Today's article has two separate and unrelated parts, I should begin by saying. The first looks at the Republican presidential nomination race, and the second concerns Hillary Clinton and foreign policy. It's impossible to provide any smooth linkage or segue between the two (as the strange headline to this article pretty much proves), so I thought I'd point this out before I begin.

First, let's take a look at the Republicans. The big news today was that Senator Lindsey Graham has decided to drop out of the presidential nomination race. This leaves only (!) thirteen candidates remaining (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore).

It's hard to understand why Lindsey Graham hasn't gotten at least a minimal bounce in the polling in the past few weeks, since his entire political persona is to be the most belligerent advocate for the use of American military force around. What with all the attention on the Republican side on terrorism and the Islamic State, it's somewhat surprising that Graham didn't pick up at least a few supporters, but this has not actually happened. Graham still regularly polls at zero percent (or one percent, on a really good day), and he continued to do so even after the focus shifted.

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Welcome to our year-end awards columns!

As we do every year, we are pre-empting our regular "Friday Talking Points" column, in order to bring you our "best and worst of 2015" list. In homage to our regular Friday columns, we will continue to gleefully abuse the privilege of using the editorial "we" throughout, so get used to that.

Speaking of homage-ing, our very title is, as always, a nod to The McLaughlin Group, who came up with these awards categories for their own year-end shows. We say "homage" with every degree of courtesy and respect, in the hopes that this column won't ever get sued for copyright infringement (to which we would reply: "Fair use!" and "Satire!"... heh).

Just to warn everyone, this is going to be a long column, but it's broken up into smaller chunks for each of the awards. Even regular readers of "Friday Talking Points" may not make it to the end, where we bestow the Person of the Year award, so if you hang in there for the whole thing, our hats are off to you for your stamina!

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Program Note: I'm busily putting together the first installment of our year-end "best/worst" lists, and so am unable to write an original column today. Tune in tomorrow to see the result. For now, please enjoy the following, where I uncover a worldwide conspiracy that each and every one of you has participated in at one point or another in your lives. Yes, you! You're a co-conspirator just like all the others....

The Biggest Conspiracy Of All
[Originally published December 23, 2009]

Speaking as someone who generally enjoys a good conspiracy theory just for the "creative writing" aspect alone, in all good conscience I simply must report this shocking news: I have uncovered a big, fat conspiracy that is no mere theory. We're either being lied to, or we're joining in the propagation of the lie ourselves, with merriment. In actual fact, it would not be hyperbole to call this the father of all conspiracies.

And almost every single one of us has participated in this gigantic hoax, in one form or another, at least once in our lives. For many, it happens like clockwork on a regular basis. And it seems to prove Hitler's point about the "Big Lie" -- if you repeat it often enough, sooner or later a certain segment of the populace will accept it as being true.

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It's that time of year when Congress actually gets things done, so they don't have to work through the holidays. This is always a powerful incentive, and this year is no different. Paul Ryan actually bargained with Democrats instead of following the hotheads in his party into another government shutdown, which bodes well for the future of the House of Representatives (and America at large). But, as with all big omnibus budget bills, this means all kinds of unrelated issues -- from health care for 9/11 first responders to whether we export oil or not -- are tossed into the giant, must-pass bill. And along with the wave of other single-issue items came some good news for marijuana legal reformers.

Two riders to the big budget bill will continue to prevent the Department of Justice (which includes the Drug Enforcement Agency) from spending one thin dime to interfere with the implementation of state marijuana laws -- even though all of those laws run counter to federal drug law. This is Congress using its famous "power of the purse" to zero out the federal budget for fighting against medical marijuana state laws and hemp cultivation state laws. The medical marijuana provision is already law, having been passed as part of the previous federal budget. It means the Drug Enforcement Agency cannot spend any money on harassing medical marijuana providers, as long as they're faithfully following their state's laws.

