Your soundbite, if you like:

I’ll tell you the whole story of this primary in 100 words or less. Ready? Start the clock…NOW!

“Hillary Clinton voted for the war in 2002, which pissed off the Democratic base. They rallied behind Obama once he proved he was viable by winning Iowa. Clinton burned through all her money by Super Tuesday and had no plan for what to do if she lost. The schedule was so front-loaded that by March, there weren’t enough delegates in play for her to make a comeback. She tried to carry on as if there were still a chance, and the media indulged her so they wouldn’t run out of material. Then time ran out and here we are. Yay!”

Everything else is filler. Especially the chirping about the VP spot, which I will address below…

What do John McCain, Pat Buchannan, Jerry Brown (twice!), Jesse Jackson, Bob Dole, and Gary Hart have in common? They all finished second in a primary campaign and didn’t make it onto the ticket.

(more below the fold, or beyond the link, depending)

In fact, looking back over the primary era (1972-present), the only case of a nominee putting the runner-up in the VP spot and winning was Reagan in 1980 – and Bush was actually his second choice; Team Reagan originally wanted Gerald Ford (!) to hold the second spot but balked at his demands regarding Cabinet picks and his own portfolio. In fact, that’s literally the only time in the primary era when a non-incumbent gave the second seat to somebody else from the primary race at all and won. The only other contemporary example of somebody else from the same race getting the second spot is…wait for it…John Edwards, in 2004.

(Here you can insert my usual rant about TV “political experts” don’t have a memory longer than the previous instance. I swear to Johnny Cash and three other gods that I lose more political brainpower every time I have a stomach flu than every pundit on CNN combined ever had. I will spaz more about this in a few paragraphs.)

Anyway, there are going to be a lot of hard feelings no matter what. If Clinton doesn’t get the spot, her folks will be bitter. If she does get the spot, a lot of Obama supporters are going to say “we won this thing fair and square and now we have to tow this boat anchor for the next five months?” And let’s not forget the immortal words of Richard Nixon, who said “A Vice-President can’t help you, he can only hurt you.” To that end, I give you the hall of fame: Ferraro the history-maker. Bentsen the steady hand. Kemp the racial-healer. Lieberman the solid Jewish moralist. Edwards the youthful engergizer. Much good they did. Bush the Elder won, but does anybody think Dan Quayle on the ticket actually helped matters?

You could make a case that Gore helped Clinton, or that Bush gave an Establishment blessing to Reagan, but I don’t think either candidate got as much help from their VP as they got from the incumbent (and from Perot, in Clinton’s case).

And let’s be honest: Obama’s never going to lose California or New York. He’s never going to win Kentucky or West Virginia. And most of the people who voted for somebody else are still going to pull the lever for the Dems in November. I don’t think a whole lot of embittered Huckabee voters are going to go vote for Obama, do you? Do you think all the Pat Buchanan voters in 1996 said “screw it, I’m voting for Clinton?” Do you think Jesse Jackson’s seven million voters in 1988 went out and cast their ballots for Bush-Quayle?

In case you’re struggling with this, I will elucidate it: NO. The risk is not that they will switch sides, it’s that they won’t turn out. And after the last five months, I feel confident in the ability of Team Obama to get their people out to the polls. That’s why they won big in caucus states, that’s why there were record numbers of votes cast this season, and that’s why I’m not bothered about the risk of people just checking out of the process. If anything, the McCain folks should be soiling themselves that he finished THIRD in Montana last night. That’s right, he pulled 25% of the vote and finished behind two guys who haven’t been in the picture for four months. There’s going to be a candidate-dissatisfaction problem out there this fall, all right, but it’s not going to be on the blue team.

The fact that we’re even having this discussion is all down to one thing: the political press can’t let go of the soap opera. Here’s a quick quiz: name me the big issues that separated Obama and Clinton on the campaign trail. Go on, think about ’em. I’ll wait.

Time’s up. Ready?

1) A gas-tax holiday.

2) The implementation details of national health insurance. Not the broader plan, the nit-picky details.

3) There is no third issue. Seriously, there is no third issue.

Obama and Clinton are hand-in-glove on 95% of the actual issues, people. So instead, what did we hear about for five months?

1) Hillary crying.

2) Obama’s crazy preacher.

3) Can she win African-Americans?

4) Can he win white votes?

5) Can he win working-class white votes?

6) Can he win redneck white working-class Appalachian votes?

7) Why can’t he win redneck white working-class Appalachian votes?

8) Will she drop out?

9) Why won’t she drop out?

10) Will she drop out now?

11) How about now?

12) How about now?

You want to know why people are sick of politics? Because we get people who can’t remember more than one race ago, people who are in the tank to promote their preferred narrative, people who aren’t even well-suited to morning shows and entertainment reporting, people with no apparent talent other than yelling on TV and hanging around night after night and year after year, and we act as if they’re going to tell us something useful. And worse yet, we act as if what they tell us IS something useful.

What we end up with is a Presidential selection process conducted on the same level as an MTV reality dating show. And if we’re content with that, well, we get precisely the government we deserve.