The cloture vote’s tomorrow. Confirmation seems a fait accompli. Is there no man in all the land who, through his sheer odiousness, can stop this train with an anti-endorsement — a sort of demonus ex machina?

Perhaps there is, my friends. Perhaps there is.

“Now wait,” Farrakhan told the crowd. “He said this to Aaron David Miller in the book The Much-Too-Promised Land. And guess what? I said the same thing 30 years ago at the National Press Club in Washington, and they have not left me alone since. Special interests along with Zionist AIPAC are robbing America of the principle of democracy and representative government. The record is there. Now, 30 years later, after beating the heck out of me for all those years, they’re finally getting up enough courage to tell it like it is.”

After arguing that the media is controlled by Jewish interests, he applauded Hagel’s nomination. “Senator Hagel is in trouble,” Farrakhan said. “But America needs a man in Congress like that, who’s not a rubber stamp for others. You need a man like Senator Hagel as your secretary of defense because a man with a mind like that will keep you out of fighting somebody else’s wars. You need a man in government that has another opinion that is not controlled, and if the Senate does not confirm him as defense secretary because of his opinion on Israel, that only proves that the Senate in the U.S. Congress is controlled by the Israeli lobby. And it also sentences America to war with Iran for the state of Israel.”

This is like a pass to the end zone from the 45-yard-line with no time left. There’s Richard Shelby, leaping for the ball. Will he come down with it, or is he determined to let this one fall incomplete? Just kidding: Like I told you before, there’ll probably be closer to 70 votes for Hagel tomorrow than 60. We’re down by more than a touchdown here. A last second Hail Mary will only narrow the final margin of defeat.

Exit question: When Farrakhan says Hagel (who, to remind you, voted to invade Iraq) will keep us out of “fighting somebody else’s wars,” is he making an exception for U.S. peacekeepers in the Palestinian territories? Because Hagel evidently thinks that’s a swell idea.