Republicans and RadioLab

[mallorys_camera]

Ben kept texting me Republican debate highlights all throughout the evening.

Was I interested?

Not particularly.

This degree of electoral frenzy 10 months before any actual convention bespeaks a kind of desperation on the part of the American media, I’m thinking. They’ve got to have a horse race. Any horse race will do.

Then they’ve got to pimp that horse race on front pages that nobody reads anymore so they can sell out expensive TV ad space. Figure this may be the last time they’ll actually be able to sell out expensive TV ad space since TV viewing numbers are going down and down and down. By 2020, hardly anyone will be watching TV.

As a candidate, Donald Trump has the advantage of a last name, which is also an action verb that describes U.S. foreign policy since Teddy Roosevelt. He’s a second-tier TV star and so, commands the types of crowds any second-tier TV star would command. Put Alex Trebak in a stadium in Iowa with advance PR and I guarantee, he, too, would draw 30,000 people. (Of course, Alex Trebak can’t run for President, being from Canadia and all.)

If you’d asked me a week or so back about the Trump candidacy, I would have told you that Trump drops out approximately three weeks before the Republican convention (July.) Trump, you see, doesn’t really want to be President. He wants to be able to say he could have been President – if he’d wanted to.

Now, though, I’m starting to sense the gentle presence of jumping sharks around the Trump candidacy – the signs are subtle, I’ll warrant you. But now I’m thinking he’ll be out by Christmas.

Who does that leave?

Trump effectively derailed Jeb Bush’s candidacy.

I don’t understand the high poll ratings of Ben Carson at all, and I can’t really imagine him as a viable candidate against any kind of political machine.

Scott Walker, who I’d fingered early on as the Repub to beat, appears to be fading.

I actually like Rand Paul and John Kasich quite a bit, although their determination to dismantle Planned Parenthood means I couldn’t possibly vote for either one.

I loathe Carly Fiorina who ran Hewlett Packard into the ground while she was CEO. Fifty-five percent drop in stock price but she still floated off with a golden parachute. Note that no other company has come forth to offer her a CEO job – which must be why she’s decided to inflict herself on the American people.

Who does that leave?

Gulp.

Ted Cruz. I think he’s the Republican candidate.

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Otherwise, yesterday was another beautiful fall day where I read, and I wrote, and I helmed my SimCity – dual specializations: mining and tourism, but I can’t seem to get the population up above 40,000 – and I generated a small amount of revenue, and I exercised so hard that I put myself into a kind of trance state. I’ve started listening to podcasts of RadioLab while I exercise, in every way a superbly transcendent radio program: It takes me to places I never dreamed existed. Well-done, Jad Abumrad!