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.

Right now, people don't feel especially great about the economy. By all rights, they should feel better than they do, because by almost every metric the economy is in great shape, having achieved the fabled "soft landing" from all the spikes and dislocations of the COVID pandemic era. However, this hasn't been reflected in public opinion, at least not to the degree which it usually is.

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This year, the Supreme Court is going to be a critical factor in the presidential election, no matter what it does. In the words of the rock band Rush, this could even come down to "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Let's take the two issues that will almost certainly wind up before the high court and see what the possibilities are and how the timing of it all could affect the race for the presidency.

Will Trump appear on the ballot?

This is the most immediate issue the court is going to face. In two states -- Colorado and Maine -- Donald Trump has been barred from appearing on the primary ballot. In Colorado, the state supreme court ruled that Trump did indeed engage in an insurrection and thus is ineligible to be president. Since he is ineligible to serve, his name will not be on the primary ballot (in much the same way that a 29-year-old would be barred from the presidential ballot for not being old enough). Appeals have already been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. But the deadline for finalizing the primary ballot is this Friday, and no one really expects the high court to rule before then.

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At the end of the day, there are other iconic things in Michigan than just college football (Go Blue!). Murdick's Fudge, for instance. Traverse City cherries. But for the sweetest of all you have to look further north, to what is known within Michigan as "the U.P." (which is populated, of course, by "Yoopers"). Because the Upper Peninsula is home to Lake Superior State University, who long ago (back in the 1970s) proclaimed themselves language mavens extraordinaire and began putting out an annual "List Of Banished Words."

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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?

   Destined For Political Stardom

We had intended to give, almost by default, the Destined For Political Stardom award this year to Gavin Newsom, California's peripatetic governor. We use that odd word (which we learned from reading Calvin And Hobbes, we should admit) since Newsom has been here, there, and everywhere this year while making little actual news as the governor of the most populous state in the country. He even finished the year up debating a Republican candidate for president, which was decidedly odd for a Democrat who is not himself in the running for the job.

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I am slowly getting back into swing and am busily compiling this Friday's column (the second part of our year-end awards). So for now, please enjoy the most fun holiday column I have ever written, and see everyone back here in two days!

Originally published December 23, 2009

Speaking as someone who generally enjoys a good conspiracy theory just for the "creative writing" aspect alone, in all good conscience I simply must report this shocking news: I have uncovered a big, fat conspiracy that is no mere theory. We're either being lied to, or we're joining in the propagation of the lie ourselves, with merriment. In actual fact, it would not be hyperbole to call this the father of all conspiracies.

And almost every single one of us has participated in this gigantic hoax, in one form or another, at least once in our lives. For many, it happens like clockwork on a regular basis. And it seems to prove Hitler's point about the "Big Lie" -- if you repeat it often enough, sooner or later a certain segment of the populace will accept it as being true.

This vast conspiracy is not limited to even America, although it certainly has a red, white, and true-blue-American following. While not exactly world-wide, the conspiracy reaches about as far as any such enormous falsehood has ever reached on our globe, so that even peoples who don't buy into the conspiracy's underlying storyline still participate in the conspiracy with jolly abandon.

The conspiracy itself is insidious and highly discriminatory, since the targets of the falsehood are a tiny segment of the population who are vulnerable and impressionable. That's right -- an enormous majority of society has banded together to repeat this lie to a minority, and the deciding factor for who is "in" the conspiracy and who is lied to is based purely on physical characteristics -- a throwback to a darker era when society deemed it permissible for such blatant and overt discrimination. The rules of the conspiracy are plain and simple, and are so prevalent that when one who has not been let into the conspiracy meets a complete and utter stranger -- virtually anywhere in this country -- without any prompting or other instigation, they will almost without exception be lied to by this complete stranger (who would rather die of shame than admit the truth).

This conspiracy, looked at from a certain light, is no better than fratboy "hazing" rituals, since the members of the conspiracy -- every man and woman of them -- were themselves lied to for a period of time before being allowed to join in the ritual of misleading others who have not been so initiated. It's as if the entire country had an unspoken agreement to join in this monstrous prank on a small group of fellow citizens.

Those being lied to have a rational and logical choice in what to believe -- either almost everyone they know and even complete strangers that they meet and an agency of the federal government to boot are lying shamelessly and absolutely consistently to them; or, conversely, what everyone is telling them must be true. The scope and size of the conspiracy mean that applying Occam's Razor in the usual fashion will lead them to believe the lie, instead of uncovering the truth of the matter. In other words, the lesson taught is that almost nobody they've ever met in their entire lives can be fully trusted any more. This is why the conspiracy is such a negative one -- because it results in finally accepting the paranoid notion that everyone really has banded together to make a fool out of you. Which leads to disillusionment and loss of innocence. Stumbling out of the dark, in this particular instance, leads almost immediately to doubting all the stories told by the perpetrators of this myth.

This may, in the end, do some good. Because a healthy skepticism is almost a required trait to deal with the modern world. No facts or stories should be taken on faith in the person speaking such, as it is obvious that informed people should view people saying "It's true! Really!" with a seriously jaundiced eye from that point on. Which, as I said, is actually a good thing, in the end.

This conspiracy has a name. And it is no coincidence that this lie is alphabetically correspondent with Satan, since as I said the evil of divisively selecting one segment of the public -- on physical characteristics alone -- and then repeatedly lying to them is a horrendous practice which should, quite obviously, be denounced by all upstanding folks who wish to allow American society to grow out of this juvenile behavior and mature as a society.

