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TOP JOBS

I have no cause to complain; I bring it on myself.

My spare time is filled with the chatter of news channels, which are trying to fill their own spare time with commentator after commentator. I catch the first-string talkers during prime time, but I often hang on through the third-string talkers who are booked for the post-midnight hours.

The Democratic presidential race seems interminable, and the commentary on it is doubly so - while at the same time being completely self-contradictory. And there's endless speculation on how the general election will shape up

And I am sick of most of it. I bet you are, too.

So today's column will be about Who Should Just Shut Up.

Morris began his big-time political career in 1978 working for Bill and Hillary Clinton in Arkansas. Morris helped Clinton in his crucial 1996 re-election campaign, successfully promoting "triangulation," or a strategy of seeming to take a position between - or even "above" - the ideological extremes of left and right.

It worked; Clinton drew the all-important swing voters who decide most elections.

But Morris left the campaign before that November election because of a scandal involving a prostitute.

He's now taking the moral high ground and dedicating himself to exposing Hillary Clinton as a - gasp - Democrat - and declaring that she has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Or, that she can't lose. He can't seem to decide.

In the past, Morris has declared that Sen. Clinton has the nomination wrapped up. In fact, he wrote a book called "Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race" in 2005.

And his early evaluation of the Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama match-up was that "Obama is God's gift to Hillary."

"Obama brings out a certain number of additional black voters, maybe 1 percent, 2 percent," Morris said in November 2007. "But Hillary brings out a slew of female voters."

Without ever getting around to admitting he was wrong, Morris has changed his message to "Hillary should face reality and drop out of the race."

"The real message of Tuesday's primaries is not that Hillary won," he wrote following the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries. "It's that she didn't win by enough. The race is over. The results are already clear."

Shut up, Dick. You clearly don't know what you're talking about. And I'm tired of hearing you say it with such conviction.

Remember when Howard Dean was just the somewhat loopy Democratic candidate for president from one of those little northeastern states? I didn't even mind the scream so much. But he went from frontrunner to has-been in the space of four weeks in the winter of 2004.

Since then, he was worked more or less quietly as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, where he has bungled the primary process royally.

He led the push to prevent Florida and Michigan from moving up their primaries, which they wanted to do because of a legitimate feeling that the states of Iowa and New Hampshire have a disproportionate role in choosing a party's nominee.

Their "primary essentially won't count" if they dare defy the DNC, Dean warned voters in Florida and Michigan. And to punish them for their subsequent defiance, the party has ruled that their delegates won't be seated at the national convention.

Yet after rupturing his party with dictatorial demands - and attempting to disenfranchise voters in Florida, of all places - Dean is now preaching a gospel of peace and love.

"You do not want to demoralize the base of the Democratic Party by having the Democrats attack each other," Dean pontificated to The Associated Press. "Let the media and the Republicans and the talking heads on cable television attack and carry on, fulminate at the mouth. The supporters should keep their mouths shut about this stuff on both sides because that is harmful to the potential victory of a Democrat."

Shut up, Howard. Denying representation to Florida and Michigan is far more harmful to the Democratic Party than a good, healthy, knock-down, drag-out campaign.

When my favorite writer, G.K. Chesterton, was asked to contribute an essay to a newspaper doing a special issue on "What's Wrong With the World," Chesterton's response was crisp and clear.

"Dear sirs," he wrote. "I am. Sincerely, GKC."

In that spirit, I'll shut up now. I'm going to put politics aside for a few hours, and go outside and play in the dirt.

I'll be back next week, though. I just can't keep my mouth shut when it comes to politics.

Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.