Between Mike Pompeo planting a minefield for his fellow members of the GOP 2024 second tier and Mike Pence getting in on the docu-drama, and frontrunners Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump both rolling out made-for-TV policy proposals on culture war issues, I think we can fairly say that the 2024 race really is in full swing.

With 53 weeks before voting is scheduled to begin, yet again the belief that somehow this would be the cycle with a slow start or how certain candidates would be exempt from the normal indignities and vicissitudes of the two-year slog in pursuit of power is revealed as a bunch of hokum.

Like bad plastic surgery, this will be ugly and expensive. It will feature multiple lead changes, boomlets, bustlets, failures to launch, out-of-nowhere surges, scandals, and a million manufactured controversies. I love to watch it, but then again, I also enjoy a liverwurst sandwich from time to time. Whether you like it or not, that’s what’s happening.

With that in mind, let’s get right to a roundup of the latest: