Are my eyes really blue?

…you couldn’t have asked for a better night for the GOP. McCain clinches, Huckabee concedes, all effort can now be turned toward the general election…and in the meantime, Clinton wins 3 out of 4 and stops the Obama momentum.

In theory and on paper, this is not as huge a deal as it looks like – remember, we’re still doing proportional allocation on the Dem side. Even though Ohio is a big win, Texas is narrower, and Obama will almost certainly come out of the night still holding a delegate lead. Once he got over the tipping point, the likelihood of him falling behind (barring a spectacular flameout) is pretty slim.

But elections are not fought in theory or on paper, and Wednesday morning’s narrative will be the Clinton Comeback, and the notion that she now has the momentum with seven weeks to go before the next primary, in Pennsylvania – and presumably, the same message that won Ohio will play well at least in the western part of the state. More to the point, the story will be that the Obama train has hit a brick wall and will have to recover from this dizzying blow. And above all, there are two Democrats guaranteed to be punching away at each other for almost two more months, while John McCain stands aside looking Presidential and taking notes to recycle any useful attacks in the fall.

Realistically, it’s probably still Obama’s nomination to lose. But the fact that Clinton made her stand in Ohio and Texas – and pulled it off – means that there’s still a long slow slog ahead. And now, it’s difficult to see how this is anything but harmful for the D’s; the long knives were already starting to come out before today and you can expect the race to take a turn for the uglier almost immediately.

Going forward, for the Democrats to have a chance in November, one of two things has to happen. Either Obama has to turn this into a story about him being able to take a punch and come back hard, and run the table the rest of the way (and the remaining schedule looks somewhat favorable for him), or Clinton has to really make this the point at which everything changes, win big over and over the rest of the way, and make a plausible case to the superdelegates that she has the momentum and deserves the nod going into the convention. Which is kind of a longshot at this point, but cannot be counted out of the realm of possibility. But either way, the odds just took a huge leap that the Democratic nominee will wander out of Denver as damaged goods…which means that at least for tonight, John McCain has to be considered the favorite to win the White House in November.

EDITED TO ADD: Two thoughts, late into the night:

1) John Edwards looked like an idiot for not making his endorsement before Super Tuesday…and now he looks like a genius. Sure, he only controls 26 delegates, but his endorsement could go a long way in the remaining races, especially North Carolina – and the fact that he was probably the furthest left of the Big Three Dems on trade and labor issues means that he could provide somebody with a credibility boost on NAFTA in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

2) Something’s going to have to be done with Florida and Michigan. Sure, they broke the rules and they deserve to be dinged for it – especially since it turns out that states later in the process are becoming more and more important, rather than less and less – but the symbolism of the Democrats not counting votes from Florida is just too egregious to let stand. That said, four things:

* Getting an election do-over will be virtually impossible, due to timetable and expense

* Since the original beauty-contest elections were not fully contested, those totals cannot be considered remotely valid

* While a caucus sort of thing could happen, the caucus format has been so favorable to Obama that it might be tough to get both sides to sign on to any plan that exclusively allocates delegates by caucus

* It is not inconceivable that some combination of Florida, Michigan and the Edwards delegates could be the margin of victory before the superdelegates come into effect…and what will be done about superdelegates to try to reflect some sort of small-d democratic process? Anybody’s guess at this point

I guess what I’m saying is that in a world that gave us impeachment in 1999, the Florida recount in 2000, the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Gulf War in 2003, an eight-month campaign in 2004, a two-house turnover in 2006, and a presidential campaign that has gone on continuously since then…the only thing you can count on is that nothing is too insane to contemplate.

* My new employer (well, the organization that leases me from my employer) was giving out T-shirts today. I don’t really feel like I’m in the Valley unless there’s at least one new work T-shirt every year. This one is actually kind of cool, too.

* I’m smack in the middle of a major re-organization of my backup strategy. It’s not enough to run Time Machine; I need a secondary backup as well (which is currently spread between an iMac, an old iPod, and .Mac). Now if I get my new DVD project done, there’s a very real chance I could wind up with a hard drive only 60% full. Which would be nice.

