The last Democratic presidential debate was held tonight on CNN, broadcasting from New York City. This debate was not originally on the schedule the Democratic National Committee had approved, and was added due largely to popular demand. It will be the final time Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton face off against each other on a stage -- the next debate to happen will be between the Democratic and Republican nominees, later in the year.

I personally thought both candidates were a lot sharper tonight than they have been in previous debates. In fact, I'm one of those political wonks who would have been happy if there had been more debates held, because I think they provide one of the only opportunities for the public to see candidates being forced to occasionally think on their feet and spontaneously come up with answers to unexpected questions. So, in general, I'm pretty pro-debate. I think that no matter which candidate you prefer in the Democratic race, you'd have to agree that they both looked a lot sharper in this debate than in the first few they held.

I wasn't very happy with the moderators, but then I seldom am. We didn't get a whole lot of unexpected questions tonight, and we didn't get a whole lot of questions that hadn't already been asked and answered at previous debates. Having Wolf Blitzer host didn't really help, either. In fact, the most interesting exchanges of the night took place when the two candidates veered off on their own preferred tangents, and brought up subjects that the moderators hadn't even asked about. For Hillary, the best example of this was her strong support (while chastising the moderators for not even asking about it) of abortion rights for women. For Bernie (at least for me) the best example was when he strongly asserted he'd move marijuana off the controlled substance schedules entirely. Neither answer was prompted by anything the moderators said, but at least the answers were something new on the stage.

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The fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage achieved its biggest success last week, when California's governor signed a minimum wage hike that will bring the entire state up to a $15-an-hour minimum within the next few years. This is a milestone for a number of reasons, the most impressive being that it is the first such statewide measure to be enacted in the entire country. But what was really notable about the new California law was the way it happened. Because it was a real vindication of Bernie Sanders's contention that without a "political revolution," nothing much of note will get done in politics these days.

There is a (probably fictional) story from the 1800s of a French politician who, hearing angry crowds in the street, exclaimed: "There go my people -- I must find out where they are going, so I can lead them!" I was reminded of this when I saw Hillary Clinton joining in with Andrew Cuomo while he signed his own version of a minimum wage hike. Clinton was full of praise for the new $15-an-hour minimum wage (which, unlike California's new law, only applies to the New York City area, not statewide). I found this somewhat ironic, considering Clinton has so far only been willing to commit to a $12-an-hour minimum wage. Sanders, who has fully supported the $15-an-hour goal since he started running, was barely mentioned in the media coverage. He certainly wasn't invited to the podium -- instead Clinton tried to take as much credit possible for a law that goes far beyond what she herself is calling for.

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I'm going to start by apologizing, because this column will be a bit abbreviated. Outside life intervened, and I didn't have time today to write a full column. But rather than just re-running an old column, I thought I could get the idea I wanted to write about today across quickly, just to toss it out there for discussion.

I thought the subject of how the war against the Islamic State is going in Iraq was worth an update today, because the Iraqi forces are on the brink of reclaiming a pretty impressive swath of the map. I should mention up front that for the purposes of this article, I'm going to largely ignore how the war is progressing in Syria, for no other reason than to keep things focused.

The problem I have with the way the war is being reported is that there is often no context given to any individual reports. "Iraqi Forces Retake Hit" was the most recent headline, but no map is provided or explanation given of any sort of strategic big picture.

There are two maps worth looking at to see the progress being made in Iraq, one from a little over a year ago and one that is up to date. The recent one is posted on Wikipedia, and changes over time (people update it with recent developments). The historical one is from the Washington Post and was printed to a companion article about what was going on last February (the Kurdish forces were about to retake Sinjar).

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The Republican Party seems to be in the midst of a period of soul-searching, heading into the remainder of the primary season. The viewpoints within the party are all over the map, and even the perception of how the 2016 presidential race is going to play out can be vastly different from Republican to Republican. How it all turns out is anyone's guess at this point, but at least one Republican faction will be able to say "we told you so" at the end of the process. The questions are who is going to be right, and what it will mean for the party going forward.

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There was some good news and some bad news on marijuana this week, which got us thinking about how the subject of federal marijuana policy relates to the presidential nomination race. So while we'll take care of the news (good and bad) in the awards section, we're going to also devote the talking points section to a list of questions we would love to hear answered by all the candidates. Obviously, the answers from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are the most important, since they'd be the only ones who might actually try to improve the current situation, but it really shouldn't excuse the Republicans from having to answer them as well. Rather than just a quick "Do you support medical marijuana?" question, we really think the issue needs to be addressed in a little more depth.

