With sincere apologies to Bill Maher for stealing his schtick, I have a new rule.

My new rule is for uncommitted Democratic superdelegates. The rule is: you are not allowed to publicly bemoan how "divided" the party currently is, or tut-tut that "the nomination process has gone on too long," or even wish that "it resolve itself soon." In other words, if you're part of the problem, you're not allowed to get all vaporous over the fact that the problem exists. Period.

The remaining 250 (or so) superdelegates who have not "put up" their endorsement publicly need to "shut up." Because these mugwumps can end the race any time they want -- by coming out en masse for one candidate or the other. So they no longer have the right to complain that the race is going on too long.

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Now that that's all over with, can we please focus on beating John McCain?

Virtually everyone (with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton -- I guess nobody told her) now knows that the Democratic candidate for president is going to be Barack Obama. But while the end of this long and winding road is now in sight, Democrats should not just be heaving an enormous sigh of relief -- they should be turning all their energy towards beating John McCain in November.

Because we've already seen what happens when the candidate lets their guard down between becoming presumptive nominee and the convention (can you say "Swift Boat"?). And we definitely don't want that to happen again.

We also want to help Barack Obama with his down-ticket coattails. A stunning thing happened in Louisiana last week, but very few people noticed. There was a special election for a House seat in a district held by Republicans for 33 years, which voted overwhelmingly for Bush last time around. And guess what? The Democratic candidate won. Importantly, he won even after he was smeared by an anti-Obama and anti-Wright ad campaign by his Republican opponent.

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Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign season, I have tried to remain scrupulously neutral among the Democratic candidates. I spotlighted the so-called "minor" and even "fringe" candidates, because I don't like the media declaring who is and who is not a viable candidate -- I feel that power should be reserved for the voters. Last Thanksgiving, I printed the full text of a speech from every single Democratic candidate because I thought it was the right thing to do -- give voters a side-by-side comparison of what the candidates were actually saying on the stump. I think it is pathetic that the news media -- print included -- do not routinely do this throughout the course of every election. And throughout the bruising battle since early February between the two candidates left standing, I have tried to bend over backwards to point out the good and the bad from both campaigns.

But there comes a time when any sane analyst looks at the math and says "it's over." And even though nobody apparently told Hillary Clinton, it is indeed over now. Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, unless he is struck by lightning tomorrow.

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[Update: This article has been updated. I have received permission to credit the person who pointed out this coincidence, in a comment he made to another Huffington Post article, so it has been changed to add Brian Laws' name. I never cite commenters within the text of my articles, as a policy, unless I have their permission to do so.]

August 28th will be the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The keynote speaker will be the Democratic nominee for president. Unless Hillary Clinton soon acquires the ability to perform miracles, that nominee giving the acceptance speech is going to be Barack Obama.

And he will give a historic speech. He will be the first black man in this country's entire history to give such a speech. And if he's half the orator he's cracked up to be, he will use the following line at some point during the speech:

"Exactly two score and five years ago..."

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It has been suggested that I have been a bit too hard on the media recently, and I've been invited to point out some good journalism when I see it. While it is true that I have been media-bashing for the past few weeks, I would tend to frame it as their drivel being too hard on my ears... but that wouldn't solve the problem, only make it worse. Ahem.

So, while we all anxiously await the close of the polls in Indiana and North Carolina tonight (I thought about liveblogging them, but I have a scheduling conflict tonight, so this won't be possible), I thought I would shine the light on one example of (local) media speaking truth to power -- and by "power," I mean "the national mainstream media."

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"The road goes on forever and the party never ends."
--Robert Earl Keen

Tomorrow is yet another primary day in the Democratic presidential nomination race, between Hillary Clinton and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

What's that? Wright is not running, you say?

Oh, that's right -- the actual candidate is Barack Obama. I apologize. After watching the blathering on yesterday's Sunday morning news shows, I don't know how I could have forgotten that and gotten the two mixed up. After all, the whole point of public opinion shows are to keep us informed of the serious issues of the day, right?

Ahem.

Seriously, though, here we sit waiting for yet another set of primary returns to come in. Could anyone have predicted at the beginning of the campaign that this is where we would be -- in May, 2008 -- still not knowing who one of the major candidates was going to be? Well... um... you decide. Here is what I wrote almost a year ago, on May 23rd (the full article is worth a read, especially for the long excerpt from H.L. Mencken at the end of it -- first-person reporting from the "open" Democratic convention of 1932):

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If every port on the West Coast of the United States of America was shut down because of a terrorist threat, do you think it would make the news?

So do I. Any event of this magnitude would be the lead story on every evening news broadcast in the nation. I say that with almost total certitude, knowing it to be true.

Yesterday, all 29 cargo ports on the West Coast were shut down, although it wasn't terrorism that did it. It was the longshoremen, in a one-day strike. Media coverage, beyond some local newspapers, was almost completely non-existent.

Why is this? I don't know for sure. It could have been because the unions said they were protesting the war in Iraq. It could have been because they may not have actually cared about the war in Iraq, but instead were taking a one-day holiday to show their strength during contract negotiations. It could be because Labor gets no respect at all from our corporate media. It could have been that celebrating May Day (known to the rest of the planet as "International Workers' Day") is still seen as a commie-pinko thing to do in America. It could have been the epidemic of recto-cranial inversion (having one's head up one's... well, you figure it out...) among television news networks, which shows no sign of abating any time soon. It could have been because Miley Cyrus' bare shoulderblades were nowhere to be seen.

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May Day means various things to various people. If you're on a ship's radio, it means "help!" (may have been from the French "m'aidez!" or "help me!"). If you're a pagan, it means spring has sprung, and a fertility festival (come on, what exactly did you think a "May pole" represents?). If you're just about anywhere else on the planet outside the United States, it means Labor Day (we didn't want to celebrate our Labor Day with all those no-good commies, so we picked a different day). Today, in America, it meant the West Coast was closed to shipping.

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John McCain should be taken at his word. He just gave a major speech in which he unveiled his "new" idea for how to fix health care in America (which is actually just recycled Bush policy). To prove he knows what he is talking about, I challenge him to be the first to voluntarily do what he is asking all Americans to do: give up his employer-based health care, and purchase his own health insurance on the open market as a private American citizen.

You heard that right -- the only idea Republicans have for our broken health care system is to take away the only thing workers have relied upon for decades -- employer-based health insurance -- and replace it with a tax credit. McCain doesn't specify who would get this tax credit or how exactly it'll be paid for, but no matter. Borrow-and-spend Republicans can just put it all on the Bank of China credit card we've been running our government on for years, I guess.

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[Note: Due to everyone else blathering about it, I am going to write this column without once mentioning Barack Obama or Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I am also going to break this blog's motto and escape reality-based politics for one day. Hope you don't mind.]

I invite you to enter an alternate reality with me. One in which the media was in a feeding frenzy over religion in American politics, a presidential candidate had to give a major speech about his religious affiliation in order to fight back hard against a guilt-by-association campaign against him, in order to assure Americans that his religion was "normal" and not something to be afraid of.

This may sound familiar -- but remember, I said an alternate reality.

In this "What if?" universe, Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee for president. It's not so very hard to imagine this outcome -- John McCain, having never recovered, sank into obscurity, and Mike Huckabee was eventually overcome by Romney's financial advantage in the race.

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