* Said DVD project suddenly took off like a rocket this morning, when I realized that maybe iDVD looks for movies in the “Movies” folder. (Hold the applause please.) As soon as I moved the project files off the desktop and into that directory, boom, everything was there, and it took me all of 5 minutes to configure the DVD mapping and get the special features menu together. Not only will this one have the new movie, but it will have the trailer, the original 02-02-02 trailer, AND a 10-minute reel of deleted scenes from the new picture. Next trick: getting it burned while working in the background on a couple of actual work projects…

* Celtic is playing at Barcelona today. Barca are the only Continental team that I sort of like, and I do respect the hell out of them: for their record, for their ties to the Catalan region and their role as anti-fascist stand-in against Franco’s Real Madrid back in the day, for the fact that they never had a sponsor on their shirt ever…until THEY decided to sponsor UNICEF and put their logo on the shirt. Couple that with the fact that the game is at the Nou Camp, and that Celtic have never won on the road in the Champions League era…well, no spoilers please, but I have a sneaking suspicion how this one will turn out.

* Am I mixing my plural-noun cases here? Probably. Put it down to the influence of Setanta Sports and having the Geoff Show podcast on in the background.

* I don’t really need a pair of blue sunglasses, do I? That would just be silly. (Not $illy.) Although I do sort of think that since I tend to use my eye color as a trademark, having brown shades is a bit counterproductive. OK, now I’m just talking shite. I will stop now.

* Last year’s Celtic road shirt (the green/black stripes) for £9.99? Now THAT is $illy.

Thanks y’all – looking forward to 36. Gotta be a step up, right? After all, I don’t actually have to run for President anymore since I proclaimed myself Emperor…

WHEREAS Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has been a Loyal and True Ally of Our Realm, and clings to her Throne with the tenacity of a Bull-dog worrying a Soup-Bone;

AND WHEREAS She has consented to send her Grand-son into harm’s way in the Service of her Realm, unlike Some Executives We could Name;

AND WHEREAS he has overcome the Prejudice normally accorded a Ginger Bastard in his Service and the Acclaim Accorded him by his Fellows;

AND WHEREAS a certain Online Personage has brought about the DIsclosure of this Fact, thus bringing Peril upon said Grand-son and his Fellows;

NOW THEREFORE be it order by Emperor Morton I, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico, and King-in-Exile of the Four Provinces, that Our Imperial Subject styling himself “Matt Drudge” is hereby proclaimed to be an Ass-Canchre and a Blight on the Realm;

AND FURTHERMORE he is to be marked as a Four-Flusher, a Bounder and a Cad, as well as a Foppish Dandy worthy of the Harsh Regard of the Local Constabulary;

AND FURTHERMORE than No Aid nor Comfort nor other Imperial Protection shall devolve upon his Person, and that in the Eventuality that Her Majesty’s Secret Service may chuse to attempt his Termination, that no Impediment shall be Given their Course, provided that said Agents do not attempt any Conviviality with the Women of Our Realm, as their Propensity for Wanton Shaggery is well-known in the Councils of the Nations, and We do not wish to see our Realm littered with the Bastard Offspring of a Thousand Loveless Couplings.

SO BE IT ORDERED by My hand from Our Palace in the Ploughboy Mansion, in the Duchy of California, this day the 28th of February, being the Second Year of Our Imperial Reign.

GOD SAVE THE ME!!!

…if my life depended on somebody scoring a goal off a free kick, I would want Shunsuke Nakamura taking that kick. Seeing him line up off the ball in a tie game with 5 minutes left is like watching Mariano Rivera come into the game in the late 90s – game over, get your keys, good night and drive home safely.

Between Celtic, Vanderbilt and the crazy last-minute heroics of the Golden State Warriors, I’m experiencing a strange phenomenon with my sports lately: the absence of learned hopelessness. Now that’s fun. Don’t think for a minute I’m not gonna milk this UT win for a while…although seriously, it’s not that much of an upset. How many times in recent years does a team reach #1 and lose their very next game? And hadn’t the last three #1s to enter Memorial Gym come out with a loss? Well now it’s four. I’m ordering the T-shirt and the DVD as soon as they’re advertised, don’t think I’m not.

The funniest thing was that I started off on Maker’s Mark and we ran out to a 14 point lead. I switched to Guinness…and we lost our lead. So I naturally had only one option. What am I supposed to do? I’m Scotch-Irish from Alabama, of course I’m superstitious. And I did my duty…my tasty nummy Kentucky-aged bottled-in-bond duty. Probably a little much for a school night, but as always…totally worth it.

One more LOL-odore… =)

(1) TENNESSEE 69

(14) VANDERBILT 72

FINAL

Tonight is what it means to be a Commodore.

And not a minute too soon.

