Post #1:The week of 26 July to 1 August

Welcome to my new blog tracking the candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. We are six full months until people will vote in primaries or participate in caucuses that add even one delegate to their totals, but I've decided to begin recording what I fully admit are nearly meaningless numbers every Sunday.

I'm not a fan of the "both sides do it" meme, but there are folks in both parties who have decided to run for president for no reason understandable to sentient beings. Instead of writing a single paragraph about Jim Webb or a deep think piece about What It All Means should Carly Fiorina's support should actually creep up to 2% in the average of a week's polls, I will always display the None of the Above number in the graph, and only people who have had a week above that number will get any electrons here.

The Republicans. It was a bad week for the people predicting Donald Trump's death. In so many ways, he is a throwback candidate, and like other 1980s favorites Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhies, he is remarkably difficult to kill. He is old and angry and has very little restraint, which means he mirrors his core constituency very well. He could be compared to Herman Cain in 2012, but Trump is much more media savvy. Cain was brought low by rumors of infidelity. Trump, like his fellow horror throwback Gingrich, has actual confirmed cases in infidelity. He has many skeletons in his closet from the standpoint of his base - earlier liberal positions, hiring illegal immigrants, working closely with organized crime - but if they are brought forward by the "lamestream media"(probably the best neologism from conservatives this century), they will not be trusted. The thing most likely to kill his candidacy would be someone in the conservative media attacking him. Barring that, losing actual races that matter could bring him the feeling of shame for the first time in his seven decades on the planet. I cannot predict what might happen then.

Both JEBush Bush and Scott Walker had small and statistically insignificant polling dips this week. The noticeable move was Marco Rubio taking a dive and None Of the Above having a small surge. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz are all ahead of Rubio this week, but all are below None of the Above, so I don't have to track them yet.

Yay, I guess.

The Democrats. The press hates this story because there is no damned drama at all. Bernie Sanders is very popular with the left leaning segment of the Democratic Party - spoiler alert, that includes this blogger - but she has a huge lead and is well above 50% support. The one other Democrat that has even a ghost of a chance of getting above None of the Above is Joe Biden, and he doesn't even have an exploratory committee. This just goes to show that pollsters can be assholes just as big as Maureen Dowd, but none of them get a paycheck directly from The New York Times.

Back next week. I admit it has similarities to paint drying, but on the plus side, geezer pop culture references.