Bill Richardson is endorsing Obama, State Department employees are being fired for digging through his passport records, the Obama campaign released a picture showing Bill Clinton used to be friendly with Jeremiah Wright (here's the photo photos!), and I'm tired of pretending I care about this stuff. It occurred to me last night that if this nomination fight really does drag on till August -- till five months from now! -- that will give the Democratic nominee about two months to run against John McCain. Two months! There will be no summer spent driving home the differences between the candidates, no early ads pummeling McCain's failures and the collapse of conservative policies, no space to explain that 63 percent of McCain' tax cuts go to the top 1 percent (a higher proportion even than Bush!), no time to build a mandate around health reform or any other policy. But between now and the convention, there will be five full months for Clinton and Obama to pummel each other, both sides hoping to influence a couple more superdelegates as we trudge along on the slow march towards Denver. So McCain gets a free ride straight through, and Obama and Clinton kick the hell out of each other till two months before the general election is decided. Some plan the Democrats have come up with here.