Please Excuse Me, I have to go to the John...

If you're feeling the Bern, maybe you should go to the John.

That pretty much sums up the New Hampshire primaries today.

To borrow a word from Donald Trump's ridiculous lexicon, Bernie Sanders schlonged Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.  I use that word because my disdain for Hillary grows each day, and her latest strategy is calling everyone who isn't voting for her sexist.  ...Bernie's voters are sexist, the Republicans are sexist, everyone who doesn't like Hillary is sexist. Madeleine Albright spoke on her behalf and said that women who don't vote for Hillary have a special place in hell.  To be fair, Madeleine Albright is probably familiar with hell.  But really, this is all very despicable, because if you don't vote for Hillary, it doesn't mean that your sexist.  It means that you have a brain.

The only woman Hillary really cares about is herself.  She doesn't care about women who serve in the military or women who say they were victimized by her husband.  At one point, she even went so far as to defend against allegations that she is not "a progressive" by playing the "I'm a woman running for President, so of course I am" card.  Yeah, that holds a lot of water.  By that definition, Carly Fiorina is a progressive.  I mean, at least Carly Fiorina cares about women and unborn babies.  Heck, Ben Carson must be super progressive, seeing as he is running for President and is the son of two black parents.  Hillary is a felon who needs to go away, both from this race and to prison.  Bernie destroyed her in New Hampshire, and rightfully so.  A Democratic Socialist is far more worthy of the nomination than a hateful felon, regardless of whether or not she has a penis.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump solidly won in New Hampshire.  As unfortunate as it is, this was in line with the polls, and it came on the heels of probably Trump's best debate performance yet.  Maybe taking a debate off helped him rest up and prepare for the next one.  He actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about for some portion of the night.  But I still think that the lower-tier candidates need to drop out and Republicans need to eventually rally around someone who can beat Donald Trump.  A Trump nomination could be disastrous for the Republican party.

Where did John Kasich come from?  I had no idea who this dude was prior to the first debate.  He started off very underwhelming, but has gained momentum in each debate, and I think he did the best out of anyone in the most recent debate.  Accordingly, Kasich has shocked many people by landing in second place in New Hampshire.  This is great news for Republicans, because Kasich now appears to be a very electable common sense conservative.  And one who isn't crazy and seems like a pleasant person to be around too!  This is amazing.  What a rare breed.  He's still polling quite low nationally, and is a long shot to get the nomination, but at this point, I honestly think he is probably the best option for the Republicans.  He has one person to thank for that...

Domo Arigato, Marco Ruboto!  Like Cruz's poor performance in the Trumpless debate, which followed his best debate performance, so went Marco Rubio in the most recent debate.  I actually think he did pretty well in the second half of the debate, but his terrible beginning overshadows that.  He pretty much repeated the same "25-second memorized speech" like four times within a few minutes, and Chris Christie (rightfully) called him out on it!  I do still like Rubio, but he has got to avoid absurd things like that.  That's even worse than awkwardly sipping water.  Yes Marco, we get it.  Obama is intentionally changing the country to make it like the rest of the world.  He knows exactly what he's doing.  Got it.  You don't need to repeat it four times in virtually the same way.

All the votes aren't tallied yet, but third through fifth are pretty close between Cruz, Bush, and Rubio, but it's time for Bush to get out of the race.  He's blowing through ridiculous amounts of money and isn't getting many votes or favorable poll numbers anywhere.  Christie, Fiorina, and Carson should drop out too, after rounding out sixth through eighth in New Hampshire.  They're done, and that pains me, because I really have a deep respect and admiration for Carson.  Jim Gilmore is a joke at this point, for some reason still not having formally declared that he's out of the race despite getting virtually no votes in Iowa or New Hampshire and polling under one percent basically everywhere.

Here's hoping that we'll at least be down to the final four before the next primaries: Kasich, Rubio, Cruz, and Trump.  ...Although personally, I could do without Cruz and Trump as well.

[The picture here is from a rock climbing trip in New Hampshire this past summer.]

Iowa Fracas

Well, the first voting has come and gone in Iowa, and certainly not without controversy.  For the Democrats, we have a virtual tie between a mean-spirited felon (who apparently replies "fuck off" when a secret service agent says good morning to her) and a kindhearted socialist (who wants to make everything free for everyone who's not rich, except that free has a giant asterisk next to it).  And coming in with less than one percent of the vote was Martin O'Malley who promptly did what he should have done long ago and dropped out of the race.  So we're officially down to two on that side.  That's nice.  It's a lot less to keep track of, which is good when your party has to deal with confusing things such as superdelegates and coin tosses that determine delegates in certain situations.  So much for Democracy in the Democratic party.  Hillary narrowly beat out Bernie in Iowa, and Bernie is already calling for more of the voting information to be released since it was so absurdly close.

