Folly and surprise insist on their seats at the table in every presidential campaign. Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Gary Hart enjoyed flurries of support before imploding in the face of voters awakening from slumber.

One of the unexpected lessons of this year’s spring and summer skirmishes has been a revival of a piece of wisdom attributed to the great 20th century wag, Dorothy Parker. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” You can chisel that one in stone.

The rise of the vulgarian Donald Trump threatens to give enterprise a bad name. His incessant braggadocio about his fortune is a cringe-inducing ordeal, but his squalid condemnation of immigrants yearning for a better life is a loathsome exercise in demagoguery that begs for a pummeling like a piñata when he meets his fellow Republicans.

The punishing light of the attention he craves will be Trump’s undoing. The insufferable real estate wheeler dealer will find a presidential campaign is more complicated than feuding with the late talk show host and entrepreneur Merv Griffin over Atlantic City casinos. If the press and rivals do their jobs, Trump will see discourse in a presidential nomination contest is different than trading insults with Rosie O’Donnell.

Explaining his affection for the crony capitalism of eminent domain, typically at the expense of the working poor, ought to challenge Trump in front of a nationwide audience at the August 6th debate. Maybe he can spend a few moments talking about what it means to be “pro-choice in every aspect” in a party that is not.

Few issues will give Trump more trouble than his friendship with and long support for fellow grasping plutocrat Hillary Clinton. Trump, who has not been a Republican for long, contributed to Clinton campaigns and donated to the murky Clinton Foundation. Trump’s record of support for his fellow grasping plutocrat ought to challenge his powers of bloviation. Never mind Clinton’s attendance at Trump’s third wedding (to the one the serial groom married after divorcing showgirl Marla Maples). All the flacks from Manhattan to Washington will not be able to put enough distance between the nation’s most-famous germaphobe and Hillary Clinton to satisfy the Republican faithful.

Clinton, meanwhile, has been busy trying to ignore the summer phenomenon of rival Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ ability to attract astounding crowds of thousands to his speeches. It can’t be Sanders’ delivery that’s filling the pews with the faithful. He’s not much of an orator. It must be the message.

Sanders is flying his socialist flag in a party that continues to fall deeper in love with big, bossy government. Some of Sanders’ attraction may be the left-wing radical’s dismay at the vast number of choices Americans enjoy when shopping for underarm deodorants. I’m not kidding. Sanders was mewling about that in a recent interview. The socialist authoritarian instinct is never far from the surface.

The Clinton campaign turned to a curious choice to lob some party establishment barbs at Sanders. U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) enjoyed her most famous moment in national politics when in a tight 2006 campaign she announced she did not want her daughter near Bill Clinton. Now she’s slagging Sanders as too liberal, an odd charge as Hillary Clinton sprints to the left.

Those crowded-to-the-rafters Sanders events suggest there may be no such thing as too far left in the early going among Democratic party activists. They may have found their vessel in the 73-year-old Sanders. What a toll the Sanders boom has inflicted on poor Martin O’Malley, the former mayor of beleaguered Baltimore and governor of Maryland.

Not even championing a notorious tax on rain as governor is enough to get O’Malley some traction in the small field of Democratic presidential hopefuls. It must be small comfort to the bumptious narcissist that he polls better than loopy Rhode Island aristocrat (yes, there is such a thing) Lincoln Chafee, making his first bid for office as a Democrat.

Perhaps O’Malley will shine in a debate with his rivals and enjoy a boomlet of his own. We will not know soon. Democrats have scheduled no debates. After all, spontaneity has proved a lethal source of folly and surprise for Clinton.