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?

Early fundraising numbers aren't completely irrelevant, but there has been a noticeable shift this election cycle over what has happened in years past, at least within the Democratic Party. It used to be that early fundraising represented mostly the ability of the candidates to sweet talk big-money donors into backing their campaigns early on -- a measure of the prowess of convincing the movers and shakers within the party of any particular candidates' chances of winning. This time around things have radically changed, because now the race is to woo small donors, rather than big-pocket money bundlers.

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Welcome back! Our Friday Talking Points column has been on a forced hiatus for the past month, due to a rather severe bout with the flu. But while we're up and running once again, we're still not at 100 percent, so we're going to foreshorten our usual weekly roundup introduction this week. Instead of attempting the monumental task of getting back up to date with a month's worth of craziness from Washington, we're going to just write a generic introduction that should be able to stand in for just about any week in the Donald Trump era. Call it a "Mad Lib" fill-in-the-blank do-it-yourself rundown. Everyone ready? Then here we go....

Generic Weekly News Roundup

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.

Earlier, Trump had fanned the political flames by tweeting [HATE-FILLED RANT], which once again clearly violates the Twitter rules of conduct; but when contacted about it, the head of Twitter stated: "We're going to interpret his tweet as [TOTAL HORSE MANURE RATIONALIZATION] rather than being savagely directed at [VULNERABLE MINORITY]."

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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."

Four Republican senators went on the record today stating that they'll be voting against Cain's nomination. In a Senate where Republicans only enjoy a 53-47 majority, that is enough to tank his nomination. For the record, the four GOP senators who have now publicly opposed Cain's nomination are: Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Kevin Cramer, and Cory Gardner.

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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.

But having said all of that, I'd like to put aside all the personality politics today to discuss the core idea itself and one of the key selling points that Democrats are going to have to eventually make, if it ever is to become a reality. There are plenty of selling points that will need to be made to convince enough Americans that Medicare For All is the best way to go for it to become a political movement, most of which I'm going to ignore today to concentrate on one central issue instead. Most of the other fearmongering about Medicare For All can be successfully countered with some version of a very easy answer: "Go ask your parents/grandparents if they like their Medicare, and then ask them if they'd give it up to return to private-sector health insurance." That's a pretty all-encompassing comeback to most of the demonization of Medicare that is sure to come from the other side.

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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.

Campaign News

The biggest news is, once again, no news. Joe Biden is looking and acting more and more like an actual candidate, but so far has remained coy about what he's up to. Since he is still playing this game, we are going to ignore him for the remainder of this column. When he announces, we'll include him in the field, but as it stands we've got so many others to keep track of that Joe will have to wait his turn. He did make some news for his past "handsiness," and he attempted to get beyond it by explaining that times have changed since he entered politics -- but this may be counterproductive in the long run for two reasons: times have indeed changed and Joe isn't sounding all that in tune with where things stand now, and it only serves to highlight one of Biden's weakest points (his age). Irony alert: most pundits missed it, but this whole storyline was truly oxymoronic: "Biden out of touch, for previously touching too much."

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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.

Xenophobia is central to Trump's political persona. It is impossible to separate the man from the issue, in fact. From his first political speech announcing his bid for the presidency ("they're rapists...") right up to today's news of Kirstjen Nielsen's ouster as Secretary of Homeland Security, Trump and xenophobia are intractably interlinked. It's who he is, and nobody should be surprised by any of it by now.

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[Program Note: OK, I'm feeling slightly better, but still nowhere near good enough to tackle a real Friday Talking Points column. I tried to write this column yesterday, but didn't make it very far. So I thought I'd finish it up today and hopefully by next week I will have recovered to the point where I can start posting regularly once again. Thanks to everyone for the "get well soon" wishes, and thanks to everyone for their ongoing patience in dealing with the interruption in service here. Oh, and... Wash your hands! Take some vitamin C! You DO NOT want to get this year's flu, trust me....]

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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Sorry, no April Fool's Day column this year (here's one from years past, if you're disappointed...). I'm entering my third straight week of fighting the flu, so there was no way I could manage to be witty in any way. It's enough of a challenge just to type. I did write about half of a column, but then had to collapse for a few hours from the effort it took. I promise I'll do my best to finish this column tomorrow and get it posted. For now, though, it's time for more cough syrup and back to bed....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

[Program Note: Still too far under the weather to write today, sorry. But I did see that Democrats have now introduced a bill in Congress which would make Puerto Rico our 51st state, so I thought it was time to dust off the following column, written over 10 years ago. Obviously, the issues being fought over have changed slightly (hurricane recovery rather than the English language), but it still makes some interesting points. Oh, and one final technical note: I can't promise all these old links still work, sorry.]

Originally published June 27, 2007

In the midst of the immigration debate raging in both houses of Congress, an old chestnut has been revived by Republicans: declaring English the national language. The issue polls extremely high with the general public, and Republicans even passed an amendment in the Senate earlier this month by a vote of 64-33, which means a bunch of Democrats (17 of them) voted for it as well. A similar amendment is part of the debate in the House. My question to these lingual purists is: what happens if Puerto Rico becomes the 51st state of the Union?

