The internet stifles originality. Well, what I mean is, the internet stifles my ability to think I’ve got any originality.

On election night, mulling the debacle of the Republican presidential campaign and the party’s wrecked state, a potential GOP slogan for the next run popped into my head: “Dumb and Plumber in 2012!”

I giggled and ran to Google. I typed “dumb and plumber” as fast as I could with one hand, since the other one was busy patting me on the back.

Alas: Hundreds of hits. From all over.

Commenters on big publications and blogs I’d never heard of had been using the phrase for McCain/Wurzelsomething or Palin/Wurzelsomething for days and even weeks.

And it was older than those political pairings. The Sunday Mail of Glasgow, Scotland, used “Dumb and Plumber” in a headline in 2002 for a story about a real plumber. (As of this morning, “dumb and plumber” incites 3,920 hits.)

Hell, the damn line was so prevalent, I’ve accepted the likelihood that I got it from reading one of those posts in the first place.

Crushing as this experience was, my quest for sloganeering immortality continues.

And, though Google tells me otherwise, hell if I don’t believe “Dead Balls Era” still has a shot…

John McCain’s concession speech made for great television, and not just because his yahoo flock interrupted him enough as he tried to make nice to remind everybody what a hate-based campaign he’d waged.

The most fascinating segment came with his “hug” of Sarah Palin at the end of his speech.

The embrace reminded me of one a boxer gives his opponent after the judges’ decision against him has been announced. Tough to watch, harder not to.

Look for Ben’s Chili Bowl and the back of my head to be on CNN. A crew from the cable network spent the evening watching the returns in the crowded back room of DC’s most famous restaurant.

As the results kept pouring in on the big screen analog TV — tuned into CNN, probably not by coincidence — the mood in the house wasn’t as tense or joyous as I’d hoped. The experience was sort of like watching a Florida State/Duke game with Seminoles fans as their team runs up the score after a close first quarter.

I wanted to find myself caught up in a happy riot. So did CNN, I think. The crew left as soon as Pennsylvania got called for Obama. I followed ‘em out after Ohio.

This afternoon I went with my mother to the polls at my old grammar school, Westlawn Elementary in Falls Church.

The school, like the neighborhood, was a very segregated place when I was there.

The only non-white kid in the school was Indian. I remember rumors, still unconfirmed, that a girl a grade below me was Jewish. I also remember hearing that the Jefferson Theater, the local moviehouse where I saw my first movie (”Mary Poppins”) wouldn’t admit blacks, and seeing my next door neighbors, very nice folks, running around in styrofoam “George Wallace for President” hats.

All the black kids in the zip code lived several blocks away, next to the Jefferson Theater in a section of Falls Church called James Lee. They had their own elementary school.

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One way or another, tomorrow night’s gonna be a hot time in the city. Barring shenanigans, the mood on our streets will be more Detroit ‘84 than Detroit ‘67, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, a fanboy from Philly who runs a website named after a Michael Penn lyric somehow convinced the L.A.-based singer/songwriter to come up with a tune just for the site to rally Quaker Staters to go to the polls.

The song starts slow and ends quick, but, if all the surveys are legit, the last couplet should bring smiles, and maybe even some goosebumps, to about 6.9 percent more of the population than it brings frowns.

On the front Google News page, just beneath the “U.S.” category now you’ll find:
“FOX News Poll: Obama’s Edge Over McCain Narrows from FOXNews, sitting right above “Obama lead over McCain growing, though still tight, new poll shows” from the Kansas City Star.

The Obama/Biden folks just released the smartest and most brutal campaign ad of the season.

While waiting for the wink, listen for the heartbeat…

That nickname Joe Biden stuck on John McCain yesterday ain’t gonna go away.

In case you missed it: In a speech in Florida, Biden said, “You can’t call yourself a maverick when all you’ve ever been is a sidekick.”

Damn, that’s brutal. (Biden admitted that he, um, Bidened the slur from Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.)

And from Rolling Stone comes the most devastating bio of McCain ever put together, full of tales of dishonesty and various sidekicky behaviors.

Damn, that’s brutal, too.

Factcheck.org has a nice rundown of all the facts the candidates got wrong in the debate last night. McCain’s creative interpretations of his “tax cuts” and health care plans are old hat. But what’s this about eBay? McCain said 1.3 million Americans make their living off the online marketplace. Wrong. The number, according to Factcheck, is more like 724,000, and only “some” of those folks rely on the site for their primary income. What really bugs me though, is the idea that all those people are somehow leading the way for a brighter future. Sure, they’re making a living, but many of them are doing it selling stolen goods.

