Over 20 years ago -- right around when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of our state -- we were fond of shocking people by pointing out: "Politics has become indistinguishable from show business." The entertainment industry and our political system had been slowly merging, ever since the ascension of B-movie actor Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s. But we have to say, we never foresaw the day when politics would become completely replaced by entertainment and entertainment alone. And we seem to be fast approaching that point.

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Congress has now successfully punted their budget negotiations into the next calendar year. The most astonishing part of this fact is that they managed to do so two days before the deadline, which (these days) is actually pretty impressive. We didn't go down to the wire with midnight votes, and we didn't have to see the media go through one of their "The government is about to shut down!" frenzies. So that's progress, of a sort.

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What is one to make of the sudden rise in physical altercations (or threats thereof) in the halls of Congress? Well, you can play it for comedy, that's certainly the first impulse. Or you can adopt a sort of "Tsk, tsk!" tone and go for the moral highroad. Then there is the traditional fallback of the opposition party using it to score political points. But in these uncertain times (to say the least) one might be tempted to fit this into a bigger picture and say it is part and parcel of a dark and very dangerous trend in American politics right now: the normalization and acceptance (by one party) of political violence.

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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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