We return after our extended holiday break to a growing realization in the political world. We had already come to this conclusion a while back, but it seems more and more people are now realizing that, barring any force majeure appearing on the horizon, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president next year. His polling tells this story plainly: Trump is up roughly 50 points over his nearest competitor nationally, and although his lead isn't quite as commanding in the early-voting states, it is still pretty daunting (Trump is up roughly 30 points in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina). Voting will begin next month, meaning there just isn't much time left for any of this to change -- and no real reason to think it will.

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President Joe Biden seems to be having some trouble getting young voters enthused about voting for him next year. There's a very simple answer to this problem -- one that he should adopt as soon as possible. He should announce that he has "evolved" on the subject of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana for adults, and unveil a new plan to make it happen on the federal level. This wouldn't be anywhere near as risky as the first time the word "evolve" was attached to Biden getting out in front of a political issue. For Biden, it'd be seen as a real Nixon-goes-to-China shift in position, which would only add to its appeal. And it is tailor-made to get young voters to the polls in droves (as well as plenty of older voters as well).

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I read a rather interesting article in my local paper this weekend which put forth an idea that has the possibility of injecting some excitement into President Joe Biden's re-election campaign. The idea's a pretty simple one: Vice President Kamala Harris should voluntarily announce she will not run for her office again on Biden's ticket, and instead will be returning to California to run for the governor's seat in 2026. This would free Biden up so he could name a new running mate, which could indeed generate some enthusiasm among the Democratic voting base.

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A completely pointless debate (at least in terms of the 2024 presidential race) will take place tonight on Fox News. Ron DeSantis will be debating Gavin Newsom, with Sean Hannity as moderator. But even though I'm a diehard political junkie, I may not even tune in to see it, due to its absolute irrelevance to current events. It's likely that just catching the highlights later will be enough.

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The House of Representatives is going to vote tomorrow on whether to formally expel a member of its ranks. And at this point, things don't look good for George Santos. Expulsion from the House would require a two-thirds majority, which would mean a substantial number of Republicans would have to vote to kick one of their own out. But the whip counts circulating today seem to indicate that up to 90 Republicans are now willing to do so. This would be historic, since it would be only the sixth House expulsion ever and only the third since the Civil War. But it will make history in one other interesting way as well, since if Santos is kicked out he will be the first Republican ever to suffer this fate.

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Impeaching a United States president should be a rare and unusual thing. And for the first two centuries of our existence, it was. We had one impeachment that failed (Andrew Johnson) and one that was threatened but didn't happen, because the president resigned instead (Richard Nixon). Since then, however, it has become a lot less rare. First Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about having an affair with a White House intern. Then Donald Trump was impeached twice, for trying to pressure a foreign nation to manufacture an investigation of his political rival and then for trying to overturn the result of the election that put his rival into power instead of him. And now we face another possible impeachment, this one of Trump's rival President Joe Biden, for the crime of... well, they'll figure something out.

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Donald Trump just gave the team working to re-elect President Joe Biden a rather large early Christmas present. Apparently, Trump has never gotten over his failure to enact "a full repeal" of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise affectionately known as "Obamacare"). This involved the big dramatic scene with Senator John McCain turning in a "thumbs-down" vote on the Senate floor, in literal fashion -- which was a complete humiliation for Trump. A humiliation, like all the others, that he's never forgotten or gotten over. So he's looking to re-fight that particular battle, it seems.

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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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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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