Hillaryzilla

The primary election in Pennyslvania is a week away. I plan to win. We’re dumping lots of money into television commercials which attack Barack Obama. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I think we’re entering ‘Hail Mary’ season in the campaign.

Tommy Vietor from Obama’s campaign said, ‘she’ll do anything to get elected.’ So? What’s your point, Tommy?

Obama says white Americans are bitter about job losses and cling to guns and religion. Those are fightin’ words, buster. If you want a fight, then a fight is what you will get.

‘Hail Mary!’

Cash up front. That’s what it’s come down to. So I missed a few payments, and have a shoebox full of unpaid bills. Big whoop, right? 

Some services vendors in Ohio and Texas are complaining that I haven’t paid them for services rendered. We normally don’t pay anything for 60 days, so why complain now? It’s been my standard practice. From where I sit, I think some of these service vendors should be paying me just for the rights to help my campaign.

We’re talking about changing America for the better and some selfish vendors just want their money.

It’s become a worse situation now that people know Bill and I made $100-million since leaving the White House in 2000. It’s as if people expect me to pay for my own campaign for President. Who do they think I am, Mitt Romney?

This cash up front thing absolutely has to end. Now.

Could it be worse? Yes. Maggie came in the office this morning and told me that we can only spend $11-million of the $33-million we have in the bank. Apparently there’s some issue with the Federal Election Commission. The rest of the money must be saved for the general election, or returned if I don’t win the nomination.

Returned? Like that’ll happen.

Enough is enough. Mark Penn is outta here. We’ll let it leak that he’s been involved in some kind of shenanigans with a Colombian drug cartel or something like that. Then we’ll tell reporters, privately, that everyone is glad he’s gone because he caused so much turmoil among the staff.

That two-step firing process makes it look like I’m managing the campaign details, yet staying loyal to those who are loyal to me. It’s not that Mark wasn’t loyal. He wasn’t. He just had too many irons in the fire, double-dipping, so to speak.

Speaking of campaigns, we’re trying to find out who is running Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Officially, it’s David Plouffe, though our insiders say he’s really more of a personal assistant to Obama. As much as I hate to admit it, Obama’s campaign is well organized and very effective. Of course, that’s the outsiders view, but there’s no evidence to the contrary.

So, who’s running Obama’s campaign?

My money is on Michelle Obama. A campaign manager has to be a tough-as-nails insider. I would have Bill run my campaign but he’s not really tough enough and gets distracted easily by all the female campaign volunteers. Michelle Obama fits the tough-as-nails requirement. She’s also the ultimate insider.

So, who’s watching Obama’s kids?

I’m on the phone tonight with Mark Penn going over campaign strategy and I give him a couple of ‘action items.’ He balks. No, not really balks; worse. He says, “Madam Senator, that’s not in my job description.”

Job description? This guy gets paid more than any other person on my campaign staff, and he still heads his own company and knocks down a full-time salary, and he charges us for every little thing he does. I ask him to tape Saturday Night Live tonight and he flat out refused.

‘Hey Mark,’ I think to myself, ‘How about if I tell everyone you WERE a pain in the rear?’

Half of all the money I spend on campaign advisors is worthless. The problem is that I don’t know which half. It’s time to move Mark’s name into the worthless column.

Just last week he was giving me grief about picking up some laundry for me. The week before he complained when I asked him to bring his laptop to a strategy meeting. Mine was on the fritz. Again. It’s a Dell. 

Why the Democrats chose August for a political convention is something I will never understand. It’s all Howard Dean’s fault. Once I’m President the first thing I’ll do is to send that noisy little mouse man back to Vermont. He should have stayed a chiropractor and never become involved in politics.

He screwed up the primary elections in Florida and Michigan. He’s responsible for mismanaging the SuperDelegate mess. He’s responsible for all those states that had caucus primaries instead of real voting primaries as God intended.

The last Democratic primary is June 3rd, which means we’ll have almost three long, hot summer months of discontent before the convention decides the party’s nominee. It’s clear now that neither Barack or me will have sufficient delegates at the end of the primary voting to claim victory.

I don’t like to wait.

Alright, so I embellished the facts a little. I’m a politician. It’s what we do. The YouTube generation will be the death of politicians as we know them today.

For the past year I’ve been telling people everywhere that helped broker peace in the Balkans, flew into an airfield which was under sniper fire, and had to run from the plane to waiting guards. What a great story. Campaign rallies all over the country listened spellbound to my story of politicking for peace as if it came from a spy novel.

Well, it did. I don’t remember which novel, but that’s not important. What is important is actual YouTube video of me in Bosnia smiling and strolling from the airplane to waiting cars, sans sniper fire, sans any sense of urgency whatsoever.

What can I say?

