It's Cute How They Keep Acting Like Trump Might Not Be the Nominee

There's always money in taking a bananas stand.

image via Flickr / Gage Skidmore (CC)

There are times when I’m genuinely impressed by the delusional optimism displayed by everyone running for the Republican presidential nomination who is not Donald Trump. I mean, my god, imagine the sheer metric tonnage of baseless self-confidence it must take for your average Mike Pence or Tim Scott to look out at a candidate field which Donald Trump dominates by anywhere from 30 to 50 points and to then say to yourself “hell yeah, I think I’ve got real a shot here!” It’d be admirable if it weren’t so pathetic.

This week, Politico published a typically haughty “insider’s guide to who’s wired — and who’s not — in Iowa purporting to give eager beaver readers the lay of the conservative land as the various Republican presidential campaigns set up shop across the Hawkeye State. The details of the piece "(“based on interviews with nearly three dozen Republican operatives, strategists and campaign officials working in the first-in-the-nation caucus state”… wowie!!) aren’t all that important, or even interesting really—you know, so-and-so’s got X number of staff and while such-and-such’s team has already made Y number of phone calls. I pity the sort of person who cares about that kind of thing without being paid for it. I’ll get to that in a bit, actually, but first, let’s deal with the very obvious elephant in the room.

Everyone who isn’t Donald Trump is going to lose this race. Everyone who is Donald Trump is going to win. There will be a lot of hand-wringing and crystal ball gazing about what it means that Nikki Haley came in 4th or how every time someone tried to caucus for Mike Pence the “Mr. Yuck” face would miraculously appear on their ballot or whatever, but none of that horseshit really matters. What matters is that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president, and the sooner everyone stops treating this whole farce like an actual race, the better it will be for us all.

Okay, let me back up one sec.