This week we were treated to the spectacle of the Republican Party largely voting in support of an advocate of using deadly violence towards her political opponents. How the mighty have fallen -- since this used to be the party that dearly loved to sanctimoniously lecture everyone on how high morals were an absolute necessity in politics, and that even the concept of "moral relativism" was evil. That all went out the window when they nominated the most amoral man imaginable for president, of course, but it's still rather shocking to see this once-publicly-righteous party wallow in the filth of QAnon and flirt with ideas like advocacy for assassinating political opponents.

Read Complete Article »

One of the concerns many Democratic voters (especially progressives) have had about President Joe Biden was that he has had a propensity to compromise too much when dealing with congressional Republicans (as he did as vice president on several Obama initiatives) and that he just wasn't bold enough (too incremental), and would therefore prove to be a rather wishy-washy president. Well, the jury's still largely out (after all, it hasn't even been a full two weeks yet), but I have to say that the earliest indications are surprisingly good. Biden is holding firm in his first big legislative push, and he's refusing to get sidetracked into some miasmic swamp of some promised bipartisan compromise that never actually materializes.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden has now spent his first 10 days in office. All told, it's been fairly boring. Which is exactly what millions of Americans voted him into office to achieve. Journalists everywhere are writing absolute paeans to boredom. Throughout the land, a joyous cry is raised: "Let boredom ring!" Well, OK, that may be overstating it a tiny bit. But not by much.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden has been in office a little over a week, and so far he has exceeded expectations. Now, to be fair, these are still the earliest of days. Biden is still enjoying his "honeymoon" period with the public, with the press, and (largely) with Congress. That will fade, undoubtedly. Also, Donald Trump left so many egregious messes lying around that cleaning up the worst of them was pretty low-hanging fruit indeed. But, so far, Biden has not disappointed in a big way once.

None of his cabinet choices raised any huge alarm with even the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and they've been getting steadily confirmed with huge bipartisan votes. There will be a few later on that will be more contentious, no doubt, but so far Biden's track record on putting together his administration is a pretty admirable one.

Read Complete Article »

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer won his first big political battle against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last night. McConnell, in a fit of petulance, had dug in his heels and was refusing to agree to the new Senate rules proposed by Schumer which will dictate the chamber's power structure for the next two years. This is normally a routine vote, even with an evenly-balanced 50-50 Senate -- there wasn't much drama the last time this happened, when Tom Daschle and Trent Lott worked out an agreement. Essentially, Senate committees will be evenly divided between Democratic seats and Republican seats, but Democrats will still control what gets out of committee and (more importantly) what makes it to the Senate floor for a vote. After all, even though the Senate is evenly-divided, Vice President Kamala Harris is the deciding vote for the Democrats. But that's been true since last Wednesday, and yet McConnell blocked the new rules until today, which had left Republicans still chairing all the committees -- even though they're now in the minority.

Read Complete Article »

The Washington political press corps have returned to some semblance of normalcy. One of the things this means is that President Joe Biden is getting scrutiny and criticism for the actual reality on the ground versus what he had promised. This follows a four-year period of being so cowed by Trump's firehose of lies and bluster that the press corps mostly didn't even bother, other than a few half-hearted attempts here and there.

Read Complete Article »

Three momentous things happened last week which so overshadowed everything else in the political world that we're just going to ignore everything else up front, here.

First, Donald Trump slouched off to his golf resort in Florida a few hours early, for purely petty reasons -- he wanted the flight to still officially be "Air Force One" (a designation that only exists when the current president of the United States is on the plane), and he also didn't want to have to ask President Joe Biden for the routine favor of one last flight home on the big plane. So he flew while he was still president, after staging a pathetic goodbye rally at Joint Base Andrews (home base of the two planes that serve as Air Force One and Two). He forced the military into giving him one last 21-howitzer salute, and then flew south for the winter. And, hopefully, forever.

Read Complete Article »

It is morning in America again.

Ronald Reagan famously made a lot of political hay out of that slogan. The phrase worked so well because Americans generally favor optimism and a bright future over the gloomier alternatives. All modern presidential candidates since Reagan have struck optimistic themes while campaigning. Except one.

Donald Trump actually did campaign on optimism, but only during his first run. He borrowed the language of populism and painted a rather rosy worldview for the forgotten blue-collar Midwestern worker, back in 2016. By doing so, he flipped the "Big Blue Wall" that Democrats had previously relied upon to give them the necessary Electoral College votes, and he thus won the presidency.

Read Complete Article »

Welcome back to the second part of our annual year-end awards column series! If you missed it, you can check out last week's installment too. But a warning -- for both this column and last week's -- they're long. Incredibly long. Monstrously long. It's been that kind of year, what can we say?

Read Complete Article »

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.

Read Complete Article »