Back Channels: A strategy for 'Our Guy'? Yes, it is

TO:

Coffee-drinking junior staff, Obama for President

FROM:

Latte-drinking, way more senior staff

RE:

Looking ahead

As the primary season winds down, with the vote today in Puerto Rico, and South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, we think this is a good time to stop the staff navel-gazing on why Our Guy, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is still losing state contests to Hillary Clinton by 30 to 40 percentage points. Henceforth, we will ignore those results and look ahead. Yes, we can.

It is only a matter of time before Clinton realizes - to paraphrase the Rev. Michael Pfleger at Our Guy's church recently - that race trumps gender. No way will party leaders reject our country's most promising African American presidential candidate - however inexperienced, uninformed and gaffe-prone the Clintons say he is - for a former first lady who already had her turn in the White House. Considering the loyalty of blacks to the party, Democrats should disregard any lead in the popular vote Clinton may conjure up. Yes, they should.

Having said that, it's time to show an interest in winning over the yahoos who fell for the New York senator's "Average Jane" act. Or at least their, ahem, lady friends. Yes, we must.

Based on the success of the speech at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, in which Our Guy called for a national conversation on race, we suggest another such call to action. This time, a countrywide kaffeeklatsch on gender, hosted, of course, by our good friend Oprah. We'll deliver the speech in Seneca Falls, N.Y., site of the first Women's Rights Convention of 1840 and now home to the Women's Rights National Historical Park. Yes, we've come a long way, baby.

Here's the tricky part. Essentially, we have to tell Clinton's female supporters to wait their turn. We must make them believe that being for Our Guy is like being for civil rights in America. Same dynamic in 1840. Sure, they were all there to support women's rights, but who got the vote first? Black men. Women couldn't vote for an additional 60 years. Were they miffed? Sure, but now it's seen as part of the natural evolution of our democracy. Yes, it is.

Here's another delicate matter. The moment Clinton ends her campaign for the presidency, her already-doomed race for VP begins. We'd like her and her supporters - effective immediately, the staff will stop referring to them as postmenopausal sycophants (PMS) - to really believe they have a shot at No. 2. We'd like them to think this long enough to get a few nice quotes about Our Guy from Clinton and her oh-so-sincere, finger-wagging, chin-quivering husband. Then we toss them overboard. Yes, watch the splash.

Of course, in the speech, Our Guy, as he does so well, will empathize with the PMS crowd - last time, promise. He will speak of their struggles, their concerns, their burdens, and he will make sure they know that John McCain and the Neanderthals in the Republican Party are responsible for those struggles, concerns and burdens. That the GOP has dedicated every waking moment to making women miserable, going back to the Garden of Eden. Yes, they have.

And if we still haven't won them over, Our Guy will reach into his multicultural bag of intercontinental relatives and deploy the sad story of some long-lost kin who was once traumatized by the cackling of a sixtysomething woman, à la Hillary on

Fox News Sunday

. "We can't in good conscience subject the American people to four years of similar trauma," Our Guy will say with a sad shake of his head. Yes, so sad.

In other matters, Our Guy will soon deliver a major address on redeployment. That is, calling for Gen. David Petraeus to be forever redeployed from congressional committee duty. The thoughtful, fact-based, well-informed answers about progress in Iraq that he delivers during hearings are a constant distraction to senators trying to make points about losing the war. Yes, they are.

Finally, hope you all caught the Newsweek cover pic with the "halo effect" on Our Guy. Turns out he was right - when is Our Guy not? Call media types "Sweetie," and they suck up even more. Yes, they do.