We have to begin today with a look at the woes of the Republican Party. Because, when you think about it, why not?

The most amusing news (speaking from across the political aisle) all has to do with the Republican Party trying to come to grips with another presidential nominating process with Donald Trump as the 800-pound elephant in the room. Most of the party establishment would dearly love to see literally anyone else win the nomination than Trump, but they also fear the prospect of Trump going rogue if he doesn't win and launching his own third-party bid.

So the bigwigs and the deep-pocket GOP donors are all planning their strategy, which aims to learn the lessons from 2016, when Trump won the nomination mostly by getting only around one-third of the votes in each state's primary. While GOP voters rejected Trump by a 2-to-1 margin, the "2" in that equation was splintered between over a dozen other contenders. So this time around, the bigwigs and the big-money types are going to try to strongarm whichever candidates they wind up endorsing into agreeing to drop out early if they don't catch fire. The only problem with this wonderful scheme is what will happen if different groups of bigwigs and donors settle on different "not-Trump" candidates? If there are three or four of them who are backed by tens of millions of dollars, are the people who invested so much money in them really going to say to themselves: "Well, we spent a lot, but he's not going to win, so let's just pull the plug and start backing another candidate"? This remains to be seen.

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I'm going to end this column today with an excerpt from the archives, but I have to explain why I'm re-running it first. Because recently I have been sent into howls of laughter at the new Republican complaint: "How could you possibly accuse us of attacking Social Security and Medicare?!? What an absurd notion!" Not just peals of laughter, but also a Shakespearean-class eyeroll as well: The party doth protest too much, methinks.

Republicans, apparently, think the American public has forgotten the last 60-90 years. You know -- the time period when the GOP was downright proud of attacking first Social Security and then Medicare and Medicaid as some sort of communist plot to kill American freedom. And no, as you'll see, that is not an exaggeration or any sort of hyperbole. They really said this stuff on a regular basis, back when Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid were all being debated by American politicians.

They aren't quite as hysterical about it these days, they're more apt to scream: "Socialism! Everybody run!" at newly-proposed programs from Democrats. But they have indeed been trying to "reform" Social Security and Medicare for the entire time that I have been alive. Their most recent attack on Social Security was to try to "privatize" it all. That, thankfully, went over like a lead balloon. For Medicare and Social Security, they want to hike the retirement age and/or cut benefits.

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Nikki Haley became the second officially-announced presidential candidate from either of the two major American political parties yesterday. Initially she had teased that her big announcement would be today, but she must have been overcome with the Valentine's Day spirit or something, so she jumped the gun. Haley and Donald Trump are now the entire "officially-announced" field for 2024. Which immediately leads me to wonder: "Who's next?"

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Senator Dianne Feinstein announced today that she would not be seeking re-election next year. California is going to get an open Senate race for her seat instead. This announcement was anticipated, although nobody really knew what Feinstein was going to decide. But, speaking as a Californian, I am glad she chose to step down gracefully. Indeed, I urged her to do so six years ago.

Senator Feinstein has carved out an impressive legacy for herself, after serving in the Senate since 1992. She broke a lot of glass ceilings and just last year became the longest-serving woman in Senate history. When she first arrived in the Senate, there were two women senators. Now there are 25. She has a lot of accomplishments to show for her time in office as well, although I certainly didn't agree with many of them at the time. Feinstein is a much more centrist (or even right-leaning) Democrat than I would have preferred to have represent me, but I did appreciate at least some of her brave stands.

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For a little over a week now, America's military might has been called into action to defend our airspace against... balloons. This has led to a frenzy of speculation about what, precisely, is going on up there. It even sparked a bit of a U.F.O. craze of the type not seen since at least Close Encounters Of The Third Kind came out, if not the original U.F.O. craze of the 1950s. This is pretty absurd when you think about it, though, since if advanced civilizations were indeed monitoring humans, you'd think they'd have slightly-more-sophisticated aircraft to do so than the one which travels the slowest and is the easiest to shoot down. But because the tally is now up to four such objects shot out of North America's skies, I thought I'd share my own ballooning thoughts today (pun very much intended).

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President Joe Biden achieved -- in public and on national television -- a seemingly-impossible feat this week, as he vocally unified all of Congress in support of the long-held Democratic goal of protecting Social Security and Medicare from having their budget slashed by Republicans. That was pretty astonishing to see, you have to admit, since Republicans have been attacking Social Security since before Joe Biden was born (which is really saying something, considering he's about as far from a spring chicken as you can get). But suddenly they decided en masse to take exception with this fact, and loudly protested when Biden pointed out what they've essentially been saying for decades and decades. So Biden welcomed them into the fold of politicians who do fight to preserve the safety net, gleefully proclaiming he had achieved "unanimity." This was a warning to the Republicans that the subject of cuts to Social Security and Medicare were now officially off the table. Rarely has so major a bit of political bargaining worked so effectively during a State Of The Union speech. Which is why it was all so astonishing to watch.

