Will we ever get to see Donald Trump debate anyone before the next presidential election? That was my immediate thought upon reading that the Commission on Presidential Debates (C.P.D.) has just announced the schedule for their four planned debates (three presidential, one vice-presidential). I consider this to be rather optimistic for a number of reasons, since at this point the safe bet would either be that any debates which are held won't be run by the C.P.D. -- or that Donald Trump won't show up for any debate (no matter who is running it).

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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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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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And then there were six... or five, really. The Republicans just announced who will be allowed on their debate stage tomorrow night, and they have once again winnowed their field. This time around, only six presidential candidates made the cut: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, and Tim Scott. However, Trump has already said he's not going to show up, which will leave only five on the debate stage. Asa Hutchinson did not qualify for his second straight debate (making me wonder why he's still in the race), and this time around Doug Burgum also got shut out (which he is not happy about). Mike Pence completely took himself out of the running last week, so the debate field has shrunk down to manageable proportions. Each candidate should get a decent amount of speaking time with only five of them on the stage, to put this slightly differently. And the moderators won't have to waste time on the longest-of-the-longshots.

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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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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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