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The incredibly destructive federal war on marijuana may be about to end in a major way. It won't disappear entirely, but even so we may soon see the beginning of the inevitable end to the federal War On Weed. If so, it will become a major part of President Barack Obama's legacy -- even though he's actually the third president in a row who admitted to using marijuana at some point in his life. Obviously the scare stories couldn't all be true, if three presidents' lives weren't totally ruined by their recreational use of what is a fairly benign plant.

The reason for this optimism was the news that the Drug Enforcement Agency has just sent a letter [PDF file] in response to a group of senators who, last year, formally asked the agency if it would consider rescheduling marijuana on the "Controlled Substances" list. The D.E.A. has now responded that it will make a decision on the matter by summertime (sometime during "the first half of 2016"). More on the technical aspects of what is being considered in a moment. But first, a little history is necessary to put the War On Weed into proper context.

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The Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland later this year. Already it is shaping up to be one of the most contentious party meetings in American history, even months ahead of time. Pretty much no matter what happens, there are going to be some seriously disappointed people (and that's putting it mildly), both within the convention hall and out in the surrounding streets. That much, at this point, seems almost guaranteed. The real question is whether this will boil over into anything other than the usual disgruntled muttering of the supporters of a losing candidate or not.

Salon ran an article today from Digby which details some of the behind-the-scenes planning by supporters of Donald Trump. Some are already using the phrase "days of rage" for what they want to see happen if Trump is somehow denied the GOP nomination. This, of course, harkens back to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which saw waves of rioting in the streets (and also gave birth to the cry: "The whole world is watching!" since the television cameras were rolling during some of the worst of it). Could this be the year when Republicans see some sort of replay of what the Democrats went through in 1968?

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We've reached the sparse and arid part of the primary calendar, which means that instead of another multi-state Tuesday, the political world is now focused solely on the Badger State. This follows last week, when (gasp!) no state voted on Tuesday, and will be followed by another two-week gap, before New York weighs in.

Because of the singular nature of the primary results tonight, the temptation in the media is to give far too much weight to what happens tonight in terms of the effect on the overall race. We'll get to all of that in a moment, but first (as always) we've got to update my scoreboard.

The previous round of primaries was a three-state weekend night for the Democrats (Republicans sat this one out). This time around, I was too pessimistic in feeling the Bern, as I correctly called Washington and Alaska for Bernie Sanders, but was mistaken in predicting Hillary Clinton would win a surprise upset in Hawai'i. That didn't happen, and Bernie swept the night.

This gives me a 2-for-3 score for the night. When added in to the running totals, my percentages didn't change (the adjustments were too small to move the numbers), so I wound up with the following:

Total correct 2016 Democratic picks: 25 for 34 -- 74%
Total correct 2016 Republican picks: 29 for 39 -- 74%
Total overall correct picks: 54 for 73 -- 74%.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at tonight's matchups. And seeing as how we only have one state to call this time around, we're going to give each party their own section heading.

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Obama Above Water Once Again

President Obama made a big breakthrough in public opinion polling in March, one that is (for once) pretty obvious in his chart. For the first time since May, 2013, Obama's average job approval number for last month was higher than his average disapproval. Take a look at this month's new chart -- it's pretty easy to see how big a deal this is, even on the overall chart of his entire time in office.

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

March, 2016

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I'm going to start this week's column by apologizing for it, up front. This is because I know it is going to be a weak and wooly-headed column today. I already know this because I myself am getting sick -- I woke up with flu symptoms, complete with the usual weakness and fuzzy thinking. I considered just punting altogether on today's column, but am feeling slightly better now, so I'm going to make the attempt. But it's going to be a pretty poor attempt, I'll warn you of that from the get-go. It will probably not be anywhere near as long as usual, for which some of you might actually be thankful (I do tend to ramble on, every Friday). One last warning -- normally, on such an auspicious date, I have lots of fun writing a piece of satire and then at the end stick in an "April Fools!" But I'm not going to do that today, which I'll explain further in the talking points section.

Normally, I would begin with an overview of the week in politics, but I really don't have the energy to do all the research that entails. Luckily for me, it was a fairly quiet week in the political world, with (for once!) no primaries at all after last Saturday's voting. Next week, all eyes will be on Wisconsin, where Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz seem to be up in the polls. Hopefully by Tuesday I'll be feeling well enough to cover the Badger State primaries.

So while Donald Trump said several outrageous things this week (as usual), and there was plenty of shocked reactions to them (both faux and real), we're going to ignore all of that and instead just present one interesting tidbit of news that may make some headlines tomorrow (or maybe not, considering the type of coverage the subject usually gets from the media).

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