It's a bovine gab fest.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, March 7, 2008.

I'm Dale Willman.

On this week's agenda is at Hillary comeback time, a White House photo op, and a fake book. And now, to introduce the discussion, here's John. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. I'm John Dickerson. In Washington at the Slate offices with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon, this is our, however many consecutive shows in a row where we've all been together, I feel. David's already shifting around uncomfortable.

No, we didn't celebrate Emily's birthday. We didn't. We should. And, well, and, you know, I felt I had a terrible thirst. We didn't have any wine. Where was the cake? Isn't there supposed to be a cake? Yes, Chris ordered a cake because it's also Melanese's birthday on Friday. Next week cake. Which leads us to our first topic, the Democratic presidential race in which neither contestant celebrated a birthday.

But Barack Obama lost three of four contests, Hillary Clinton, won three of four contests in a huge comeback after 11, 12, actually straight losses counting Vermont.

But for those of you who were going to email in, I started with Barack Obama just out of

happenstance.

It doesn't mean I prefer Barack Obama anyway.

Emily, your reaction to this extraordinary comeback by Hillary Clinton.

Well, we were talking last week about whether it was time for this primary season to be over.

And clearly, despite my own fervent desire, I'm ready for a new topic, the voters are not ready. I mean, I don't think that this is, it's not directly buyer's remorse in the sense that the same voters aren't changing their mind about Obama, but he can't close the deal. That's a great, that's a good cliche. You like that cliche? You can't unclose the deal. What does that mean to you, David? Is that really true to say that he can't close the deal? I mean, you could have said that she couldn't close the deal either. I mean, I think what it means is that why, I don't know, huh, why would he can't close the deal? If he had won Texas, he would have closed the deal. The superdelegates, I think, at this point, are ready to break for him if they can have a decisive moment in which to do so, but he didn't give it to them. And so now we're in kind of march towards stalemate for weeks, presumably. Right, right, for seven long weeks, eight long weeks.

So I think that they should have the Florida and Michigan doovers in between now and Pennsylvania on April 22nd, so we can all have something important.

Well, as an Obama voter, you think that?

No, just as a process.

I forget my partisanship.

Just as a sort of matter of process, if we're going to do that, like let's do it now. Huh. I would like to, in interest, to see some perception, some psychologists talk about the perception of time because it has only been, you know, two months of this and we're complaining. And yet it really feels like, and for you, John, I must feel like three years.

But for me, even, it feels like it's been a year since this thing started in Iowa.

And it's just the prospect of facing another eight weeks that last as long as the last eight weeks is really disheartening.

And what makes it feel that way?

The constant conversation about this that we have, I mean, in covering it, what's amazing is that you have, every day now we have basically three or four rounds of back and forth between the two candidates, which used to fill up a couple of days. Now we have that, but that's the shortening of the news cycle we've all known about that. So is that just what makes it feel like forever? Or is it because there have been so many twists and turns in the story that it feels like the kinds of drama that usually only happen over a long period of time? Isn't also that it just started really early? I mean, didn't start with Iowa and New Hampshire. It started months before then. And so, I mean, David Greenberg has this good. Yes, it did. I mean, it did. There was a lot of coverage, but it really, when did you emotionally tune into it on Iowa, I'm sure?

Probably. I guess that's right. But, you know, David Greenberg has this good piece in slate pointing out that in the past, it's been routine for Democrats to choose their nominee in June. This really isn't late. And so maybe it's the intensity of the contest, but also I think it must have started earlier than those previous campaign seasons.

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