A Tough Few Days for Carly

I'm not sure why she annoys me so much, but she does.

Perhaps it's the false populism.

Or the desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator during the Planned Parenthood thing.

Or the false spontaneity of the 'I buried a child' emotional admission in front of 60 million people.

Or maybe it's just the hypocrisy of it all wrapped up into one obvious and inelegant package.

But I also knew, I didn't have to rail too much because there was no way karma was going to hold it together for her for much longer.

And I was right. This weekend Politico wrote a piece about her step-daughter who died at 35 from alcohol and prescription drug addiction issues. The piece isn't some scathing piece but the decline and death is far less dramatic than the campaign has made it out to be. It was a sad story of a young girl, then woman's, long, slow decline.

As parents - and step parents - we think that we'll always have a powerful connection with our children and that when the shit hits the fan they always know they can turn to us. But sometimes they end up isolating themselves and you have to watch from afar as they pass through life's difficult passages, hoping they'll navigate to safety.

That didn't happen in this case, sadly.

But it's a good thing to have the whole story on the record so it can't be emotionally cherry picked. No spinning this tragedy. One arrow out of her ambitious quiver.

Then over the weekend former eBay CEO and current HP CEO Meg Whitman said she wouldn't vote for Carly. That's a swipe by the current CEO as well as another powerful woman business titan. Ouch.

So, you say, "well, Whitman simply said she wanted a candidate with more political experience." Yes, OK. But she didn't name the others in the race that didn't have political experience. Her choice of words were key. Also, she didn't have to say anything. Given that, she certainly said something and it should resonate not only with voters but fundraisers as well.

Again, we excoriate the media for how inept they are during the debates, yet then we hang on their every word about who is where in the horse race. Sam Rayburn had it right, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people."

But in "the people's" defense I will say there's generally a collective native intelligence that doesn't take us down any bad road too far. Or hasn't yet.

Although, James Buchanan was close.

Anyway, as weird as it feels to write this, Trump is actually the total package right now. He's stopped saying crazy shit on a daily basis and is really in campaign mode with solid debate performances and a lot of energy. 

Carson, Rubio and Fiorina are flavors of the day, they're circus in this bread and circus.

Kasich and Bush are the undercard at this point.

Cruz is the dark horse. But that photo op of him hunting upland game the other day was a bit over the top. That's not a message that gets him out of his core demo. He might as well start negotiating with one of the front runners (or moneyed players) for a role in their campaign, drop out and endorse.

Please let it be Fiorina...