Raebert’s all grumpy this morning. As am I. Chalk it up to Monday morning blues.

I didn’t watch a single minute of the Masters Tournament. No Tiger. The only sporting event we followed this weekend was Penn baseball, because Lady Laird had an intern who is the Babe Ruth of the Ivy League, a power pitcher last year who developed arm trouble and is now a power hitter at first base.

Still too young to be president.

I didn’t watch a single minute of Sunday morning news programming. I didn’t want to meet the press, face the nation, or endure another edition of Chris Wallace outsmarting himself in his vain attempts to be even-handed in dealing with the most criminal presidential administration in American history.

I’m going to do a post about the Steven Colbert flap, because there are times when I have to indulge my penchant for getting deep down mean with the presumptive cognoscenti, and this is an opportunity too ripe to be missed.

But I’m NOT going to do a post about the presidential prospects of Jeb Bush, because some notions really are beneath contempt. The DC punditocracy is a joke so superannuated as to be funny no more. They want Jeb. Nobody else does. Trust me.

Still, I can use Jeb as a jumping off point for the real purpose of this post. The Republican establishment pines for Jeb because they believe the Dems will nominate Hillary in 2016, and they fear what the MSM will do to any Republican newboy who rises up to oppose her. They’d prefer a clash of dynasties to any real referendum on the nation’s direction. Probably because they mostly agree that that direction is a downward spiral nobody can stop. Meaning, Jeb serves as a dignifying fig leaf for their otherwise exposed impotence.

It’s the Chris Christie Effect. He was supposed to be the new Teflon Don, immune to the machinations of the MSM because he was so blunt and plain-spoken and all. They were wrong about that. The MSM killed him off with a simple traffic jam. Quick work. Just imagine what would happen to the lineup of sad-sack Republican governors who are hemming and hawing about putting their own hats in the ring. It’s obviously time to default to dynasties.

Not so fast. Time to ask what they really want from a Jeb candidacy. Ready-made name recognition. Can’t be slaughtered by Dem revelations of who he really is and where he came from. All the MSM ammunition against the Bushes has already been fired, repeatedly, for years, and further attacks on the name of Bush will produce no more than a huge yawn from the electorate.

They crane their necks in all directions and can’t anywhere find a candidate the Great Unwashed already know, at least by surname, and who can’t be easily destroyed by a well orchestrated campaign of slander, libel, and vicious lies. Understandable. It’s just that they missed one. Somebody so obvious that they couldn’t see him at all because they’ve spent so much time looking past and around him.

It’s the Trump card. Name recognition. Have you seen all those quasi-comedic man in the street interviews where people who look like regular people can’t name the Vice President, tell you how many senators there are, or guess what century the Constitution was written in? But they know who’s screwing Kim Kardashian at the moment. And they know who Donald Trump is. He’s the rich guy that fires people.

Hmmmm. A rich guy who fires people. Rich isn’t a problem. Everyone who gets a presidential nomination is rich. And fires people is an outstanding credential in a time when the government does nothing but screw up and nobody ever gets fired. The man in the street could get behind a guy like that. Call it the Reality Show Effect.

But wait till the MSM goes after him! Uh, no. They already have, ruthlessly, systematically, maliciously, for years. Trump is a beneficiary of what we could call the Biden Effect. It has long ceased to matter what dumb thing he said yesterday. He’s like Ol’ Man River. He just keeps rolling along.

He has the built in invulnerability of a reality show. His comb-over may be ridiculous but, hey, he’s famous and he fires people. When the MSM and the DNC go digging for scandals, they will find them, I suppose, but the electoral response will be yawns. We know this guy, he’s entertaining, and he fires people. No wonder there are people willing to say bad things about him. He fires people.

They can’t get him on a sex scandal either. Call it the Clinton Effect. Everybody knows Donald Trump is in the business of trophy wives and probably trophy mistresses too. Why should we care? Every bit of salacious gossip just buffs his reality show shine.

More than that, even the man in the street knows other things about him. He has a talent for winning. He makes deals. He bends other people to his will. He knows how to run things. He knows how to make a profit. He generates jobs. Who hasn’t been to a Trump casino? All the people who work there have jobs.

And, finally, he also benefits somewhat ironically from the Obama Effect. He has no legislative record that can be used to vet or destroy him. Although, unlike Obama, he has a long and very public record of accomplishment. He evidently fears no one. Not even Hillary. To him, she’s just another frail who would never have made his trophy wife cut.

Too rich to be prey to lobbyists. Too much of a loose cannon to toe any party line. Too loud to be cowed by anyone else’s bluster. It just might be that this is his time. Call it the Trump Effect. Sometimes, the times demand someone who is larger than life.