Serious-minded online magazine Slate usually deals in conventional wisdom upending, but over the last couple days they're just going in for political fanfic. First: what if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could both be president? At the same time! OMG best ever! We bet Han Solo and Captain Kirk woulda totally been bros too! Maybe Obama and Al Gore can team up with Wolverine to end global warming? ALSO wouldn't it be totally kick-ass if Hillary Clinton gave a really good speech about being a lady, like how Obama gave that speech about being black? That would be so cool. And it might go... a little something... like this:

1) I am proud to be a woman and a mother and the first serious female contender for the presidency, but my gender is only a part of who I am, and it doesn't define or constrain me.

2) I am part of a generation that faced and still faces all sorts of gender slights and slurs, and I honor the women who came before me for their commitment to achieving equal rights for women in the face of that.

3) But I would ask the women of this country to stop engaging in petty warfare over who has suffered more—women or blacks, women or men—as it is corrosive and fruitless. This country was founded on the promise that you can become the best thing you can dream for yourself; you are not trapped by the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

And so on in that fashion for another 7 bullet points. After the fantasy speech outline, Melinda Henneberger and Dahlia Lithwick admit that Hillary Clinton would never give this speech because she doesn't actually like women that much, or something.

These trips into the world of fantasy are kind of worrying coming from the sober and reality-based Slate. Is John Dickerson gonna write a column about how the emergence of a cyborg with the un-frozen brain of George Wallace could swing the election? Will Jack Shafer opine that the New York Times should appoint Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter as Public Editor? Anything's possible when you use your imagination!