I can’t decide which pop culture analogy from Slate for the race between Obama and Clinton I like better. Monopoly :

Player 1 (Obama) holds virtually all the properties, railroads, and money. But Player 2 (Clinton) has Boardwalk and Park Place, with a tony little neighborhood of hotels and houses. Player 1 consistently amasses money, bit by bit, from Player 2 but can’t close the deal because he lands on Boardwalk or Park Place every three or four times around the board, thus prolonging the agony. “The other four players who started the game but went bankrupt four hours ago,” explains e-mailer Daniel Fiore, “lie on the couch yelling, ‘Come on, end it already!’ “

…or Looney Tunes :

You can give more or less weight to Obama’s political magnetism, the tactical and strategic miscalculations of the Clinton campaign, the delegate-allocation rules that weakened the punch of Clinton’s big-state wins, the crucial difficulty of a former first lady who embodies Restoration competing in an election in which change is the watchword. And here’s another explanation for this remarkable reversal of fortune, one that represents for me one of the few really reliable rules of presidential political warfare: Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.

As shaped by genius animator Chuck Jones—he didn’t create the Warner Bros. icons, but he gave them their later looks and personalities—Bugs and Daffy represent polar opposites in how to deal with the world. Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He’s onto the cons of his adversaries. Sometimes he is glimpsed with his elbow on the fireplace mantel of his remarkably well-appointed lair, clad in a smoking jacket. (Jones once said Cary Grant was his inspiration for Bugs. Today it would be George Clooney.) Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor.
. . .
Is there any doubt about who is Bugs and who is Daffy between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? When Clinton insisted that Obama not simply “denounce” Louis Farrakhan but “reject him,” Obama shrugged. Well, he said, I don’t really see any difference, but if you think there is, I reject and denounce. Indeed, throughout the debate, Obama leaned back and asked for time with the flick of a finger, as if summoning a waiter for another bottle of wine. Clinton, meanwhile, leaned forward, pushing her points with grim determination.

Then again, maybe the better metaphor is Clinton is Microsoft and Obama is Google? Or Friendster vs. Facebook? Or The Eagles vs. a band that doesn’t really, really suck?