After having just sat through over five hours (!) of Republicans debating each other, I have to say my brain is somewhat numb. So I'm not going to try to do any high-level analysis of the 25 pages of notes I took, but instead rely on just snap reactions to what I've just witnessed at the Shrine of Saint Ronald of Reagan's Magic Airplane. I write these snap reactions for a reason, and the reason is to see how differently I saw the debates from all the professional pundits out there. Come tomorrow, I'll read what everyone else has to say, and if the past is any measure, I'll be astonished at what settles in as conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom. All quotes are transcribed by me hastily, and may not be exact, I should mention in passing, too.

I will also try to keep this column short, because after five hours of argle-bargle from politicians (and wannabe politicians), I think I need a beer or something. Which, of course, I'll wait to quaff until after I finish this. Hence, it'll be as short as I can possibly manage. I promise I'll provide more in-depth commentary tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, how's that? OK, that's enough of an intro, let's get on with it....

The Undercard

It was a very strange division this time around, because with 11 people in the main event, it meant only four candidates were on stage for the undercard debate (which is so much more polite than calling it the "kiddy table debate," don't you think?). Rick Perry's already gone from the race and Jim Gilmore wasn't even allowed in, which left just Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki to debate each other (and the illusory specter of Donald Trump, who is always present at undercard debates). As if to underscore this, the last thing the "warmup" show on CNN showed before they broke to the undercard debate was Trump himself, making big news by actually (gasp!) getting out of his car and entering the building.

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We are over a year away from voting who will be America's next president. Summer's not even over, and the first primaries will be held in the bitter cold of next winter. Most people simply aren't paying much attention to politics yet, and won't for some time to come. I truly do understand all of that, but at the same time I've been writing more than my fair share of "horserace" stories already -- a trend which will only accelerate in the coming months (especially when I crank up the 2016 version of my "Electoral Math" column series, which tracks polling from all 50 states). So I wanted to take today to offer up a proactive defense of the concept of watching the polling around the "horserace" that is the presidential contest.

Horserace reporting is sneered upon by many. Critics have a valid set of complaints, actually. Horserace reporting is lazy for reporters -- you can do it from your desktop without attending campaign events or digging through piles of position papers. Horserace reporting is stupid because it focuses almost solely upon national poll results, which is not how we elect either our party nominees or our presidents. Early horserace reporting is especially stupid, because polls so far away from the actual election do no more than measure name recognition. Horserace reporting almost always misses the mark when trying to ascertain the reasons why certain candidates are doing well and others aren't, or when trying to gauge public perception of complicated issues. The poll data is not always accurate, and modern-day polling has several technical issues it didn't use to have.

That's a lot of complaints, and I actually agree with most of them -- to one degree or another. But there are mitigating circumstances for almost all of them. Horserace reporting is indeed lazy stuff -- you look at the polling data, you make a few notes so you get the numbers correct in your story, and then you sit and ponder the meaning of it all. It's a lot easier than following a candidate around or doing a deep dive into the issues. I would say that horserace reporting is indeed facile and superficial, and I would hate a diet of nothing but stories about the horserace. But when complimented by reporting on the issues and on the things candidates are saying, keeping an eye on the polls is still a valuable tool for political writers.

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The second debate of the Republican nomination race is fast approaching, so in preparation I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the entire GOP field once again. First, though, a word about the debates themselves.

The host of the second debates is CNN, who got shamed into changing their rules for who will appear on the main stage (so as not to exclude Carly Fiorina). Everyone seems to have agreed Carly "won" the first debate, despite her not even being in the prime-time event. This "win" was always a bit overstated, which I'll get to in a moment, but what it means is that there will be 11 people on the main stage this time around.

That's a lot of people, and when you divide it up it means only a few minutes of microphone time for each candidate. My guess is that future debate hosts are going to be looking for ways to even further limit the participants, in order to give those who really seem to have a chance much more time to make their case. The first thing likely to happen will be the elimination of the "kids' table" debates altogether. If candidates aren't in the top ranks by now, there really isn't a whole lot of reason to provide them with free airtime. "But what about Carly's rise?" some might ask -- again, I'll get to that in a moment. I should also add I'm not predicting what I would like to see happen here, I'm attempting to predict what is likely to happen. And the first thing to get jettisoned will be the afternoon debates between candidates struggling to pull more than a single percent in the polls.

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Breaking news! Rick Perry drops out of presidential race!

This news broke after almost all of this column was written, so we're just going to add this bit at the top to snarkily wish Rick Perry well in his future endeavors. I must admit I got it wrong when I predicted a few weeks ago that Perry would stay in the race longer than Jim Gilmore, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, and Bobby Jindal. But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun betting who will drop out next! With Perry gone already, I predict that Gilmore will be next, seeing as how he didn't even make it onto next week's CNN kid's table debate. Place your bets in the comments -- who will be the next to fall?

One thing worth pointing out as Perry exits is that he was really the first Republican candidate to directly attack Donald Trump. Both Perry and Graham lit into Trump after his disgraceful comments about John McCain's military service. It did neither of them any good in the polls -- and, in fact, was roughly where Perry began his big slide downwards. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned for the other candidates? Time will tell. OK, with the breaking news out of the way, let's resume our regular column, shall we?

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Today, as all political pundits know, is the opening of football metaphor season! Since football is getting underway tonight, it becomes entirely appropriate and seasonal to once again start talking about politics in the language of the gridiron.

Trump tackles Fiorina! Self-declared refs Bush and Walker call unnecessary roughness!

CNN moves goalposts for debate inclusion!

