The Republican Party is now the party of Donald Trump. That's a pretty astounding statement, but as Trump continues to not only lead in all the primary polls but also to drive the debate for all the other contenders, it would be hard to make the case that Trump hasn't completed what might be called a hostile takeover of the Republican Party brand. This could always change, of course -- nothing is ever set in stone in a presidential race. But for the time being, Trump's not only the party frontrunner, he is actually defining the race for everyone else.

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In the midst of the current eruption of nonsense over American immigration policy from out on the campaign trail, I have a few more targeted questions to ask of all the candidates. They're really just extensions of one basic question, really, which would be: "What will your policy towards Cuba be if you become president?" However, since Republicans and Democrats have different basic viewpoints on the issue, it must be broken down into more specific queries in order to elicit useful answers. Both questions, for different reasons, will be tough for Democrats and Republicans alike.

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Vice President Joe Biden certainly has got the media talking. All it really took was one leak to Maureen Dowd and a meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the recurring story in the media is now: "Biden's son Beau made a deathbed plea to his father to run for president again, and he's now seriously considering it." That's a compelling political narrative, to be sure. The Wall Street Journal is even reporting that Biden's now leaning towards running. Now, I have no inside sources of my own, so I have no idea what's really going on in Biden's head, but no matter how likely it turns out to be, a Biden candidacy bears political examination beyond the simple question of: "Will he or won't he run?"

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Another week has gone by, and Donald Trump remains the Republican frontrunner in the presidential nomination race. We've noticed that all the inside-the-Beltway pundits who so confidently predicted Trump's imminent and inevitable downfall are now slowly starting to revisit their predictions. This is making them extremely nervous, of course. Some are still finding solace in the "Trump's going to say something any day now that will sink him like a stone" way of thinking, but their numbers are getting smaller as time goes by and Trump defies political gravity once again.

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Could the next presidential election be one where both sides get the candidate who inspires the most passion among the base? It would have seemed almost ridiculous to suggest as recently as last month, but the possibility that America could be given the choice of Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders doesn't seem so far-fetched nowadays. If these are the choices the two major parties coalesce behind, it'll certainly be one of the most unique presidential elections ever.

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Yesterday, I wrote some advice for Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Political pundits are wont to do this sort of thing, of course, but today I'd like to shift gears somewhat and give Clinton some credit for handling a situation perfectly. Hey, I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

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We're going to begin today with a wrapup of the week that was in the presidential campaigns, and as befitting his status as the Republican frontrunner, we're going to start with Donald Trump (if you're sick of hearing about Trump, just skip down eight or ten paragraphs and continue reading).

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Legalizing both medicinal and recreational marijuana will be on the ballot in Ohio this November. But this news is actually dividing marijuana activists once again, which might have some political repercussions for the entire movement. Because of the way the proposed law was drafted, it would create an official oligopoly of only ten growers for the entire state. Ohio has over 11 million people, so each official farm would serve the needs of over one million people. That's pretty unbalanced, to put it mildly, since the other 75,000 farmers in the state would be out in the cold.

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Donald Trump is unique. Let's start off with that. He's an outsider to the political process, he's got name recognition other candidates would die for, and he makes his own rules out on the campaign trail. He is (to use a word I coined a while back) a "celebritician" -- a celebrity who decided he'd become a politician. This horrifies many, mostly because he's been so successful (so far). But he's certainly not the first celebrity to toss his hat into the political ring, although he is the first big one to emerge on the Republican side in a while (ever since the days of Senator Fred Thompson, by my reckoning). But since each celebritician is unique, can anything be learned from the past history of quixotic celebrity political campaigns?

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The entire political punditry world has been holding its collective breath since last Thursday night, waiting for some polling numbers to interpret. As usual, polling takes longer than most people think. The first Republican debate, after all, was held Thursday night. Most pollsters take at least two days to conduct a poll, then maybe another day of number-crunching, before the results are made public. Due to this process, a lot of new polls will likely appear in the next two or three days. NBC beat them all to the punch, though, and released their first poll results over the weekend. The numbers -- if they prove to be valid, and not outliers -- show a remarkable shakeup happening in public opinion as a direct result of the debates, at least in the field right below the frontrunner. One question in particular from this poll seems to show some very bad news for the Republican Party, but before we get to that let's take a look at the whole field.

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