CNN poll: 19% of Republicans want Donald Trump as their candidate.

Mike Huckabee is tied for first, but what makes Trump’s numbers interesting is that he’s doubled his support since March.

Whether he runs or not is another matter, as is whether he would make a good President. But how does his candidacy– real or fake– affects the actual candidate running in November.

It’s not so simple that a person announces, tries, and then bows out, his influence evaporated. It’s not like Fantasy Elections.

These people are “running” in a highly produced, pornographic media environment, which means that every candidate after Trump is going to have to define themselves by their similarities and differences to Donald Trump, and any other candidate that runs.

But in particular, they will react to the media portrayal of Donald Trump, not what he is, not even what he wants to pretend he is, but what they decide he is, the 3 minutes of soundbites, grimaces and images endlessly looped in all media outlets. What does Trump think about corporate taxes? “No idea; but he’s a birther!” You don’t say.

In theory, the RNC could throw out candidates in a predetermined order to generate the precise kind of support they want for their actual favorite; but that would require a level of deviousness and planning that no n>3 guys could ever pull off. Hinckley acted alone.

In practice, such crowdsourcing might give us, through a process of course corrections, the candidate best suited to the majority. But the problem again is we’re not seeing the candidate, but the media generated simulacrum of a candidate that is itself the synthesis of 6 or whatever previous simulacra. In other words, what you think you know about a candidate is probably completely wrong, but on purpose. Won’t stop you from getting agitated in a coffeehouse, though.

If you want an analogy, turn on the Price Is Right. Player 1 makes a bid of $40; player 2 immediately stops trying to guess the correct price– he just bids $40 + 1. Player 2 wins because he’s a slimy choad.

That may sound bad, but it is not the relevant point I’m getting at. What you need to understand is that if Player 1 had bid $400, then player 2 would have bid $401– but now the next contestant has to bid based on a 10x bigger number. It’s true that if you go over on The Price Is Right you lose, but that is decidedly not true in politics. Taking the analogy to its inevitable conclusion, the winner on the November 4th broadcast of The Electorate Is Bananas must position himself as an inflated reaction, in one or the other direction, to several previously insane bids.

There is good news, however: all of this should really help out the beleaguered media industry, which in turn should create jobs for good looking reporters. Phew. Keynes was a genius.

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