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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Having devoted yesterday's column to a look backwards at presidential races, today I'm going for a personal best in the "ridiculously early speculation" category, and examine what might happen to the Republicans and the Democrats in the next presidential race. Hey, it's been that kind of week, what can I say?

Before I dig in, I should define my term. By "next time around" I am speaking of the next open presidential nomination (with no incumbent running, in other words). This could either be in 2020 or 2024 for either party, depending on who wins this year's election. Either President Hillary Clinton or President Donald Trump would assumably want two terms, so I'm taking it as a given that they'll run for re-election. A sitting president means an all-but-assured nomination (usually, but not always), so I'm looking beyond any second-term campaign to the election afterwards -- when the field will be truly open. So for one party, this will be in 2020 and for the party who wins this year, it'll likely be in 2024. As I said, a personal best in "ridiculously early."

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To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd have to write this article. I fully expected someone else to dig this stuff out, if the calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race (or "say nice things about Hillary Clinton") began. Now that they have, I still haven't seen any detailed reminders of how the 2008 Democratic primary race ended yet. So I went ahead and dug them out on my own.

What follows is a review of the last few weeks of the 2008 primary, for those who have forgotten what it was like. All of these articles come from the Washington Post (because it made the database search easier, mostly). I apologize for not providing links; this is due to the fact that I retrieved the articles from a commercial database (with a paywall).

All of the following articles were published from mid-April to the first week in June of 2008. In other words, exactly eight years ago. I'm going to present them with only limited commentary (to only provide any needed historical context).

One more thing before I begin, in the interests of fairness. While Hillary Clinton did fight hard until the end, she is to be credited for two strategic moves from roughly the same period of time. First, she largely refused to attack Barack Obama in the midst of all the "Reverend Wright" mudslinging. She easily could have piled on, along with the rest of the political universe. She didn't. Secondly, during the time period below, Clinton had a stock line she threw in to most of her speeches (even the ones quoted below): "I will work my heart out for the Democratic Party and the party's eventual nominee." She signaled that she would work for Obama's election if she lost, which was rightly seen as a big step towards party unity.

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