Today seems like a good day to write an optimistic column. I was inspired to do so by reading a different optimistic column, in today's New York Times (to give full credit for my outburst of rosy-tinted cheerfulness). The article, by Jonathan Alter, is titled: "What If Democrats Win The White House And Congress On Tuesday?" It does begin by admitting that this all may be a "pipe dream," but it lays out what Kamala Harris and a Democratic Congress (with control of both houses) might be able to accomplish.

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Tomorrow night might be the last big television event of the 2024 presidential race. JD Vance and Tim Walz will debate each other, and since Donald Trump is so far resisting the idea of having a third presidential debate, this may be it for face-to-face encounters between the two campaigns. So I found myself wondering what I would ask the two candidates, if I had the chance.

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In a surprise turn of events, the mayor of New York City will not now go on to run for president. Or maybe that should read: In a surprise turn of events, this time it wasn't the governor of New York caught in a career-ending scandal, but instead just the mayor of New York City.

That's the way I reacted to hearing the breaking news that New York City Mayor Eric Adams had been indicted on five federal charges, including bribery and money-laundering: "Wait... the mayor? Shouldn't that be the governor?!?" I apologize to Governor Kathy Hochul for this knee-jerk reaction, since (as of yet) she has not been implicated in any career-ending scandal. But it should be a forgivable reaction, after reviewing the recent history of both offices.

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Members of the Republican Party, from Donald Trump on downward, were all caught pretty flat-footed by the announcement yesterday that President Joe Biden was bowing out of the presidential race. The only thing they could agree upon, at least in the initial hours after it happened, was a knee-jerk reaction that is just a monumentally stupid position for them to take (politically-speaking). Because if they got their wish -- if Joe Biden immediately resigned the presidency -- then Donald Trump's chances of winning the race in November would go down even further. But not many of them seem to have realized how self-defeating their calls on Biden to resign truly are.

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President Joe Biden now has absolutely nothing to fear from picking up the phone and ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate Donald Trump. Or perhaps (and more to the point) ordering them to take out two or three Supreme Court justices. These would all be "official acts" of a sitting United States president (the commander in chief giving an order to the military), and therefore Biden would be completely immune from any fear of prosecution afterwards. That is what the Supreme Court just ruled, today.

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Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.

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For a while, Donald Trump was known as "President Trump." Then he became (depending on your editorial whim) the "former president" or "ex-president." But the only valid title he really could claim after leaving office (former titles being no more than diplomatic politeness, really) was what one judge called him while turning down one of his numerous appeals: "Citizen Trump." Or, as the judge and the prosecution referred to him throughout his first criminal trial in New York City, merely: "Mister Trump."

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Well that certainly didn't take long! After less than 10 hours of deliberating, the jury in Donald Trump's first criminal trial returned their verdict. It was a sweeping one: guilty on all 34 charges. Donald Trump will henceforth be known as: "convicted felon Donald Trump."

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Presidential debate announcements, Michael Cohen testifying, and The Jerry Springer Show breaking out in a House committee -- it's been an eventful political week all around, folks!

But we have to begin today with a very sobering piece of data, just to put everything in some perspective. We (rather obviously) personally live and breathe the political scene, and it is a fair assumption that anyone who regularly reads this column all the way to the end (a weekly marathon, 'tis true...) is also pretty plugged in to the follies of the everyday political landscape as well. We all pay attention, in other words. Not just to the large and meaningful events, but also to the small and amusing. But it cannot be repeated enough: this is not exactly normal. Most Americans just don't pay all that much attention to politics. Like, at all.

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Today, Greene decided to perform her stunt even knowing full well it was going to fail. And it did fail -- spectacularly. A preliminary vote was held on a motion to "table" (or "ignore," essentially) Greene's motion. If the preliminary vote had failed, the House would have then moved to vote on Greene's motion to vacate the chair. But the preliminary vote was overwhelmingly in favor of ignoring Greene and for keeping Johnson as speaker. In the end, only 11 Republicans voted against Johnson, which is not much of an uprising. The final tally was 359 to 43, with 196 Republicans voting to table the motion along with a whopping 163 Democrats. Only 32 Democrats voted against tabling the motion, while seven Democrats merely voted: "Present."

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