THE AUDACITY OF HOPELESSNESS. The playa-hatin' on Obama continues at a pace that will leave many of the brethren exhausted by summer. A sort of apotheosis, or maybe nadir, is reached by Cal Thomas at the Washington Times:

"Hope is a dangerous thing," says "Red" to "Andy" in the 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption." Red, played by Morgan Freeman, means that Andy, played by Tim Robbins, risks despair if he hopes to get out of prison.

Wait a minute -- didn't Andy escape in the end? And didn't a couple of cons successfully use his breakout method just last December?

This is where mature and experienced adults can steady the enthusiasm of the young and inexperienced. The Washington Post Magazine recently carried a cover story by Jeffrey Birnbaum titled "How lobbyists always win: Dispatches from Washington's relentless growth industry." It is a reminder of how, no matter who is president and which party controls government, lobbyists are part of the permanent class and very little can change without their participation and approval. Numerous "reformers" have come to Washington in the past, promising change. As often happens, they don't change Washington; Washington changes them.

Funny, I don't remember Thomas, or any of his fellow doomsayers, warning us in 1994 that Newt Gingrich's Contract With America was a bunch of bullshit.

The "hope" being sold by Mr. Obama and his true believers is misplaced. Mr. Obama cannot deliver; he cannot save; he cannot improve individual circumstances by redistributing wealth and talking to America's dictatorial enemies. He is selling snake oil.

The problem with this argument is not that the American people don't share his cynicism -- it's that they do. This makes the relatively untried Obama interesting to them, as he seems not to have been a part of the clusterfuck that brought us to our present dolorous state. And Obama has stormed to an unexpected lead in the Democratic Presidential race, which makes claims that he "cannot deliver" seem less like homespun wisdom and more like sour grapes.

For years conservatives have been blasting the negative attitude of the press; now that they're the ones playing the killjoy, telling everybody that it's all a sham of a mockery of a sham, they may be astonished to find that citizens have internalized their previous message, and won't give them any more credit than they gave Dan Rather.

Being a little cynical myself, though, I expect that if Obama gets the nomination, Republican supporters will have recovered sufficiently to go with a more traditional message, and devote their energies to reminding America that Obama is black.

UPDATE. Gerard Vanderleun tells us that Obama is a sorcerer because chicks dig him. I can see why Vanderleun would feel that way.