Few have commented on it since the Democratic National Convention last year, but to me there were some striking parallels between the election of 2024 and that of 1968. The biggest of these? A sitting Democratic president declined to finish his effort to win re-election, so the party had to rally around an alternative candidate late in the cycle -- who went on to lose. But that's not the only parallel. In 1968, America was mired down in a proxy war in Vietnam. Young people faced being drafted and sent off to fight and possibly die halfway around the world, and neither political party seemed to have any answer to the situation that didn't include a whole lot more of the same. This is where the parallel is not exact, because nothing like that is happening today.

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We are entering the homestretch of the presidential election, and who is going to win is anybody's guess. Polling is no real help since it shows many battleground states either perfectly tied or within a point or two. Both candidates are out there campaigning hard, but neither has a clear edge over the other one. It's going to go right down to the wire, that's about the only thing which seems certain at this point.

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Traditionally, Labor Day is the kickoff to the "real campaign season." This implies that none of what has gone before really made much of a difference, and that the American people will now give each of the candidates a fresh look as people slowly turn their focus to politics after the summer season is done.

Maybe that was true once, but quite obviously we've been in the midst of the general-election campaign season for most of this year already. There was no drama or mystery about who would become the major parties' nominees -- Donald Trump and President Joe Biden had the primaries wrapped up before they even began. And then the most dramatic event of the general election campaign happened midsummer, as Biden decided to end his candidacy (after a disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump). In other words, plenty has already happened this election season, and so we've got to look at the remaining two months as nothing more than the homestretch.

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With most of the "must-pass" legislation already out of the way for this year, both the House and the Senate are now planning a series of what are commonly called "messaging bills." These are bills that have one main intent -- not to pass the other house of Congress and become law, but instead to "send a message" to the voters. It's a polite way of saying "generating partisan talking points to use on the campaign trial."

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Republicans in the House of Representatives truly are their own worst enemy. It has been this way since the Tea Party revolt, more than a decade ago. And it shows no signs of changing or abating any time soon.

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This was a very bad week for Republicans in Congress, pretty much all around. The Speaker of the House proved incapable of counting votes and thus saw two big defeats on the floor, and over in the Senate the Republicans cut off their noses (elephant trunks?) to spite their faces in a spectacular turnaround from their own basic bargaining position. GOP incompetence was on display on both sides of the Capitol, to put it bluntly.

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Donald Trump is, without doubt, the leader of the Republican Party right now. He is cruising to the Republican presidential nomination and the party's base has rallied around him almost to the exclusion of all others. But below the level of Trump, there is a growing leadership vacuum in the party, as everyone scrambles to bend whichever way the Trump winds happen to be blowing at that particular moment, while still attempting to hold the party together. This lack of secondary leadership came to the fore this week in three notable ways.

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New monthly employment numbers were released today showing a surprisingly-high 353,000 new jobs were created in January. The stock market is currently setting new all-time highs. The American economy has recovered from COVID far faster and far better than all other major countries, in fact. Inflation has come back down, gasoline prices are down, and wages are up (growing faster than inflation). Signups for Obamacare hit another record this year (outpacing last year's record by five million!) and America has the lowest uninsured rate in history. Domestic oil production is also setting records. So what are conservatives obsessed with in reaction to all this good news? Taylor Swift. No, really....

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It is shocking (it always is), but here we are on the brink of the 2024 presidential election cycle's official start. The Iowa caucuses will be held Monday. Most of us, thankfully, will have a few more months to go before being faced with the prospect of going to the polls for our state's primary, when (hopefully) the weather will be a lot better than it is predicted to be in the Hawkeye State three days from now. They may be heading to their polls in the midst of a blizzard, with the temperature forecast to be: "Oh CRAP it is cold!" with windchill factors being as low as: "I can't feel my toes... or my face... just leave me here in this snowbank for the wolves to find...."

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Happy new year, everyone! It is indeed a brand new year, and an election year to boot. The presidential election isn't some faraway thing anymore, as the Republican Iowa caucuses are now less than two weeks away. Then it'll be on to New Hampshire and South Carolina and eventually Super Tuesday, which is quite likely the point where Donald Trump will have functionally wrapped up the GOP nomination.

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