The House of Representatives actually did their job today -- which is surprising enough right there -- but the truly shocking part (to me, at any rate) is that they did so three whole days early! America is facing the possibility of a government shutdown just after midnight Friday, which normally would have resulted in a standoff right up until the last possible minute -- followed by a legislative frenzy to get something on President Joe Biden's desk to avoid the shutdown. That the House passed a bill late on Tuesday seems like progress, at least using the measuring stick of how things normally happen in one of these standoffs.

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Donald Trump is not being coy about what he would do if he became president a second time, and his vision for his second term is downright frightening. He would rule as a strongman or dictator and implement all of the darkest fantasies both he and his even-more-frightening advisors have been having for years. This is not an overblown or hysterical thing to say anymore -- if anything, it is the polite and watered-down version, since I didn't use the words "Nazi" or "Hitler" in describing Trump's dystopian plans.

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There were supposed to be three big political stories this week, but in the end two of them turned out to be duds. Donald Trump testified at his New York fraud trial, but without video or audio recordings of him answering questions under oath, the impact was significantly lessened. The other Republican presidential candidates (the five who qualified, at any rate) met for their third Republican debate, but it mostly turned out to be a snoozefest.

Tuesday night, however, more than lived up to expectations. The off-year elections which were held ended up as a big night for Democrats almost across the board. Put quite simply: abortion rights won. Big time. Everywhere.

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So instead of a microanalysis of sheer meaninglessness, I decided to write today about the rest of the field, which grew in two significant ways today. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced he would not be running for re-election (which just about guarantees a pickup for the Republicans in the Senate). And Jill Stein announced she would be the Green Party's presidential nominee this time around.

Manchin is not exactly being coy about his plans, either. He is making his bid for the presidential nomination from the "No Labels" effort -- which has tens of millions of dollars behind it and is already getting itself on state ballots in multiple states. Manchin wasted no time in making this pivot, as evidenced by his statement of retirement:

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What was previously merely obvious has now become downright undeniable: the right to have an abortion is the most potent political issue around right now. When women's reproductive rights are on the ballot, it is a winning issue. Every time. This is going to help Democrats and continue to hurt Republicans for as long as women's rights are not universally protected in every state in the Union.

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Republicans are in disarray. Let's start with that this week, shall we?

This week in the Senate, Republicans spent five whole hours ripping into one of their own. A group of GOP senators tried to force the hand of Senator Tommy Tuberville over his petulant hold on fast-tracking all military promotions, but to no avail.

The House, meanwhile, voted for an Israel military aid bill that is going nowhere in the Senate because (among other reasons) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is diametrically opposed to the strategy.

The House also took the time to vote down a censure of a Democrat that drew Marjorie Taylor Greene's wrath, but also voted to let George Santos keep his seat. On both votes, there were significant numbers of Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.

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Polling for the likeliest of general election matchups this far out -- almost exactly one year until people actually get to vote for president next November -- cannot be seen as definitive, but it also cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant (since it's pretty obvious at this point that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to wind up winning the two major parties' nominations). But it won't actually be just a two-man contest, since there will be other names on the ballot, in what is likely to be enough states to make a big difference. Both Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Cornel West have announced they are going to be running as independents, and who knows who the Green Party or the nascent No Labels effort will decide to nominate? At the very least, there may be four names for voters to choose from. Perhaps even five or six.

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Boo!

It is time once again, goblins and ghouls, to offer up some frightening political horror stories for both sides of the aisle. As in years past, we have brewed up a witches' cauldron of fearful spine-tingling tales to scare the pants right off you, no matter where you dwell on the political spectrum.

And, as promised, there will be pumpkins! We have carved two jack o'lanterns to fit each chilling tale, although we do admit that the second one was rather hard to think up an actual image for (we went with California, although upon reflection maybe we should have carved a train... or a snarling dog's face...).

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Mike Pence surprised everyone this weekend, when he abruptly announced he was ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination during a speech Pence gave in Las Vegas. The surprise wasn't that Pence's presidential ambitions were doomed -- anyone with half a brain could see that from the get-go -- but that Pence had actually realized it himself, this early in the process. Personally, I knew from the day he announced that Mike Pence was never going to win the Republican nomination -- not even if Donald Trump had suddenly decided not to run. Even without Trump in the race, Pence would still have been doomed. His flavor of Republicanism is a thing of the past, he has an incredibly bland and smarmy personality (he really deserves to have Trump hit him for being "sanctimonious," much more than Ron DeSantis), and he enraged the MAGA crowd by not following the Dear Leader's order to somehow wave a magic wand and overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6th. Add all of that up and it equals a big defeat from the Republican voting base, plain and simple. So watching the coverage of the development on yesterday's morning political-chatfest shows wasn't any real surprise (other than the early timing of it). What was a surprise (for me, at least) this Sunday morning was to see Arnold Schwarzenegger being interviewed (for some unfathomable reason) on NBC's Meet The Press.

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After three weeks of junior-high-school levels of adolescent slap-fighting, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally (!) chose a speaker. Was this largely due to fatigue at how tawdry the whole clown show was, or was it the fear that some moderate members were actually considering working with Democrats to come up with a solution? We'll never know, but we certainly are glad it's over. For now, that is. The rule on the "motion to vacate" hasn't changed, so while Speaker Mike Johnson seems to be enjoying something of a honeymoon period with even the furthest-right of his caucus, things could always go south for him, since all it would take would be five disgruntled Republicans to kick him out too. And disgruntled is what MAGA extremists do best, so we'll have to see whether this comes to pass or not in the weeks ahead.

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