This is one of those back-burner issues that comes up for a vote now and again (in Puerto Rico), but then "never actually happens" -- so Americans feel free to ignore it as a whole. Or, I should say, "Americans outside of Puerto Rico," since all Puerto Ricans are already American citizens. But every referendum that happens, the percentage voting for statehood gets larger and larger. While it shouldn't be seen as an inevitability, it should indeed be seen as a strong possibility. Say, within the next ten years or so.

So what are we going to do if an American state speaks Spanish as their primary language? It's a question worth thinking about ahead of time.

There's a joke I heard while I was living in Europe, which goes like this:

Q: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?

A: "Trilingual."

Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

A: "Bilingual."

Q: What do you call a person who speaks one language?

A: "An American."

This is obviously due to people from countries (who don't speak English) getting very tired of American tourists who seem to think that: "a-NY-bo-DY... who... speaks... ENG-lish... SLOW-ly... E-nough... and... who... e-NUN-ci-ATES... their... WORDS... well... E-nough..." can be understood by anyone on the planet, no matter what language they speak. You can understand their frustration, if you've ever seen an ignorant American tourist perform this embarrassing pantomime in another country.

But back to the home front. The first question raised is: "How the heck does a territory become a state, anyway?" This is the primary question asked by most Americans, which is due to the fact that we are now in the longest period in American history without admitting a new state. The last states who joined the Union were, of course, Hawaii and Alaska, both in 1959. This happened almost 47 years after the 48th state (Arizona) was admitted in 1912 -- but we have now gone almost 48 years without admitting a new state, breaking the previous record.

The answer is a little vague. Here is the relevant text from the Constitution:

Article IV, Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

In practical terms, this has usually meant that (1) the territory in question has to have a certain minimum number of people living in it, (2) they have to vote on it and have the majority favor statehood, and (3) they have to have a state constitutional convention, to enact a state constitution. And then, of course, Congress gets to vote whether to admit them or not.

Now, there really is only one candidate for becoming the 51st state: Puerto Rico. Ignoring deluded fantasies of splitting either California or Texas into multiple new states, and also ignoring the perennial push to declare the District of Columbia a state; Puerto Rico is really the only viable candidate. All the other U.S. territories (mostly islands in the Pacific) simply don't have enough people living in them.

Well, OK, I can't just ignore Washington, D.C. -- simply because they've got one heck of an amusing way of showing how annoyed they are that they have no (voting) representatives in Congress: their vehicle license plates. Since 2001, their license plates have provocatively displayed the following slogan: "Taxation Without Representation."

What a hoot! Using a Revolutionary War slogan on their official license plates to let all the congressional legislators (who see these plates on a daily basis, it should be noted) know how annoyed they are that they have no congressional representation who can cast a vote.

But I digress.

Puerto Rico has been actively considering statehood for some time now. They have held three referenda on the issue in the last few decades. The numbers and the trends they show are interesting, but not conclusive. The first of these three votes took place in 1967. 60.4% voted for continued "commonwealth" status, and 39.0% voted for statehood. The next took place in 1993. This time the vote was much closer, with 48.6% choosing the status quo of being a commonwealth, but 46.3% chose statehood (the numbers don't add up to 100% because other options, such as becoming an independent country, were also on the ballot). That's a spread of only 2.3% -- a pretty small margin. The most recent of these votes took place in 1998. The vote was a little skewed because the "commonwealth" faction overreached and used vague and unpopular language, so the "status quo" vote went to the newly-added "none of the above" option on the ballot. The outcome was 50.3% for "none of the above" and 46.5% for statehood. While the total percentage for statehood was higher than in 1993 by 0.2%, the "spread" was also higher, at 3.8%. So, statistically speaking, it's not clear what would happen if another vote were held today -- the trend could go either way, in other words.

But you've got to admit, it's still a pretty small margin. Which means that at some time during the next 10 years, another referendum could happen on the island, and if they reach a majority, then they will begin working on ratifying a state constitution and applying to Congress for statehood.

And it's an absolute certainty that their state constitution will not be "English-only" or proclaim English as the state language. Quite the opposite: they may set into their state constitution that the state government will conduct its affairs in two languages: Spanish and English. Or they may even (gasp!) declare Spanish their official state language.

So what is Congress going to do when faced with such a dilemma? What will the president (whomever it happens to be) say about the issue? Republican presidential candidates are already on record, with the exception of John McCain, of supporting English as a national language (it plays to their xenophobic base). But even John McCain, after denouncing such efforts, voted for that English-only amendment to the immigration bill (mentioned earlier). The Arizona Republic article skewers McCain thusly: "Anyone know the Spanish translation for flip-flop?"

What would we all do if a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico became our 51st state (after we redesign the U.S. flag, that is)? Obviously, at this point, any "English is our national language" nonsense will have to be repealed.

Of course, it would all be a lot easier if Democrats wouldn't vote for such silliness in the first place, but that may be too much to ask during the horse-trading which is currently at the center of the immigration debate. The most intelligent commentary I've heard on the subject comes from a retired Air Force officer, in an op-ed to the tiny Central Shenandoah Valley News Leader. It's worth reading for the common sense he offers.

I say let's not be the butt of the rest of the world's jokes. Let's admit that America can still be America with two official languages. Let's welcome Puerto Rico (if and when it happens) as our 51st state -- with no linguistic jingoism. We will wind up as a stronger country for having done so.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant