Oooh, nuance!

and we have these weird caucuses and superdelegates and primaries that "don't count." Yes, we do have a lot to complain about and to fix.

However, it's still better being a Democrat during primary season than being a Republic. At least we Democrats don't stop counting votes because we don't like the result.

Republics seem to feel that 87%, not 100%, is the magic number of votes to count in Washington State. Ever-so-surprisingly, stopping the vote count and declaring John McMaverick the winner halted a decisive weekend sweep by Hackabee, the Candidate Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

“The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted—with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.

“In other words, more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party..."

This is just hilarious. Not only do they hate fair national elections, they hate fair elections WITHIN THEIR OWN PARTY. They're like brothers and sisters cheating each other at "Go Fish." Jeebus, what a bunch of crooks!

Look, I don't think that caucus victories mean a whole heck of a lot compared to primary victories. A primary election is much more like a regular election, where hundreds of thousands, or sometimes millions, of voters come out to express their support for their chosen candidate, whereas a caucus is much more like a town hall, where supporters of candidates group together and try to convince all the caucus-goers to vote their way. I'm not saying that a caucus victory is meaningless, but I don't see it as translating into widespread support for a candidate.

Barring a true miracle, the hated and despised McMaverick will indeed be the Republic candidate for President. But if I were he, I'd take a good look at Hackabee's strength in the South and Midwest, and at the fact that CPAC and fundie conservatives hate me, and perhaps I'd offer Hackabee the VP slot.

Not that it will help him win. But what else can he do?

Ah, Hackenfreude. It's a beautiful thing.

Ah, yes. Good ol' Hackabee, with his five o'clock shadow and folksy manner. What an appealing candidate! He was a Governor. He's not a legacy candidate like George W. Bush. He's got real evangelical creds, being a Baptist minister. Heck, he even seems to have compassion for poor people - something a lot of elected Republics lack. What could be wrong with this guy?

At a Michigan campaign event last night, Mike Huckabee gave an interesting reason for why he wants to amend the Constitution to ban both abortion and gay marriage: Otherwise, the Constitution would be in conflict with God.

Huckabee first observed that some of his opponents don't want to amend the Constitution on both of these topics. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God," Huckabee said. "And that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Now, since Hackabee just lost the vote of tens of millions of people who think this is the dumbest idea evah, how can I say he's a great campaigner? Easily. This type of rhetoric is absolute red meat to the right-wing evangelical voters who are the biggest voting bloc in the Republican primaries. To a large degree, these voters mistakenly believe that America was founded on "Christian principles," whatever those are (hey, it's not like people ever disagree on what the Bible says or anything!), and thus, America should really be a theocracy. If these poor ignorants only knew that the whole reason most Americans came to our country was to AVOID religious persecution CAUSED by theocracies in their home countries! Alas, megachurches don't give classes in history.

Ever since Raygun brought the right-wing evangelicals into the Republic Party's tent, they have been getting very little in return for their money and loyalty. Gay marriage still exists - in fact, more and more states are legalizing it - and Roe v. Wade is still established law. I think we can all agree that a formal Constitutional Amendment banning abortion and gay marriage is a non-starter, since it would require a two-thirds Congressional majority to even begin the process. So what is Hackabee talking about?

Well, how about an informal amendment of the Constitution? All that needs to be done to make this happen is for a federal judge to make a ruling that changes the way the Constitution is interpreted. Indeed, religious conservatives scream about "activist judges" because in decision after decision, federal judges have upheld the Constitution's declaration about the separation of church and state.

In the case of an evangelical president being elected in 2008, these rulings could change. President Hackabee, thanks to the approaching retirement of two of the liberal Justices, could potentially appoint two right-wing evangelicals to the Supreme Court. All they have to do is rule that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, and that "marriage" should be defined as only taking place between a man and a women. Of course, that will only be the beginning of the "reforms" the Hackabee Court would make to our democracy. In a few years, it could be illegal to be anything but Christian in America.