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Once again, welcome to a post-debate column. As always, these are my own snap reactions, uninfluenced by what others are thinking or saying. Also as always, any of the quotes below were hastily jotted down, and may not be word-for-word accurate. That's enough of an introduction, at this point, so let's just dive right in.

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The fifth Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle will take place tomorrow night. With less than two months to go before the voters finally get their chance to weigh in, this may be the last chance any of the other Republican contenders have of knocking Donald Trump out of first place. For many of the candidates on stage, Tuesday may be their last chance at remaining even slightly relevant to the race. There will also be a fierce battle for second place between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. All of this adds up to a fairly important night, and with Donald Trump at center stage once again, also likely an entertaining one.

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Hillary Clinton is right. Last night, on Seth Meyers's late-night show, Clinton had this to say about Donald Trump's candidacy: "I no longer think he is funny." Earlier in the week, the Huffington Post announced that it was un-banishing Trump from the "Entertainment" section and would now properly cover him under "Politics." Arianna and Hillary are correct -- what started out as a hilarious joke is no longer even the slightest bit funny anymore.

Donald Trump has the best chance of becoming the Republican nominee for the highest office in the land. Actual voting begins in two months. So far, nothing he's said -- no matter how outlandish or outrageous -- has had any negative impact on his support. His poll numbers defy political gravity. So far, no attacks against him have worked, and the GOP candidates attacking him have actually gone down in the polls as a result.

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A few years back -- right around the time I started blogging, in fact -- I was also considering doing a writing project that never actually took shape. I wanted to write a book about how Populism was about due for a resurgence in American politics. This was after watching Ralph Nader and Howard Dean, but before John Edwards and (obviously) Bernie Sanders. The disconnect between how the politicians (of both parties) set their priorities and agenda and what the American people actually wanted from their government was growing into a chasm, which is why I began entertaining thoughts of writing about the historical parallels and the possibility of a Populist wave building in the near future.

That was almost 10 years ago, and here we are. Donald Trump is the frontrunner of the Republican Party, and Bernie Sanders is second on the Democratic side. Both could quite plausibly be labelled Populists.

But the reason I gave up on my project was that there is a historically dark side to Populism that I really didn't want to grapple with. Populism has always had a strong strain of nativism running through it. Anti-immigrant ideas are nothing new in American politics, they go back a long way. And Populism is part of that history. Populists didn't invent anti-immigrant concepts, I should mention (being anti-immigrant goes back a lot further in our history, in fact), but they certainly did embrace them. This is one reason why people on the Left chose to re-label themselves "progressives" (when "liberal" went out of style) rather than "populists."

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On Monday, I took a look at the Republican nomination race, so I thought it'd be fair to check in today with the Democratic contest. One obvious reason why I (and others in the political commentary world) have been paying so much more attention to Republicans is the continuing volatility of the GOP campaign, which still has (as of this writing) 14 official candidates running. By comparison, the Democratic race is a lot more calm after half the field has already dropped out, which has left only three candidates still in the contest: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley.

Even a horserace between three horses can be exciting and close, we should mention, if they're evenly matched. The sheer number of candidates isn't always the best indicator of the fierceness of the struggle to be the frontrunner. However, in this case neither of those things is really true. The Democratic primary race has stabilized and there simply hasn't been much movement at all in the past few months. The safe bet is on Hillary to win comfortably. Bernie has an outside shot but still a rather long one, and O'Malley has no chance whatsoever.

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What is going to happen to the Republican Party in next year's general election campaign? We could be on the verge of a major shift in the American political system, which is always interesting to speculate about (whether it winds up happening or not). Donald Trump, love him or hate him, has certainly followed through on making this one of the most interesting presidential nomination races of all time. As the saying goes, we're all cursed to be living in interesting times -- at least for the next year or so.

As I see it now, there are four realistic scenarios which could play out. Trump fueled speculation about one of them recently, pointing to a poll which showed that 68 percent of his supporters would back him if he ran an independent campaign. This is already sending chills down the backs of the Republican establishment, as they contemplate President Hillary Clinton being sworn into office.

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