My neighbor, E.Z. Ryder, fancies himself a farsighted entrepreneur and is always full of imaginative ideas. He was sitting on his front porch shuffling through a stack of blueprints as I pulled into my driveway. He waved and motioned me to join him, so I walked over.

“See these plans? This is my best idea ever -- an assisted suicide center for political consultants.”

“What? Why?”

“I got this idea during the last presidential campaign, and this article in the Atlantic confirmed it,” Ryder said. “Political consultants burn through billions of dollars and have no idea what they’re doing except to enrich themselves.

“They do a number of things over and again of limited effect: TV and radio ads, direct mail, robocalls. And burn through money they do. Jeb Bush’s campaign famously spent $139 million and he dropped out early after having won only four delegates. Top men. Hillary’s campaign juggernaut was defeated by Donald Trump who had no super PAC, no traditional fundraising operation, no campaign pollster, speechwriter, or campaign strategist.”

I couldn't help but agree. “He utilized Twitter and Facebook, mass rallies, and sold campaign gear like MAGA hats, didn’t he? And he spoke his own words, not something poll tested by his staff. He mapped his own strategy, paying attention to voter sentiment and things like the Electoral College.”

Ryder chuckled. “No one pays much attention to those annoying campaign robocalls and the TV ads help only those who sell snack foods or need bathroom breaks.”

“They do spew out slews of talking points for the media,” I pointed out. “If your candidate is a Democrat, that may be helpful, but it is of little use to Republicans. Media love stuff they only have to republish with minor changes -- like the headers indicating the source, but first and foremost they are Democrat operatives.”

“Now that the consultants’ golden goose is strangled, a lot of people who benefitted are also out of luck: people who make and sell campaign literature printers, specialists in data acquisition, venders of robocall equipment, experts at fundraising for politicians, campaign tchotchke manufacturers, and social media analysts. They really are getting suicidal at the thought of having to find some real work.”

“I guess the townhalls have really dealt a death blow to Democrat political consultants," I replied.

“You have that right,” Ryder said. “All the Republicans have to do is run video clips of the asinine stuff the Democrats are promising to do. Like all the candidates raising their hands promising to provide free health care to anyone who makes it across our border."

“I suppose that with a looming shortage of doctors now that so many have fled the profession in response to ObamaCare, this will not go over well,” I said. “Nor will it appeal to those already overburdened with medical insurance and deductible costs, hospitals facing closure as a result of federal mandates to treat all who enter their doors, or seniors struggling with inadequate Medicare reimbursements after having paid into Social Security for their working lives.”

Ryder nodded. “You’re seeing what I am. But to top that off, there were the promises to ban everything that works and that people enjoy in the most recent townhall on CNN. Seven hours of pure nanny state, ignorant nonsense. The Democrats gave their opponents a cornucopia of possible campaign videos. Down with plastic straws (which contribute virtually nothing to ocean pollution despite the grade-school unscientific paper by a kid that inspired the bans). People hate this, and Trump is cleaning up by selling plastic straws with his name on them. Down with gas-powered cars. A policy that would not go well with most of us who own and like them or scientists who argue persuasively that electric cars hurt the environment more and would, in any event, limit the range of driving, raise the cost of new autos, and still require electric power production -- something wind and solar have proven not up to the need. Cattle growers and processors, restaurants, and the many of us that eat meat shudder at the thought of meat taxes or bans. That’s not all -- the candidates are opposed to real energy production -- offshore drilling, fracking, nuclear-powered plants, coal plants, natural gas plants…in sum, everything that makes the U.S. productive, comfortable in all weather, mobile and fed. And everything that actually works. “

“I have already seen the video clips on Grabien,” I told him. “I especially loved these: Cory Booker wanting to ban all fossil fuels ‘My goal is to get our electricity zero carbon emissions, that means phasing off fossil fuels.’ I haven’t seen anything so brilliant since plans for perpetual-motion machines. Or Senator Kamala Harris’s idea of phasing out red meat beginning with a federal dietary reeducation program. (Shades of Michelle Obama’s unpopular, wasteful, and now discarded school lunch program from which her kids’ private school was excluded.) Senator Sanders's plan to fund abortions in the Third World to reduce human life in order to save the planet. (At least he cut right to the chase -- wipe out humans -- rather than follow the others who’d just freeze, broil, and starve us to that point.) Joe Biden was up for all this, it seems, and is determined “to get vehicles off the road” altogether. Of course, they -- like Al Gore and his Hollywood virtue-signaling pals -- will still travel in limos and fly private planes to vacation spots and climate warming confabs. The rest of us can play at being feudal serfs, limited in where and how we travel, heat, and cool our offices and homes, communicate with each other, or feed ourselves. If we’re lucky. If we’re not it’s Flintstone redux for us.”

E.Z. picked up another pile of blueprints.

“What are those for?”

He explained he was planning a wing of the center for pollsters. “The demand is almost as enormous as that for campaign consultants and their retinue of support casts.”