Barney's Guide to the Primaries

Since football is over and I’m always looking for new ways to waste your time, I’m now going to delve into a new topic: politics. One of my readers was a little confused about these primaries going on and wanted me to break each candidate down in ways they could understand: namely, basketball, football and rap music references. I’ll do them one better and throw in a Rocky reference for good measure.
First off, what are the primaries? The primaries are a series of votes done by states to select delegates. These delegates then vote for a particular candidate at each party’s convention. Now here’s where it gets tricky. Each state has its own rules and can select delegates however it wants. Some have winner takes all delegates, others divide them proportionately, others do a caucus (I have no idea how that works). Basically the system designed to get our Presidential candidates was designed by the same people who designed college football. Now that you have that background (AP American Government, what?), we can proceed to the candidates. Let’s start with the Democrats:

Hillary Clinton = Apollo Creed
Both were heavily favored going into their “fights”. Hillary had name recognition and Apollo was well known enough to wear stars and striped shorts on the bicentennial. And then it started. Picture Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager screaming at her, “He thinks it’s a fight.” And now, just like Apollo, she’s in for the fight of her life. Will this be Rocky and she wins by split decision, or will this be Rocky 2 where they both knock each other out, but she can’t get up?
I enjoyed doing this comparison because I imagined Mrs. Creed getting plowed by the pool boy while Apollo was training Rocky in Los Angeles. And I don’t think Hillary would yell, “Throw in the towel,” if Bill was getting pummeled by a Russian. You won’t find that hard hitting analysis on any other network people.

Barack Obama = Jason Williams
Both of them came out of relative obscurity and burst onto the national stage in a short amount of time (Obama at the DNC and J Will out of Florida at only the 2nd pick). Both of them amazed people with their skills that another race should have (White Chocolate’s playground passes and Obama’s ability to “Speak well.” (I keep going back to Chris Rock’s points about Colin Powell as a Presidential candidate). You can’t mention them without talking about their race. Both have admitted (through drug test or other ways) to doing illegal drugs.
Now we’ll see if Obama follows J Will’s steps and regresses. If this leads to the first Pres with knuckle tattoos them I’m all for it.

(Can I get bonus points for being the first person to compare Hillary to a black man and Oboma to a white guy?)

John Edwards = That guy at a party who tries to hard to be cool
Everyone knows that guy at the party: tries to hard to be cool, wears the latest outfits, and really at the end of the night, will settle for having to score with second class pussy. And that Edwards, he spends $800 on a haircut and he’s really gunning for the VP position. Nothing wrong with that.

Now onto the Republicans:

John McCain = Eli Manning
Back in October, these guys were dead. McCain was saying the Diamondbacks, down 2-0 had a better chance of beating the Rockies in the NLCS than he did of winning the nomination. Eli was having negative passer rating days. Now, they’re they motherfucking shit. And I have no idea why. This comparison also works because the national media likes them more than their own fans. Conservatives question McCain all the time and Giants fans will never trust Eli, even with a Super Bowl ring. It’s even a better comparison if you picture Elisha in a Vietnamese POW camp. And Archie calling the embassy trying to get him back.

Mike Huckabee = Big Ten Football
Both of these really have no chance on the national scene. They’re confined to a certain geographical area and that’s it (Big Ten to the Rust Belt, Huckabee to the Bible Belt). They have trouble grasping modern concepts (see the Big Ten’s inability to stop the spread offense and Huckabee campaigning to scrap the Constitution for the Bible). And both fuck shit up for everyone else. Romney is losing lots of conservatives to this guy who won’t win, just like USC or Georgia were denied a shot at a national title because Ohio St had to play in it because they played exactly 0 good teams all year.

Mitt Romney = Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come” album
Both have come from the boardroom to the save their movements. Mitt is supposed to be the conservative’s choice in these primaries. Jay was supposed to save hip hop with this album. Neither went to well. Just like conservatives are a little suspicious of Romney’s conservative credentials when he was governor of Massachusetts, rap fans were suspicious of Hov’s new content. “Coldplay? Where’s DJ Premier?” “Free market? He instituted mandatory health care in Massachusetts?” The only difference here is if people secretly didn’t buy Jay’s album not because it wasn’t good, but because he was Mormon. And they didn’t want to tell anyone.

Rudy Giuliani = 2003 Shaquille O’Neal
“Off season conditioning? Training camp? Who needs those? I’ll just turn it on in the playoffs.” “Iowa? New Hampshire? Who needs those? I’ll just turn it on in Florida.” Both tried to play up their images (Most Dominant of All Time and America’s Mayor) instead of actually doing work. And both ended up losing in the end. Except Rudy’s concession speech didn’t include Kobe crying on national TV. Oh well.

I hope that when you go into a voting booth, my careful analysis proves helpful to you.