More Primary Predictions

Don’t look now kids but this thing ain’t over by a long shot. I am predicting that February is going to be a cold cruel month for Hillary Clinton but, if she can make it through the February gauntlet, things will look up for her in March.

Anyway, the logic these predictions are based on is fairly simple:

• Obama has been winning caucuses and primaries where the state has a significant black population (i.e. here comes D.C., Baltimore, Louisiana)
• Clinton has been winning hard core democratic state primaries and still does well with Hispanics
• McCain is taking pretty much every moderate to conservative republican state
• Huckabee is winning the states in which a majority of republicans still believe in Santa Claus, the Rapture and Magic Faries (no not Sigfried and Roy, the other kind).

Upcoming Primaries (my projected winner) *

February 9
Louisiana primary (Obama, Huckabee),
Washington caucuses (Obama, McCain),
Nebraska caucuses – democrats only (Obama)
Kansas caucuses – republicans only (Huckabee)

February 10
Maine caucuses – democrats only (Obama)

February 12
Maryland primary (Obama, McCain)
Virginia primary (Obama, McCain)
Washington, D.C. primary (Obama, McCain)

February 19
Wisconsin primary (Obama, McCain)
Hawaii caucuses – democrats only (Obama)

March 4
Ohio primary (Obama, McCain)
Rhode Island primary (Clinton, McCain)
Texas primary (Clinton, Huckabee)
Vermont primary (Clinton)

*As always, predictions guaranteed or your money back

Super Duper Tuesday Predictions – The Reckoning!

Update 2:41PM CST
Ok so I was a day early on Romney and perhaps 2 days late on Huckabee? We will see but still you have to admit 1 out of two and the week isn’t even over yet.  By the way, I would argue that the real reason Romney quit is that he didn’t want to throw anymore of his money down the rat hole.

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Well folks, Super Duper Tuesday came and went and what did it tell us besides the fact that ‘the fool’ in “a fool and his money are soon parted” is Mitt Romney? Since I went out on a limb and made a few predictions prior to the races, I figure I ought to stand up and see if any of them panned out as I expected.

Turn out will be extremely high for the democrats and average to low for the republicans.
Turn out was high everywhere. Apparently the republicans don’t really care if they hate all their choices, they’re still gonna vote.

The republican race for the nomination is d-o-n-e
Oh and it is. Huckabee is not a viable national candidate and his successes do nothing but steal votes from Romney who nobody is in love with anyway. The money is running out for both of them and the math only gets harder from here.

Starting Wednesday, every Republican becomes the biggest Hillary supporter you’ve ever seen
Secretly they are but you are not going ot hear about it until the GOP gets settled. Let’s see about this one on March 5th.

Huckabee is out on Wednesday, Romney is gone by Friday
Huckabee winning so many southern states surprised me. I thought that, if he couldn’t win South Carolina, he couldn’t win anywhere. Still he’s not a viable national candidate and sooner or later he will run out of states where people think that the Left Behind series is serious literature (the ones that can read that is).

Romney still may be gone by the end of the week (I am sure his kids are not pleased about him flushing their inheritance away) but he is hoping folks like Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh are going to save him. It’s not going to happen Mitt. Save your money for the senate run.

The map will go for Hillary and the the delegates will for Obama
Actually the map and the delegates went for Obama but, with the media so focused on California and with so many results coming in so late, this got missed. Hillary should thank the democratic party for setting up a vote counting scheme so complex that it makes tax law look like the puzzle that helps Ronald get through McDonaldland . Still Obama’s big loss in Massachusetts was a bad sign for him in that he put in a lot of effort, got the endorsement from the Kennedys and still got trounced. It also happened early enough to give the media a good storyline while waitng for Missouri to fall.

Hillary spin: I’m losing in the states that we are not going to win in the general election anyway
Again, since the results were so complex to explain, there really wasn’t a need to spin anything. Just declare victory and keep on going. But, when a candidate is asking for more debates it usually indicates that they feel like they are losing.

Obama spin: I’m losing the states that are guaranteed to us. Oh and did I mention that I am ahead on delegates
Disappointing lack of spin from the Obama camp. This seems to be a prevalent thing this week. Mark Penn is all over the news for Hillary with his ridiculous comments but we aren’t hearing a lot from the Obama campaign.

Obama spin II: Sure I lost California but half the voters voted before they knew who I was
see above. Oh, and he lost Ca worse than he should have and it is a bad sign.

