Does Donald Trump want votes or cash?

Like the stripped away promise of an early spring here comes Donald Trump again to depress our spirits by eying another presidential run. 

Things are admittedly bad on the GOP presidential front, with commentators already blasting their emerging candidates for having limited national appeal, but nothing says we're screwed like another meeting of the Donald Trump exploratory committee. 

A recent Quinnipiac University poll discovered that 76 percent of Republicans "absolutely" or "probably" will not vote for him but public opinion has never mattered to the man who likes to spell out his surname in ten foot gold letters on the front of his gaudy buildings.  So why is he doing it? He must know that he has about as much chance of winning a national campaign as Lord Lucan has of reappearing and winning the Grand National. 

The simple answer is that he's doing it for publicity. 

By bathing in the reflected glory of a presidential campaign he can bolster his shaky credentials as a political celebrity and commentator. And the more he basks in that glory the more books he will sell, the more invitations he will receive from the news media, and the higher his speaking fees will climb. 

He doesn't want our votes he just wants our attention because he knows how to parlay that into cold hard cash. 

And we give him our attention because in the main we loathe who he is and what he represents, the personification of a gilded age on steroids where the rich have an outsize influence, the era were entitled showboats like himself drown out nuanced political debate in favor of sound bites and slogans. 

We're the monkeys and he's come to throw peanuts (he knows how to do this, in a now notorious event in 2013 he filled a fish tank full of cash that was guarded by babes in tight tank tops). The public was invited to come and grovel via his Twitter account.

In a memorable phrase President Obama dismissed Trump as a “carnival barker” four years ago. But it's clear that in his relentless pursuit of money and influence Trump simply doesn't care that his latest "reality" show cheapens American political life and scoffs at the electorate. 

When it comes to running for president it's time America said "You're fired" right back at him.