Maybe because it wasn't funny?

Have you seen Mike Huckabee remind us why he is a sad pathetic joke who should never try to tell one? (Especially if he is going to attempt improv.)

For those who can't watch video, Huckabee was addressing the NRA convention today when his address was interrupted by a loud noise. He tried to make a joke, saying "[T]hat was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor."

What the fuck? That is the sort of thing that a kid would get expelled from school and sent to see a shrink for saying.

But it was a joke, you see.

Well, listen up, Huckleberry. Lemme asplain this and I am going to type r.e.a.l.l.y. s.l.o.w. so you can follow and I only have to say it once.

First of all, Huckster, stick with jokes that start "a Priest, a Rabbi and a duck walked into a bar..."

Second, no one is obligated to say "Oh, well, okay then. Never mind," and just let it slide every time some stupid mother fucker says some stupid, hateful, bigoted thing - in "joke" format.

The problem isn't now, and has never been, that the people who are offended need to get a sense of humor. The problem is that stupid, bigoted, hateful "jokes" are not funny. And any joke that implies an assassination attempt on a candidate that has received secret service protection since early in the primary season is so far from funny that words fail me.

And this is what the republicans have to offer. They can slander. They can imply cowardice and they can scream "appeaser!" That's it.

*******************

Okay. I understand that Huck has apologized.

To which I say "so?"

Let me put it this way - I have a four year old granddaughter. Even she understands that even the most heartfelt apologies are not get out of jail free cards.

So shut up and go away now. This is the sort of thing that should hound him off the public stage that he might molest decent people no more.

There's more: "Maybe because it wasn't funny?" >>

Obama Runs the Table; Huckabee Snookers McCain

Barack Obama showed the world - and more than a few doubters - today that his MO ain't faux by making a clean sweep of the nominating contest in three states - Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington - and in all three he won by wide, decisive margins. In Nebraska and Washington, he won by a 2-to-1 margin over Senator Clinton, and in Louisiana, with 2/3 of precincts reporting and the vote still being tallied, he was leading 53% to 39%, and projected to win. Every state saw Democrats turning out in numbers that were roughly double the 2004 turnout.

"Today, voters from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the heart of America stood up to say 'yes we can'" told a cheering crowd of Democrats at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Va. "The stakes are too high and the challenges are too great to play the same old Washington game with the same old Washington players and expect a different result," he told the crowd of loyal Democrats. "People want to turn the page. They want to write a new chapter in American history."

With 158 delegates at stake, and Obama winning so decisively, he certainly narrowed the delegate gap. Going into todays contests, Obama narrowed the lead held by Hillary to a less-than-100 spread, going into a week where he enjoys strong support in states that go to the polls over the next few days. Maine will hold caucuses on Sunday, with 24 Democratic delegates at stake. Tuesday, it's the Potomac Primary, with Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia holding primaries. It is conceivable that Obama, with decisive victories in two or more of those states on Tuesday, could pull even in the delegate count.


On the Republican side, McCain was bitch-slapped by Kansans who went for Huckabee by a humiliating 60% to 24%. Here is what I want to see in Kansas: The county numbers. I want to see how Leavenworth, Geary, Riley and Sedgewick counties voted, and how overall Democratic votes stack up against overall Republican numbers. Those are the four counties that are home to the states three major military installations - Forts Leavenworth and Riley, and McConnell Air Force Base. In 2006 the military vote in the KS-02 (both of the Army Forts are in the 02) didn't turn out for the incumbent conservative Republican, former Olympian Jim Ryun, and the district is now represented by Democrat Nancy Boyda. I keep telling anyone who will listen that the service personnel most likely to vote are the ones most likely to have families - and when they have kids in school, they vote local, not absentee back home.

If Huckabee beat McCain in those counties, he has to reassess his level of support among military personnel. I don't think it is half as strong as he has tried to portray it to the media and the masses, but the numbers will tell the tale.

McCain had a rough day - just two days after he managed to muscle aside Mitt and his millions, he was humiliated in Kansas and it was followed up with additional repudiations in Louisiana and Washington, with Huckabee leading in both states.

I find the psychology of Huckabee and his voters fascinating. There is no way he can win the nomination. He trails by more than 500 delegates and he has been, for all intents and purposes, mathematically eliminated. Yet he forges on, and his supporters continue to vote in droves, and probably in defiance, of the McCain candidacy. Conservatives really, really hate him. Couple that vehement hatred with the uncomfortable feeling that it's 1996 all over again, this time with a bad candidate.

There's more: "Obama Runs the Table; Huckabee Snookers McCain" >>

Wasn't there something I was supposed to blog about today?