Obama puts Hillary and McCain in bed together on Wednesday morning
Again, put this one off until the first democratic debate after the March 4th primaries.

Edwards endorses Obama (even if he doesn’t)
Bingo was his name o! Obama did better than ever with the kind of white voters that Edwards was winning before he got out.

Here come the lawyers
The Hillary camp continues to put out feelers. Look for this to heat up by the end of February

Finally, Hillary and Obama will both claim victory on Tuesday night (but Obama will have really won)
As I said before, Obama just being in this thing is a win. It has largely gone ignored that this whole front-loaded primary process was designed to give Hillary the nomination by Feb 5th and keep any kind of outside candidate (i.e. Bill Bradley in 2000) from messing her up. It was designed by the head of the DNC, Terry McAuliffe who is now, you guessed it, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. So the fix was in form the beginning. Now we have made it past the gauntlet and the two are essentially in a tie with Obama having more money and better primaries coming up for the rest of the month.

For those 94 million of you that watched last weekend’s super bowl, perhaps you recognize the “keep it close and win it at the end” strategy that has been helping the underdog beat the favorite for years. Still, the Obama camp had better remember that sometimes the league wants the favorite to win and isn’t above throwing in a couple of questionable calls to make it happen.

Super Tuesday shenanigans?

So John McCain Mike Huckabee won West Virginia. Sounds like Mitt Romney is accusing John McCain and Mike Huckabee of a back-room deal to push support to Huckabee if McCain became not-viable at the convention.

So now Romney is upset at being victimized by the political game:

“Unfortunately, this is what Sen. McCain’s inside Washington ways look like: He cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Gov. Romney’s campaign of conservative change.”

Huckabee’s response? Humorous:

“I thought he was saying yesterday, ‘No whining.’ So is it no whining or whining? He can’t even keep a straight answer on the ‘whining or no whining’ question.”

I’ve determined that Mitt Romney is a shinier version of Doug Neidermeyer of Animal House and Twisted Sister fame. I’m waiting for Romney to pull a Doug Neidermeyer-esque outburst to cement his status as an idiot. On the heels of all his flip-flops, most recently his stoopid comments about Bob Dole, Mitt Romney continues to not understand national politics or the gravity of the statements he makes. He uses attack ads, yet complains of the same old Washington political process. He is acting like a petulant child, and if he doesn’t start to play the game better, he’ll have to go home and figure out to do with all his money. Boo-hoo.

Predictions for Super Duper Tuesday*

Ok kids, lets get into it because after tomorrow, some old white guys are going to be very happy, some old white women are going to be very sad and Mike Huckabee still won’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

And a final note before we get into the predictions, all of these are based upon my own interpretation of several media outlets, a few polls (worthless) and what I am hearing from the various nut jobs who have nothing better to do than post political comments on the Internet all day. You get the idea.

Overall Predictions

Turn out will be extremely high for the democrats and average to low for the republicans.
This is a symptom of the two races being completely different in their competitiveness and SHOULD NOT be taken as an indication of turn out in November. In other words (and I am looking at you Hillary supporters) don’t think just because GOP voters didn’t turn out in droves to coronate McCain it means that they won’t walk uphill two miles in the snow to beat the pants suit off of your girl.

GOP predictions

The republican race for the nomination is d-o-n-e
Mitt Romney can look in all the hats and read all the magic rocks he wants but he’s not going to be the nominee. McCain is about to eat his lunch in a very dramatic and very undeniable way that will leave more than a few publicly wondering, “what if the GOP had actually nominated this guy against Gore in 2000.”

Starting Wednesday, every Republican becomes the biggest Hillary supporter you’ve ever seen
McCain has said that he will “beat Hillary Clinton like a drum” and just about everyone but Gloria Steinem knows that he his right. Look for this line in McCain’s victory speech on Tuesday night and his stump speech on Wednesday morning. More than anything else, this will resonate with GOP voters and make them see past their distaste for many of McCain’s positions.

Huckaby is out on Wednesday, Romney is gone by Friday
Good ol’ Huck has gotten more mileage out of this race than he probably ever thought possible. Look for him to be a long-sitting and very popular senator from Arkansas in the near future.

Meanwhile (at the Legion of Doom), Romney will take a couple of days to ask everyone he knows “what the hell just happened?” But ultimately he will fall in line after most likely getting a “how’d you like to be Secretary of the Treasury” phone call from the chairman of the republican party.

