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Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!
We do have to warn readers, right up front, that this is an insanely long article. If you're one of those "tl;dr" types of people, we would strongly advise you to go find a short listicle somewhere else, to read instead. Because this will be a marathon, not a sprint (as always).
It is December once again, so we're going to have to take care of some year-end business today. And tomorrow too, for that matter.
Let's begin with that -- our tentative schedule for the month. Today, we'll be throwing open the nominations for the first half of our year-end awards, so feel free to peruse the categories listed below and send your thoughts as to who you think deserves any of them. I didn't start asking for public nominations during the first years these columns ran, but I have been more than impressed at the quality of suggestions I've gotten since I have, so I do encourage everyone to suggest nominees! I take them all very seriously (except for the ones that make me burst out laughing, of course).
OK, to begin with, a word of warning: our schedule for this week is going to be light. Today (obviously) there will be no new column, and tomorrow will be a re-run column, just to warn everyone in advance. Then Wednesday will be the second installment of our year-end awards (see below). Thursday I will try to write a column, but if the "banished words" list comes out early (sometimes it is posted on the last day of the year, sometimes on the first of the new year), then that's what it will cover. Friday, naturally, there will be no column, as we all nurse our first 2021 hangover. Starting Monday, we'll be back to a full schedule once again, as we count down the last 20 days of our national nightmare.
What a year. Seriously, that was a tough one for us all, wasn't it?
Before we begin with the awards, I would just like to thank all the people -- both online and in person -- who helped out by giving me their suggestions and nominations for all of these awards. I have tried to credit individuals where appropriate, but I probably forgot to do so here and there too, so I apologize in advance.
Well, this year both year-end holidays fall on a Friday, so I haven't completely decided how to handle our two annual awards columns. I basically have two options.
In the admittedly sophomoric fashion of headline creation, today we do not cheer: "On, Wisconsin!", but rather approach the state from the point of dealing with a tricky subject to address, in the style of: "On The Subject Of...". The reasons are pretty obvious (not to... ahem... badger the point), since the primary election they're holding today simply should not have been held right now, seeing as how we're all still in the depths of a medical crisis which demands as stringent social distancing as possible. But Republicans have successfully demanded that people risk death to cast a ballot, so (sadly) here we are.
Welcome back again for our continuing series where we attempt to pick the winners of all the 2020 Democratic primary contests. This is really the second part of a two-part article, as yesterday I discussed at length the shifting nature of the contest after three of the moderate candidates dropped out (Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar). Today we're going to forego the "big picture" analysis altogether and just dive right in to the state-by-state predictions.
It's "first in the nation" primary time, which means it is time once again to throw down my own markers and predict the winner of New Hampshire tonight. I've long felt that pundits who merely vaguely describe the race as it stands are craven, because it's a lot tougher to actually try to foresee the results ahead of time in an article under your own name. So I've always publicly announced my picks ahead of time, even if they turn out to be disastrously wrong in the end.
We're finally at the point where Democratic primary voters (or "caucus voters," today) get to register their choices in an actual election. It's been a long and winding road to get here, and along the way 18 of the announced 29 Democratic candidates have already dropped out of the race, leaving us with only (!) 11 remaining. After the Iowa and New Hampshire results are in, that field should narrow down to, hopefully, single digits.
Welcome back to the second and final installment of our year-end awards columns! If you missed last week's column, you should probably check that out, too.