It's been a pretty momentous week in the history of American politics, folks. The Republican Party is going to nominate Donald Trump to run for the highest office in the land. Politics and entertainment are now one. The trend that Ronald Reagan began -- furthered in no small part by Sarah Palin -- is now complete. In other words: welcome to the next episode of Who Wants To Be President?

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As I predicted last month, President Barack Obama consolidated his recent gains in public opinion polling in April, and only showed very slight improvement in his job approval and job disapproval numbers. While this doesn't sound very exciting, it does show that Obama's recent gains were not temporary, but instead show some real staying power. Let's take a look at the new chart.

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It is now official. Seventeen candidates ran for the Republican presidential nomination, and the sixteenth of these just suspended his campaign. This leaves Donald Trump as the last man standing. A whole lot of people who never thought we'd arrive at this point are now going to have to get used to the phrase: "Donald Trump, Republican nominee."

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Boy, it isn't every day you get to write a headline like that! But those are the kinds of feelings Ted Cruz seems to bring out in everyone -- left, right, and center.

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To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd have to write this article. I fully expected someone else to dig this stuff out, if the calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race (or "say nice things about Hillary Clinton") began. Now that they have, I still haven't seen any detailed reminders of how the 2008 Democratic primary race ended yet. So I went ahead and dug them out on my own.

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It's time once again to play another installment of our ongoing game of "pick the primary winners." Now, whenever multiple states hold their primaries on the same day, it has become de rigueur for the pundits to slap some cutesy name on it. This started with the granddaddy of all cute primary names, "Super Tuesday" (which was also, confusingly, known as "SEC Tuesday" this year). However, because a lot of states seem to shift around their primary dates each election cycle, new names are constantly being thought up for the new primary groupings. For tomorrow night's primary, the punditocracy seems to have settled on "Acela Tuesday," but for some reason this irks my sensibilities. Maybe it's because I never thought "Acela" was all that cool a name to begin with. It sounds like something a drug company dreamed up to hawk their newest laxative, or something.

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You have to have at least a little bit of pity these days for the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus. He seems like one of those guys in a horror flick who keeps trying to convince everyone that the monster isn't real, and that everything can be explained by rational means... right up until the monster unexpectedly (for maximum shock value) rips his head clean off, in graphic 3D. The guy who has persevered in keeping his little group of teenyboppers together and somewhat sane ("If we can just get out to the barn and fire up that Model T/snowmobile/hot air balloon/mine cart/tractor... we can make it out of here to safety!"), who eventually sacrifices himself (in some horrific way) so that the rest of the group of worthless highschoolers can have a chance at survival. You know the guy, right?

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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was supposed to be the only person capable of unifying the Republican party (especially the fractious House Republicans), and was portrayed as some sort of savior who had the power to fix the inherent problems and get things done, by showing the world a new Republican agenda for the future. "Regular order" would return to the House, all members would be listened to, and Republicans would unify around a budget rather than incessantly gumming up the works. Ryan was committed to showing Republicans could be the "party of ideas," which they would then turn into legislation and vote on before the election, as a shining centerpiece of Republicanism. Sure, all these bills would likely be vetoed (if they even stood a chance in the Senate), but that was immaterial, because the public would be able to see what Republicans would do if they ever managed to take the White House. The Republican candidate would have a ready-made platform on his (or her) first day in office, all tied up in a nice bow.

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Believe it or not, it was a fairly quiet week on the Republican campaign trail. That's news in a sort of "man bites dog" (or, at the very least, "rabid attack dog refuses to bite") sort of way. In fact, the biggest news from the Republican side this week was Paul Ryan definitively refusing to be the Republican nominee this year. Ryan delivered a speech (called "Shermanesque" by every political reporter in existence) which essentially said: "Man, you couldn't pay me to be the GOP nominee this year -- no thanks, but I'll see you all bright and early for the 2020 contest!" This is a smart move indeed for Ryan, since it is looking more and more like Republicans don't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the White House this particular year. So we're ignoring all the "but that's what he said about the speakership" tease articles, and we're taking Ryan at his word. No how, no way is Ryan going to be the nominee this year.

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The fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage achieved its biggest success last week, when California's governor signed a minimum wage hike that will bring the entire state up to a $15-an-hour minimum within the next few years. This is a milestone for a number of reasons, the most impressive being that it is the first such statewide measure to be enacted in the entire country. But what was really notable about the new California law was the way it happened. Because it was a real vindication of Bernie Sanders's contention that without a "political revolution," nothing much of note will get done in politics these days.

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