The New York Times reported on recent testimony before a House subcommittee on a bill that would force eBay to crack down on e-fencers. A loss prevention expert from the National Retail Federation told legislators that eBay was like crack for vulnerable, would-be thieves (not his analogy).

“When they run out of “legitimate merchandise,” they begin to steal intermittently, many times for the first time in their life, so they can continue selling online… At least one major retailer has reported that 80 percent of thieves interviewed in their eBay theft cases admit that selling stolen property on eBay is their sole source of income. In fact, many of the eBay sellers have used those proceeds to obtain mortgages, new cars and even boats.”

Sounds like a great strategy for job creation.

In the coming weeks, many publications across this country will be endorsing the Republican presidential ticket. And there are some solid reasons for doing so–John McCain is indeed a great American, serving the country admirably in times of war and peace. Nearly three decades in Congress have given him a good grasp on the issues, as his performance in the first prez debate conveyed. Not falling in the plus column is his choice of running mate.

Even so, there are plenty of good things to say about McCain. Which raises a question: Why does the Examiner, in its McCain endorsement, feel compelled to regurgitate a Republican campaign slogan? I am talking about this passage:

America is at war overseas and in an economic crisis here at home. Many of her citizens believe the country is on the wrong track. It is for times such as these that men like John McCain are made, to put country first so that it can be put right in its time of need. For this reason, The Examiner endorses McCain for president and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for vice president.

And at just the moment when it has become a staple of American comedy, the Examiner invokes that “M” word: “Ever the maverick, McCain selected Palin because her record mirrors his own in courageously standing up to corrupt special interests regardless of party and cutting government waste.”

Hey Examiner, can’t you do some original thinking here?

On last night’s 10 O’Clock News on Fox affiliate WTTG, news reader Maureen Umeh told the audience, “Barack Obama could get a boost from a new voting block: felons!”

Then Umeh read a few sentences merely asserting that groups in a few states were currently pushing legislatures to grant prisoners the right to vote.

Umeh’s report, which was teased earlier in the broadcast with insinuations that good news for Obama was forthcoming, included no details about Obama’s involvement in any of these voting-rights movements, or any evidence that prisoners would vote as a bloc, or any explanation whatsoever into why we should believe prisoners would favor the Democratic Party candidate if allowed to cast ballots.

So, what was your point, Ms. Umeh?

Via TPM, it’s Palin doing a pretty good impression of Bush. Slate offers some tips for Palin so she can ace her next interview (whenever that might be). In the meantime:

As anybody with eyes and ears knows by now, Sarah Palin isn’t so great at articulating what it means to be Russia’s neighbor. But if having an veep candidate who knows Russia-Alaska relations is important—and after all, “as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where—where do they go? It’s Alaska.”—there’s an easy replacement. Lynne Cox.

I first learned about Cox back in 2002, when I was reporting a story about a distance swimmer in San Francisco. In that particular world, Cox is Derek Jeter, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, and the ‘85 Bears rolled all into one: She swam the English Channel in 1972, at 15, then took on increasingly ambitious (and bone-chilling) swims, efforts culminating in a 1987 trip across the Bering Strait. For that, she swam the two and a half miles between Little Diomede Island (U.S.) and Big Diomede Island (Russia). The next year, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev referenced Cox’s effort as an example of how two countries can come together. A uniter, you see, not a divider.

Cox was a fun interview—performing these sort of feats makes you admirably zen, it seems—and she’s a hell of a writer, too. A few years back she published a beautifully written memoir, Swimming to Antarctica, describing her feats in vivid, disarming detail. (Don’t agree to a competition in the Nile River. Dog carcasses.) I know nothing of her politics. But somebody so strong, so articulate, so capable of using Alaska to inspire peace agreements could be nothing but a boon for the Republican ticket. Just a suggestion.

Here’s some folks pawing at Sarah Palin and mumbling while a Kenyan mystic seeks to cast off “every form of witchcraft” from the candidate in 2005 at her church in Wasilla.

Wonder if the spell’s still holding.

According to CNN, the McCain camp wants to delay the veep debate as well. So. Um. How many ways can McCain suggest his running mate is just not ready for prime time?

Just from today, Palin isn’t allowed to answer one soft-ball question at a press conference. And then tonight she gets stumped on what exactly McCain has done to support regulation. Maybe reporters can just give Palin a take home quiz?