Thirty-one days until the corn engorged people of Iowa shuffle into voting booths and pick from the saddest field of GOP candidates in a long, long time. Then the insane mountain lunatics from New Hampshire will follow five days later. At that point I expect a name to emerge that will scare the shit out of every sane person in the country: Huckabee.

Huckabee pretty much annihilated the competition in Wednesday’s Republican debate, which has led to another bounce. It’s not his first bounce, either. He got one from the Ames Straw poll in August and has been rising ever since.

A December 1st poll of Republican voters shows Huckabee pulling ahead in Iowa for the first time. In early October, the same poll had Mitt Romney ahead by 17 percentage points. Shit, Huckabee used to be behind the walking corpse called Fred Thompson. But now the Christian psycho is on a roll.

It doesn't look as good for Huckabee in New Hampshire, where he is sitting in the middle of the pack, but also rising. With 15%, he has his highest support yet in New Hampshire and is way up from the 4% he had in September. Romney is kicking ass in the militia state, while Giuliani and McCain are slipping down. Huckabee should get a big bounce if he wins Iowa and could easily close on Romney.

Giuliani is collapsing into a giant shit heap. He has slipped into third in Iowa with 13% and is tied for second place in New Hampshire with Huckabee and McCain. But in New Hampshire he is trending down. Also, he has some major electability problems in Iowa.

Those are not good numbers, considering they are coming from his party. Giuliani's new Shag Fund scandal should completely doom him, unless of course, conservatives are okay with a guy having the NYPD pay for his fuck trips, act like a cab for his mistress and her friends around town, drive her to her parents house in Pennsylvania and walk her dog. Yes, he had cops walk his mistress’ dog. He’s done.

Fred Thompson is fourth in Iowa, but there is no reason to even discuss him.

McCain is pretty screwed as well. He’s sitting in fifth in Iowa with 7% and second in New Hampshire with 15%. With his kind of name recognition he should be doing much better. And contrary to what Ron Paul’s insane followers want you to think, he is just a zit on the ass of the Republican field. Paul is tied with McCain for fifth in Iowa and in New Hampshire has a whopping 8%. But that is not the worst news for Paul.

Iowa:

New Hampshire:

Paul is plowing forward with a lot of cash but Republicans just don’t like him. All he has been able to do is catch the already dead McCain in Iowa. Congrats, loser.

Shut the fuck up. Ron Paul already lost.

This race is looking like Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Mitt has decent numbers in Iowa and fantastic numbers in New Hampshire. Much of that is due to the fact that Romney has completely out spent his fellow candidates in the two states.

Unfortunately, he is now slipping in Iowa and has dropped five points since October to 24% as of last week. But in New Hampshire, Romney is a Mormon freight train.

You go, girl.

The key fact in this mess is that Huckabee hasn’t been spending money. He’s been doing it all with a grass roots following, public appearances and through debates. Now that Huckabee is ahead in Iowa, expect him to get a massive infusion of cash and become a serious contender for president. Right now he has the best chance. Scary.

Republicans have been quite busy the past couple of years, with all their man-on-man fucking and trying to blow police officers in bathrooms, while trying to pass laws against man-on-man fucking and blowing police officers in bathrooms. But when Democrats stray from the path, they really do it in style. Take my latest hero, New Hampshire’s own Gary Dodds.

Last year Gary was running in the Democratic Primary for the 1st District Congressional seat when he had a horrible accident.

Yes, they found his car but poor Gary was gone. New Hampshire law enforcement, fire departments and the state’s Fish and Game officers were all mobilized to look for Gary. Surely his wife and two daughters were terrified.

It was an odd accident. Dodds’ Lincoln Continental was the only car involved and when Emergency Responders arrived, there was no driver to be found. Gary’s disappearance lasted for just over a day before he was located, under some leaves.

Thank God he was alive. Dodds spent a week in the hospital recovering from his horrible ordeal. But the police had some questions.

It is odd, especially since Dodds was a volunteer fireman.

Gary said he swerved to avoid a deer and crashed into the guardrail. The airbag hit him in the part of his body where he keeps his brain and he became disoriented, got out of his car, crossed the river and laid down in a pile of leaves a mile away from the crash - exactly what they say to do in fireman school. Poor Gary didn’t know why he crossed the river, walked a mile and fell into his pile of leaves, but he did tell the cops he “swam” across the river right after the accident.

