Oh boy. Clinton campaign strategist and avowed Mark Penn-enemy Harold Ickes is running David Paterson's reelection campaign, apparently, so let's all pray for a divisive and lengthy primary battle. (Maybe it can be racially charged, too!)

First of all: two awesome TV ads. Governor Paterson looks so much more professional clean-shaven, right? We miss the mustache though. The first ad is all "I never asked to be governor and also I have too won some political victories" and the second one is mostly "look, you don't actually know anything about this man, so we will tell you that he was very smart and went to Columbia and stuff."

But why TV ads, now? Because he would like to raise money. And you have to spend campaign money to make money.

Ickes was, maybe, the most reality-based of the triumvirate of assholes who destroyed Hillary Clinton's dreams, but he was also the guy still running around in June of 2008 crowing about how superdelegates and his magical maps of Michigan meant certain victory for the White Lady of Experience.

Still: he was and is not Mark Penn. For the most part, Paterson has hired the Good Clinton People, leaving the Bad Clinton People to Bloomberg and evil PR firms and the Wall Street Journal and little talking head boxes on Fox News.

Meanwhile, the Governor is preparing to push for gay marriage again. And it will fail, spectacularly. This is maybe a smart way to point out how evil and useless everyone else in Albany is, and how that is not even the governor's fault, or it is maybe just him trying to fuck with the State Senate because he hates them.