President Joe Biden has rolled out a new moniker in the political lexicon: "ultra-MAGA." Unfortunately, this is probably a branding misstep, because while it is rather descriptive of the phenomenon Biden is trying to draw attention to (being a fanatical adherent of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" philosophy), it seems more like a positive term a supporter would come up with rather than a slur an opponent would use. So far, I haven't seen either Donald Trump or any other Republican fully embrace the term, but it seems like it's only a matter of time before they do.

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The Democratic Party is in the midst of a minor revolution of the scheduling variety. Earlier, they announced that all states wishing to be early-voting states in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary campaign would have to submit applications to the national party -- and that there was no guarantee that the four who had [...]

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Intraparty, Republican-on-Republican violence aside, however, this was really a one-story week in Washington.

That story was the immense scoop of Politico publishing an almost-100-page draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. This is virtually unheard of -- such a major leak from the Supreme Court. But it's easy to see why someone decided it was time to tell the public what was about to happen.

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The very first column I ever wrote (for the Huffington Post, I didn't actually start this blog until a year later) was titled "Democratic Demagoguery." It urged Democrats to take a page from the Republican playbook and learn how to viscerally present issues and their party's agenda, in order to get more voters to vote for them. It started off (you'll soon note that this was 2006, as some of the current "hot button" issues plainly show) with the following:

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Supreme Courts are commonly referred to using the name of the chief justice who runs them. In my own lifetime, we've had the Warren Court, the Burger Court, the Rehnquist Court, and now the Roberts Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts. The chief justice is not selected or elected by the other justices, it is a permanent position that only changes after the death or retirement of the previous holder of the title. But it is becoming increasingly obvious (and will continue to become so) that the current court is no longer being led by Roberts. We might as well just adjust to the new reality and start calling it the Alito Court instead.

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Primary season is about to get underway across the country, and this year all eyes are on the various Republican contests, as seen through a single lens: Donald Trump's endorsements. This is horserace political commentary at its best or worst (depending on your outlook on horserace reporting in general). Tomorrow night will kick off this frenzy, with one of the most-watched races around -- the Senate primary in Ohio. But while much ink will be spilled dissecting the outcome of this race and many others (in the weeks to come), when considering Trump's endorsement record and the relative value of such endorsements, it's important to consider a few factors which might get lost in the fray. So let's take a look at the biggest of these.

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As we write this, everyone inside the Beltway is getting ready for the upcoming White House Correspondents' Dinner, which President Joe Biden has said he will be attending (after a hiatus of presidents attending due to COVID and, earlier, due to Donald Trump having incredibly thin skin). But, as usual, our invitation seems to have been lost in the mail or something. Ahem.

We are excited with a sort of "something good is about to happen" feeling, however, because the House Select January 6th Committee has finally announced a preliminary schedule for public hearings. Here's the story (as it stands so far):

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If Republicans do take control of both chambers of Congress, the margin of control in each will be the most important variable. In the Senate, the margin will likely be fairly close, but nobody really knows what it might be like in the House. If Republicans have a blowout House election season and pick up dozens and dozens of seats, this will almost certainly make Kevin McCarthy's job a lot easier; but if the margin is tight (maybe not quite as tight as the one Nancy Pelosi has been dealing with, but perhaps within 10 or 15 votes) then any faction bigger than the margin will be able to dictate its own terms -- as the Tea Partiers proved, the last time this happened.

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As distasteful as it may be, it seems like a good time to consider what divided government next year would look like, and what might happen in such a scenario. Of course, nobody knows what the outcome of the midterm congressional election will be, and as Ukraine should have taught us, sometimes crises pop up that aren't a part of the American political cycle at all. So we have no idea right now what the most important issue facing the voters will be in November. It could very well be something that isn't even on anyone's radar at the current moment. But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that Republicans win control back of both the House and the Senate. This would give President Joe Biden a hostile Congress for the remaining two years of his first term.

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President Joe Biden seems to be getting more engaged in the process of the midterm election campaign of late. He has been travelling around the country a lot more (partly this is due to the fluctuating state of the COVID pandemic, of course), he has been making the case for his own record of accomplishments a lot better, and he now seems to be openly considering making a dramatic move that he has actually supported all along: forgiving at least $10,000 of student debt. Notably, this comes only days after Senator Elizabeth Warren publicly urged Biden to start using executive orders to get some things done now, while it could matter for the party's chances in the fall. Maybe Biden got the message.

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