To use a sports metaphor, we're right at the end of the pre-season and about to start the actual games that count. Tonight was the last presidential debate between the Democratic candidates before Iowa votes in its caucuses. From now on, in each subsequent debate, we'll know not just who is up in the public opinion polling, but who has done better at the actual polls, where voters cast their ballots for the Democratic nomination.

Tonight's debate was the smallest yet, as only the top six candidates qualified. In order of their current poll standings, we had: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer, and Amy Klobuchar. I was a little surprised that Steyer ranked above Klobuchar (mostly because he almost didn't qualify for tonight), but he's recently seen a surge in state-level polling due to running ads in states the other candidates have been ignoring, so I suppose that's what put him above Klobuchar.

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As you may have heard, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are now locked in a political deathmatch, trading body blows and viciously attacking each other. Except for the fact that this isn't really true, of course. But the media loves confrontation, so when there isn't much to work with, they just hype the heck out of whatever thin reeds they have available.

Excuse me for being snarky, but this sort of thing just kind of brings it out in me. I have firm beliefs about primary races in general, and my biggest disappointment (which usually comes true every four years like clockwork) is when Democrats don't attack each other strongly enough. But that needs a qualification, because mere attacks for the sake of attacking aren't what I'm talking about.

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Well we made it to the end of the week without a major new war breaking out in the Middle East. At this point, that's about as good as it gets with Donald Trump in charge.

We've said it before and we're sure we'll have to say it again before the year's out, but President Trump is the personification of what Richard Nixon used to call the "Madman Theory" of foreign policy. Back then, it was a bluff -- if Nixon acted crazy enough, then perhaps the North Vietnamese would think he was so crazy he might just drop a nuclear bomb on them. This would tend to restrain them more than if they were sure he wouldn't.

Now, however, it is no bluff. Trump actually is a madman with no idea what he's getting into at any given time, on any given subject. This obviously weighed on the minds of the Iranians, who actually chose to take a measured approach to reacting, by lobbing some missiles at a few military bases in Iraq that housed American soldiers. Rather astonishingly, nobody was hurt or killed (they were all reportedly safe in bunkers for hours before the attacks happened), and even more astonishingly, Trump refused to retaliate further. Thus both countries backed away from the brink of all-out war. In this particular instance, the Madman Theory worked.

Next time, of course, we might not be so lucky. And nobody really knows if this is the end of the Iranian response to us assassinating their top military leader -- there could be much more covert or third-party attacks to come, either on the battlefields of the Middle East or much closer to home. So while we're all breathing a rather large sigh of relief right now, there may be another shoe to drop at some point further on.

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Today, I'd like to step back from a day-to-day analysis of Donald Trump's actions in order to look at a slightly bigger picture. Because at this point, it almost seems like we should all start calling him "Precedent Trump," since he is setting so many of them for future presidents to either use or abuse at will. Republicans who now slavishly insist upon supporting anything and everything Trump does -- no matter how outrageous, no matter how disruptive -- should be warned that future presidents (Democratic ones most definitely included) may one day point to current GOP behavior while insisting that they have exactly the same rights that Trump has claimed for himself. Because this is always the ultimate test of supporting any expansion of presidential powers: would you support a president of the other party doing such a thing? Again, Republicans would do well to consider this in the Trump era, because it's my guess that some of these precedents are going to come back to bite them later on. And it'll be pretty tough for them to argue against these precedents after so wholeheartedly supporting them now.

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The next Democratic presidential debate is going to almost have to focus intensely on questions of foreign policy. No matter what anyone had planned previously, the situation almost demands it now. So far, the debates have been remarkably light on foreign policy, which has allowed almost all the candidates to utter platitudes about the type of world they'd like to see as president, without delving too far into any specifics about what they'd do as president at all (except perhaps on minor differences between the candidates' policies). This is no longer good enough, as we all wait to see what happens next with Iran.

