I did consider, when contemplating a headline for today, riffing on the Grease song "Beauty School Dropout," but I decided to pay homage to Neil Sedaka instead. Just in case anyone's interested....

I chose this theme because it seems it's been a week of politicians being urged to drop out of their respective races. So far, few have, but the entreaties will likely continue and continue to grow in urgency. But dropping out is indeed hard to do for any politician, since entering into politics as a candidate almost requires you to have an outsized opinion of: yourself, your importance to your party, and your ability to influence the direction of the country. Donald Trump has the biggest ego of any politician I've ever seen, but there are plenty of others whose egos are pretty outsized as well. It's the nature of the business, really.

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Well, the results are in from deep in the heart of Texas, and it was a big night for both parties' political establishment wings. On the Republican side, two candidates will now head to a runoff election in a few more months (May 26th), but the sitting senator surprisingly got more votes than his firebrand challenger. On the Democratic side, the establishment candidate beat out his own firebrand challenger and won the nomination outright. Neither of these outcomes was guaranteed, and the vote was pretty close in both, but both parties' bigwigs are undoubtedly now heaving a big sigh of relief.

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It was a big week in American politics, with Donald Trump giving his first official State Of The Union speech of his second term to Congress, but we felt even this was overshadowed by Trump seemingly slouching towards a new war with Iran. America going to war used to be a very big deal to the public, but on Trump's watch it seems to be just another item within the firehose of distractions he continually creates.

That sounds cynical, but it's not even the most cynical take on things. Hardcore cynics point out that Trump seems to launch his military attacks whenever the Epstein files begin to get some traction in the news again. We're not sure if we totally buy into that thinking, but it is worth considering, seeing how Trump does almost everything for the stupidest of reasons.

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California voters will go to the polls to vote in a primary election in a few months, to choose the candidates for governor who will move on to the general election. But as a new poll shows, the result might be pretty shocking and may even give rise to a movement to change the way the state's primaries are conducted. Because as things stand right now, there is a very real chance that come November, the overwhelmingly-Democratic state might only have two Republican candidates on the ballot to choose from. Which, as I said, would be pretty shocking.

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I am going to begin this remembrance with my own personal story, minimal though it is. In 1988, I attended a political speech given by Reverend Jesse Jackson. He was running for president at the time, in his second national campaign for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately, the arena he had booked was filled to overflowing by the time I showed up, so we heard the speech on speakers placed outside the venue. So while I didn't actually see Jackson speak, at least I got to hear his oratory.

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Perhaps it was because the week ends on Friday the 13th, but whatever the real reason was, Donald Trump didn't have a great week this week. Which, of course, is good news for everyone else! There was actually a lot of good news in the political world this week -- so much that we're not even going to bother with the other news that wasn't so good.

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Today Donald Trump proved yet again that he is nothing short of a stone-cold racist. He reposted a message on social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. That's really all you need to know about it, other than the fact that (for once) it was so unbelievably offensive that, hours later, it was deleted. The White House blamed an unnamed "staffer," to which Black voters everywhere responded: "Yeah, right." Trump's hatred for the Obamas is well-known, of course, but even some Republicans complained at this latest racist outrage from Trump.

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Up until now, some Democratic worries about the upcoming midterm elections have been dismissed by the "It could never happen here" crowd as unfounded nightmares. They pooh-pooh such worries as being laughably outlandish and accuse people who express these worries for overreacting about things that couldn't possibly happen right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. But this week should make such scenarios a whole lot less laughable and a whole lot more worrisome.

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I do realize it is Groundhog Day, but I am going to refrain from making the easy references to the movie of the same name, mostly because the elections in question happened over the weekend, not today. But it's undeniable that Democrats are on a repetitive roll, winning special election after special election -- and even when they lose one, they manage to shift the margins by double digits their way. Which all bodes well for the midterms, although how much of a harbinger this might all be is always an open question.

This weekend's special elections both happened in Texas: one for a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and one for a state senate seat. Democrats romped to victory in both.

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Today marks the end of the first year of Donald Trump's second term in office. One down, three to go.

Looking back, the most notable thing about Trump's first year back was how he has thrown himself fully into the Silicon Valley maxim to "move fast and break things." Trump has indeed moved fast, and he has indeed broken many things -- some of which will take a very long time to put back together and some of which may just stay broken forever.

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