“Bitch is the new black.” If my wife is ever killed in a tragic blimp accident or otherwise conspires to leave me, I will allow Tina Fey to comfort me in my time of distress. I’m just sayin’,

(She has similar plans to stalk Jimmy Fallon, so don’t hate, y’all ;] )

Nader to Discuss Election Plans:

If Ralph Nader runs for President again, he should be beaten within an inch of his life. And anyone who votes for him in 2008 should be shot dead outright. Politics ain’t therapy, morons.

ETA: Well, he did it. Doug Feith and Mark Penn are off the hook. Meanwhile, we have another fossil in the race who doesn’t realize the 70s are over. The question now is – will we be compelled to treat him any more seriously than we would the candidate of, say, the Natural Law Party? Or Harold Stassen or Pat Paulsen back in the day?

If you want to send a message, buy a !!-ing Hallmark card. If you’re not in it to win, get out of the race.

Gather round, kids, and listen to Unca Donkey. Once upon a time, political conventions weren’t soporific four-day wastes of time that made you want to stick a fork in your cerebrum (or at least wish they’d outsource the coverage to the FOX NASCAR team and the Sports Junkies). Once, childs, the convention was where they decided WHO WOULD BE THE CANDIDATE.

This process was controlled by political machines, union leaders, big businessmen, etc etc etc. and was not particularly democratic. But because the parties were stronger and more organized, you could sort of follow the chain up and see that the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent you were making the decision, so in a way – a very very VERY distant way – you sort of had some say-so over the process. This is the sort of thing that led to the thousand-plus Democratic delegates going through 103 ballots in 1924 to pick their candidate – and prompted one wag to suggest that they change the symbol of the party from one donkey to 1,096 jackasses.

By the 1960s, some states had primaries, some had caucuses, some had state conventions – a real mixed bag. Flash forward to 1968, when the assassination of putative front-runner Bobby Kennedy left the Democrats casting about for a candidate in the midst of a riot and a media circus. In a fit of exhaustion, the party handed the delegate-selection process over to a small group of activists for 1972 – who proceeded to require open selection of delegates, set minimum standards of participation by women, youth and minorities, and put themselves in charge of authenticating the credentials of delegates. Flash forward to 1972, where George McGovern – who chaired the commission above – wins the first prominent Iowa caucus, racks up a lot of winner-take-all delegates, and lands in a convention where stalwart union-ethnic types get decertified in favor of six hippies from Madison, etc etc. Practical upshot: McGovern ends up accepting the nomination at jackass o’clock in the morning, has a debacle with his VP selection, and goes on to valiantly lose 49 states.

This is when a couple of things happened on the D’s side. For one, they introduced proportional allocation of delegates, so one candidate who polled 30% couldn’t swipe an entire state’s delegation. And just in case that wasn’t enough to forestall insurgent candidates (like Ted Kennedy in 1980, challenging a sitting President), they created the superdelegate for 1984: a ranking Party figure, usually a member of Congress or governor or something like that, who would remain unselected until the convention, to insure that the right person got the nod instead of somebody who would lead the Dems to another Cannae.

So that’s how we got the process we have now. It didn’t entirely forestall the possibility of an insurgent – Carter got the nod in 1976. Nor did it ensure a competitive candidate – Mondale was the establishment choice in 1984 and managed to repeat McGovern’s frying-pan-in-the-balls feat of losing 49 states. The Democratic process that bedevils us now is a direct linear result of a fiasco 40 years ago.

As for the Republicans, they never had anything that would lead to those kinds of changes in the process. No superdelegates, mostly winner-take-all allocation of delegates. Maybe if the Reagan insurgency had succeeded in 1976, things would be different, but if Goldwater ’64 didn’t change things, I can’t imagine what would have. Besides, the thing that has always bedeviled the GOP is the whole idea of “it’s his turn.” Which is what put Bush on the ticket in 1988, Dole on the ticket in 1996, and arguably, McCain in 2004. McCain has also made out like a bandit with winner-take-all delegates; until Super Tuesday, I don’t think he broke 40% in any primary or caucus. This is obviously part and parcel of having 4 or 5 candidates in the race, but the fact remains that through no fault of their own, the Republicans have inadvertently handed their top spot to a character who is 72 years old and odious to the majority of the party’s activist base.

If you don’t think there are going to be MASSIVE changes to the GOP selection process for 2012…I’ll take that bet.

So practical upshot: nobody designed the system to work like this. Nobody really intended for anything to work out like this; it evolved organically and just sort of flopped up on the beach. And because the mechanism of delegate selection is ultimately controlled at the state level, it’s going to take a hundred changes to make a difference in every state and both parties.