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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Bernie Sanders bearded the Fox in his den last night. He outFoxed them, plain and simple. Rather than shunning Fox News, Bernie accepted an invitation from them to hold a town hall meeting on air. And he not only held his own, at some points he even appeared to have the Fox audience solidly behind him. This defies a whole lot of media storylines, and punditary heads are still exploding in Washington as the impact of Bernie's town hall reverberates.

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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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Political scapegoating of immigrants is certainly nothing new in American politics. Even a cursory look at American history shows this to be true, from the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in the 1790s, to the anti-Catholic-immigrant "Know Nothing" Party of the 1850s, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1880s, to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, to the scapegoating of Mexican laborers in the 1950s (Operation Wetback). Being anti-immigrant is about as American as apple pie, as horrifying as that might sound to those who are more comfortable sweeping such excesses under the historical rug. Donald Trump, in other words, did not singlehandedly create xenophobia, instead he merely revived a longstanding tradition of using the issue successfully as a political bludgeon.

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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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Before attempting to draw any comparisons or contrasts between Bernie Sanders and the rest of the 2020 Democratic presidential field, what I find rather ironic is to compare his second bid for the White House to two of the candidates from last time around: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Because, whether he likes it or not, Sanders is now close to occupying the position that Clinton held the last time around, and (if he's lucky) he might just follow the path Trump charted in the 2016 race.

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