YOU’RE DONE. I’m sorry, it’s not because I take pleasure in saying this, dude, but you are slipping something awful. Back in 2000, I was rooting for you; I liked your cool demeanor and willingness to hob-knob with traditionally liberal stuff like “The Daily Show.” But now, I don’t think you’ve got a prayer. I mean you’re doing a great job locking down the conservatives, but in case you didn’t notice, they lost Congress pretty handily recently, and Bush’s stunningly low approval rating would serve as a thermometer of the country’s political temperature for a wise observer. 

You need the moderates, and you aren’t getting them.

Obama is. He eats moderates for breakfast. He wakes up from dreams about moderates. He doesn’t even try for the liberals, because hell with ‘em, who else are they gonna vote for? No, he wants people on the fence, because he knows that more and more of America just can’t make up their minds. And before you say it, John, don’t try to tell me “John Kerry made the same mistake.” John Kerry was a meager, pandering dandelion, and Barack Obama is not. Kerry thought he could get to the finish line by getting a piggy back ride from Bruce Springsteen, but your opponent is a political killing machine, and he’s coming for you, and you’re just not getting prepared.

Yes, your war record is damn impressive, but the last few decades have seen the candidate with the better war record lose almost every time. Americans won’t be bullied by guilt-tripping, you can’t make us give it to you because we feel bad, you need to do more. And you’re not going to, because you’re John McCain, and you’ve already set your sails for the disastrous shipwreck that’s coming in November. No one will convince you to change them.

See you in the Senate, dude.

BARACK OBAMA IS GOING TO WIPE THE FLOOR WITH EVERYONE. Sometimes it’s just the right time for a candidate, and it is the right time for this man. I don’t know how good a President he will be, but he will be President. I guarantee it. Consider someone like Jimmy Carter, who in many ways was far more naive and wet behind the ears than Obama is now: he became the leader of the free world because he came right after Nixon, right after Watergate, right after the political “system” had rendered itself an ugly, untrustworthy mess. Any other time, Carter would have been too plain-spoken, too earnest, too much, but opportunity knocked and he swung the door wide open. 

Barack Obama is doing the same exact thing. A wildly unpopular two-term white male Republican is on his way out the door, and here comes an ivy-league, African American, fresh faced Democrat whose campaign slogan is a single word: “change.” Are you kidding me? Why even try to run against that? Politics is timing, his is dead on, he wins. But even more than that, Obama would probably be a compelling choice if his timing was awful, because he’s a sharp politician with just enough idealism to keep him above the crap-storm, and he has a degree from the “Kennedy School of Getting Elected via Television.”

The only person alive who could have put Obama down was Hillary, and she came darn close, but she lost. If he can stop the Clinton dynasty in its tracks, I think he can handle a party with no power in the Senate and a Chief Executive with the lowest approval rating in decades.

He’s gonna crush everyone. Watch.