In its way, it’s a juicy business, this recent smoke-free-room anointment of the latest DNC chair — the awful Perez over the perhaps slightly less awful Ellison. But who cares, really. With any luck at all, the poor Clintonite mook Perez will be the official chief mourner, a year or two hence, at the damp, depressing, poorly-attended graveside of the Democratic Party, finally buried, after two lamentable centuries and change, with an unnecessary stake through its heart(*).

Juicy because it’s so strikingly the fabled old ward-heeler world: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; what has he done for me lately; show me the money. People playing the angles inside a rapidly collapsing figure. The tangents and the cosines are objects of serious nerdly study; the measurable length of the sides is of no consequence. We shall fight each other to the death for ever-diminishing prizes. “Rats in a trap” is an awful cliche, of course, but it comes irresistibly to mind.

One of of the truly delightful aspects of the thing was how irrelevant my town’s mayor, the sorry faineant Bill DeBlasio, was, even in the tiny, hypoxic, gravitational-collapse world of Democratic party insider politics. It’s difficult to overstate what a big nothing this guy has been, here in Gotham. I mean, he’s useless even by the low standards of the Democratic Party. I curse him daily: filling potholes is a mayor’s first job — it’s in the Constitution, I think — and the condition of the streets, which I see up close on the bike, makes me miss Iron Mike Bloomberg. Never thought I would say that, but Windbag Bill is a miracle worker in this respect.

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(*) Still, as regards the stake: You can’t be too careful with these Undead. I’m in favor of the stake. If only for the sheer joy of the thing: the thwack of the hammer, the crusty give of the ancient skin, the slowly-welling thick old dark blood, sucked and reduced over long ages.