Response to What it Takes

(See: Just Above Sunset: What it Takes)

Not to take away from that extremely helpful critique of Carly Fiorina -- the success so far of whom being, I think, as equally unwarranted and unsustainable as that of Donald Trump -- but I really did think all this "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" talk was going somewhere else.

The thing is, I'm just not into bling, and I don't understand its attraction. I especially don't think much of diamonds, since whatever sparkle they give off can be achieved at much less cost, with costume jewelry. But that, of course, would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? The point of a diamond is not so much that it's beautiful but that it's somewhat expensive, isn't it? I mean, diamonds are attractive, I guess, if you like that sort of thing, but they're certainly not as pretty as they are expensive.

And they're only expensive because they're rare, and only rare because of artificial scarcity, with mostly one company making sure not too much of the stuff comes to market at one time.

In other words, the market for diamonds is a bubble, and if, suddenly, two or three times as many "high quality" diamonds showed up for sale, people would stop finding them so attractive, and then even more people would stop finding them attractive, and everyone would realize that, ultimately, a diamond is mostly useless. Oh, sure, we can make drill bits out of them, but who wants some drill bit decorating your finger?

So for a moment, I suspected the point was going to be about what Donald Trump has in common with a diamond.

The truth is, diamonds are only popular because they're popular; once people stop wanting them, people would stop wanting them, and they'd eventually come to see a diamond as nothing more than a fancy lump of coal.

Likewise, Trump's poll numbers are only up because his poll numbers are up, but once the other candidates show they have something more to say about the country's problems than his "We'll be looking into that", Trump's numbers will start to slip, and then they will continue to drop, mostly because they'd be dropping -- at which point, his supporters will wake up and notice that he's just another fancy, although also mostly useless, lump of coal.

Fiorina's story is a bit more complicated. Once her real history becomes more widely known, there may still be those who will say, "So what! I like her spunk!", but I think those people will eventually be in the minority, and she will find herself, like Trump, out of the running. Right now, the markets for both Trump and Fiorina are bubbles, and at some point before the season really gets going, I think both the Donald and Carly bubbles will pop.

But enough of the good news. The bad news is, try to imagine who from this bench will replace them!