But when the cops found him, he was not wet and he did not have frostbite on his hands or face. His shoes, however, were soaked. So much so, that when they took his shoes off water poured out, much the way it would if someone had JUST walked through water, instead of 24 hours before. The ground also did not have an indentation consistent with someone lying there for a day and a woman who lived near the river was outside when Gary said he crossed. She said he didn’t. And doctors said Gary could go home the next day, but he decided to stay for A WEEK, just to be sure. So, none of that looks good for our hero.

Turns out Dodds sort of faked the whole thing. Gary was arrested in April and charged with two misdemeanors.

Then, later in April he was charged with a felony.

Finally this week, we learned why Dodds faked the car accident, hid out for a day, then soaked his feet in a river and hid under a pile of leaves. To help his campaign! Duh. It’s called leadership.

Err, back up. I forgot to mention that before the accident the FCC was threatening to open an investigation into Gary because of “discrepancies in campaign finance reports." Oh, and he also took out a second mortgage on a house he owned with his wife without telling her.

I think I fucking love this man. This is the greatest Democrat in the history of our country. I don’t know how this plan did not work. It was fucking foolproof! Can't you just see the ad?

But in a bizarre twist, Gary did not win the election. Some lady did. Weird, right?

Oh, shit. We are now officially getting down to it. The Iowa “we’re a special state” caucus is on January 3rd and there are 45 delegates up for grabs. Five days later the New Hampshire primary will be held and that tiny, weird state will cough up 22 delegates. I think it is fucking bullshit that Iowa gets to hold the first primary every year and make an enormous impact on the presidential election because based on recent candidates; they are sucking at their picks.

The big news out of Iowa is that Hillary is beginning to drop. The latest poll has her numbers sinking from 43% in September to 26% now. That is a plummet and puts her in second place behind Obama, who comes in at 30%. Edwards is bringing up the rear with 22%.

The way voters are talking, it sounds like the last thing they want is Hillary Clinton, regardless of how the media is trying to make her sound “inevitable.”

New direction, new ideas = Obama. Old ideas, old direction = Hillary. There’s more.

Clinton comes in 4th on which Democrat is most "honest and trustworthy" -- 27% Obama, 18% Edwards, 14% Richardson, 13% Clinton.

Fourth. That is incredibly poor for the “leading” presidential candidate. The only guy I know of who won a presidential election when people did not consider him “honest and trustworthy” was Nixon. In ’68, he hit the road and had a bunch of townhall meetings, basically winning over people because of his knowledge and intellect. Americans didn’t like him but they thought he would do a better job. After eight years of Bush I don’t know if that is going to fly for Hillary.

In less than 50 days, we are going to be down to two candidates. Most likely, Obama and Clinton. That is when I believe we will really begin to see the Clinton likeability factor. People will begin leaving their favorite candidate, as Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, and the rest fall way. Where will those people go? I can’t see very many of Edward's followers going to Hillary because she is seen as a corporate beast and he is running a populist campaign.

Edwards has also been falling in Iowa and those votes are going to either Obama or Richardson. They are clearly not jumping over to Hillary. But Hillary is not giving up and has recently flooded the state with operatives. The only problem is that everyone already knows Hillary, which means more organizers isn’t going to make a difference. Almost everyone has made up their mind about Hillary and voters are now picking between the guys they don’t know: Richardson and Obama.

In New Hampshire, Clinton has a bigger lead but she is also starting to slip. Edwards is in a dead heat with Richardson, but he is falling while Richardson is going up. If Richardson finishes ahead of Edwards, the southern ex-Senator will be in pretty, bad shape and may be close to calling it a day.

If Obama has a good showing in Iowa, which is how it is looking now, he could be riding a huge wave of good time feelings. Headlines will be screaming that he kicked the ass of the ex-President’s wife. More money comes flooding in and he is off and running. At that point, Clinton will have to go very negative, which coming from an unlikable person never goes over well. She already started last week and it was rather pathetic.

Ah, yes, he doesn’t have any foreign experience. Slam. Or was it?

And game over. That is a quick and easy ass kicking by Obama. Note to Hillary: If you are going to talk shit about someone not having any experience, make sure your own experience doesn't suck.