Oh yeah - I remember now.

There's a Republican primary election in South Carolina and both parties held their caucus in Nevada today.


Nevada first...With 88% of precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton was declared the winner with 51% to Obama's 45%. Edwards garnered 4%, and should probably think about withdrawing with his chances for a cabinet position - and his dignity - intact.

On the Republican side, Romney took it standing up with 51%. Ron Paul took 14%, John McCain came in with 13%. Huck and Fred tied at 8%. Rudy brought up the rear with 4%.

I guess the Nervous Nellies among Hillary supporters were a bit over-the-top. For the record, they totally took the wrong tack. They should have approached it from the position of "then you have to hold caucuses in hospitals, too." What judge would want to be seen as the guy who upheld a showgirls right to caucus, but nurses can go hang? It was a no-brainer. Apparently. Some no-brain out there fucked that up from Jump Street.

Okay - South Carolina - that's a Republicans-only primary election, and polls won't close for a couple of hours, but Politico.com has a pretty good summation:

Saturday's most crucial showdown was on the other side of the country, in South Carolina, where the Republican contenders try to wrest advantage from each other — after three different candidates won the first three major contests.

Most polls have shown McCain leading Huckabee, trailed by Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

The stakes for the entire GOP field are high if history is a guide — every Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan has won South Carolina.

And the weather is absolutely miserable. Can you believe it's snowing in parts of South Carolina?

Well it is.

In the part of the state where Mike Huckabee's support is strongest.

Wonder what God's own Candidate is thinking right now?

[Updates below the fold]


UPDATE - Pale Rider

God's own candidate, Mitt Romney, did well out in Las Vegas. I've seen some coverage writing it off, basically saying that an overwhelming Mormon vote is the reason for his win in Nevada.

Ron Paul pulling 14% and beating McCain is huge--as is the fact that Ron Paul has a larger constituency within the Republican Party than that of Rudy Guiliani. I'm reminded of Ron Paul explaining why we were attacked on 9/11 and Rudy "not getting it" and trying to belittle Ron Paul for his ideas. As nuts as he is, Ron Paul gets it right on the war and that's gotta be troubling for the overtly pro-war candidates on either side of the aisle.

UPDATE II - Pale Rider 7:45 PM- Eastern

Tucker Carlson is trying to fan the flames of a Hispanic vs Black split in the Democratic Party. As if. We don't even have a nominee yet. We don't have anywhere near enough information to make that assessment. We have yet to see a large, populous and diverse state vote yet. And the Republican shill machine is desperate.

Tucker--talk about Ron Paul beating main stream Republicans with 50 times the name recognition and then ask us about a split among Democrats. The split is on the Republican side, clearly, because they are seeing candidates who have spent millions go down in flames.

The MSNBC coverage is dominated by Olbermann and Russert. Matthews is the third wheel along for the Prom date, and no one wants to give him liquor because he'll get caught and everyone will get busted by the Gym teacher. This makes for stilted coverage. CNN is unwatchable. They have Bill Bennett in there and all I want to do is ask "did that lardass play the one-armed bandit all day?"

UPDATE III - Blue Girl

Lets look at the Nevada numbers:

Women were a strong majority for the Democrats in Nevada. 59% of Democrats attending the caucus were female, to 41% male.

On the Republican side, the numbers are closer, but males are a solid majority - 52% to 48%.

But more telling than the gender demographics are the age demographics.

Republicans

60-up_________45%
45-59_________27%
30-44_________17%
18-29_________11%

Democrats

60-up_________36%
45-59_________32%
30-44_________19%
18-29_________13%

The numbers tell this well-versed-in-stats political consumer that the Republican party is entering the twilight years, along with it's stalwarts. It is sooooo yesterday. People who want to move forward are throwing their lot in with the Democrats, and the demographics on the Democratic side are much more stable and desirable. If you read these numbers as if they were in the respective prospectus of companies competing for your investment dollars, where would you invest your money?

UPDATE IV - Pale Rider

Yes--the voters are turned off by the Republicans, they are identifying themselves as Democrats, and the Republicans can't raise money. It's shocking to see how broke some of them are--Guiliani and McCain are literally broke and running on fumes on a day to day basis. Romney is using his own money and Huckabee isn't spending any money. The only who has a legitimate fundraising machine is Ron Paul and he's not going to piss that money away. In 1999, George W Bush was raising millions and was building a massive war chest with which to run. There is no comparison this year. They are all running on fumes.

