This is the dumbest prediction of the 2016 election -- and why TV political punditry is a wasteland

Surprising as it may seem for such a "hot take" or scoop or whatever you might call it, MSNBC's Mark Halperin, who is all over your TV as a "senior political analyst," waited until the Friday night to make the most stunning -- and dumb -- prediction of the 2016 election season.

Hold onto your hat because here it is, courtesy of the ever-aware Tom Tomorrow:

As the kids say: "Whoa, if true."

As intelligent people who follow politics -- and even with people who only have a passing knowledge of who their two senators might be -- might say: "Shut the hell up, Mark."

We'll let slide for the moment that the GOP's lady bench isn't exactly overstocked with possible candidates. Sarah Palin? (I wish) Nikki Haley? I hear Carly Fiorina is available although it appears that she . On the other hand, for someone who once said of Ted Cruz, "He'll say whatever he needs to get elected," it sure didn't stop Fiorina from jumping on board the Cruz campaign until it crashed and burned in Indiana with all hands on board.

Keep in mind, Halperin is the same political genius who once said that John McCain's 2008 admission that he couldn't remember how many homes he and heiress wife owned was "Great news for John McCain!"

We have almost two whole months until the conventions and almost six months until the November election and this is the kind of blather the cable talking heads are going to fill the airwaves with as they feed the 24-hour news-cycle beast with, well, more blather.

Today the Washington Post reported -- and the talking heads obsessed over --  the fact that Donald Trump impersonated his publicist on a phone call --- wait for it: 25 years ago.

Which sounds like fun, in not exactly Pulitzer material for the WaPo, if not for the fact that Trump admitted it to People magazine .... 25 years ago.

Not after a PEOPLE reporter played her a tape on June 26 of a man saying that he was a Trump publicist named John Miller. A shocked, devastated Marla identified the voice as that of Trump himself. He announced, among other things, that he’d traded in his Georgia peach for an Italian model (Carla Bruni). “When I heard his voice on that tape saying those things, I said, ‘Whoa! Uh-uh. No more,’ ” says Marla. “If he could say all that stuff and act like it’s cool to have this playboy image, then oh my gosh, all I could say was, ‘Baby, you’re on your own.’ ”

[...]

Meanwhile a penitent Don Juan-ald had come to the opposite conclusion. The John Miller fiasco he called a joke gone awry. “What I did became a good time at Mar-la’s expense, and I’m very sorry,” says the newly humbled tycoon.

Despite this, the Beltway press was consumed with reviewing the audiotape as if it were the Zapruder tape, only stopping short of guessing which grassy knoll Trump was calling from.

And this -- as we read the umpteenth story about how the media "let Donald Trump happen," although you have to give the racists who keep voting for him some credit -- is what is wrong with television punditry in their obsessive "say something incredibly dumb because no one will care next week" feeding frenzy of duh.

Will Halperin's comment be the dumbest prediction this political season? It's entirely possible.

Then again, we also have six months of Bill Kristol ahead of us.

Lord help us all.