With fewer than 750 votes in -- less than one percent of the total -- the news organizations have already called the Republican Iowa caucuses for Donald Trump. As I write this, Ron DeSantis is up over Nikki Haley by a count of 161 to 159, so obviously there is still going to be a close race for second place. Neither one of them is topping 16 percent as of now, while Trump sits above 60 percent. All of these numbers could swing as the evening continues, but the fact that Trump is going to walk away the winner is already set.

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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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The speaker may have changed, but the underlying dynamics of the Republican-led House have not. Kevin McCarthy was ousted -- the first House speaker in American history to lose his job this way -- because he had to work within the reality that having a slim GOP majority in the House simply did not mean that the hardliners in his caucus got to dictate terms to everyone else in Washington. The Democrats hold the Senate and the White House, and they're never going to knuckle under to the MAGA hardliners and just give them everything they want. Now Mike Johnson is in charge and is facing exactly the same demands from exactly the same members of the GOP's "Chaos Caucus," who still refuse to admit any reality outside of their own warped view of how Washington should work. And Johnson may wind up facing the same fate as McCarthy before all of the dust settles.

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I was just sitting here contemplating what to write about today when some breaking news made the decision for me: Chris Christie has just ended his presidential campaign. This is going to shake things up in the Republican field, obviously, but will it shake things up enough to make any sort of difference? That remains to be seen.

We won't have to wait very long for the other major candidates' reactions, since Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are scheduled to hold their first one-on-one debate tonight on CNN, while Donald Trump will be holding a town hall over on Fox. Undoubtedly all three will be asked at some point to react to the breaking news, so we'll see if Nikki Haley (in particular) can contain her glee.

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Donald Trump has long believed that because he was president, he was constitutionally allowed to do anything he pleased, without any possibility of ever having to answer for any of it in any way. He explicitly stated this belief while he was president and he has claimed the same sweeping immunity ever since he left office as well. He truly believes that somewhere in the Constitution is a clause that essentially bestows the divine right of kings upon the U.S. president. A president's actions can never be challenged in court because of this supposed loophole, in other words (according to Trump).

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It seems fitting that we take today to remind everyone of the events which transpired at the United States Capitol three years ago last Saturday. Joe Biden reminded everyone, in his first campaign speech of the year. Some in the media are even starting to call the 2024 presidential election "the January 6th election." That may or may not turn out to be the case (some other issue could easily be the main motivator for voters by November, in other words), but with Donald Trump out there still refusing to admit he's a loser and with a frighteningly-high percentage of Republican voters buying into his dark fantasy, it behooves us all to go back to what was said about the events of that day. By Republicans.

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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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In 1992, James Carville defined the focus of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign as: "It's the economy, stupid." For better or worse, the American people (led by the American mainstream media) generally give the sitting president either a whole lot of credit or they assign a whole lot of blame for whatever the current state of the economy happens to be. So no matter what else is going on, the fate of President Joe Biden in the upcoming election is going to be tied in a big way to how people feel about the economy.

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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.

As always, we must begin with a warning for all readers. It's long. Really, really long. Horrendously long. Insanely long. It takes a lot of stamina to read all the way to the end. You have been duly warned! But because it is so long, we certainly don't want to add any more here at the start, so let's just dive in, shall we?

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Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!

As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is -- as always -- a marathon, not a sprint.

We have tried to credit readers' nominations where we could, but writing the whole column is such a frenzied activity that we may have omitted the citations here and there -- for which we apologize. Reader suggestions make our job putting together this list a whole lot easier, and we are indeed grateful for the people who do take the time to do so (and you still have a chance to make nominations for next week's awards, we would point out).

OK, since it is so long, let's not make it any longer and get right to it. Here are our winners for the awards categories first created on the McLaughlin Group television show, for the year that was.

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