And then we have the Republicans.  Ah, the Republicans.  There were twelve of them on the ballot in Iowa, which makes me wonder what it would be like if the twelve of them sat down at a table like the disciples and ate dinner with Jesus.  Which one would he hand a dipped piece of bread to?  Anyway, out of the twelve candidates, six of them got less than two percent of the vote.  Save for Kasich, who is holding out for a strong showing in New Hampshire, the other five should drop out, but only Mike Huckabee has so far.  Bush couldn't even muster three percent, but he seems ready to go on wasting millions of dollars on a failed campaign.  Heck, his brother wasted a lot more money than that.  Rand Paul got almost five percent to finish in fifth.  Carson finished in fourth with just over nine percent after someone from Ted Cruz's campaign said that Ben was dropping out of the race (though he probably would have finished fourth anyway).  Rubio was third with Trump nudging him out for second and Ted Cruz taking home first place with a whopping 27.6 percent of the vote. 

Normally, I would be disconcerted about Cruz winning, but I was able to take some solace in the fact that he beat out Trump.  It was nice to see Trump lose.  But this brings us to the reality that Republicans must face.  Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are NOT well-liked outside of the right, notably the far right.  While many conservatives want one of these top two finishers to represent their party in the general election, either one being nominated would increase the odds of the Democrats keeping the White House, meaning President Hillary Clinton or President Bernie Sanders.  That should be enough to send shudders down the spines of conservatives, yet they are still voting for the candidates who are either furthest to the far right or pretending to be.  The strategy ought to instead be to nominate someone who could actually garner Independent votes.  In my estimation, Marco Rubio fits that description best.  Paul, Kasich, and even Carson as a Washington outsider could do that to some extent.  With Trump, Bush, and Christie holding firm in my rankings at 8th, 7th, and 6th, I update my top 5 thusly:

5th (previously 2nd), Ted Cruz: After his brilliant showing two debates ago, Cruz has been a disaster.  His performance in the Trumpless debate was very poor by his master debater standards.  He started an unwarranted argument with the moderator, cracked a joke that was not funny, and was not as on point on the issues as he had been before.  Furthermore, it's becoming more and more difficult to see him as genuine, and there are plenty of folks wondering if he is using his Christianity to advance politically.  Whether he knew about it beforehand or not, his campaign people used several dirty tricks in Iowa, and the story about Cruz touting tithing but not actually doing so himself has gained traction.  This should not be a surprise from someone whose college roommate said he would rather vote for a random person in the phone book to be president instead of Cruz.  While it is possible that he can win the presidency if nominated, perhaps fueled by some quality debates, it does not give his party the best chance at victory.

4th (previously 4th), Rand Paul: I like Paul because he thinks.  He comes across as someone who believes he's smarter than you but isn't a complete jerk.  And he probably is smarter than you.  It's nice to see someone who actually thinks about the issues as well, and does not always just go along party lines.  He's debated well recently and offered some real solutions.  He could draw votes from moderates and independents in a general election.  And he appears to have a rabid fan base, at least in Iowa.  The only problem is that he's not getting many votes in the primaries and his poll numbers are quite low.  It's not likely that he will be the nominee.

3rd (previously 3rd), Ben Carson: Look, as an "Evangelical / Born Again" Christian, I recognize that Carson believes some weird stuff as a Seventh Day Adventist.  But I also recognize that a requirement to be President of the United States is not that the President believe the same things that I do, or that traditional Christians in America have believed.  Dr. Carson comes across as someone genuine, far more than Ted Cruz.  Carson appears to do a much better job showing his Christian love than Cruz.  As a political outsider (and an African-American), he will garner votes outside of the right in the general election, and he could potentially do a lot to unite a divided nation, but he's debated poorly lately and is fading fast in the polls.  He looks sleepy, but maybe he just needs a nap.

2nd (previously 5th), John Kasich: How did this guy make it up to second on my list?  I think it's almost by default.  That's how big of a mess the party is right now.  The Governor has debated well the last few times, he clearly has common sense, he has the ability to lead, and I could see him potentially doing well in a general election now.  I didn't see that as a real possibility before.  Of course, he got 1.9% of the vote in Iowa.  But there's hope.  He's virtually tied with Cruz for second place in the New Hampshire polls at least.  I just don't think the party would end up nominating someone as sensible as him right now.  The Republican Party is in disarray, but hey, the leading candidate for the Democrats should be thrown into prison, so whatever.

1st (previously 1st), Marco Rubio: He's done pretty well in the debates, people like him, and he doesn't seem crazy.  He doesn't always take the most conservative stance on every issue either, which is nice.  He is definitely electable in the general election and is the best chance the Republicans have to beat Clinton or Sanders.  As long as he can avoid awkwardly sipping water on television for a while, he just might have a shot at getting the nomination.

...Goodness, I hope so.  This thing is a mess.