Democratic Predictions

The map will go for Hillary and the the delegates will for Obama
Prepare to be amazed and confused folks cause this one gets a little complicated. Because the democratic primaries award all their delegates proportionately, neither Obama nor Hillary will get much of an edge in states like California, where they are neck and neck. So, Obama supporters, don’t get too down if Hillary “wins” California. The way that either candidate is going to help themselves is by beating the crap out of their opponent in the states that they are overwhelmingly ahead. For Obama, this will be places like Georgia and Illinois. For Hillary , it will be places like New York and New Jersey.

Hillary will end up “winning” more states (but only by a smidge which will give her little or no more delegates than her opponent) but Obama will trounce her in the states that he does win (thereby getting more delegates). So when the networks put up their map it will look like Hillary is winning even when she is actually losing.

Hillary spin: I’m losing in the states that we are not going to win in the general election anyway
Look for Hillary to do really well in the traditional democratic strongholds of the West Coast and the Northeast (and if she doesn’t she is in trouble). She will spin this as showing that her wins are more meaningful since Barack Obama can be as popular as Jesus Christ in place like South Carolina but there is no way in Hell that the democrats are taking it in the general election.

Obama spin: I’m losing the states that are guaranteed to us. Oh and did I mention that I am ahead on delegates
One of Obama’s strongest arguments is that he can steal independents and republicans away from John McCain. His primary wins are going to reinforce that and support his arguments that, if the democrats are going to win the white house, they need to take states away from the GOP and not just keep the states that they won in 2000 and 2004.

Like in Nevada, don’t look for the Obama camp to concede anything no matter what Tim Russert’s map looks like. You get to be the democratic nominee by getting delegates not by turning the states a certain color on a map. The Obama campaign will remind everyone of this so many times on Tuesday night that it might even eventually sink in.

Obama spin II: Sure I lost California but half the voters voted before they knew who I was
If Obama loses Ca big, look for the campaign to point out how the voting broke down between those who voted early and those who voted the day of. In California alone over half the voters have already voted. This helps Hillary a great deal since she was the presumed nominee with a huge lead when most of these people were voting.

Obama puts Hillary and McCain in bed together on Wednesday morning
John McCain being the republican nominee helps Obama in a myriad of ways but one you may see more in the coming days is the Obama campaign touting Hillary’s “close relationship” with McCain. Hillary Clinton and John McCain are old Senate buddies and look for Obama to exploit this by saying that now the race is between a republican, a republican-lite and a democrat.

Edwards endorses Obama (even if he doesn’t)
Edwards voters (white males) will break big for Obama. This will be one of the dominating stories of the night.

Here come the lawyers
Once again Florida looms large in determining an election and this time it has brought its little brother Michigan (or as I like to call it – Northern Georgia). Tuesday night is going to show everyone once and for all that this race is going to come down to delegate count. Hillary “won” both Michigan and Florida and is not about to just let those delegates go uncounted. Look for the Hillary campaign to start pushing hard to get those delegates seated and look for the Obama campaign to start to pushing hard back.

This more than anything has the potential to sour this election for the democrats by escalating into a very ugly, very dirty, very public fight, (and do not think the Clintons would hesitate to go there if it means Hillary wins the nomination). I think that this issue starts to come to the forefront on Tuesday night (I am sure both campaigns were hoping to avoid it by getting a rout but that isn’t going to happen). Personally, I think it will go down like this :

1. The Clintons will try to put Florida and Michigan in play to win the nomination
2. A grass roots campaign will start up to protest this and threaten to derail the democrats hopes for November
3. Party peacemakers (Gore, Mitchell) will step in to broker a compromise that lets everyone save face and gets Florida and Michigan represented (but not in the way that Hillary wants)

Finally, Hillary and Obama will both claim victory on Tuesday night (but Obama will have really won)
It is mathematically impossible for the nomination to be won on Tuesday and the polls look like, if anything, the results will give both campaigns hope. However, just by being in the race this late and by being favored by voters who are deciding later, Obama’s future looks brighter in the states ahead. Look for another landslide of donations for the Obama campaign come Wednesday and Thursday and a new message from Hillary by the weekend (including a possible campaign shakeup).

*As always, predictions are guaranteed to be accurate or your money back

How the democrats lost in S.C. tonight (without even having an election)

While the country may have just dodged an enormous bullet tonight by not having Mike Huckabee win in S.C., the democrats may look back at tonight’s republican primary in 6 months and conclude that this is exactly when their fate was sealed.

