All of us who have frittered away our time in school goofing off, hanging out, chilling with a Bud, thinking the long, fuzzy, wingéd thoughts of youth, have calmed our inner prefect by promising to get down to study tomorrow, next week, Christmas vacation, next semester, Easter for sure. Then the hour arrives when we break open the books, beg, borrow and steal class notes, sharpen the pencils, set the coffee pot on the stove and get to work.

After an hour doubts are rustling in the wainscoting. A couple of hours later a swarm of dreads are knocking furiously on the windowpanes, fear is scratching at the door.
Then at the very witching hour of night full blown terror swhooshes down the chimney and takes possession of the room liked a poltergeist with a three week old toothache. We stand rigid in a goggle-eyed panic before collapsing on a bed that's as stale and unmade as our mind.

Through the chaos one thought emerges as clear and sharp and unwelcome as broken crystal: You have left it too late, it says. There is too much to do and too little time to do it. Your failure is assured. Your golden future will never happen. You have proved yourself a little man and are now doomed to live a little man's life during which your early promise, your wasted talents, your broken dreams will never cease to mock you.

This is where Hillary Clinton is at. If North Carolina blew her away Indiana cruelly just broke her fall enough to allow her to limp away from the disaster with too few injuries to grant her a merciful death but enough broken bones and internal bleeding to guarantee that no future treatment will do anything other than prolong the agony. Obama holds the centre of the ring while his opponent, heaving on the ropes, blind in one eye, jaw dislocated, one eyebrow a bloody gash, pleads through split lips with the referee not to stop the fight.

If this were a World Championship bout the referee at the very least would call in the doctor and he, after a mere glance, would end the carnage. But this is politics, the cruellest bloodsport of them all and one where the cornerman has no towel to throw. The candidate alone decides when to quit and Hillary blindly staggered out of Indiana straight into the West Virginia arena where she hopes the crowd will be more supportive and Obama less surgically devastating with his right jabs and southpaw uppercuts.

This election isn't fun anymore. Rather than being a substitute for warfare this particular political process has transmuted of late into a series of bloody battles where the only thing missing are actual firearms. It's become as much a meatgrinder as Hamburger Hill and is bidding to last longer than the Somme. After each bruising encounter a handful of delegates are exchanged, leaving each side bloodied, unbowed and occupying essentially the same strategic ground.

The demographic terrain is cruel, unyielding, impenetrable to either combatant. Obama is secure among the white elite, the youth and the blacks. Hillary is dug in with the white working class, white women and the seniors. Any attempt to charge across the no man's land in between grinds to a halt under withering defensive fire.

Obama's strategic advantage gained in Iowa and consolidated among the causus states after Super Tuesday has held against the tactical blunders of Flag Pin Hill, Wright's Salient, the skirmish at Bitter Clinging Valley and the assault on Ayre's Redoubt. Clinton failed to turn any of these opportunities into a breakthrough, merely forcing Obama to make an orderly retreat at times but never being able to turn his local difficulties into an overall rout.

Like all wars of attrition this one will be decided by the resources which each side has still in hand. Obama's coffers are full. His forces, though fighting an essentially defensive war, are in excellent spirits. Those watching from the sidelines are more and more tempted to enter the fry on his behalf. And as time ticks away and Hillary's assaults necessarily flag, it's becoming increasingly probable that he will carry the day.

Hillary, on the other hand, is weak where he is strong and weakest where he is strongest. All her treasure is spent and she's sinking deeper into debt. Her followers talk a good fight still but heads are being to hang and crests to fall. Some hitherto staunch supporters are eyeing the chance to defect with dignity, if not honor, intact. Energy and morale are swiftly ebbing in spite of the steely determination of an increasingly desperate general. The uncommitted are now turning away, some reluctantly, others with no little bounce in their step. Her Chief of Staff and Consort is undoubtedly contemplating an end-game strategy which will leave open the opportunity for another campaign in more favorable circumstances.

Like the many Prussian, English, Russian and Austrian generals so often outmanoeuvered by Napoleon, Hillary's only hope is to stick it out on the chance that a random bolt of lightning will strike her opponent dead from out his saddle and give her victory by default. This is no doubt a forlorn wish but in this year of years it is slightly less impossible than one might otherwise imagine. Who of us foretold such a creature as William Ayres rising from his little puddle of history to trouble Obama's dreamings? Or the exotic pastor rampaging from his pulpit to loose a whirlwind of invective against the white race and the nation to which they gave birth?

Are there other dark genies in yet uncorked bottles that lie still undisturbed waiting for the fateful rubbing that will release their havoc upon an unsuspecting presumptive nominee already in the flush of near certain victory? Is there somewhere a tape of Barry and Jerry, drunk on Communion wine, cackling over the vengeance they will wreak on the traditional oppressors of their people? Or a recording of Obama empathizing with Bill Ayres' chagrin at not having thought of a 9/11 thirty years before bin Laden? Or a photograph of Tony Rezko slipping a fat brown envelope to Obama in some shady Chicago nook while burly "associates" with broken noses and bulges under their armpits look unsmilingly on?

These are the visions that smooth Hillary's sweaty brow as she surveys the latest battlefield strewn with the shredded body parts of her lifelong hopes and dreams. This is why she'll hang in there as long as she can. What a galling prospect if she raised the white flag and a week or two later that random bolt of lightning struck leaving the Dems to strap the political corpse of Obama to his trusty steed and lead him as best they could all the way to an inevitable McCain landslide next November.

Now God surely wouldn't play such tricks on a Clinton!

Ya think?

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