Biden got some rave reviews for his speech, which had the theme "Let's finish the job" (a not-so-subtle 2024 campaign slogan tryout). One line from a Politico review seemed to sum the evening up perfectly: "At times, Biden seemed to take delight in ribbing lawmakers on the other side of the aisle -- wearing a Cheshire cat grin when he did so." After leaving the chamber, Biden even tweeted a challenge to the Republicans: "Look: I welcome all converts. But now, let's see your budget." Chuck Schumer had some warm words for Biden afterwards, saying: "Joe Biden was so deft. He let them walk into his trap. He rope-a-doped them. And now all of America has seen the Republican Party say, 'No, we're not going to cut Social Security and Medicare.' He did a service."

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It is always amusing when the Republican Party is forced to perform a whiplash-inducing 180-degree turn on an issue that they've solidly been on the other side of for a very long time. The previous notable instance of this was likely during their whole "repeal and replace Obamacare" fiasco, when they suddenly realized en masse that one of the most popular things about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the protection of people with pre-existing conditions who had previously been categorically denied even the chance to purchase health insurance. All of a sudden, Republicans started swearing up and down that they would also protect people with pre-existing conditions -- usually without a hint of how they were going to accomplish this fact. But they all started singing from Obamacare's playbook and praising it to the skies as a good thing (where previously they had tried to convince everyone that everything in Obamacare was bad and downright evil). In Tuesday's State Of The Union speech, President Joe Biden forced another major ideological U-turn of this magnitude upon the GOP, ironically aligning himself (!) with Donald Trump in the process. That's got a certain "through the looking glass" quality to it, you have to admit.

Biden performed the most spectacular trolling of Republicans I have ever witnessed, in fact. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a successful "rope-a-dope" strategy, which metaphorically works too. Biden seemingly did the impossible by getting Republicans -- all of them, from the sound of it -- to fervently cheer the idea of protecting Social Security and Medicare from any budget cuts. This has long been a core Democratic goal, although some Democrats have occasionally wavered in the face of Republican demands to gut the safety net for retirees and seniors (see: Barack Obama's proffered "Grand Bargain," for just one example).

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Last night, President Biden gave (depending on how you look at it) a rousing State Of The Union speech or perhaps the first speech of his re-election campaign. Throughout it all, by my count, he uttered the phrase "Let's finish the job" a whopping 10 times (at the very least... I know I must have missed a few...). That sounds an awful lot like a new campaign slogan to me....

Biden's speech was rather extraordinary, mostly because of his delivery. He actively engaged with Republican hecklers, which is a very tricky thing to do, but he pulled it off masterfully. He stressed cooperation over partisan confrontation, for the most part, and called for unity and getting done what they could both agree upon. Which, again, is a very hard needle to thread in today's hyper-polarized America. But he managed to stay folksy and cheerful throughout it all, which is what made it all so extraordinary. I've already seen the term "happy warrior" used to describe Biden's performance last night, and it fits pretty well.

As expected, the speech stuck mostly to the tried-and-true listing of accomplishments mixed in with Biden's ambitions for future legislation. Biden reportedly heavily vetted the speech himself to remove all "Washington-speak" and/or technical government terms from the text. If this is true, he did a great job. He sounded natural and in his element for the entire speech -- it was all delivered in "Bidenese," to put it another way.

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As is my wont, I will be watching the State Of The Union speech tonight and then writing my post-speech thoughts and reactions afterwards. But I am not sure I will finish this effort tonight, so I could either post it very late this evening or possibly tomorrow. Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up. Thanks for your patience.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Tomorrow night, President Joe Biden will mark the halfway point of his first term in office by delivering a State Of The Union speech. He will remind Americans of all the things he has accomplished so far, and he will likely have a pared-down list of things he thinks he might still accomplish even with a divided Congress. All of which is traditional and expected. But what we can all also expect is a "soft launch" of Biden's re-election campaign.

Of course, the official launch of Biden's next campaign could come at any time now or it could even be months in the future. There's no real pressure on Biden to announce, since he seems to already have frozen all other Democrats out of the running. And there's no real mystery left at all about whether Joe's going to run again or not -- all the signs point to him doing so. He's been riding rather high politically ever since the midterms, and the economic numbers just keep getting better and better. Prior to the midterms, there was a lot of grumbling behind the scenes among Democrats about how it'd be better for the party if Biden did gracefully step aside to allow another candidate a shot at 2024, but those voices have all been quelled by the complete disappearance of the much-predicted midterm "red wave." Biden's job approval ratings have even been rising since then, although they still stand just below 45 percent -- which is supposed to be very dangerous territory for any politician seeking re-election. But if gas prices stay low and inflation continues to fall then Biden could be in the 45-50 percent range within a few months, which would be much more solid territory to run from.

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