It would have been far far better for Hillary and the gang (and further evidence that S.C. really deserves its coveted spot at the bottom of the national education rankings) if the wing nuts had turned out for Mike Huckabee instead of splitting their vote toward Huck and Thompson. Huckabee was counting on S.C. and, with tonight’s loss, the writing is pretty much on the wall for him and his television ministry.

Instead, the GOP looks like it’s going to go with the smart money and pick the guy who’s most likely to pants anyone the democrats choose to throw out in November, John McCain. The fact that Huckabee couldn’t win in the biblest of the bible belt states squished with the fact that Romney has only won 1 real contested primary, layered on top of the fact that Rudy Guiliani’s let’s-let-all-the-other-candidates-get-all-the-money-and-press-and-delegates-before-we-even-start-

trying strategy shows that he’s just too stoopid to be president all points to the party eventually (probably very soon if McCain wins Florida) will line up behind John “the Hillary killer” McCain.

Does anyone seriously think that Hillary Clinton is going to beat John McCain in a general election in this country? Perhaps if Connecticut were to secede, start its own republic and then have McCain and Hillary run for supreme leader . . . maybe.

Did he really just say that?

“What we need to do,” he said, “is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.” – Mike Huckabee, speaking at a campaign event in Michigan Monday night.

There you have it folks, Mike Huckabee has just pretty much told you that he supports turning the U.S. Constitution into some kind of twisted Christian sharia system. I doubt if anyone asked him, but does he realize that this would essentially repeal the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery since that’s one of the economic systems endorsed by the so-called word of his living God.

Idiot.

You know what, let’s all hope there is a God because if this yahoo ends up getting elected we are gonna need all the help we can get.

Meanwhile at the Legion of Doom . . .

Getting lost in all the hullaballoo over the democratic nomination, with its always entertaining test of whether you are a racist, a sexist or both, there’s a perfectly scintillating contest going on to see who’s going to take over the reigns of the just-about-to-explode-but-is-still-pretty-evil death star that is the republican party.

Many in politics are saying that this is the year when the boys in red finally wake up with each other only to discover that the promises that were made in the bar at 2 am don’t necessarily ring true in the cold morning light of a centrist nation where putting your socks and creeping out the door may not be as easy as you had hoped.

Politics has been conspiring to make these strange bedfellows ever since Ralph Reed did his unholy dance to get George H. Bush elected in 1988 and even though Ralph had moved on by then, the same formula held true when George II beat the hapless John Kerry in 2004 when almost all of us (except for Karl Rove who is Solomon Grundy – “Karl Rove smash you!”) thought that his fois gras was cooked.

But, while George the II was a perfect combination of big money corporate interests and snake-handling wing nut, there has not arisen another ‘uniter’ to take his party forward and to keep his party in power for another 4 years. This is not to say that the GOP is sunk because no one and I mean NO ONE can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like the democrats can, but it is looking like the check is now due on issues like abortion, gay marriage and school prayer. And all those votes that ol Solomon Grundy got on that dark Ohio night in 2004 look like they may eventually cost the party this year’s election.

But, since lists are fun, let’s do a quick breakdown of the relevant GOP candidates, including a few words about them and who they would be in the Hall of Doom.

Mitt Romney – Leaving out the bit about the magic rocks in the hat (Wikipedia: Mormons.) Mitt Romney is the Hillary Clinton of the GOP primary race in that he will say anything and adopt any position as long as it gets him into the White House. Boy are those values voters going to be pissed come October when Mitt agrees in a debate that maybe an assault weapons ban is a pretty reasonable idea and if a couple of gay guys want to get married then who is he to stop them. Because he is megalomaniacal and because of the eyebrows, Mitt Romney has to be Gorilla Grodd.

Mike Huckabee – Just plain crazy. What can you say about a guy who went on national tv and not only told denied millions of years of fossil record but then told everyone that it would be great for the economy if everything were 23% more expensive. Wikipedia says that the Riddler “used riddles to taunt and confuse adversaries with while committing crimes.” Well Huck, I am definitely taunted and confused.

Rudy Guiliani – The human drinking game. Joe Biden should have won the presidency just with his line about every sentence that Rudy says “has a noun, a verb and 9-11.” So basically, Rudy, you’re using possibly the worst day in American history to scare everyone so we will vote for you. Rudy(n) is(v) the(a) Scarecrow . . . (wait for it) . . .9-11!

