No one can be quite sure if politics will ever be the same after this, the Trump Era.

Certainly, we have already discovered that we will no longer have elections like those we saw in the past, either, with the 2016 circus still continuing to this very day in the Robert Mueller investigation and the “resistance” movement.

The coming 2020 election is shaping up to be no less frenzied than the 2016 contest, although the democrats are the group who’ve convinced themselves to try the “spaghetti on the wall” method of choosing a nominee:  Throw the entire party at the wall and see what sticks.

This isn’t exactly the sort of shrewd, political nuance that has bookies in Las Vegas sweating, either.  This “spray and pray” method of leading your party has left the oddsmakers with only one real choice.

The entry of Sen. Bernie Sanders and 11 other White House challengers has not changed the gambling odds on the expectation that President Trump will win re-election.

The latest odds, taken after Sanders joined the 2020 race on Tuesday, put Trump as a 3-2 lock to win re-election followed most closely by Sen. Kamala Harris, at 10-1.

And the odds of Sanders winning didn’t budge despite announcing his race, said Dave Mason, the sportsbook brand manager of BetOnline.ag.

In a cruel twist of irony for the doomed democrats, a recent poll showed that they had two frontrunners in a dead heat for 2020.

The problem is that neither of these candidates is currently even running a campaign.  One has even flatly said “no”.

There are despicable acts committed by despicable people every day, but we, as a society, hold certain egregious infractions as far more sinister than others.

Of course, these are the most heinous of crimes; murder, rape, pedophilia, and hate crimes.  The only situations worse than these acts themselves, is the exploitation of the emotion they cause for personal gain.

That precisely what police are alleging that actor Jussie Smollett has done, now twice having been the phony victim of a phony hate crime concocted by he himself.

What’s even more vile is the reason that police are saying Smollett committed these acts:  Money.

Jussie Smollett, upset by his salary and seeking publicity, staged a fake assault on himself a week after writing himself a threatening letter, the Chicago police said Thursday after the “Empire” actor surrendered to face a charge of filing a false police report.

Eddie T. Johnson, the visibly angry Chicago police superintendent, said Mr. Smollett had taken advantage of the pain and anger of racism, draining resources that could have been used to investigate other crimes for which people were actually suffering.

Johnson then deftly and tactfully made a plea for Americans to get their heads out of Hollywood.

“I just wish that the families of gun violence in this city got this much attention,” he said at a news conference in Chicago.

Smollett’s crimes are heinous to begin with, but a reasoning of mental health concerns or substance abuse would certainly have sat better with the American people than simple greed.

Of course, given the mainstream media’s soft takes on Smollett, there is certainly time for his PR firm to concoct just such a story in an effort to save his career.