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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....
That is indeed the question right now, for President Joe Biden. Some are urging the president to issue "blanket pardons" to any and all persons who might become targets of legal harassment by the incoming Trump administration. This is an extensive list, as it includes basically everyone who has ever seriously annoyed Donald Trump at any time, for any reason. And the threat is real, as Trump proved yet again a few days ago by expressing his desire that everyone on the House January 6th Committee should go to jail. And the members of that committee aren't the only ones who could be targeted.
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.
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.
The circus has come to town, and performing in the center ring this week was the teeny-tiny clown car which disgorged a continuing parade of clowns, each more outlandish than the last.
Or, to put things another way: get ready for lots more circus/clown metaphors in the very near future. It's really the only possible way to describe Donald Trump selecting his cabinet. But we'll get to the individual clowns in a moment, because first we've got to take a broader view of what Trump's up to here.
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.
As we all contemplate another four years of Donald Trump, the second-guessing and finger-pointing has already begun. Maybe things would have been different if Joe Biden had decided, on his own, to live up to his pledge of being a transitional president by announcing he would not run for a second term. Maybe things would have been different if he had finished his campaign -- he beat Trump once, right? Maybe there should have been a real contest to see which Democrat should run instead of Biden. Maybe Kamala Harris wasn't the best candidate. Maybe Democrats should have gone with a more traditional (White male, in other words) candidate. Maybe she should have picked someone else to be on the ticket with her. There will be plenty of time to anguish over all of these and more (anguish is what Democrats do best, after all).
The final week of the 2024 presidential campaign was reduced -- quite literally -- to "trash talk." This is perhaps a fitting end for this contest, one might think.
But among all the frenzy surrounding who called whom "garbage" this week, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing pitch to voters from the same spot Donald Trump incited a mob to go attack the United States Capitol four years ago. From the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, Harris spoke of the differences between her and Trump, and made her closing argument for why Americans should vote for her rather than him.
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.
The Washington Post secured its entry into the annals of American political history by taking down a United States president. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein famously uncovered the entire Watergate scandal, which caused Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Award-winning books and movies about the brave reporters followed, portraying them as giants in the world of journalism.
Ah... those were the days, eh?