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The ongoing fight for delegates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been of immense benefit to John McCain. Not only are they continuing to spend money campaigning against each other while he focuses on the general election, every time they attack each other or say something stupid, it gives him material to use against them in November. They look like bickering children while he looks presidential.

Never in their wildest nightmares did the Democratic party leadership imagine they wouldn't have a Presidential candidate in place by now. As the primary race began they had what everyone considered to be three very good candidates to choose from, and it was assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the eventual nominee. Not since the 1976 election following the Nixon debacle a generation ago had the prospect of taking back the White House looked so much like a sure thing.

Yet the party now seems on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. A year ago winning seemed like a virtual certainty: the Democrats loved all of their candidates and the Republicans hated theirs. It was a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee on the Democratic ticket, possibly with Barack Obama as her running mate, and that the Republicans would push hard for a life-sized poster of Ronald Reagan to be theirs. The Democratic race would be over by Super Tuesday while the Republicans fought all the way to the convention and beyond.

Then a funny thing happened: John McCain came back from the dead, and people started buying into Barack Obama's audacity of hope. Now it's the Democrats who are stuck in an electoral quagmire while McCain gets to run around looking presidential. There could even be a convention fight in Denver, since neither Obama nor Clinton will end up with enough pledged delegates to win outright, although the super delegates seem inclined to vote for whoever is ahead at the end of the primaries.

That stance made some sense before the controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright happened. Between Wright's hateful sermons and Obama's quote about "typical white people," the audacity of hope suddenly became simply audacity. Obama did give an eloquent speech in response to the uproar, but that shouldn't surprise anyone; giving eloquent speeches is what got him where he is today. Now his "positive" campaign is attacking Hillary Clinton's character, calling her deeply flawed and dishonest. So much for change.

This is typical for a political

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