The Mueller Report is finally out. Portions of it have been redacted, and congressional Democrats will doubtlessly continue their push to get an unredacted version to read, but even if that happens the public may never get to see the full text. So for now, we've only got what was released today to examine. And the emerging consensus seems to be that there was no one glaring thing to point to which will lead to Donald Trump's downfall. As usual, there is plenty of fishy and questionable and possibly illegal conduct by both Trump and his minions, but none of it is likely to spur immediate impeachment hearings.

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Today is not just the day when millions of Americans have to file their income taxes, if is also the day when the millions of Democratic presidential candidates also have to file their first quarter fundraising numbers. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but it certainly seems like millions at times, doesn't it?

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President Donald Trump embarrassed himself today by claiming [TOTAL LIE], and then following up on Twitter with [INSANE CONSPIRACY THEORY]. Both were immediately disproven by [WIDELY AVAILABLE AND INDISPUTABLE FACTS]. When asked for comment, the White House merely stated that "the president's words speak for themselves." Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway was quoted blaming [ANYONE BUT TRUMP] for the whole fracas.

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When pizza magnate Herman Cain ran for president, he came up with a snappy slogan for his inane tax plan: "Nine, nine, nine." Donald Trump apparently thought the man was a financial genius, because he recently nominated Cain for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve. But today, the Senate sent both Cain and Trump a very clear (Germanic) message: "Nein, nein, nein."

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Bernie Sanders made some news today as he unveiled his most recent version of a "Medicare For All" bill in the Senate. Notably, four of his competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Senate signed on to his bill (this is notable because normally this wouldn't happen -- normally each candidate would put out their own version and argue that theirs was superior to all the other candidates' efforts). Sanders has long been a champion of single-payer health care, of course, and his is the strongest voice on the issue mostly because he almost singlehandedly pushed it to the fore in the Democratic Party. Four years ago, it was considered (sneeringly, by most "serious" Democrats) to be "too radical" an idea to ever happen. Now, it is so mainstream within the Democratic Party that each presidential candidate is measured by whether they support Medicare For All, or merely some weaker or more incremental version. That is a sea-change, and one that Bernie should rightfully be proud of.

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It's time once again to take a look at the emerging 2020 Democratic presidential field. Those of you who sneer at horserace columns would be advised to just skip today's offering altogether, we should point out right up front. And as usual, we have some new candidates and some updates on the current horde of hopefuls.

We've refined our ever-changing column format this time around, adding a "campaign news" segment at the start, followed by the three tiers of candidates and then some conclusions. This format may endure, or it may get tweaked further as the race develops, but for now it'll have to do.

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In an extraordinary turn of events, President Donald Trump has had to face reality not once but twice within the same week. Seeing as how this has only happened a handful of times throughout his entire term, this double-shot of reality is rather notable. The last time he was forced by those around him to readjust his worldview to actual facts was after he had hastily announced he was pulling all U.S. troops out of Syria. It took weeks for his advisors to force him to backtrack on this decision, but in the end they successfully convinced him. This time around, though, it took only days -- and it happened not just once but twice.

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[Program Note: Still too far under the weather to write today, sorry. But I did see that Democrats have now introduced a bill in Congress which would make Puerto Rico our 51st state, so I thought it was time to dust off the following column, written over 10 years ago. Obviously, the issues [...]

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Even though most of the political media refused to acknowledge it until after the fact, one big political issue emerged during the 2018 midterms that turned out to be a real winner for Democrats: protecting people's healthcare. This was really nothing more than a self-inflicted wound by the Republicans, since the voter backlash had been growing ever since the GOP tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with absolutely nothing. Democrats merely pointed this out in their campaigns, and the voters backed them overwhelmingly on the issue. And now it seems that Donald Trump is doubling down on this losing strategy in preparation for the 2020 campaign. Democrats, meanwhile, are moving forward on healthcare in a positive and constructive way, which paints the starkest of differences between the two parties' political attitudes, right at the start of the campaign season.

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As I wrote about yesterday, the Democratic 2020 presidential field is getting bigger all the time. With so many viable candidates running, it's getting tougher and tougher for each one of them to stand out in any appreciable way. Most of the attention in the media so far has focused on rather superficial traits about the candidates (this is nothing new, I should mention), but that doesn't mean that substantive policy proposals aren't being put forward. So today I'd like to zero in one on particular candidate who seems to be proposing some of the boldest ideas in the field (at least for now). Because whatever else you may think of her, Elizabeth Warren has certainly staked out a few cutting-edge positions.

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