The more they try to be different the more they sound the same. Now that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have convinced us that they are almost equal on every issue, now that petty attacks have taken over political discourse in this country, aren't you ready for the general election? I know I am.

We need some real contrast in this presidential race, the kind that we surely will get when there's only one Democrat running against Sen. John McCain. With all due respect to the voters in late-primary states, whose votes never were expected to count anyway, we've had enough primary time!

Now the country needs a new campaign season to weigh the differences between the two parties' nominees. And unfortunately, the Democrats — because of their own indecisiveness, breaking of party rules, inept leadership or whatever — are depriving the rest of us of a general election debate that should have begun already.

If the Democrats don't select a nominee until their August 25 convention, we will have only about 10 weeks to really select our next president. After such a long primary marathon, the general election will seem like a 50-yard dash!

After dozens of debates during the primaries, involving many candidates who never had a shot of winning the presidency, we will be lucky to get three or four debates between the two finalists, when it really counts.

Forget about whether this prolonged fight between Democrats benefits John McCain; of course it does. What we should be asking is whether it benefits the country. And of course, it doesn't.

Democratic Party leaders would have us believe that the extended primary season is good for us, that listening to Clinton and Obama sounding like broken records and watching them diminish each other will strengthen the Democratic nominee's chances against John McCain somehow. They can't possibly believe it themselves, but they want us to believe it. Otherwise, they would have to admit they made a colossal mistake when they stripped two states of their delegates and failed to reduce the number of delegates required to clinch the nomination proportionally.

As things stand now — although Obama has more delegates and popular votes than Clinton — even after all the primaries are over, neither Clinton nor Obama can clinch the nomination without a decision by about 300 superdelegates who are still on the fence.

Because of this Democratic stalemate, we may end up running the 50-yard dash to select a president. And if we make that decision on the run, we may end up regretting it.

I, for one, can't wait to see McCain in a debate with either Obama or Clinton. Their differences will be so vast that it finally will seem like a real debate instead of the beauty contests we've been watching. I can't wait for presidential candidates to start talking about the issues again. We need to consider their differences on many issues that cannot wait for the Democrats to stop bickering: the economy, Iraq, national security, immigration, health care, etc.

Because going into a divided convention obviously would be a disaster for the Democratic Party, Chairman Howard Dean, who has presided over this chaos, is saying now that either Clinton or Obama must quit the race shortly after the last primaries, which are June 3.

"Either of these candidates, if it's time for them to go, they'll know it and they will go," Dean said Monday in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"They don't need any pushing from me," he added. "You know when to get in, and you know when to get out. That's just part of the deal."

Nevertheless, to make sure one of these candidates finds the exit door sometime in June, Dean is encouraging all Democratic superdelegates to make their choices known by the end of June. He said that while party rules allow superdelegates to wait and make up their minds at the convention, if undecided people don't define themselves soon, trouble looms for the Democratic Party.

"We really can't have a divided convention," Dean said. "If we do, it's going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards. So we'll know who the nominee is, and that'll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race, and take on Sen. McCain."

That will not be easy for Democrats to accomplish, especially because both Clinton's and Obama's camps have many potential sore losers. But if they do it, if they get the general election debate started by the Fourth of July, it might be good for the Democratic Party, but much more importantly, it will give us time for real political discourse in this country.

Let's shorten the marathon and lengthen the sprint!

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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