Will his lack of foreign policy experience be a problem? Yep. Will anyone who voted to go into Iraq be able to call him on it? Nope. Certainly the voters in Iowa are taking his foreign policy experience into account and they are still moving in his direction. He's also got this big likeability/sexy thing going on. That is always tough to beat.

Clinton is on top right now in nationwide poll, but that does not mean shit. If Obama pulls off Iowa, he heads into New Hampshire with a lot of momentum. If he then manages to pull off win in the granite state, then Hillary is fucked going into South Carolina. The primary season will only last three weeks after that and all the spinning of “inevitable” over the past month by her campaign will bite her in the ass.

For the record, I don’t want either one of them. (I’m a racist/sexist.)

It’s nice to see a state take their motto seriously. On Tuesday, the New Hampshire state House voted to extend the “right” of civil unions to same-sex couples.

Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut and California have some form of civil unions. Massachusetts is the only state that currently permits gays to marry. Of course, when the topic of homosexual unions enters into the public debate, you’d expect controversy. New Hampshire is no exception. What’s interesting about those who are opposing the New Hampshire bill is that they’re not throwing out the now-predictable canards about “marriage being reserved for procreation” or “the degradation of the modern family.” Instead, we’re getting opposition from the political right with a twist: they’re saying it doesn’t go far enough for straight people.

Mooney’s argument is really quite silly, of course. If heterosexual couples, roommates of the opposite sex and others want to share legal benefits as a couple, they can get fucking married. On the other hand, gays have no such luxury. The stronger argument comes from those who point out the inherent inequality in the idea of civil unions.

The bill now heads to the New Hampshire Senate. If it passes it will land on the desk of Governor John Lynch. Lynch opposes gay marriage but somehow has no opinion of civil unions. Which is a polite way of saying that he’s not going to take a stand until he’s forced to.

In the nineties there was a politician in New Hampshire who had the most unfortunate name of all time: Dick Swett. His birth name was Richard but he clearly thought Dick was a better lead in to Swett, so that is what he went with.

He managed to get himself elected to the US Congress in 1991 and served four years. He was a candidate in the 1996 New Hampshire Senate race but did not win, mainly because his name was Dick Swett. Dick is currently mulling another run for Senate against John Sununu. Luckily for Dick Swett, he may not have the most horrible name in politics anymore.

Introducing Dick Clapp. Dick, like Dick Swett, is also named Richard but has chosen to use the nickname Dick because it works so well in front of Clapp. Richard Clapp just sounds weird and unelectable. Dick Clapp is more venereal disease sounding and therefore, electable.

Dick Clapp is running for City Commissioner in Sarasota, Florida. He’s the president of Sarasota's Indian Beach-Sapphire Shores Neighborhood Association. Dick Clapp is all about growth, traffic and property taxes.

Vote for Dick Clapp.

The primary election system of the two major parties in the US has been a mystery to many for a long time. The result of spreading out the primaries over several months gives a disproportionate amount of power to the first few states that participate, since candidates who do well in those states end up generating more campaign contributions and media attention that can quickly snowball to the point where they're the "assumed" candidate and subsequent primaries have become meaningless. And all long before more populated states (like, I don't know, California, New York, Texas and Florida for example?) even get a crack at having their say as to who should be the candidate. So despite the fact that their aggregate populations are only slightly over 4 million people, and 94.3% and 91.7% of New Hampshire's and Iowa's citizens, respectively, self-identify as non-Hispanic white (compared with 67.4% for the rest of the country), these two states often have the most say in who gets to stay in the run for president.

But things are about to change. Starting in 2008 Nevada is set to jump in between Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primaries, and will hopefully allow a more representative sample of the US population have their say in the Democratic presidential candidacy.

This also plays well with the Kos championed strategy that seemed to work in the midterm elections, pushing centrist, libertarian candidates like Jon Tester (the senator-elect for Montana) into the Democratic party. Western states like Montana, Colorado and Nevada had been Republican leaning for years, and all voted for Bush in 2004. But if recent trepidation about Bush's expanded role of govenment and infringement on civil liberties is enflaming libertarian sensibilities that are more prevalent in the West, then this should be a good chance to let those voters gain some influence in the Democratic party.