Hillary clutches her pearls in mock surprise at the turnout. Youre all here to see ME?
Hillary clutches her pearls in mock surprise at the turnout. "You're all here to see ME?" Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com

So far it's been a slow news day, election-wise. None of the candidates have dropped any babies they were trying to kiss, or hacked each others' mailing lists, or called for the deportation of an entire religious group. Good job, candidates!

That means it's time for a little reflection on Hillary Clinton's rivalry with Bernie Sanders. Bernie was thought to be one of those long-shot joke candidates (like Barack Obama), and now he's occasionally polling better than she is.

How has this happened? I do love to indulge a good conspiracy theory, and it's fun to imagine that Hillary allowed Bernie's temporary surge so that voters wouldn't think she got the nomination too easily. Of course, this theory is nonsense.

There was an amazing article in the New York Times yesterday about how annoyed the Clinton campaign is to have to deal with Bernie for as long and as seriously as they have. The Clinton machine is apparently dumping unbelievable amounts of cash into Iowa and New Hampshire—memories of her primary defeats in 2008 must still sting—and Bernie is still outpacing her in terms of paid operatives.

But the article points out that a few Clinton losses could work to her advantage in the long run, motivating donors who had been sitting out until they perceived a need.

I still like to pretend that Bernie's success was engineered entirely by Clinton for just that reason. I know it's not true, but isn't it fun to think so? Just imagine a smoke-filled back room at the Clinton villa, where party operatives have gathered to mastermind the family's ascendency.

"Now listen, you bozos," Hillary shouts around her cigar. "This can't look too easy. Find me some chump who can make a lot of noise in a couple states before we shoot him in the kneecaps."

All eyes turn to Bernie Sanders, loading up a plate from the cheese buffet. The cheddar has been sculpted to resemble a nude woman with the head of a jackal.

"What?" he says, Velveeta dripping from a Ritz cracker in his hand.

"You'll do nicely, my pet," Hillary coos. "We need one whose heart is pure, and whose super PAC is virginal."

"But your excellency," Bernie pleads, "I cannot! I dare not challenge you!" He backs up in alarm, dropping his fork in the fondue pot.

Hillary is at his side in an instant, wrapping her arm around him and smiling grimly. She stares deeply into his eyes as she inhales around her cigar.

"Now now," she says. "We mustn't alarm the common folk. Through my benevolence, your polling shall climb in the early primaries, only to be rent asunder by my forces on Super Tuesday." She grabs hold of him by the end of his rumpled necktie and he gags. "Like so." In one bite, she severs his tie in two.

Bernie feels his head swim. Hillary's eyes glow with an unfathomable power that dizzies him, and for a moment it seems that a woozy spiral surrounds his heavy head.

Hillary takes a deep breath around her cigar, and in one gust she releases an enormous cloud of blinding white smoke from her mouth like a fire extinguisher. "Go now," Hillary roars, not in her voice but in that of Gugalanna, the Great Bull of Heaven and first husband of Ereshkigal of the Realm of the Dead. "Go, in my stead, to the Pork Producers of America barbecue in Des Moines, where you shall flip many a burger."

The cloud dissipates from around Bernie's head, and he now gazes serenely past Hillary, past the assembled officials from the Democratic National Committee, past the cloister of mages at the shrine to Jimmy Carter, and even past Fabio, who has been hired to work topless at the open bar.

"Yes, your worship," Bernie drones, wisps of smoke trickling from his ears. Dazed, he reaches back to retrieve the dropped fork from the fondue, reaching in with his hand to extract it. His flesh is unseared by the molten cheese.

"But what of our nemesis, Nate Silver? Will he not detect our trickery?"

"We have ways of persuading Nate Silver," Hillary says. She snaps her fingers at Fabio, who nods and lumbers off toward a waiting motorcycle. Across his back are tattoos of all of Hillary's congressional endorsements, a list so long it tapers down his rippling lats to the small of his back and then out of sight, covered beneath the waist line of the mom jeans Hillary insists he wear.

"Oh man, we got this," giggles Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, bouncing in her chair.

"Your pantsuit's on backwards," Hillary snaps at her.