Obama does endzone dance after Iran deal victory!

Sanders continues to advance the ball against Hillary!

As you can see, the metaphors are all quite easy to apply to politics, because after a while the "horserace" metaphor only goes so far, and football metaphors are so much more varied (and more fun). Admittedly, pundits don't routinely get flagged for use of football metaphors outside of the season, but I personally like to at least emphasize them in a timely manner.

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September is always an amusing time of year for politics-watchers, because inevitably Congress will return from their five- or six-week-long paid vacation and then immediately start whining that there is so much on their plate that they simply won't have time to get everything done. Without, of course, ever seeing the irony of such statements (after taking all of August plus a week or two off). This year is no different, of course. Congress is back and they're already moaning about how much they have to do in September. After all, they've got an upcoming budgetary train wreck to create, the Pope is going to visit, and -- first on their list of looming deadlines -- they're supposed to vote on the Iran nuclear deal. It now seems the Republicans are going to fumble this one badly, due (once again) to the intransigence of the House hardliners.

The plan was to hold a politically-fraught but ultimately meaningless vote (or two, or three). This would allow Congress to have its say, but wouldn't derail the actual deal President Obama has struck. This was the plan all along -- make some political hay over the issue (and then use it to campaign on next year), but without suffering any real-world consequences. The Republicans themselves agreed to this arrangement, back in May (when Obama stacked this particular parliamentary deck in his favor).

The original plan was to have Congress pass a resolution expressing their dissatisfaction with the Iran nuclear deal. They'd then put this bill on Obama's Oval Office desk, where he would be forced to veto it. The bill would then get another round of voting, even though it was very likely that the veto would not be overturned. Republicans would have gained three big political moments from this plan: the initial votes in both the House and Senate, the veto itself, and the votes attempting to overturn the veto. They could proclaim "a majority of Congress disapproves of this deal," and they could have told voters that "we fought as hard as we could against Obama on the Iran deal."

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Labor Day weekend is over, meaning the world of political punditry heaves a collective sigh of relief because, according to the calendar they use, this marks the end of the summer "Silly Season" and the point where the public starts to actually pay some attention to politics once again -- specifically, the presidential race. There's some truth to this, although people in Iowa and New Hampshire have likely already begun considering political presidential candidates, and there are plenty of people elsewhere who won't get interested until we get a lot closer to actually voting in primaries and caucuses. Still, with the second Republican presidential debate due next week, I thought it'd be a good time for a quick review of where the Republican field now stands and where it could go in the very near future. My personal feeling is that Donald Trump might just be approaching a point where he becomes unstoppable, which started as a gut feeling but looks entirely plausible, given the data.

[I should mention as a technical note that all of the data I'm about to analyze comes from the 2106 GOP presidential polling page and the 2012 GOP presidential polling page, both from the RealClearPolitics.com website. I should also add that I only really paid any attention to the data on both pages from the beginning of July, the year before the actual election (any earlier polling is almost meaningless, really).]

The first question is whether anything can be learned from the 2012 race. The Republican field was similar in some ways to today's field, but there are also differences. In 2012, there was a presumptive frontrunner, Mitt Romney, who faced a wide field of challengers. While there were four challengers who overtook Romney in the polling at various times, Romney stayed in a pretty strong second place even during the challengers' peaks. He was always, at the very least, second or third choice in the field. This year's race also featured an early presumptive nominee, Jeb Bush, who faced an even-larger field of challengers. But one key difference is already apparent: Bush is nowhere near as strong as Romney was, at the start of September.

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There will be no column today, as I played hooky and enjoyed myself instead. Hope everyone else had a happy Labor Day! New columns will resume tomorrow.

President Obama had some fun this week, and by doing so actually forced the media to tackle a serious subject on his agenda. The fun part was taking the whole press corps up to Alaska, and even filming an episode of Bear Gryll's celebrity survivalist show. I certainly never thought I'd type a sentence linking President Obama and Bear Grylls, but then we certainly do live in strange times. In a more normal political (but no less partisan) atmosphere, Obama might have been roundly criticized for acting almost Putin-like, being photographed as a tough guy in the great outdoors. Who knows, when the episode airs, he still may face such carping from Republicans. But seeing as how the Republican presidential race is currently redefining the term "cult of personality" in a major way, I don't think the charge is going to carry much weight. It's hard to argue that the dignity of the Oval Office means not appearing in a reality television show when the guy leading the pack on your side is a reality-show television star, after all.

Obama's trip did have a serious side, and he used his bully pulpit to good effect, spotlighting Americans who are already being directly affected by climate change. This spawned some stories in the mainstream media, which was precisely the point -- drawing the public's attention to the problem. Obama did undercut his Alaskan visit a bit by giving the green light to more arctic drilling a few weeks earlier, but he's still been the strongest environmentalist American president, on the whole, in modern times.

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Senator Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Senate Democrat to indicate she'll stand with President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal, which is significant -- although, in all likelihood, also merely symbolic. The media are reporting it is significant because it assures Obama that his veto won't be overturned, but what they're mostly missing is that a Senate veto-override vote likely wouldn't even have to happen.

The process is rather convoluted, and actually started months ago. President Obama has long held the legal opinion that Congress doesn't even have a say in the deal he (and six other nations) struck with Iran. It's an executive deal, according to Obama, therefore Congress isn't even part of the process. Congress, understandably, didn't much like this and demanded the right to be heard on the deal. So Obama struck a deal with Congress -- and, by doing so, Obama stacked the deck entirely in his own favor. Which Congress fully agreed to, months ago.

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