Obama Nation!

“Fee-Fi-Mo-Mama…” The African-American community is rejoicing this evening, having finally shaken off the yoke that the oily opportunist Jesse Jackson and allegedly-deranged Alan Keyes put on America’s hopes for a viable black Presidential contender. Young, smart, chick-friendly, and charismatic Barack Obama–given up for dead and a pallid would-be Kennedy just weeks ago–has won his party’s first test for 2008. The race was a virtual dead heat until a Des Moines Register poll this past weekend suddenly had Obama stepping over John Edwards and what would, by 8:15 PM Central Time on Thursday, January 3, be Hillary Clinton’s stunned, twitching body.

Obama looked every bit the wunderkind as he cooly but triumphantly addressed his supporters after a victory that once seemed as improbable as Truman defeating Thomas Dewey. He appeared untroubled at the prospects of his Vice Presidential hopes taking a beating as he rides into New Hampshire. He wasn’t going to settle for second place, and was ready to tie Hillary up on the ropes and beat her within an inch of her political life, before he and Michelle go shopping for valances for the White House.

“Hillary, Billary, CLOCKED!”: As the cameras rolled, Clinton was joined by her  rock star husband and a cast of Democratic characters that included Madeline Albright looking like Andy Rooney-in-drag, someone who appeared to be Newt Gingrich’s skinnier twin brother, and an unidentified gentleman who may or may not have been the product of a William Baldwin-Fred Ward pregnancy. Taking a page from her husband’s 1992 campaign playbook, the third-place Hillary Clinton tried to find victory in a shellacking and shake up a little bronze fever among her supporters, while her aides frantically tried to wipe Barack Obama’s bootprints off her chest. It was certainly difficult for her exhausted and dispirited supporters not to get out the Magic Markers and start reworking her thousands upon thousands of Iowa campaign signs from “Ready for Change, Ready to Lead” to “Ready to Change, Ready to Leave” as the Misery Train departs for New Hampshire after what they hope isn’t her penultimate bitch-slap in the nascent 2008 campaign.

“I. Hearts Huckabee”: Nazareth carpenters cheered in Iowa this evening as Christendom’s and Jenny Craig’s favorite son, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, sprinted his svelte Baptist frame to victory in a finish that only weeks ago seemed as plausible as Huckabee’s contention that the planet’s age can be measured in thousands of years.

But, Jesus, were the naysayers wrong, and here we are on the cusp of having another Man from Hope (population 10,467) in the pole position for the White House.