Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

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Everybody ready? Here is the first installment of our year-end awards, with our obligatory nod to The McLaughlin Group television show for coming up with these categories.

As always, it's a marathon. It's really, really long. Don't say you weren't warned! And since it is so long, that's all the introduction we're going to bother with.

Ready?... everyone buckle up... here we go....

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It has been astonishing to watch the reactions to the cold-blooded killing of a health insurance executive. Not so much the rude reactions people have been posting online, but the reactions to those reactions, in both the media and in the political world. This inability to recognize the rage that exists towards health insurers in general is nothing more than elitism. People who simply can't understand this free-floating anger are out of touch with the struggles ordinary people face and the powerless feeling it leaves them with. Murdering someone on the street is obviously an unacceptable answer, but it has provided a catharsis of feeling that someone out there took the power into his own hands for once. It's not exactly Robin Hood, but cheering for an outlaw isn't exactly a new thing when the outlaw is seen to be fighting back against entrenched power.

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Since it is Thanksgiving week, I am going to write a positive article today about Donald Trump (well, semi-positive, at any rate...).

Of course, there is indeed a whole universe of negative aspects of having Trump as president again, but even I have to admit that Trump has had a few positive effects on the Republican Party -- mostly by his insistence that they blindly follow him in all things. This has meant the party as a whole has had to largely accept some of Trump's very non-traditional stances on issues (non-traditional for conservatives or Republicans, that is). Trump, unlike many of the ideologues who used to set the party's direction and policy objectives, has the ability to occasionally spot an issue where the GOP's traditional position is so unpopular that it winds up hurting them at the ballot box. Two of these issues in particular stand out. Trump can't truly be said to be "on the right side" of either of these issues, and his objection to the more-extreme positions the Republicans traditionally have taken is rather thin and transactional. But it's better than where the party was headed without Trump, so he at least deserves partial credit for how he's changed the party's orthodoxy. And then finally, Trump has now made one cabinet pick that even plenty of Democrats will likely get behind in the Senate, when it comes time for their confirmation vote.

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Well, that was quick. As many have amusingly pointed out, the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be Donald Trump's attorney general didn't even last a full Scaramucci. Eight days, from beginning to end, was all it took. It's more than he deserved, really.

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Do Democrats still have a "big tent" party, or have they now morphed to being a "small tent" party by insisting on too many must-pass litmus tests? That is a question Democrats should really be asking themselves now, after suffering a humiliating election defeat. That's the traditional way to put it, but at the risk of using an offensive term, what they really need to decide is whether they're going to allow what might be called "Cafeteria Democrats" to exist peacefully within their party or not.

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I have to say, the temptation to join the chorus of both laughter and horror over Donald Trump's cabinet picks is pretty tempting today, but I think I'll save my comments on that clown parade for tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to continue looking forward today, to extend my thoughts on the Democratic Party and what it should do moving forward. The last two days I devoted to possible presidential candidates in 2028, but today I'm going to concentrate on what Democrats should be emphasizing during both the 2026 (midterm) and 2028 campaigns.

Looking that far into the future in politics is impossible, I do realize that. A lot of any Democratic campaign is going to be commentary on what Trump has done as president, that much seems pretty certain. What I'm going to lay out is a very pro-family economic platform for Democrats to embrace next time around, which would compliment whatever Democrats are saying about Trump and the Republicans running Washington.

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Senators

I will begin by saying that this section is probably going to be somewhat incomplete. Almost all senators entertain thoughts of becoming president at one point or another, so I'm sure there will be some surprises when 2028 rolls around. Most of these, however, fail to gain much traction on a national stage and wind up pulling out of the race pretty early, though. To give but one example, does anyone today remember Michael Bennet's 2020 presidential campaign? I certainly hadn't, and I follow politics pretty closely. So there will likely be at least a couple Democratic candidates next time around that few outside of their home state even recognize.

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Yes, this is way too early. Insanely early. I get that.

But looking into the future with hope is what Democrats are going to have to start doing at some point, and I figured now -- while Democrats are in some pretty deep despair -- is a pretty good time to start doing it. So today let's think about the 2028 Democratic primary season, and run down the list of possible Democratic candidates. Hey, it's better than watching Donald Trump make cabinet picks, right?

In 2028 we will have a rare election, because both political parties will have open races. Trump is term-limited out of office (assuming the Constitution is still relatively intact, of course), and there will be no heir apparent on the Democratic side.

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We've all already seen this movie once, so we should kind of know what to expect. And sequels are usually much worse than the original.

Which is why today we're going to devote this column to pondering how bad things could really get in Donald Trump's second term in office (rather than sticking to our normal Friday format). Some things will probably not be as horrifically bad as Democrats now think, some things will indeed be precisely that bad, and some things will be even more horrific than anyone's imagining right now. And my apologies, because this is not an attempt at making a comprehensive list of predictions but rather just free association, what might be called initial thoughts.

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