BVDH The Blog

Why I like Mike Huckabee

NYT Magazine writer Zev Chafets about meeting Huckabee for lunch to do a story on him: “I met Huckabee for lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice, T.G.I. Friday’s.)” 

This is why.  Because he is down to earth, real, normal and rather funny.  His politics, however, are something completely different: they scare me. 

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show in Tibet

The recent violent protests in Tibet could not have come at a worse time for President Hu Jintao and his Communist Chinese government. This was supposed to be a great year for China, a year when the world would watch a new China during the Beijing Olympic Games, the new China that has risen from the days of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to become one of the world’s largest economic, political and military powers. Extensive efforts have been made to improve China’s image leading up to these games.

This is very similar to what West Germany wanted to do with the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. West Germany wanted to show the world how much it had changed since the days of the Third Reich, while at the same time drawing a clear contrast between itself and its Communist neighbors. But despite extensive preparations, the Munich Olympics were permanently scarred when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

While different in some key ways, the Chinese crackdown on the protests in Tibet has the possibility to the do the same thing to the Beijing Olympics as the Munich Massacre did to the 1972 Olympics. This possibility is a great thing for the United States. The Tibet protests and the resulting Chinese crackdown are making China look terrible in the international spotlight leading up to the Olympics. It is strongly in the American interest for China to look as bad as possible this year.

Sean Hannity May Be Sleeping With His Sister

Catch your attention?  I thought it would.  I don't even know if Sean Hannity even has a sister.   This post is to make a point about the nonsense he is gabbing about Obama.

Hannity keeps saying "How do we know Obama does not have the same feelings as Reverend Wright?"  Because he has never said the things Rev. Wright has and has strongly rebuked him.  At some point when there is no evidence to the contrary, you have to take people at face value.

Or we could use his logic.  Using Sean Hannity's logic, how do we know Sean Hannity isn't a pedophile?  We don't.   

Hannity cheapens the discourse on an important issue like race through his bombastic and ridiculous comments.  Way to go you television blowhard.  How do we know he doesn't kick puppies after his show?

Why Hillary Clinton Should Drop Out

To put it simply, because she cannot win.   And by staying in the race, she is only hurting the chances of Democrats winning in November.   Politico analyzed the math and wrote a story on Friday titled "Story behind the story: The Clinton Myth."

Here are the highlights (emphasis mine):

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe. 

Quote of the Day

"Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need."

--Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York.  He might not be in all this trouble if he would have followed his own advice.  He did not.  See item below.

How stupid and arrogant can a man be? Very. See Spitzer, Eliot

I enjoy seeing hypocrites getting nailed.  Therefore, I have really enjoyed watching Eliot Spitzer's spectacular fall from power and grace this week.  I simply feel terrible for his three daughters and wife, but I feel a sense of glee at Spitzer getting busted for using prostitutes.

Spitzer was holier-than-thou.  He was the crusading Attorney General of New York, going after Wall Street.  Then he was elected Governor of New York by a huge margin.  People thought he could be President.  In short, the world was good to Eliot Spitzer.   

Spitzer was not good to the world.  As AG, he would spread terrible rumors about the people he was going after like having aides leak to the media that someone he was investigating was "banging" his secretary, even though it was not true.   He made lots of enemies on Wall Street.  Then when he was elected governor, he decided that he was a "steamroller" (his term, not mine) and decided only his ideas were good.  He pushed drivers license for illegal aliens, something that he refused to give up on even though 70% of the state was against the idea.  He finally gave up.  Going into last week, his approval ratings were in the thirties, not great for a governor who was elected by a forty point margin a year earlier.

Little did we know, things were much worse...            

Hillary is getting hammered (by the press)

The press, just like my colleague Jeremy Barr below, is starting to call for Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the race. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter wrote a scathing column titled “Hillary Should Get Out Now.” He argues that this is her last chance for a graceful exit and for her own political future should get out of the race, despite the fact that personally Alter would love for the race to go on. He writes:

Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn’t…Hillary has only one shot—for Obama to trip up so badly that he disqualifies himself. Nothing in the last 14 months suggests he will.

But Alter is not the only one being critical of Hillary.

Obama a Mac? Hillary a PC?

Here's an amusing article that ran in the New York Times a couple weeks ago.  It compares the websites of HRC and Obama and come's up with a simple conclusion:

The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

Clinton is in Trouble

My apologies that it has been a week since I have posted anything.  My life has been incredibly insane, but I have lots of posts lined up that I should be able to get up soon.  --BVDH

On Tuesday, Barack Obama won Wisconsin by 17 points and Hawaii by 51 points brining his win streak to ten states in a row.

Obama is now facing incoming fire from John McCain and from Hillary Clinton, who is becoming increasingly desperate after losing every race held since Super Tuesday.

While it certainly is not impossible for Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, it certainly has gotten harder in the last two weeks.  Polls showed her closing the gap with Obama in Wisconsin before Tuesday’s primary. Instead, it was another whopping by Obama. In fact, Clinton’s 17 point loss to Obama in Wisconsin was the closest she has gotten to winning in the ten races since Super Tuesday.

The Deal with Delegates and Delegate Math

Now that the primary races have dragged on, people are looking at the races in terms of delegates and how many delegates a candidate must get to win the nomination. The problem with this is how delegates and given out is complicated and then there is also the issue of superdelegates. Since people are constantly asking me about these things, I thought I would explain them here on BVDH The Blog.

The thing that makes this issue even more complex is that the Democrats and Republicans do things differently. But let’s start at the beginning and try to make some sense of all of this.

A delegate is someone with a vote at their respective party convention that allows them to help pick a nominee. To win the Republican nomination a candidate needs the votes of 1191 delegates at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in early September. To win the Democratic nomination a candidate needs the votes of 2025 delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in late August. Obviously, there are more total delegates for the Democrats than the Republicans.