One of Donald Trump's presidential heroes is Andrew Jackson. Jackson rose to the presidency in 1828 after his first attempt failed. The centerpiece of his second campaign was to shine a bright light on the "Corrupt Bargain" in the House of Representatives, which named John Quincy Adams president in 1824 even though he had fewer Electoral College votes than Jackson (it was a four-candidate race and none of them got an outright Electoral College majority, which threw the election's decision into the House). I was reminded today of a central quote from Jackson's second campaign where he spoke about what had happened in the 1824 election, because it seems downright appropriate when discussing our current president: "There was cheating, and corruption, and bribery too." At this point, that seems to accurately sum up Trump's 2020 campaign as well.

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Up until today, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been the person riding the brakes on the growing calls to impeach President Donald Trump. This is no longer true. Pelosi has now begun the process of Congress attempting to remove a sitting president from office. By waiting this long, though, Pelosi is now absolutely immune from any accusation that she's in any sort of rush to judgment.

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Well, the numbers are in, so it's time to take another look at the Democratic horserace, after the third debate shook things up a bit. There are new polls out at both the national level and in Iowa, the Democratic National Committee just announced the new criteria for the fifth debate (to happen in November), and the field continues to shrink as time goes by. So a lot's been going on out on the hustings.

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We're in the midst of a brand-new breaking scandal -- one that's so new it hasn't even been assigned a "-gate" label yet. Ukraine-gate? Kiev-gate? MassiveTrumpCollusion-gate? As was entirely appropriate, Hillary Clinton had the pithiest tweet of the week: "The president asked a foreign power to help him win an election. Again."

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It was little noticed, but last week the U.S. government admitted that this year's budget deficit has already topped the trillion-dollar mark. And the fiscal year won't be over for another month. This will be only the fifth time in American history that the annual deficit has been over a trillion dollars, and the other four years were all in the depths of the Great Recession. We're supposed to have a good economy right now, but we're running a deficit as if we're in some pretty bad times. Of course, all of this proves how both Donald Trump and the Republicans have been lying to the American public all along, and how Democrats can continue to make the rather easy argument that the only time the nation gets its fiscal house in anything resembling good order is when there's a Democrat in the White House.

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It seems like Elizabeth Warren is getting more electable by the day. The more voters see of her, the more they seem to like her, and the more they are tending to support her candidacy. This already has supporters of Joe Biden concerned, although it's not quite a two-person race yet. Bernie Sanders still has virtually the same level of support as Warren, as the two have been locked in a race for second place for months now. But Sanders may not have the ability to broaden his base as much as Warren, who is increasingly seen as somewhat of a compromise between the Democratic Socialism Sanders champions and the incrementalism of Biden.

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We have to begin today with an apology. Five years ago, without knowing any better, we erroneously reported in this space that there would not be another Friday the 13th which coincided with a full moon until 2049. So it was much to our surprise that we heard that this week we all were going to see another one, only five short years after we feverishly coined the word "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia" to describe those with the very specific neurotic fear (-phobia) of both full moons (seleno-) and Fridays (-frigga-) the 13th (-triskaideka-).

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Finally, everyone on one stage! That was my reaction before the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate even began, because for the first time it's a one-night affair. Unfortunately, at least 11 candidates have already qualified for the next debate, with a few other candidates hovering on the brink of qualification, so it's looking like we're going to have to wait for the fifth debate to see all the frontrunners on the same stage together again.

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Tomorrow night, ABC will host the third Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle. For the first time, the top 10 candidates will all be on the same stage together. I have no idea what questions will be asked of the candidates, but if it's anything like the past two debates then they'll probably miss the biggest issue that most Democratic voters are looking to see addressed by the potential nominees. No, I'm not speaking of climate change, or healthcare reform, or gun control, or immigration reform, or any of the other single issues the moderators have used to show the (mostly) minor differences between the various candidates' stances. Instead, I'm speaking of the number one priority that Democratic voters have been telling pollsters throughout the entire contest so far is the most important to them: beating Donald Trump. Which is why what I'd like to see tomorrow night is an entire debate segment devoted to how, exactly, each candidate would take on Trump if they become the one who gets the chance to confront him face-to-face on a general election debate stage.

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There are two special House elections in North Carolina today. Both of them should be foregone conclusions that nobody but political wonks pay attention to, because both of them are such solid-red districts. But while that is true in one of the special House elections tonight, it definitely isn't true in the other. In North Carolina's third district, the Republican candidate is going to chalk up an easy win, and nobody's going to pay any attention. But in the ninth district, Democrats have a real shot at flipping a district that Donald Trump won by 12 points in 2016. Whether they manage to eke out a victory or not, though, the very closeness of the race is making other Republicans increasingly nervous.

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