I should mention right up front that I'm essentially punting on today's article. I had planned on doing this anyway, but then an appointment I had got cancelled at the last minute, so I at least now have the time to jot down a few things -- a news update and then some great news for the site. The first is just me patting myself on the back (again, I'm admitting this up front, in case there are cat videos or something else on the web which would be a better use of your time than reading this), but the second is a bit of personal news that I think regular readers will be almost as excited about as I am. But before we get to dessert, we've got to eat our vegetables.

Or maybe I should say before we get to dessert, we have to detour through the desert. Roughly a month and a half ago, I made a military prediction in this column. My initial plan for today's column was to merely re-run this prediction, titled: "Fallujah Will Fall Next," since that is now exactly what is underway.

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There's a question on the minds of many Democratic Party leaders right now, which might be phrased: Will there be PUMAs? Or, to update it a bit: Will there be BOBs? Or maybe even PUMA BOBs? Perhaps you'll hear, at the convention: "I'm Bob Puma, glad to meet you"?

Cheap acronymic humor aside, the question is an important one. PUMAs, for those who have forgotten the 2008 Democratic primary race, were the supposedly-numerous Hillary Clinton supporters who refused to back Barack Obama (due to slights perceived during the hard-fought primary, as well as ideological differences), and were instead going to defect en masse and vote for John McCain. The name stood for "Party Unity My Ass!" which was also their rallying cry. This year, they may be replaced by the "Bernie Or Bust!" crowd, or (to coin a neologism) the BOBs.

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This column was written from bottom to top today. The reason we started with the end and worked our way back up is that we were inspired to go off on a rant (rather than our usual talking points for Democrats). This was due to unusually high levels of panic in the media this week (actually it's not that rare that mainstream media panic causes us to go off on a rant, just in general). But because we started with this extended rant, we're going to have to summarize the week in lightning fashion here in this intro, because we are way behind schedule now. So without much extraneous commentary, here are the stories we noticed during the week.

The uninsured rate has now fallen to single digits, as the second year of final stats for Obamacare are in. This means seven million more people with healthcare, in 2015 alone. The uninsured rate stands at 9.1 percent, down 2.4 points last year alone. Oh, and the sky hasn't fallen yet, either.

One town in Mississippi's schools have finally been desegregated -- hey, what's 50 years of waiting, right?

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I realize that much of the political press is currently dissecting the continuing division amongst the Democratic base, at least those who aren't caught up in the he said/she said fight over who has treated women worse on a personal basis (Donald Trump or Bill Clinton?). But I'm putting all that aside for today (I'll address some of it tomorrow, never fear...), because I think it's about time to take a look back at the Republican nomination race -- specifically, the polls of GOP voters.

Ever since Trump essentially secured the Republican nomination, many famous professional pundits have been apologizing for getting the Trump phenomenon so very wrong. I haven't had to do this myself, since I not only looked at the polling which was happening at the time, but also actually believed it -- something even folks like Nate Silver are now admitting they couldn't bring themselves to do.

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Program Note: Today I am once again turning my column space over to a regular commenter at my website, who wishes only to be identified by her login name "Paula."

Paula took it upon herself -- unasked, entirely on her own initiative -- to begin conducting "man/woman on the street" interviews with strangers she interacted with in her daily life (she lives in Akron, in the bellwether state of Ohio), to see what they thought about the election season. Such interviews are, of course, anecdotal -- they are in no way a scientific survey of public opinion writ large. But in a lot of ways, they are much more representative than most of what you hear in the media about how real people are actually reacting to the election process. The responses are a lot more authentic and genuine than anything you'll hear from inside the Beltway, in other words.

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Program Note: Today and tomorrow, I am turning my column space over to a regular commenter at my website (ChrisWeigant.com), who wishes only to be identified by her login name "Paula."

Paula took it upon herself -- unasked, entirely on her own initiative -- to begin conducting "man/woman on the street" interviews with strangers she interacted with in her daily life (she lives in Akron, in the bellwether state of Ohio), to see what they thought about the election season. Such interviews are, of course, anecdotal -- they are in no way a scientific survey of public opinion writ large. But in a lot of ways, they are much more representative than most of what you hear in the media about how real people are actually reacting to the election process. The responses are a lot more authentic and genuine than anything you'll hear from inside the Beltway, in other words.

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We're really in the home stretch of the Democratic primaries now, as the last few territories and the last eight states will all be voting in the upcoming weeks. Tomorrow night, Oregon and Kentucky will weigh in, and then the last six states (who, for some unfathomable reason, all decided to go last this year) will finally get a chance to vote on the seventh of June: California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Before I get to predicting tomorrow night's races, as usual I have to take a moment to update the stats. Last Tuesday, I called West Virginia for Bernie Sanders, predicting he'd win by double digits. This turned out to be true, which gives me one more in the "win" column for Democrats. As I mentioned last week, since Donald Trump is the only candidate left on the Republican side, I won't be calling any more of their races (Republicans in Oregon vote tomorrow, too), and my Republican record for the year can now be considered final.

Total correct 2016 Democratic picks: 34 for 44 -- 77%
Total correct 2016 Republican picks: 37 for 47 -- 79%
Total overall correct picks: 71 for 91 -- 78%.

Those numbers may look pretty good, but I have to say I was chagrined to learn that there is a spoof pundit out there (Carl "The Dig" Diggler) who has also been playing this game, which was intended by the people behind the prank as satire of the horserace-obsessed political press. They intentionally ignored the polls and went with gut feelings designed to poke fun at how some pundits operate. This led them to write such lines as: "Wisconsinites are mostly a simple people. They eat their three lunches, kiss their often enormous children on their often featureless faces, and go to church so they can pray for the 2 Broke Girls." Pretty funny, I have to admit, but the sobering part is that their record of predictions is astoundingly good -- a fact which shocked even the people behind the spoof. Carl "The Dig" Diggler called 87 primary races so far. He got 77 of them right, for a very impressive 89 percent correct. My own record doesn't look so good, stacked up against what was intended to be a prank. It's stories like this which keep you humble about the whole business of political prognostication.

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Today, let's just start with some silliness. It just seems appropriate, somehow. Maybe because it's Friday the 13th? For whatever reason, silliness seems like the place to begin (and end) this week. Because, after this silly start, we're going to end this column with a contest to come up with the best playground taunt to call Donald Trump -- and you can't get much sillier than that!

There was both some sad news and some amusing news from the internet recently, so let's get the sad news out of the way first. There will be no "RSS Boaty McBoatface." The British government announced that after it had held an online contest to name its new polar research vessel, the will of the online voters would be ignored. "Boaty McBoatface" won in a landslide, but the vessel will not be christened the RSS Boaty after all. Instead, in a massively disappointing downgrade, one of the robot probe ships on board the research vessel will get the name instead. Our favorite tidbit from this story: one of the other rejected names was: "RSS It's Bloody Cold Here," which we feel would also have been a great name for a polar research vessel.

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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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