Here’s an interesting graphic. It is basically saying that people searching for Bernie Sanders on Google end up clicking through to his official website more often than searchers for any other candidate. Searches relating to Sanders end up on his official site 4% of the time. The next closest is Trump, but he is far behind Sanders – searches about Trump only end up on his web site about half as often, or 2.3% of the time.

Why do more of the people interested in Bernie Sanders follow through and actually go to his website?

Maybe they can’t find enough info in the press so they have to go to his website to see what he is up to. Or maybe they are more wonkish, and actually care to read his positions on various issues. (But that would imply that Trump’s supporters are the second most wonkish. Hmm..)

Maybe they want to donate to him and find his site through Google. Sanders gets a high proportion of his funds through small donations.

It is probably a combination of these and other factors. In any event, you’ve gotta feel for some of the other candidates. They spent a lot of money on their web sites but they don’t seem to be getting much use.

The graphic, BTW, is from this site, a company that is analyzing search behavior.

By his own yardstick, Paul Ryan is over halfway there to getting the Republican nomination for president. When he fake non-ran for Speaker of House, he denied he was running or interested in the job 5 times before he finally accepted the will of the party and took the job.

As of mid April 2016, he has already denied running for president three times:

• Oct 30, 2015 to CNN
• March 16, 2016 to CNBC
• April 12, 2016 in a news conference

The convention is not until July, so there is plenty of time for two more Paul Ryan denials.

Who are the winners and losers in the 2016 presidential race?

As of early April 2016, here’s what we see

Winners

Trump: No matter what happens, he has already won hugely. He just put another few billion dollars onto the value of his brand.

Cruz: His peers think he’s a jerk, but they’re holding their noses and lining up behind him to stop Trump. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

Kasich: Who ever thunk he’d still be around? Maybe he even becomes the new poster child of moderate Republicans

Bernie: Yeah it’s Quixotic, but hey, he’s having big time influence. Besides, who else is gonna mobilize the angry Democrats?

Carson: Should have a nice future on the lecture circuit

Losers

Bush: Wow, that didn’t take long. Complete flame out. The good news is that Pops and Mummsy don’t have to keep watching him get skewered for another six months.

Rubio: At least he hung around longer than Bush. But what a tanking in Florida. Is he starting to regret leaving the Senate?

Carly: Maybe she should try to run for an office that she can actually win, like school board.

Why hasn’t there been much ink spilled on the parallels between Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Both of these guys came out of the celebrity word to upend politics. Make no mistake, Donald Trump has not been in the real estate business for years. Ever since he started putting his name on buildings he has been in the celebrity business. By his own reckoning, the vast majority of his $10 billion in wealth is related to the brand he has created: Trump.

The best – and really only – way to keep that brand valuable is to be famous. Trump has been working at this since the 1980s and has over 30 years of experience in working the press. How many times has he been in the NY Post’s Page 6 celebrity column? He was regularly featured in Spy magazine 25 years ago. He has been honing his celebrity status and his interactions with the press before most of the folks covering him were out of grade school.

Arnold also spent a lot of time and effort crafting his celebrity status. When he declared for the governor of California, the political press were blindsided. The celebrity press in LA had his number but they were no longer on the story. To the political press, he was celebrity royalty who all of the sudden deigned them access.And Arnold knew how to work it. By they time the political press got their feet back on the ground, Arnold was the Governator.

Is the Trump situation similar? The celebrity press would know when to give him ink and when to ignore him. The political press has no clue. Trump says something and the more outlandish it is is the quicker they are to give him some ink. They are thinking to themselves, “Wow. This stuff is great. All of the other politicians are so carefully crafted and the stuff out of Trump’s mouth will get my story on the front page for sure.” Do you think Trump doesn’t know this? He works it just like Arnold did.

The only difference is the timing. Arnold declared 8 weeks before the election (it was a special recall election). Trump has to keep the political press off balance almost 10 times as long. If he can do it, how do you like the sound of Kongresswoman Kardashian?.