I'm pleased to announce that ChrisWeigant.com is applying for press credentials for both national political conventions this year. Longtime readers of the site will remember that I (and my lovely wife, whose blogs also appeared in the Irish Times) attended the 2012 Democratic National Convention, but seeing as how the level of political excitement this year (in both parties) seems almost unparalleled, this year we really want to see what both parties have to offer, in person.

National conventions are, in modern times, heavily-scripted affairs which often resemble nothing so much as an extended campaign advertisement. This year, obviously, will be quite different. In both the Republican and Democratic national primaries, there is a real fight being waged over the fundamental direction the parties will chart in the future. While every four years political wonks dream of "open" or "brokered" conventions (being political wonks, even our dreams are wonky...), in 2016 we might actually see one on the Republican side. Even if the Democratic nominee is known before the convention, however, there will still be a big rift in the party which will need some serious mending before the general election campaign begins in earnest. Whether this can successfully be done or not should become evident at the convention itself. Whatever happens, it should prove to be more exciting than the 2012 Democratic National Convention, when Barack Obama ran unopposed for his second term in office. Both conventions will no doubt be fascinating in their own ways, in fact -- which is why we're applying for press credentials for both.

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Anderson Cooper just made some news, by asking all three Republican candidates for president whether they'd honor their previous pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee -- no matter who won. None of the three candidates now say they'll honor their loyalty pledge, although two of them tried to weasel out of even giving a straight answer. Personally, I can't decide which is more bizarre, the whole spectacle of a party loyalty oath in the first place, or the news that all three Republicans seem to have set a new world speed record by breaking a big campaign promise -- not after getting elected, and not while pivoting to the middle after becoming the nominee, but before the primary season is even over.

The oath, of course, was nothing more than a gimmick in the first place, directed at one candidate alone. All the Republican National Committee really wanted was a signature on the following: "I, Donald Trump, after my inevitable flame-out on the campaign trail, pledge not to attempt a third-party run and instead will support the eventual Republican nominee, which (of course) will not be me." That was deemed too personal, so they made all their candidates sign a generic pledge not to do so, to preserve the appearance of fairness.

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I wrote the following exactly eleven months ago, when Bernie Sanders announced his run for the presidency. I'm running it again today, for two reasons. The first is that I am otherwise occupied, with putting together my applications for press passes for both national conventions (wish me luck). So I was going over a lot of old columns, looking for ones I could cite. The second reason is why this particular article leapt out at me is that it is pretty prophetic in seeing clearly the concept of a how a Bernie Sanders campaign effort would be run. The biggest thing I missed was the fact that Bernie would be the first Jewish president, instead of just "another old white guy." But while not every word in it came true, I think I did a fairly good job of predicting the overall dynamics of the race as it has played out. So again, apologies for the re-run, but here's what I had to say about Sanders, from the very beginning.

Originally published April 29, 2015

We've had a President Jimmy and a President Ronnie, so why not a President Bernie?

That was my first thought on hearing the news that Senator Bernard ("Bernie") Sanders is going to formally announce his candidacy for president tomorrow. Often, first thoughts are not the most profound, as I seem to have proved here. But upon reflection, a deeper meaning can be teased out of my sophomoric response: why not a President Bernie? I'm pretty sure there will be many in the media who laugh Sanders off as some sort of "not serious" candidate, and attempt to pigeonhole Sanders into the role of court jester to Hillary Clinton: there to amusingly point out foibles, but in a way that cannot be taken seriously. This is a mistake. Bernie Sanders is a serious candidate, no matter what his chances at the ballot box may ultimately be. He cares deeply about the issue of inequality, and he is not afraid to say exactly what he thinks. You can question how viable a candidate Sanders will be, but no matter what the answer to that turns out to be, Sanders will be a serious candidate. The issues he will raise on the campaign trail deserve serious discussion and consideration, from not only Hillary Clinton but also from the media themselves.

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Bernie Sanders just had a very good week. Six states voted in the past week, and Bernie won five of them. Overwhelmingly. Bernie got over 70 percent of the vote in four states, and over 80 percent in Alaska. All in all, a pretty good week. His delegate count has now hit four digits, with superdelegates added in. That's all pretty impressive, but rather than focusing on his chances for actually winning the Democratic presidential nomination this time around (which are still pretty low, even with that impressive string of victories), instead what intrigues me is how the movement of Democratic populism seems to be growing. If Sanders falls short this time around, the next time a populist runs they may actually succeed. Bernie has already gone a long way towards transforming the Democratic Party away from its embrace of economic centrism (the Bill Clinton and Democratic Leadership Council era) towards a much more people-centered party.

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That really should be "Copulating Rodents, Batman!" for full effect. Or it should just come right out and use the original term being euphemized. But somehow we couldn't quite bring ourselves to use either one of those in our title today.

