If you are identified with certain opinions and an ability to express them, and if you can build yourself an audience, a partisan fan base - measured through social media - then you are an official opinionator, monetizable through books, television contracts and the speaking circuit.

If you run for president and lose, you promote yourself into all sorts of more lucrative, possibly more influential and surely more fun media opportunities.

Cable television is basically now the business of former political professionals. Joe Scarborough, a former Florida Congressman, is a far more successful cable host than he ever was a politician.

Michael Wolff Quotes