I’ve always believed that there are times when it is important to embellish on the facts because the resulting story has more import than truth. The opposite is also beneficial to a politician, whereby the facts, whatever they may be, are harmful, so the reverse of embellishment is applied.

People need to ask themselves a question. Do they want a commander-in-chief who bores people to death with the mundane moments of life, or one who can polish up a story and make it presentable for the masses to enjoy and cherish?

Icky gave me the bad news. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will endorse Barack Obama. On the surface it would seem as if Richardson has become a traitor, but I don’t think so.

Bill owes his entire political life to the Clintons. We gave him everything he has. From his lengthy resume to his sense of humor to his way with women, everything Richardson is came from his long-time mentor, William Jefferson Clinton.

To see that Richardson has defected to endorse Barack Obama at a crucial time in my campaign can only mean one thing:

Aliens. Bill Richardson was abducted by aliens.

It all makes sense. He’s lost weight. His hair is a little darker. His accent is somehow different. And he has a beard. That alone makes it difficult to tell the old Bill Richardson from what is obviously a clone. That means that aliens could be poised to take over the government.

It doesn’t matter. They can’t do any worse than George Bush.

How many Texans does it take to count a vote? Seriously. How many?

Texas’ strange Frankenelection was held almost two weeks ago and they still haven’t finished counting all the votes. I think I won but I don’t know for sure. They do things differently down in the Lone Star state.

The way I understand it is they held their primary election during the day, and then held a caucus election at night. I didn’t even know about that. It looks like I won the primary election but the results have not been counted for even half the Texas precinct caucuses.

Will Rogers was right. ‘I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.’

From what I can tell, the Democrats in Texas learned how to count votes by attending a vote counting seminar held by Florida Democrats. It’s a tall tale of chaps and chads. There’s something about states with a heavy population of Hispanics. They can’t count. At least, they can’t count quickly or accurately.

Everyone tells me I won Texas. Probably. Big whoop, cowboys. The delegate count looks to be split right down the middle between me and Barack Obama. This is not how it’s supposed to work.

Timing is everything. Unfortunately, there’s good timing and bad timing. Geraldine Ferraro played what may well be our last race card the other day, and days later I had to face a bunch of African-American newspaper publishers and ask them for support.

Life is full of little ironies like that.

Well, before I could face what might have turned out to be a bunch of angry black men who buy ink by the barrel, I called Geraldine and told her it would be best for her to step aside. Sure, she was right. But the country just isn’t ready to debate the nuances of truth.

So, in true Clintonian fashion, I apologized. Of course, it wasn’t a real apology for what Geraldine said, because what she said was really true, and it’s hard to apologize for the truth. I proceeded to apologize for offending anyone, which is true. Apologies need to be explicit, and they need to be targeted, and since I was speaking in front of African-American newspaper publishers, I added, and “I apologize and I am embarrassed that our federcal government so mistreated our citizens.” The reference to victims of Hurricane Katrina was Bill’s idea. He said they’ll lap it up. They did.

And just like that they accepted my well crafted apology and all was forgiven. Is it any wonder that newspapers are dinosaurs?

Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe his Alzheimer’s is kicking in. Whatever it is, Bill is fresh out of ideas.

His latest trip to the looney farm was a stunner. Even Mark Penn didn’t know what to say. When Maggie Williams heard Bill’s idea she snorted coffee through her nose.

We’re all sitting around Friday night working on strategy and tactics and Bill stands up, walks around the room, then, almost too quiet for anyone to hear, “Offer the vice president’s spot to Obama.”

Terry McAuliffe asked him to repeat it so everyone could hear. “Offer the second spot on the ticket to Obama,” Bill said again, louder.

I looked at Terry, then Maggie, who was wiping coffee off her dress. I think it was coffee. She was giggling like crazy, so maybe it was something else. Who drinks coffee late at night? It was some kind of brown liquid.

“Bill, honey,” I said, “There are a few issues that we have to contend with before we begin to think about a running mate. For example, we’re behind in pledged delegates and won’t be able to make up delegates even if we win all the rest of the primaries.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to keep a straight face when Bill comes up with these crazy ideas. Bill walked around the room again, took a sip of whatever was in Maggie’s glass, and dropped the corner of his lips. I can always tell when he’s too full of it. He drops the corner of his lips just before he talks.

“It’ll work,” Bill said. “Offer the number two spot to Barack. He’ll think we’ve dug up some dirt on him that no one else knows. Either he takes the job as veep or we go public. Either way, what do we have to lose?”

There’s no doubt. Bill’s lost it. He’s fresh out of ideas. We thought about it for a few minutes. No one said a thing. Terry turned to me and said, “What the hell. Why not?” I turned to Mark and said, “Make the call.“