How about a shout out to Howard Dean? The Fifty State strategy means we are going to compete with Republicans everywhere, and we will make them play a full-court game. As their "brand" continues to sink, we will make gains in places the Washington DC establishment would have written off four years ago.

There's more: "Wasn't there something I was supposed to blog about today?" >>

Will 2008 be the Year of the Populist?

Perhaps.

How else to explain the insurgent popularity of Mike Huckabee?

There is always a populist somewhere in the Democratic field, at least early on. John Edwards has tapped into a vein of traditional Democratic working-class and man-of-the-people appeals; and as the message seems to be catching on this election cycle, other Democratic candidates are scurrying to don the populist cloth. Even Hillary. "The wealthy and the well-connected have had a president for seven years," she told a crowd in Ottumwa last night. "Meanwhile, most Americans have seen their incomes stall."

But I honestly don't think I can place a single Republican populist in the Republican field, ever. I have certainly never seen one with the support Huckabee is currently enjoying.

The Huckabee campaign presents a real opportunity for head-scratching on the part of the bought-and-paid-for corporatists of the Republican Party, which has traditionally been business friendly at the expense of all other interests.

None of the other Republicans candidates have taken up the charge. In fact, Frederick of Hollywood stuck to the script (there's a writer's strike on, you know) and continued to insist that "[N]ot enough has been done to tell what some call the greatest story never told, and that is that we are enjoying a period of growth right now."

It doesn't hurt the populist message any that oil hit a hundred bucks a barrel the day before Iowans caucus. John Edwards immediately seized on the price of oil and incorporated it into his campaign message the day before the first votes are cast. "Today's report that the price of oil has reached $100 a barrel is just another example of how corporate greed is squeezing the middle class," said Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, in a statement. At a packed coffeehouse in downtown Iowa City yesterday, he asked the crowd, "Are you going to let corporate greed steal your children's future?"

[Keep reading]

That message can't help but hit home in a state where towns are far-flung, and farms dot the landscape. And every one of those farms has at least a couple of 250-gallon tanks (one for gas, one for diesel) that have to be filled up regularly, and there is no buy-in-bulk discount. (Those Massey-Fergusson and John Deere tractors and combines that plant and harvest a lot of the food you buy at Albertson's and Safeway get fueled up at home, not in town at the gas station.)

Huckabee frequently cites escalating fuel prices as a major concern for voters, and even goes so far as to contrast CEO pay with stagnating wages. On New Years Day he told an audience that "A president needs to understand that what's good for the American economy needs to be good for all Americans."

He also contrasts his own humble roots with the privileged life of his chief rival here in Iowa, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. "If politics is going to end up being nothing more than about who has the most money, then we've not had a presidency, we've had a plutocracy, and we might as well put it on eBay and sell it to the highest bidder," he said yesterday in Mason City.

Huckabee might be getting grief from that embarrassing gasbag Limbaugh and his slavering minions of the so-called "right" - but his message is resonating with people who are more concerned about paying for their next tank of $3 per gallon gasoline than whether they ditched their illegal viagra before they attempted to clear customs after their latest Dominican fleshpot cruise.

One of the pillars of Huckabee's economic plan is a "fair tax" - a national sales tax that would replace the income tax (this is anathema to business interests, which guard their favorite loopholes in the tax code as jealously as a Texas high-school cheerleaders mother). Conservatives and liberals alike denounce the notion as dangerous, because it would have to be much higher than what Mr. Huckabee has proposed in order to raise enough revenue to keep the country running. Critics also charge that the "fair tax" Huckabee proposes would hit the very working-class people he aims to help the hardest.

But that doesn't stop it from resonating. It hit home with 22-year-old Jason Downs, a University of Iowa student who recently went to a Huckabee rally. "Right now the middle class is paying more taxes, the upper class has abilities to get accountants and move funds around and all that. Where if you have a consumption tax, it's going to be a fair amount," said Mr. Downs.

John Edwards, who never left Iowa after the 2004 election, has been priming the populist pump in Iowa ever since. And with energy prices so high, and healthcare so tenuous (farmers are self employed and have to buy their own health coverage, unless a spouse works "in town" and likely only took the job in the first place in order to get insurance. And still the premiums and copays keep going up.)

Whatever happens tonight in Iowa, and next week in New Hampshire, the economic message of populism is going to influence the rest of the campaign.

And while I am not a populist (insert joke about city dwellers and public transportation here) I welcome the message. For too long corporate interests have run roughshod over the interests of ordinary people, to the point that it now represents a serious threat to our liberty. So I welcome anything that might reverse that trend.

There's more: "Will 2008 be the Year of the Populist?" >>