Politics isn’t just a horse race anymore. It’s a creepy, overblown dog show. Can the candidate jump through these hoops? Are they purebred? Do they speak when prompted, and can they snatch a treat from the tip of their nose?

In the most ironic of turns, the media has veered away from its Fourth Estate, fact-checking, overseers of the Government sensibilities. Now they are shameless hawks looking for nothing but a good soundbite and a snappy retort that they can play on air for hours. I mean, who can blame them? They are employed by are corporate, cash-driven whores who are looking for whatever the politicians will throw them to rationalize the fact that the news cycle runs 24-hours a day, and miraculously makes it through all 24 hours without saying anything.

This entire primary process has to show that not only are the Republican and Democratic Parties crumbling from within (or out), but so then is the television news medium covering it. Joe-freakin’-Scarborough calling out the primary system as rigged against Sanders had the fervor around the primaries dying down. It has become clearer each day that Clinton and Trump have the nominations locked up yet the media continues to scrape and scrounge around for ways to make it seem like that ain’t so.

Now, don’t get me wrong – Trump is an evil, hateful, spray-tanned ham that doesn’t shut up while Hillary Clinton is a reptilian overlord in a human suit. But they have both gotten to where they are without breaking the rules of the primary process (as infuriating as some of those rules may be…). For a long time, Clinton received an incredulous amount of support from the media. Whether it be as blatant has having Clinton stumpers show up live to talk about how Bernie Sanders is a long-shot who will never win, or adding super delegates to pledged delegate counts without stipulating what, exactly, super delegates are. It is an entire other hoop a candidate has to jump through and work around in order to make their campaign viable. And all media outlets do it because their competition does it, too.

Timothy Crouse, in his seminal book "The Boys on the Bus," described the scary way in which journalists, like any animal, change their behavior when tossed in with the rest of the pack. Pack, or Herd, Journalism, is a phenomenon that takes place when journalists are covering the same topic, or candidate, for a long period of time. These journalists all rely on the same sources, they all interact with each other, and this leads to an Orwellian groupthink that tells the individual: if you so much as re-word a lead, or try to prioritize a certain piece of information as more important, when the rest of the reporters don’t, you’re going to look like an idiot. The tables have turned and they don’t even know it--I guess they really are idiots. Not wanting, of course, to be conceived of as idiots or generally bad reporters, the news stories all end up looking the same all across the country – from the "New York" and "Los Angeles Times" to the "Chicago Tribune"or "Baltimore Sun."

And now, in an era where communication and fact-checking is easier than ever? In an era where news is being pumped out on a 24-hour cycle? All the stories are the same. Some cable channels, such as FOX and MSNBC, try to put a clear, bias slant on those stories, but that’s just pandering for ratings. In essence, the stories are the same, the sources are almost the same, and a lot of the guests end up being the same, too. Horse race elections have become a thing of the past.

Now the people expect the candidate to bark when asked, or to have a well-oiled coat of fur that is just perfect for petting. As the primaries look all but wrapped up, the media is finally pulling for a new dog to enter into the contest. Because without the notion of a Trump-Sanders Debate, or Sanders’ rising poll numbers in California, or the ridiculous, establishment odd-stackers known as superdelegates, what would the media have to report on the 2016 election? Not enough people give a crap about Clinton’s e-mails anymore, and hell, everybody knows that Trump is a flat-out flaming pile of crap with a hair-piece. That’s not news anymore.

The pack has taken to manufacturing the news because it is what their corporate mommies and daddies want. And the pack has taken itself so seriously in the past fifteen years or so that it doesn’t seem to care that they’re no better at reporting the news than TMZ. As long as we cretins keep tuning in to hear an “in-depth” take from a “professional” on how a bigot like Donald Trump eating a taco bowl is somehow important or damning in any way, our society is doomed to ignorance and idiocy. And if one channel is doing it, well hell, the other channels have to as well, unless they want their precious viewers (whom I envision holding sacks of cash, throwing stacks of singles at the screen every time someone like Joe the Plumber becomes a media sensation) to change the channel from ABC to NBC.

No, politics is no longer a horse race. It isn’t exciting enough anymore. Politics is now just reporters and analysts making sure that Hillary Clinton has learned how to roll over, or seeing if Bernie Sanders has grasped the art of playing dead.

I would say that Timothy Crouse and his co-patriots from The Boys on the Bus are either rolling their eyes or rolling in the graves knowing that journalism has just become another stage for politicians to perform. But even in 1972, they saw this coming.