Now who woulda thought that aw-shucks ol' Hackabee could be plotting such a horrible perversion of America's laws and traditions? Certainly not the traditional media, who are treating him as a legitimate candidate, and not the theocratic maniac he truly is.

Yup. He's a great campaigner all right. Thankfully, campaign skills can only get him so far, because convincing more than 30% of Americans to vote for him would truly take divine intervention.

it's Hackabee and Obama! Hillary and Edwards are deadlocked at second place.

Hackabee, in a straw poll, whomped Romney and all the other candidates by a large margin. The general consensus seems to be that Obama, and perhaps Edwards, benefited from "second choice" recommendations, since the top three Democrats all received 30% or more.

In any case, the race is far from over. The Republico-punditry seems desperate to claim that McCain and Giuliani still have a chance to win, despite their extremely poor showing in Iowa. (Ron Paul, this year's Ross Perot, got much higher numbers than either of those "major" candidates, but shockingly, Chris Matthews doesn't seem to think he has a manly enough scent to be discussed.) The Democratic folks (especially Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC) are ecstatic about the strength of the candidates; the amazing turnout, which ended up being double that of the Republics; and the undeniably exciting and historic nature of Obama's win.

Considering the complete lack of discussion in the media about Edwards, his showing was quite strong. I'm disappointed that Edwards didn't come in first, but I still think he will end up being the Democratic nominee.

On to the next, and the next....

New York's Nosferatu finds sunlight is lethal.

Thanks to some of Giuliani's scandals beginning to surface in the press, and particularly Tim Russert's devastating interview on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Rudy's star is falling. Baptist Minister and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (or Hackabee, as I call him), who I have thought for a long time is the only true choice for the right-wing evangelicals that make up the largest voting bloc in the primaries, is now leading in Florida.

As many thought, this idea that Rudy could ignore the "early" states where Romney and Hack were leading and begin his sweeping, inevitable victory from the Sunshine State, would never fly.

Numbers like this have to really hurt Rudy Giuliani's strategy, as Florida has been one of the few January contests where he was polling well recently. In addition, it says a lot about Huckabee's fellow Southern candidate, Fred Thompson — he used to lead or come in a close second here, but is now down to 9%.

For a long time, the press has completely ignored the fact that despite his strong national poll numbers, Rudy simply is not a good fit for today's Republic party. Granted, his authoritarianism is attractive to people who still support Bush, and certainly he is a foreign policy neocon like Cheney who would love to bomb something just to watch it die. But clearly, he fails the religious test. Giuliani is on the wrong side of the issues where the evangelicals are concerned; Gays, God and Guns are where he is the most liberal. Ditto for Mitt Romney, who was the governor of liberal Taxachussetts, tortured his dog, and is more of a flip-flopper than a dolphin at Sea World on the triple G's.

Hackabee has genuine conservative credentials. He is a True Believer from the evangelical point of view, and always has been "right" on Gays, God and Guns. He also appears to care about ordinary people, which the modern GOP has completely stopped even pretending to do - decrying "No Child Left Behind" and advocating for adding the arts back into curricula, for example. When it comes to the war, he is an advocate for "The Surge" and staying in Iraq until the Iraqis and their neighbors in the region "step up." Hackabee's scandals, although they too are starting to come to light, won't matter. They are insignificant compared to the fact that he is The One.

Personally, I have never thought that Giuliani would survive the Republic primaries. The only person who can do that has to fully represent the 25% of Americans who still believe in George Bush. And that means that when the Republic nominee is selected, 75% of Americans will not want to vote for him.

If that person is in fact Hackabee, it's going to be a Democratic tsunami in 2008. I cannot wait for this country to see what it will be like to have Democrats fully in charge of all three branches again. I hope we will finally realize that Fascism has no place in America, and we can never again let the Fascists take away the values of truth, justice, liberty and peace that our Founding Fathers put in our beloved Constitution.