Bernie Sanders, once again, is enjoying a resurgence of attention, after handily winning West Virginia's primary earlier this week. He'll likely pick up Oregon next week, and even has a good shot at Kentucky as well. If he hasn't dropped out by then, he's even got a decent chance to upset Hillary Clinton in the biggest blue state of all, California.

But in the midst of all this optimism for Bernie, the fact remains that he's still very likely to lose the race for the nomination. At the moment, Sanders has won 19 state primary contests, while Clinton has won 23. He'll win more delegates than any populist challenger in the Democratic Party since Teddy Kennedy (if you consider Teddy a populist, that is -- some do, some don't). He'll likely win three times as many delegates as Howard Dean, John Edwards, or Jesse Jackson ever managed -- Sanders already has more delegates than all three of these candidacies combined, in fact. That's impressive, and he'll only build on this total the longer he stays in the race.

But I can't help but keep wondering if things might have been different for Bernie if he had flipped the one state that Republicans always obsess over. If Bernie had won Ohio, could the ultimate outcome have been different?

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Tomorrow, all eyes in Washington will be on the meeting between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan. Some Republicans hope this "summit" between two of the leaders of the Republican Party will signify how the party as a whole will move forward with Trump as the presidential nominee. Ryan surprised some last week by his refusal to endorse Trump -- yet. The big question is whether the two will exit the meeting with their arms around each other (figuratively if not literally), step to the microphones and announce that Trump will support Ryan's congressional agenda while Ryan will support Trump's candidacy. Anything short of full-throated enthusiasm for each other will be big news, to put this slightly differently.

Putting aside the question of what they'll do for the cameras after the big meeting, it's pretty easy to see what each of them wants from the other. Neither would fully admit to these positions in public, of course, but anyone who has watched the two men's political careers for the past year can tell what they're both hoping for.

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As we await the primary results from West Virginia, we have to note we've reached a milestone in the "predict the primaries" contest. With the exit of Ted Cruz and John Kasich from the Republican race, Donald Trump now stands alone, as he's the last Republican still in the race. Since he is now the presumptive nominee, we will not be calling any future Republican primaries (starting tonight, by ignoring the West Virginia and Nebraska GOP results). This is because calling a race with only one candidate is so easy it counts (in our rules, at least) as cheating -- pumping the score up by calling contests that are foregone conclusions. So what this all means is that I've now got a final score for my 2016 Republican primary picks.

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Last week, the Washington Post ran an article titled "Five Not-Totally-Crazy Electoral Maps That Show Donald Trump Winning." The article was a cautionary note to Democrats who are blithely assuming Hillary Clinton will easily beat Donald Trump this November. In it, the authors provide five maps that show Trump beating Clinton, by winning anywhere from 270 Electoral College votes (the minimum necessary to win) up to 283 Electoral College votes. I'd like to answer them back with five maps of my own, which show scenarios that are a lot more likely to become reality. I do understand why the Post authors wrote their article -- Democrats getting complacent about their chances of victory is indeed a danger this election cycle, and who knows how many crossover votes are going to happen (in either direction)? But at the same time, it is easy to see the monstrous advantage any Democratic candidate for president now enjoys, and it's a lot easier to see a very wide and gentle path to victory for Hillary Clinton.

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It's been a pretty momentous week in the history of American politics, folks. The Republican Party is going to nominate Donald Trump to run for the highest office in the land. Politics and entertainment are now one. The trend that Ronald Reagan began -- furthered in no small part by Sarah Palin -- is now complete. In other words: welcome to the next episode of Who Wants To Be President?

Of course, this news was such a bombshell that many stunned politicians have no idea how to react. Many Republicans are indeed singing the refrain: "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to..." as they contemplate the chances of success they're faced with in November. Decisions must be made. Follow Trump, distance yourself from Trump, or fully denounce Trump and all he stands for? When else in living memory has a major political party faced such a stark division -- at the precise moment the general election presidential campaign begins? The word "stunning" doesn't even begin to cover the magnitude of the Trump political earthquake.

