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Welcome back to the second part of our year-end awards column! For those who may have missed it, check out Part 1 from last week to see what awards have already been handed out.
Sadly, for the first time, we really have to explain our title. It used to be rather self-evident, but then it's been more than a year since The McLaughlin Group went off the air, after the death of host John McLaughlin.
The show was a political chatfest and ran for decades. Regulars such as Clarence Page and Pat Buchanan used to face off every week on all sorts of subjects, but at the end of the year they put on two special awards shows.
Long ago, we decide to write our own suggestions in an homage (which is so much nicer than "in a blatant ripoff of their bit," don't you think?). We've done so for over a decade now (there's a list of links to all of these at the end of this article, for anyone interested in past awards given).
President Trump, in his victory celebration over the passage of the Republican tax bill today, said it was a big Christmas present to the American people. More properly, however, it is really a gigantic Christmas present to the Democratic Party, because it provides a ready-made single issue to construct their campaign platform around, for next year's midterm elections. The bill is already wildly unpopular, so Democrats should spend much of the next year reinforcing this already-baked-in perception among the public. There is a window of opportunity to do so, since nobody will really be sure how the new tax system is going to work out for their family until April of 2019 -- months after the midterm elections happen.
As we begin the final week of 2017's congressional calendar, it is worth noting how ridiculous the whole process has now become. This becomes painfully obvious when you compare what has been done versus what remains to be done. Because after the final votes on the GOP's Christmas gift to their wealthy donors (expected Tuesday and Wednesday), an entire year's worth of problems are supposedly going to be dealt with -- before the end of Friday. No wonder the public holds Congress in such low esteem.
Democrats -- and not a few Republicans as well -- spent most of this week metaphorically dancing on Roy Moore's political grave. To the very end, Moore proved to be a rather cartoonish villain, riding up to the polls on a horse he couldn't even control (named -- you just can't make this stuff up -- "Sassy"). This led to much ribaldry at his expense, after he lost the election Tuesday night, most of which ended with the refrain: "...and the horse you rode in on!"
Donald Trump's election spurred a political backlash. Diverse groups took it upon themselves to protest what had happened to their country, from the massive Women's March On Washington (held the day after Trump's swearing-in) to the "Indivisible" groups that soon spontaneously popped up across America. "Resist!" was the battle cry, leading some to name the entire movement "the resistance." Cynical observers of Washington politics (and yes, I was among them at times) wondered whether the whole thing would eventually peter out or whether it could continue long enough to be a factor in the 2018 midterm elections. After a year's time, though, there are no signs that it is waning. In fact, this resistance is showing a dramatic degree of persistence.
Can Democrats retake control of not just the House of Representatives but also the Senate in 2018? Well, they'd pretty much have to run the tables to do so, but with last night's Alabama's upset victory by Doug Jones, what has changed is that it is now a distinct possibility. While many Democrats are giddily celebrating their surprise win, they should also take the time to examine the factors present not just in Alabama but also in the other races that have happened over the past year, to identify the key factors in winning. Because if they've got any chance at all of taking the Senate, they should work as hard as possible to maximize what has been going well for them.
Doug Jones will be the next senator from Alabama, according to all media sources. With over 90 percent of the votes counted, Jones snatched away the lead that Roy Moore had been holding for almost the entire night. Rural votes got counted first, but when the urban votes came in, they propelled Jones into the lead. Alabama has stunned the nation with this upset victory -- the first Democrat they'll have in the U.S. Senate in a quarter-century.
I originally wrote "Trump Hits New Low" as this article's title, but then realized that it was far too generic a headline. After all, Trump hits new lows all the time, in many shocking and unusual ways. A sitting president endorsing an accused child molester to sit in the U.S. Senate, for instance. So I clarified it, since this is a more qualitative thing -- Trump has indeed hit a new all-time low in the polls. As of this writing, his daily job approval average (as calculated by Real Clear Politics) is a dismal 37.3 percent. Trump's job disapproval also hit a record high, to now stand at 57.9 percent. This is also (not surprisingly) the most he's ever been underwater in the polls -- a negative gap of 20.6 points.
In the same week that Time magazine gave its "Person Of The Year" award to the #MeToo movement, three members of Congress resigned because of it. The last week anything similar happened, according to historians, was during the Civil War, over the issue of slavery. On a single day in January of 1861, five senators resigned (as their states seceded from the Union). One historian noted: "If you look over the history of the 20th century in Congress, there just is no comparable event."