Because that's really the key to the whole conspiracy -- a juvenile falsehood told by those who have no excuse for such childish behavior. No excuse whatsoever, since (almost by definition) none of the members of the conspiracy can defend their actions as childlike, rather than childish.

I realize I am fighting a headwind by exposing this insidious lie, and that merry members of the conspiracy are simply never going to change their behavior, since they are all convinced that lying to a physically-challenged minority is somehow for their own good.

Sigh.

Maybe they're right after all. It's so much easier just to believe the lie, and (by doing so) avoid tilting at this particular windmill. Screaming the truth in a crowd would not make me friends -- in fact it would likely put me in fear of turning such into a mob screaming for my blood.

It's so much easier to avoid all of that. And, after all, this conspiracy has been ongoing for hundreds of years, so I guess it does no real harm. So, count me in, and allow me to say without any hint of dishonesty or smirking irony:

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

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.

   Biggest Winner Of 2023

Our first inclination in this category turned out to be a repeat of last year's Biggest Winner: abortion rights being on the ballot. Just like in 2022, abortion was a big winner in 2023. In the most fiercely-fought (and most expensive) Wisconsin state supreme court election ever, liberal Janet Protasiewicz won in a double-digit landslide over her conservative opponent, on a platform of supporting women's rights and getting rid of the rampant gerrymandering in the state. Then in Ohio, abortion rights won not just once but twice, since the Republicans tried an end-run around the ballot measure which cemented the protections of Roe v. Wade in the state's constitution -- and both won by overwhelming landslides in a reddish-purple state. Putting abortion rights on the ballot is a winner, and candidates who support abortion rights are winners -- a clear message for the 2024 elections, where it will be on the ballot in various ways in many other states.

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I have been working diligently all week long reviewing the past year and putting together tomorrow's first installment of our year-end awards here, so I had no time today to write a new column. Serendipitously, today is also the shortest day of the year, so it was an easy call which holiday article to re-run instead.

Join us here tomorrow for our first marathon of year-end awards, and don't forget that the second installment will appear one week later, on the Friday before New Year's!

Originally published December 4, 2007

When is Christmas? And why?

These are questions guaranteed to get you funny looks when you pop them, especially in a gathering of wassail-soaked relatives. But if you're tired of hearing the seemingly-eternal "this is what Uncle Fred did when he was twelve" stories, and you're leery of bringing up politics with your kin from Outer Podunk, then it's at least a conversation-starter that's somewhat neutral. Plus, you can reaffirm your nearest-and-dearests' image of you as a latte-sipping fruitcake who moved away from the glory of the heartland and now lives on (say it with an embarrassed whisper) the coast.

OK, I should stop editorializing here. After all, the subject at hand is Christmas.

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The Colorado supreme court decision that ruled Donald Trump ineligible for the state's primary ballot was a legal and political earthquake, and we're still experiencing the aftershocks of it. For the moment the questions are fairly simple: will the United States Supreme Court hear and rule on the case before the January 5th deadline or not? And, of course, which way will they rule, if they take it up? But there are going to be further reverberations from this that echo across other states as well, so we could all be in for a very bumpy ride.

The Colorado high court ruled that Trump had indeed engaged in a rebellion against the U.S. government, and therefore he was ineligible to become president again by the clear text of the Fourteenth Amendment... and thus should not appear on the Republican primary ballot (since ineligible candidates shouldn't be presented to the voters as a valid choice). The case did not, however, rule on whether Trump should be allowed on the general election ballot next November (the lawsuit was specific to the primary), so perhaps there will be a second case later to determine this, but the outcome will likely be the same (barring intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court).

If the U.S. Supreme Court is going to rule, it's got to do so quickly, as January 5th is the date when the primary ballots are set in stone (figuratively -- they're really "sent off to the printer"). Trump hasn't even filed his challenge yet, but this should come with lightning speed, one assumes. As with any case, the Supreme Court could do three things: ignore it, uphold the decision, or reverse the decision. All will have a profound effect on the election. [Note: at this point, I am not going to get into a legal analysis of the case at all, I am merely speaking of the practical effects this will have.]

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I realize that it is the height of the holiday season and I should be either writing about politics or attempting to dispense my own particular brand of holiday cheer, but instead today I am personally moved to write an obituary for a well-loved newspaper columnist. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer the week before Christmas -- which is why I am warning everyone here up front (in case you'd prefer to skip today's article and instead seek out something more cheerful).

I am not alone today -- far from it -- in mourning the news of the passing of Gary Richards. For those of you who don't now or have never lived in or around Silicon Valley, he was a feature writer for the San Jose Mercury News. But few called him by his given name, because for over three decades he was much more well-known by the title of his column series: Mr. Roadshow. His beat was traffic. And the roads. And drivers. And all things transportation, really.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

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Donald Trump loves to whip up fear of "the other." He's been doing it for decades, in fact. So the news that he's continuing to do so out on the campaign trail -- in the most vile language possible -- shouldn't really come as that big a shock to anyone, really. But it is being widely covered in the media mostly as if it were some sort of recent development. My response to this reaction is simple: "Where have you been for the past eight years?!?"

The shock and outrage have a focus: Trump used a term originally written by Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf. Trump, from both a recent speech and social media post: "Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation." Hitler, from Mein Kampf: "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning." By "poisoning the blood," both men meant the same thing. "The other" was intermarrying with the citizenry and diluting the pure genetic strain of the populace. This is all undeniably racist, and undeniably dangerous. It dehumanizes "the other," and that supposedly makes it OK to do pretty much anything to them, because (another Trump quote) they are not actually human but instead "vermin."

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