President Joe Biden has rolled out a new moniker in the political lexicon: "ultra-MAGA." Unfortunately, this is probably a branding misstep, because while it is rather descriptive of the phenomenon Biden is trying to draw attention to (being a fanatical adherent of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" philosophy), it seems more like a positive term a supporter would come up with rather than a slur an opponent would use. So far, I haven't seen either Donald Trump or any other Republican fully embrace the term, but it seems like it's only a matter of time before they do.

It's pretty easy to see how they would successfully flip this script. All Trump would have to do is champion it once, and the rest would follow naturally: "So Sleepy Joe calls Republicans 'ultra-MAGA' like it's some sort of bad thing? Well, I say to him you're damn right [Candidate X] is ultra-MAGA! He's more MAGA than anybody! That is a good thing, Sleepy Joe!"

To me, this seems pretty obvious.

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The Democratic Party is in the midst of a minor revolution of the scheduling variety. Earlier, they announced that all states wishing to be early-voting states in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary campaign would have to submit applications to the national party -- and that there was no guarantee that the four who had previously held these prized spots (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada) would continue to hold the same status in 2024. The applications are now in and the national party apparatus will consider the matter and announce their selections at the end of the summer.

A full twenty different entities have applied for what could reportedly be as many as five spots. I say "entities" because two of them are not states -- Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, and the more-nebulous group Democrats Abroad. Neither one of these has any vote in the actual presidential election (only states send electors to the Electoral College), but either would be an interesting signal of inclusivity.

All four previous early-voting states have applied, as well as the following 14 other states: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.

So what are any of their chances? It's anyone's guess, really. But it's worth handicapping all the contenders, or at least weighing their relative merits and drawbacks. So I'm going to just dive into this free-for-all and offer up my thoughts on what I think the national Democratic Party is going to be thinking about, when they consider all these applications to be the earliest states.

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We're going to write our introductory weekly wrap-up in reverse this week (since it was a week for reversals). Then after we get the lesser political stories out of the way (in accelerated fashion), we'll get to the big bombshell scoop that drove the rest of the political world all week -- and will continue to do so for months to come.

So, as quickly as possible, let's run through the minor stories from the week:

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It is undisputable that Donald Trump plumbed new depths for what the Republican Party considers "too far" for their own politicians to go. Trump proved that no scandal -- sexual, financial, business-related, personal, factual, political, international interference in American politics, white national, conspiracy theorist, or insurrectionist -- was "too far" for him to go, at least with his own massive and committed base of supporters within the party ranks. Many other Republicans either now in office or running for office have taken this new low standard to heart, as GOP politician after GOP politician is caught in scandals that previously would have forced them to resign or be voted out of office the first chance the voters had. The big unanswered question is whether any standard (no matter how low) even remains within the party for anyone not named "Donald Trump." How far is "too far," these days, for Republicans?

Of course, there are really two standards at play here. The first is what the Republican Party thinks, and the second is what the voters think. We don't have a clear image of either one of these, at this point in the process, but it might become clearer as we wend our way through the primary and general election seasons.

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The very first column I ever wrote (for the Huffington Post, I didn't actually start this blog until a year later) was titled "Democratic Demagoguery." It urged Democrats to take a page from the Republican playbook and learn how to viscerally present issues and their party's agenda, in order to get more voters to vote for them. It started off (you'll soon note that this was 2006, as some of the current "hot button" issues plainly show) with the following:

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Supreme Courts are commonly referred to using the name of the chief justice who runs them. In my own lifetime, we've had the Warren Court, the Burger Court, the Rehnquist Court, and now the Roberts Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts. The chief justice is not selected or elected by the other justices, it is a permanent position that only changes after the death or retirement of the previous holder of the title. But it is becoming increasingly obvious (and will continue to become so) that the current court is no longer being led by Roberts. We might as well just adjust to the new reality and start calling it the Alito Court instead.

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Primary season is about to get underway across the country, and this year all eyes are on the various Republican contests, as seen through a single lens: Donald Trump's endorsements. This is horserace political commentary at its best or worst (depending on your outlook on horserace reporting in general). Tomorrow night will kick off this frenzy, with one of the most-watched races around -- the Senate primary in Ohio. But while much ink will be spilled dissecting the outcome of this race and many others (in the weeks to come), when considering Trump's endorsement record and the relative value of such endorsements, it's important to consider a few factors which might get lost in the fray. So let's take a look at the biggest of these.

How red a state is it?

A Republican primary in a ruby-red state is a different beast than one in a purple state. In a solidly red state, the Republican primary essentially is the election -- whoever wins is going to be elected in November, in other words. In a purple state, there is also the consideration of how strong the candidate will be in the general election against the Democratic nominee.

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As we write this, everyone inside the Beltway is getting ready for the upcoming White House Correspondents' Dinner, which President Joe Biden has said he will be attending (after a hiatus of presidents attending due to COVID and, earlier, due to Donald Trump having incredibly thin skin). But, as usual, our invitation seems to have been lost in the mail or something. Ahem.

We are excited with a sort of "something good is about to happen" feeling, however, because the House Select January 6th Committee has finally announced a preliminary schedule for public hearings. Here's the story (as it stands so far):

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[Program Note: This is the conclusion to the first part of this article, which ran yesterday.]

If Republicans do take control of both chambers of Congress, the margin of control in each will be the most important variable. In the Senate, the margin will likely be fairly close, but nobody really knows what it might be like in the House. If Republicans have a blowout House election season and pick up dozens and dozens of seats, this will almost certainly make Kevin McCarthy's job a lot easier; but if the margin is tight (maybe not quite as tight as the one Nancy Pelosi has been dealing with, but perhaps within 10 or 15 votes) then any faction bigger than the margin will be able to dictate its own terms -- as the Tea Partiers proved, the last time this happened.

Of course, there is no guarantee that Kevin McCarthy will actually become speaker. If the margin is tight enough, then the whackadoodle fringe of the Republican caucus might decide to oust him for some perceived unfaithfulness to Trumpism. It's doubtful that they could force one of their own (Jim Jordan, perhaps?) on the rest of their caucus as speaker, but there is a curveball plan that some of them are already openly flirting with -- nominating Donald Trump for speaker of the House.

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[Program Note: I had to split today's column into two parts, because it ran so long. When I started writing it, I didn't realize how much ground I was going to have to cover. So today's installment will first take a look at the historical context, and then there's a little rundown on some current Republican candidates at the end. Tomorrow's conclusion will examine in depth exactly what might be expected to happen next year. I suppose it's entirely appropriate for an article on divided government to be presented in a divided fashion, right?]

As distasteful as it may be, it seems like a good time to consider what divided government next year would look like, and what might happen in such a scenario. Of course, nobody knows what the outcome of the midterm congressional election will be, and as Ukraine should have taught us, sometimes crises pop up that aren't a part of the American political cycle at all. So we have no idea right now what the most important issue facing the voters will be in November. It could very well be something that isn't even on anyone's radar at the current moment. But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that Republicans win control back of both the House and the Senate. This would give President Joe Biden a hostile Congress for the remaining two years of his first term.

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