John McCain – Or as I like to call him “my ace in the hole just in case the democrats screw this up.” McCain is a legitimate war hero and one of the few politicians you will ever hear who will own up to a mistake. I once heard him say that his neglecting to call for South Carolina to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from the state house lawn was “an act of cowardice” which he regretted. That is integrity (I’m looking at you Mitt and Hillary). BUT he was utterly kneecapped in 2000 by George Bush’s attack dogs and the fact that he could not only shake hands with George II after that but also stay in the party AND campaign for GW in 2004 is something I will never understand. John McCain is Bizarro.

And finally we have the guy who basically looks exactly like what republican presidents are supposed to look like, Fred Thompson. Apparently Fred thought that this was going to be enough to get him the nomination because frankly I think I  have made more campaign speeches than he has and I am not even  running. Of course, Fred’s wife is hotter. Anyway,  I am not sure if it is the hair or the total state of denial that he keeps getting his ass kicked but Fred gets to be Lex Luthor – he’s rich, he’s bald, and you can tell that he knows even if he loses he can always call the Hall of Doom to take him back to his hot wife and his sweet tv gig.

Its unclear whether or not the Legion can rise out of the swamp one more time to hold us all hostage their death ray, but 2 things are sure:

1. The Hall of Doom is always hovering, waiting to beam up our GOP friends before they can get indicted and

2. somewhere Rudy Guiliani just mentioned 9-11.

Who are ‘they?’

You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. – Barack Obama, Iowa Jan. 3, 2008.

One question, Barack – who are ‘they?’ Sure in your next paragraph you call them ‘the cynics’ but that’s really just what ‘they’ are, not who ‘they’ are. So who are these people, you know the dastardly ones who have been holding us up from enjoying the sweet sweet sunshine and flowery goodness that we really should have been experiencing all along? Clearly a lot of stuff is their fault, I mean, dividing and disillusioning an entire country – these are obviously bad people. So who are ‘they?’

For John Edwards, ‘they’ are all the greedy corporations and the fat cat lobbyists that apparently own every senator and congressman in Washington D.C. (except for him.)

For Hillary, well she doesn’t say so but I’m pretty sure she’d tell you that ‘they’ is whomever the hell you, dear voter, want them to be as long as it gets her enough votes to beat the crap out of John and Barack come Tuesday, Feb. 5th. (Is it just me or is she the blonde Henry Kissinger?)

Well, I think I know who ‘they’ is and I think I have some bad news because ‘they’ are not OPEC. ‘They’ are not Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri (although the sooner we stake both their wretched heads on pikes at the entrance to New York harbor the better off we’ll all be).

And, sorry Mitt and Huck but ‘they’ are also definitely not a bunch of Mexican busboys working twice as hard as everyone else in this country just so that they can buy food for their kids. I am also pretty sure that they are most certainly not two people who love each other and just want to be left alone to get married.

‘They’ are us. That’s right – us. We are the ones who are gleefully celebrating our 401K s going up up up because they are fat with investments in John’s greedy corporations. These would be the same corporations that need to keep their stock price up so that we will invest in them and they won’t have to layoff their employees (you know, employees like us).

We are the ones driving the cars that sent oil to $100 a barrel yesterday. And we are the ones who let people like Dick Cheney stick around just because he’s really good at scaring the crap out of 50% of the country. Ok, he actually scares the crap out of the other 50% but for different reasons.

And while we are at it, we are also the ones who are getting fatter and older and demanding that medical science prioritize our erections and our self-inflicted diabetes over the easy cheap stuff like pre-natal care for poor women.

So John, Barack and Hillary (ok, maybe not you Hillary, you are just too far gone) why don’t you guys stop pandering to us and start telling us that the country is in a mess, it’s going to get worse and that the only way to fix it is for all of us to start making sacrifices and to stop letting our fears make our choices for us. This may not be your best strategy for winning the presidency but, if you want your campaign and your presidency to mean anything, then trying to stop the country from getting fatter, lazier and stoopider would be an amazing legacy.

John, Mitt, Mike and Rudy well, you guys need to just stop hating people because of who they sleep with or where they were born. Let’s just start there.

As the turnout numbers from Iowa showed last night, this might be the first election that the AARP, the NRA, the UAW or the Southern Baptist Convention (pick your favorite villain, odds are that you or someone you know gives them money – it’s us that we are talking about after all) can’t just go ahead and rig the election at the expense of the rest of the country. It would be a shame if who ever wins does it by dividing, demonizing and coddling a select few while the folks who weren’t on the winning side got to look forward to 4 more years of picking up the tab.