Barack Obama has had not only his most stable year of job approval polling, but quite likely the most stable year ever recorded for any president (since scientific public opinion polling began). Now, this doesn't mean Obama's been charting extraordinarily good numbers (he is roughly 13 points lower than President Bill Clinton was, at this point in his second term), nor extraordinarily bad numbers (Obama is also polling 13 points above where George W. Bush was, at this point) -- but Obama's numbers have indeed been extraordinarily stable. Both his job approval monthly average and his job disapproval monthly average have kept within a range of around one percent, all year long.

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The Republican presidential candidates don't seem to realize it, but they're in the process of seriously undermining their own "tough guy" brand. Republicans have always seen themselves as "the Daddy party" (as opposed to Democrats' "Mommy party," of course), which has always meant no-nonsense toughness in the face of any opposition to their agenda. But how can American voters square this with the collective hissy fit the GOP candidates are now throwing over debate moderators? To put it the most obvious way, why should any voter believe that any of these folks will be able to get tough with (for example) Vladimir Putin, when they can't even handle snarky questions from journalists? Republicans seem to have now embraced what was (ironically) a major political problem for Jeb Bush's father -- the wimp factor.

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I haven't done one of these types of column in a while, but figured it was a good time to do so, since I punted on writing yesterday to get interviewed on HuffPost Live and since tomorrow is our annual Hallowe'en column, with a scary nightmare story for both left and right. Because of all this, there's been a lot of political news made this week and I have nowhere else to talk about it all than here.

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No matter what the eventual outcome, this year's Republican primary race is sure to go down in history as one of the most bizarre political contests ever. Well, considering what happened in 2012, perhaps I should amend that with "...until the next one happens." We currently have two frontrunners, with everyone else running so far back in the pack they're ecstatic if they ever post a double-digit number in the polls (which few of them can manage to do, even in state-level polling). The two GOP frontrunners have, between them, a total of zero days of political experience. One is a megalomaniac billionaire and one is a world-class surgeon who seems to be trying to prove the old canard that doctors all think they've been promoted to God.

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Hillary Clinton just had the best week of her campaign yet. Not only did she shine at the Benghazi hearing yesterday, three of her Democratic opponents dropped out of the presidential nomination race. Joe Biden was never actually in the race, but his announcement that he wouldn't run was more significant than Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee ending their campaigns. This leaves Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and Lawrence Lessig. Of those four, only Sanders and Clinton have any chance at winning the nomination, and Hillary's doing better in the polls than Sanders. So, all in all, a very good week for Hillary Clinton.

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It has been a busy few weeks for the Democratic presidential race. First the debate, then Jim Webb's exit from the race, and today the news that Vice President Joe Biden has declined to jump into the contest. Tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi committee. All of this will have an effect on the voting public, but it's still too early to make any definitive statements as to how everything is going to shake out. Still, some trendlines are already emerging, and they could be very good news indeed for Clinton.

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It's been a few weeks, so it's time once again to take a peek at the Republican presidential primary race. There are new polls out today, and the most interesting thing about them is the reflection of the public's reaction to the first Democratic debate. I'll be writing about the Democratic side of things in the next few days (never fear), but for today I thought the Republicans were worth a quick look, seeing as how they'll be debating again next Wednesday.

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After two seemingly-endless Republican debates, this week the Democratic candidates for president finally got their turn to face off against each other on national television. While the audience was smaller (since Donald Trump was not on stage), it was still a lot bigger than most political debates in the past -- over 15 million people watched on CNN, and a further million livestreamed it. This is up from the usual audience of 2-to-5 million, it should be noted, from years past.

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In two of the three presidential debates which have so far taken place, marijuana legal reform has been brought up in a serious way. Right there, that's a mark of respect for marijuana reform that has simply never previously existed at this level in our nation's political debate. The concept that the federal "War On Weed" needs to end is now about as mainstream as it gets, and after the people have led so admirably on the issue in the past decade, the politicians are finally deciding it is safe to follow this trend.

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Overall, I would agree with some of the closing statements -- this was a much more substantial debate than anything the Republicans have yet put on. No insults were hurled, no bigoted statements were made, on the whole it was a lot more sober than watching Trump take on all comers. However, having said that, tonight's debate was a lot more spirited and feisty than I expected. There weren't direct face-to-face confrontations, but a lot of differences were clearly outlined between the candidates' stances.

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