Confused? Join the club. The Republican presidential nomination race has previously devolved to the level of an elementary school playground (penis-measuring in a national debate), and has now risen to at least high school (if not a college frat house) with the vicious battle going on between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz over who can insult each other's wives the most. This morning, "the beans" may have actually been spilled, as the National Enquirer is now reporting not on Ted Cruz's wife, but instead on his (alleged) five girlfriends. I'd say "we're down the rabbit hole now, folks," but there is in fact a better rodent-based metaphor, from the dim and distant past. Here is the full explanation, from Cruz himself:

It is a story that quoted one source on the record: Roger Stone, Donald Trump's chief political adviser. It is attacking my family. And what is striking is Donald's henchman, Roger Stone, had for months been foreshadowing that this attack was coming. It's not surprising that Donald's tweet occurs the day before the attack comes out. And I would note that Mr. Stone is a man who has 50 years of dirty tricks behind him. He's a man for whom a term was coined for copulating with a rodent. Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.

The Washington Post article then helpfully explains: "The copulation reference was to a term coined to describe Stone and other political allies of Richard Nixon who spread rumors and foiled the campaign events of rivals." Another of these Nixon allies was none other than Karl Rove, a man George W. Bush called "turd blossom." But let's not get distracted. Back to the term in question, which is (warning -- avert your eyes if you are easily offended): "ratfucking." Originally the term had nothing to do with rodents, as the "rat" was short for "rations" -- it was a military term to describe soldiers who would comb though the rations packages and steal all the good stuff while leaving the less-tasty stuff behind for everyone else. But a rat is a rat, in the world of politics. And here is where we find ourselves, in the historic (or perhaps "infamous" will be more popular for future historians) election season of 2016. Call it the pest-control election, and you won't be far from the reality.

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Shouldn't that be "caucii"? Well, maybe not.

You'll have to excuse me sounding a little loopy, but we all tend to get that way in the brutal middle slog of the primary season. Around 30 states have voted on both sides, with no clear national winners yet. The delegate-counting has reached a frenzy, and you'd think every state would count at this point. The pollsters, however, obviously do not think this. I'll get to all of that in a moment, however, as the first thing I need to do is update my record.

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You'll have to forgive me for using such a lethal metaphor in that title, but I did not actually come up with the comparison myself -- that dubious honor goes to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. One month after he ended his own presidential bid, Graham addressed the question of which GOP frontrunner he could support, in pretty graphic fashion: "If you nominate Trump and Cruz I think you get the same outcome. Whether it's death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter?"

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It's time to play the "predict the results" game again, folks. Today's primaries and caucuses weren't getting all that much attention as it was, and now with the Brussels bombing tragedy, they are going to get even less attention. But we've got to remain focused, so let's concentrate on the two parties' races for the presidential nominations, once again.

As always, the first thing we've got to do is update the results from last time. There were five big contests last Tuesday, and I did fairly well calling the Republican side, but not so great on the Democratic side.

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No matter what the next primary election results show tomorrow night, one thing seems to be certain: we are in for a long slog of delegate-counting before either party's nominee is crowned. On the Republican side, this is leading to more and more desperation from the party's bigwigs, as they clutch at the thin straw of somehow yanking the nomination away from Donald Trump at their convention. All of this is going to take time to play out, but we're just going to leapfrog over it all for now and assume for the purpose of this conversation that Trump does emerge victorious as the Republican Party presidential nominee. Whether a third-party conservative challenge emerges or not, this means the next big question has to be who Trump is going to pick as his running mate. So buckle your seatbelts, because this is likely going to be just as bumpy a ride as the rest of the GOP nomination process has so far been.

Traditionally, the game of speculation over the vice-presidential slot on the ticket (the "veepstakes") has been a lot easier to play. However, after John McCain rocked the Republican world with his choice of Sarah Palin, the old assumptions don't always work. Even before the rise of Trump, wild cards have previously been chosen, to put it another way. But Trump is the wildest wild card on his own, so the possibilities of who would get Trump's nod are almost limitless. "Nah, that's too crazy" might not apply to the veep choice, to put it another way, just as it hasn't applied to the nominee himself. Especially when you take into account how much of Trump's political persona has been centered around sticking a big thumb in the collective eye of the Republican establishment all along.

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That's a pretty ambitious subtitle, but we're not going to get to the deconstruction project until the talking points, we should warn everyone up front. And we could never hope to deconstruct all of the GOP's absurdities in one column, so we'll be focusing just on their all-over-the-map reasoning on why they're not going to do their constitutional jobs in the Senate on President Obama's Supreme Court nomination. So we'll have all that to look forward to. For now, let's quickly review the week just to see where things stand.

It's not exactly political news, but we do have to point out that it is the day after Saint Patrick's Day, so we'll try to type all this out very softly, in case anyone's still nursing a hangover of Brobdingnagian proportions.

There were two major events in the political world this week. The first was another round of primaries (which got given the label "Super Tuesday 3" too late for anyone to start actually using it). The second was a Supreme Court judicial nomination from President Obama. Both were groundshaking in their own ways.

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