ANALYSIS/OPINION:

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Not since Garry Kasparov faced off against Deep Blue has a contest between man and machine been so hotly anticipated.

It is estimated some 100 million Americans will tune in to see real estate mogul Donald Trump step into the political ring against The Clinton Machine.

We are talking Super Bowl numbers here. Roman coliseum fascination for the masses!

This is appointment television the likes of which we have not seen since Al Gore invented the internet. Unless, of course, you include the Republican debates. But this will eclipse even those.

It is such a spectacular political extravaganza that there will even be dramatic sideshows for the search lights to sweep across in the audience.

Proving it is not beholden to billionaires, The Clinton Machine will have billionaire Mark Cuban sitting on the front row to cheer on The Machine.

And to remind the world that sometimes very bad machines marry humans who are accused rapists, Mr. Trump has proposed inviting Gennifer Flowers to root against The Machine. I know, it’s complicated.

In Clintonworld, everything is always complicated.

This latest version of The Clinton Machine, known among her creators as C2016, has been in the works for — literally — decades. Engineers have done extensive analysis and tinkering to work out the kinks of C2000 and especially C2008. This one is, they promise, the best and most evolved machine yet.

She has been programmed and reprogrammed, finely tuned and meticulously calibrated and recalibrated.

If The Clinton Machine is a scientific wonder of algorithms and demographics, Mr. Trump defies them all.

Donald Trump, the human. Possessed of free will. Unpredictable. Says what he wants. Impulsive. The most perfect foil imaginable for The Clinton Machine.

Even The Machine’s motto — “I’m with Her” — is an extensively contrived calculation. Heck, just crafting The Clinton Machine as “female” in gender was just one more political calculation. It will do anything to win, including reassign itself as a “male” if that would give The Machine some electoral advantage.

Have you ever wondered why — amid all this talk about “health records” — no doctor has actually confirmed the actual gender of The Clinton Machine?

And all the political experts wring their hands because the candidates have not been more forthcoming about their “health records.” Nobody gives a flying frisbee about the “health records” of Donald Trump or The Clinton Machine.

All anybody actually cared about was that video exposing the robotic rigidity of The Clinton Machine when it blew a fuse earlier this month. Agents and handlers leaned The Machine against a street bollard and then hoisted it feet first into the campaign ambulance when it arrived.

Fueling the fascination and anticipation is that there is no guarantee what will happen Monday night. In these contests, the humans always ultimately lose. Remember how the steam engine killed John Henry? And, of course, Deep Blue ultimately prevailed against Garry Kasparov.

But for years and years before The Machines were fine-tuned to perfection, the humans still had a chance. John Henry and Garry Kasparov did not go quietly. And nor will Mr. Trump.

And remember, the last time The Clinton Machine faced off against a human — albeit one who some say was born in Kenya — it short-circuited disastrously.

The Machine said it wanted to take a hammer to “the glass ceiling.” But The Machine’s foot soldiers had another idea for that hammer.

Brilliantly ripping off a Macintosh computer ad from 1984, these foot soldiers released “Hillary 1984.”

The ad showed The Clinton Machine on a giant screen droning on and on to the catatonic masses until a woman breaks free and runs through the crowd and hurls the sledgehammer through the screen, causing The Machine to explode in a flash of blinding light.

Then appeared the words: “On January 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like ‘1984’.”

It really is a superb video and if you have not seen it in a while you should look it up on the internet. (Again, thanks Al Gore.)

But if you google “Hillary Clinton hammer,” you will find 12 million stories about The Clinton Machine’s technicians using a hammer to smash to bits a Blackberry as part of The Clinton Machine’s email scandal cover-up.

You have to google “Hillary Clinton sledgehammer 1984.”

• Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected]; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.

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