As readers of this space know, I like my political palaver better than most. I wake up to NPR, and spend part of my afternoon with the pedantic Wolf Blitzer and the Best Political Team on Television; I always stop to watch Mark Shields and David Brooks on Jim Lehrer’s show and sometimes go to bed with Rachel Maddow. (Not literally, of course. Her bio confirms what the suit and haircut she sports on Keith Olbermann’s show led me to believe: that she is, as Russell Crowe said of Jody Foster, “playing for the other team.”)

But even I am weary of the Clinton-Obama battle, and the prospect of this dragging on until June fills me with ennui. This week saw some killer endorsements for our man in black (first Bill Richardson, then PA Senator Bob Casey), as well as calls from other party machers (and Obama backers), Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Christopher Dodd for Hillary to quit her campaign.

As they say here in Brooklyn: It’s going to happen.

First, as much as I wish we could lay down our arms and get to the business of Republican bashing, Hillary Clinton has every right to stick around and spend as much of her donors’ money as she wants. The fact that it is statistically impossible for her beat Obama on delegates, barring a disaster (and polls indicate that the Wright contretemps wasn’t it) that makes superdelegates run away from him. Second, the robotic business is real: she literally can’t stop herself. There is no off switch if you’re a Clinton. You just keep going and going, as she learned up close and personal at the White House, watching her husband’s endless campaign.

“The main thing,” as Bill famously said, “is never quit, never quit, never quit.” I run, therefore I am — it’s emblazoned on the family crest. I was in the minority, at least among the Democrats I know, who thought he would have done us all a huge favor if he had stepped down after he admitted to lying about Monica Lewinsky. Gore would have been president long enough to convince everyone he could do the job (instead of standing, stricken, through much of his campaign, afraid to associate himself with the administration he had just served), Bush never would have been elected and we certainly wouldn’t have invaded Iraq.

Well, nap time’s over. Whoever emerges the victor from this campaign (and even if you don’t agree that black is the new president, he’s almost certainly going to be the new presidential candidate, bitch) should be able to beat McCain. He just released his first national campaign ad that features footage of him in captivity during the Vietnam War (Thomas Edison introduces the use of sound in motion pictures first) and employs the voice of actor Powers Boothe. Boothe, it has been noted, most recently played an evil Dick Cheney-like vice-president who tries to steal the government from a black president in 24. He also played Jim Jones in a made-for-TV movie about Jonestown. Jones taught people what it meant to drink the Kool-Aid, and he, too, was fond of saying things like, “We’re Americans and we’ll never surrender!”