A.B.B - DAY 398

Summer has ended, time to see what's happenin' (as Raj, Dwayne, Rerun and the always formidable Dee would say) with the Anybody But Bush crowd.

REPUBLICANS

1. Rudy Giuliani - Hanging on to first place by the skin of his falsies, Rudy continues to pray that every day was 9/11 (only a year away, big guy!). America's Mayor has withstood some Swift-Boating from the NYFD, but look for more as the primaries approach. He made it through the summer without any huge hemhorrages, only the usual Giuliani stuff, you know, minor scandals involving various former aides and supporters that never gained any real traction. "I will make you safer," is his mantra, and he's sticking with it.

2. Fred Thompson - He's in! Just ask Jay Leno. Ol' Fred joins up just in time to win the NASCAR Dad, or as I like to call it, the Rednecks Turning (And Always Were To Begin With) Right vote. Boy, I've never seen such a pair of Republican shams as these two guys. At least Reagan actually believed his bullshit, as much as a guy like Reagan could understand what the puppet-handlers around him were telling him to think. Fred, like Rudy, belongs at a tony Manhattan or LA dinner party more than he does kissing babies and/or pigs at the Iowa State Fair (maybe that's why Fred missed this years'.) It should be fascinating to see to what depths of folksiness these guys will be willing to go to get the nomination.

3. Mitt Romney - Things aren't looking good for Mitt, despite his store-bought win at the Iowa Straw Poll. The creepy spectre of Mormonism haunts his every move, and it didn't help that he thinks his five miltary-aged sons are serving the country by working for their Dad's election campaign. He clarified his stance on abortion rights by saying that he was for them before he was against them. Nice going, John, er Mitt!

4. Mike Huckabee - He's still my dark horse. Every time I see him, he makes more and more sense, which isn't necessarily good for a presidential candidate, but it is refreshing. Yeah, I know, he said via Wolf Blitzer-inspired hand gesture that he doesn't believe in evolution, but what he meant was that he didn't think that evolution was strictly a natural phenomenon with no divine intervention, which is a mainstream view.

5. John McCain - Wow, he's behind Huckabee now (well, to me he is). Big Mac is out of cash and bereft of ideas, aside from The Surge Is Working, and it looks like he won't be retaining Karl Rove's services.

6. The Field - Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Jim Gilmore. None of these guys have done anything to distinguish themselves, aside from maybe Paul, whose Libertarianism appeals to Hollywood types, at least enough to pat him on the head. I'm surprised at Brownback. I kept hearing all this hype that he was primed and ready and a darling of the base, but he keeps polling in the low single digits. Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

DEMOCRATS

1. Hillary Clinton - The Democrats seem to have settled on Hill to wear the pants(uit) for them in '08, which also surprises me. At this point, she'd have to fuck it up pretty bad to not get the nomination. She leads in every state poll and in the overall polls, often by wide margins (although, ominously, Iowa is close). I guess Obama still has a chance, with all that Internet cash he has, but it appears that the party has listened and turned away. 2008 will be an historic, and historically ugly, political year.

2. Barack Obama - Not Enough Experience. The verdict is in, and when you reach a conclusion like that, a few more months isn't going to help. Hillary could still blow it (no, Bill, it's not what you are hoping for), but I doubt it. He would make a hell of a Veep.

3. John Edwards - $400 Haircut has been reduced to the fallback's fallback, and a weak one at that.

4. Al Gore - What's he doing here? Well, he's running ahead of Edwards nationally, and would definitely give Hillary a coronary if he joined. We should be seeing "An Inconvenient Truth" on basic cable any day now, which should only help his chances. I simply can't believe he can keep himself away, not with Hillary about to go through a nuclear holocaust of right-wing sexist rage that could set the Democratic Party back from a presidential perspective for at least 20 years and in the South possibly forever.

5. The Field - Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich. Dodd is the only grown-up of the bunch (sorry, Dennis, but you are pretty short). Biden foams at the mouth and never shuts up, Richardson is a future cabinet member, Gravel is wacky (although I like most of what he says), and Kucinich is left of Hugo Chavez. Given that, even Dodd's odds are still near zero.