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Obama Consolidates His Gains

As I predicted last month, President Barack Obama consolidated his recent gains in public opinion polling in April, and only showed very slight improvement in his job approval and job disapproval numbers. While this doesn't sound very exciting, it does show that Obama's recent gains were not temporary, but instead show some real staying power. Let's take a look at the new chart.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

April, 2016

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It is now official. Seventeen candidates ran for the Republican presidential nomination, and the sixteenth of these just suspended his campaign. This leaves Donald Trump as the last man standing. A whole lot of people who never thought we'd arrive at this point are now going to have to get used to the phrase: "Donald Trump, Republican nominee."

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Indiana likes to call itself the "crossroads of America," which is understandable when you look at a map of the Interstate Highway System and how many major routes intersect in Indianapolis. But tonight, instead, it may very well be the end of the road for the entire primary season. Or, at least, the heavily-contested part of that season. Because tonight we may truly pivot to the general election and stop paying much attention to three of the five remaining candidates.

Before we get to all of that, however, as always we have to update the scoreboard. Last Tuesday might have been the best night for predictions I've had during the entire primary season. As Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware voted in the "I-95 Tuesday" (a late entry in the "let's call it something cute" game), not only did I call all five Republican races and all five Democratic races correctly, I also was spot-on calling the rest of the Republican results: "Kasich, surprisingly, will pick up four second-place finishes, while Cruz ekes out second in Pennsylvania." This was indeed the final result, as Donald Trump swept the GOP, and Hillary Clinton picked up four while Bernie Sanders won in Rhode Island.

Minor predictions (who comes in second and third) don't count in the overall totals at this point, but it does feel good to get things exactly right at least once during the primary season, I have to admit. And even this late in the game, getting 10 races correct has actually moved my overall percentages up a bit. Here's my new scoreboard:

Total correct 2016 Democratic picks: 33 for 42 -- 79%
Total correct 2016 Republican picks: 36 for 46 -- 78%
Total overall correct picks: 69 for 88 -- 78%.

OK, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the Hoosier State.

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Just to warn everyone up front, today's column is essentially nothing more than a "clip show." Television series use this motif whenever they get lazy, because it involves very little writing and filming, because the bulk of the episode is merely clips from previous episodes. Today, I'm offering up my own clip show as a retrospective for how we all got to where we stand today -- on the brink of Donald Trump essentially wrapping up the Republican nomination for the highest office in the land.

In asking how we got here, a crucial thing to remember is that everyone in the political and media universe has convinced themselves that the situation just kind of snuck up on them when they weren't looking. "Who could have imagined this outcome?" they all ask each other at their exclusive cocktail parties, and then they shake their heads in a bemused fashion. They are secure in the knowledge that nobody could have seen this coming, therefore everyone was wrong at the same time. This is why, they tell themselves, all the efforts to stop Trump failed -- because by the time everyone realized what was going on, it was too late to do anything about it.

This is a false narrative. The facts were out there. The poll numbers existed. Donald Trump has been the frontrunner of the Republican race since very shortly after he announced his candidacy, last June. All throughout the summer and fall of 2015, what was happening was obvious to anyone who took the time to both look at and believe the level of support Trump was showing.

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Boy, it isn't every day you get to write a headline like that! But those are the kinds of feelings Ted Cruz seems to bring out in everyone -- left, right, and center.

On the right, doesn't John Boehner sound a lot looser and more relaxed now that he isn't responsible for herding a bunch of hyperactive cats in the House? He certainly seemed like it this week, in what was supposed to be an unrecorded talk. Of course, these days, everyone in politics should just automatically assume that everything they say will be recorded, because the chances are it will be. When asked what he personally thought about Ted Cruz, Boehner responded: "Lucifer in the flesh." In case anyone thought he was kidding, he followed this up with: "I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." C'mon, tell us what you really think, John!

Not to be outdone, Representative Peter King (who, earlier, said he'd drink cyanide if Cruz were to become his party's nominee) piled on to Boehner's comment by responding: "Maybe he gives Lucifer a bad name by comparing him to Ted Cruz." This is likely the first time that Peter King and actual Satanists have agreed on anything, it should be noted. We're not sure if this is any sort of sign of the impending apocalypse, but then we're not the theological (demonic?) experts that King and Boehner seem to be. And, please remember, this is what fellow Republicans are saying about the man who is supposed to somehow be "saving the party" from Donald Trump!

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