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At the start of the Democratic presidential primary season, some pundits latched onto what they considered a fun way to label how the race was shaping up -- the "killer Bs." You had [Joe] Biden, Beto [O'Rourke], [Cory] Booker, Bernie [Sanders], [Michael] Bennet, [Steve] Bullock, and even [Pete] Buttigieg. That's a lot of Bs, to be sure (a whole hive, maybe?), and it's not even the full list. It was also (as you can tell) a fairly silly way to frame the race, but whatever. The funny thing is, with less than a month to go before the first votes are cast, we've still got a swarm of Bs. Four of the top five candidates still qualify: Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg, and newcomer [Michael] Bloomberg. The only odd woman out is Elizabeth Warren, although it wouldn't surprise me if some pundits started trying to call her "Beth," just to fit her into this strained metaphor.

Silliness aside, however, I'd like to focus today on two candidates who haven't been getting the recognition they deserve from the punditocracy. Both have shown amazing consistency in the polls, even though neither has ever been what you could accurately call a "media darling." If anything, this should show the limited influence of the pundits in the real world of the voters. While much media attention was showered on other candidates (Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, etc.), this roving spotlight has never bothered to shine on either Bernie or Biden for long -- and when it does, it is usually to cast negative aspersions on their chances of winning. But none of that seems to matter all that much, at least to the voters who are paying attention.

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There are two major stories in the political world today, without a whole lot of overlap. They both have foreign policy in common, and the outcome of both is unpredictable at this point. Other than that they are entirely separate stories, so we're going to handle them separately rather than trying to tie them together in any way. The bigger story by far is Donald Trump's assassination of a major Iranian military figure as well as an Iraqi militia leader. This could have far-reaching consequences across the Middle East, obviously. The second story is that John Bolton is apparently ready to spill the beans on Trump, as long as the Senate "forces" him to by issuing a subpoena.

Will we hear from Bolton?

Let's take the Bolton story first, since it strikes closer to home. John Bolton, ever since he was kicked out of the Trump inner circle, has been somewhat of an enigma. He is reportedly upset with Trump and is eager to reveal his side of the story, as it were. He quickly inked a book deal which will allow him to do so in an unfettered manner. However, books take a long time to write, and events on the ground are moving quickly in the meantime.

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As we sit down to write this, America is on the brink... of a lot of things, all at once. Largest among these: we are now on the brink of another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran. We could also be on the brink of a North Korean nuclear test or I.C.B.M. launch, which would probably signal a disastrous end to the Trump diplomatic bromance with Kim Jong Un. We're on the brink of a presidential impeachment trial in the Senate -- only the third one in our entire history. We're on the brink of a presidential primary season. And we're on the brink of a new political decade. All are pretty momentous, meaning that 2020 could turn out to be even more chaotic than the three years which preceded it. There's a scary (or just plain exhausting) thought, indeed.

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A new year, as always, means many things to many people, but to the folks up at Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, it means it is time once again for the annual official "Banished Words List." Hey, with the winters they have to put up with in the frigid Upper Peninsula, I think we can all agree that they deserve a little fun at the dawn of each new year. So without further ado, let's check out the full list:

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I'm writing my first 2020 column looking ahead to not the new year but the entire next decade. Before I begin, I have to admit that I'm one of those pedants who point out (every ten years) that turning a zero on the year doesn't actually mean the start of a new decade, since there was no "year zero" at the start. Technically, the 201st decade won't be over until New Year's Day, 2021. Hmmph. But I realize I'm in a tiny minority, so for the purposes of this column I will bow to the prevailing notion that the 2020s began yesterday. And in American politics, a new decade means new dividing lines for the House of Representatives.

This Monday, the Census Bureau released its final estimates for what this year's actual count is projected to show each state's population to be. Of more importance, this also shows which states are going to lose congressional seats and which states will gain them. Now, this is just an estimate -- there are several states on the cusp, which may wind up either not losing a seat or not gaining a seat, so for the moment this is all just informed speculation. But it's still interesting to look at, even if the actual results turn out to be slightly different than the projection.

The upshot is that the following ten states are going to lose a single House seat in the redistricting which will happen prior to the 2022 midterm elections: Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Five states will pick up a single seat: Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon. Also, Florida will pick up two seats and Texas will be the real winner, picking up three seats. This shouldn't come as too big a surprise, because last time around Texas actually picked up four seats.

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