God oh god please let it be over soon, now, anytime, soon. Somebody do something. Somebody do nothing. Anybody do anything. It’s like waiting in for the electrician. Nothing interesting is going to happen but nothing else can be done until the bell rings.

Latest: Obama leading in Oregon by between eight to 15 points, depending. Hillary leading in Kentucky by about 20 to 30. No surprises, absolutely no surprises in either forecast. Hillary has to win Kentucky big to not lose; Obama can weather a disappointing Oregon result.

Obama — now not even bothering to campaign against Hillary, focussing directly on McCain, spending time in swing states — estimates himself to be 75 short of the 2,026 delegates needed for victory, calling on Clinton to concede.

Clinton warning against any premature victory celebrations which is a tad desperate. She is now an acute source of psycho-physical pain to me and many others, like a trace memory of childhood scalding whenever she comes on the teev…

Yes, she has a right to keep campaigning. No-one denies she’s got a right. And if she had a different program – continuing the war and socialising health care for example – then she would be offering something different. But it’s the sodding same, with bells and whistles.

Make it stop.

Warren Buffett has endorsed Obama. No big surprise. He’s always had a social liberalish streak.

More significantly, Bama also got the endorsement of Robert Byrd, the 90-year-old veteran senator form West Virginia, days after Hillary took the state. To say Byrd is a conservative Democrat is something of an understatement: the guy was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Mind you he’s 90 and that was in 1942 – he was a Grand Cyclops apparently – and he has subsequently apologised profusely. Now he’s just your average bloke who stays at home on a weekend to do some chores and singe the lawn.

Hillary will probably counter by getting the backing of the KKK. “Racist? Oh that’s just elite sociologists talking”.

God knows, if the whole campaign is like methadone now, next week – Montana and South Dakota – will be like sucking the cotton wool in a Panadol bottle. A perfectly tepid half-life of politics.

Everything is stuck. No matter how much Obama tries to turn the guns onto McCain, it just can’t be done in any serious way until round one is out of the way.

And of course Hillary could still win. She could still win.

Possibilities:

  1. Assassination of Obama. Highly unlikely, though the most plausible culprit would be enraged white Hillary supporter at this stage, or possibly Gloria Steinem.
  2. Big scandal as yet unexplored, though God knows what it would be that Fox News hasn’t thrown at Obama yet. There’s lots of stuff from his Illinois voting record that will be thrown during the general election, but nothing of the “video of farm animals” level they would need. Jump the shark. F— the quokka. Sniff the chair.
  3. Mixture of intimidation, influence etc by Clintons in post-primary hiatus to get enough superdelegates back for a narrow victory.
  4. Food poisoning at convention

None even remotely likely, but NUTC.

So, as the Democrack-up continues, McCain is getting a free ride on a bunch of stuff, most specifically the fact that his campaign against Washington lobbyists has had to be close fought lately in that he’s had to sack three of his staff for being, um, lobbyists. Two of them worked for the Myanmar junta. A moderate faction thereof. Which is McCain all over really. We will work with a moderate faction of the junta.

There’s also the endorsement by Pastor Jim Hagee that McCain sought – and then had to qualify due to Hagee’s anti-Catholicism – Hagee’s an ultra protestant who basically sees the Pope as the Antichrist.

Even worse/better are his views on Jews. Like most evangelical fervid supporters of Israel, it’s conditional on the idea that at Judgement Day , half the Jews will be saved and half condemned – and that such fates are predestined, ie that half the Jewish population are satanic creatures with no souls. Jewish suffering – including the Holocaust – is held to be God’s punishment for Jews deserting their role as chosen people, ie becoming secular and assimilated in 20th century Europe.

There appears to be no footage of Hagee saying this bilge, which must be the only reason FOX news isn’t running with it full-bore. I mean what other reason could there be?

But given that Obama will need to hang on to the Democrat Jewish bloc given his qualms about incinerating Iran, I will be very surprised if the issue doesn’t come up in the general election campaign.

If there is one. If there ever is one.

Stop press: Phil Beavis, vice-chair of the Waxachie (MO) county Democratic Party has endorsed Obama. What does this mean for the campaign? CNN will be debating the issue for the next 8 hours.

Make it all stop.