There were two main lessons to be learned from last night's Senate runoff election in Georgia: electability matters, and Donald Trump is still a loser. These are really just two sides of the same coin, in this particular case. The big question left unanswered is whether Republican primary voters will learn these interrelated lessons before the next election cycle comes around in 2024 or not. To state the painfully obvious: if they do, they'll stand a much better chance of electoral success than if they don't.

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This week, there was a massive toxic explosion of hot air and noxious fumes, which caused many to flee in terror from the spectacle. Also, in Hawai'i, the volcano Mauna Loa erupted.

Sorry for being so sarcastic, but we couldn't resist.

But we'll get to all of the White supremacy and Nazism and Donald Trump in a bit, instead let's start off with some positive news.

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There was a historic passing of the torch today, as Hakeem Jeffries was unanimously voted leader of the House Democrats in the next Congress. He will become the first Black leader of a political party in either chamber of Congress, which is an enormous milestone to achieve. Meanwhile, over on the Republican side, Kevin McCarthy is still scrambling to get enough votes from his caucus to achieve his goal of becoming the next speaker. This should all be seen as a harbinger of things to come, for both political parties. So let's take a look at where both of them are and what we might expect to see in the 118th Congress.

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A lot of people work on America's railroads. Some of them are ready to go on strike. This could, as early as this weekend, cause major disruptions in the supply chains of just about everything. And we all remember last year's holiday shopping season, when supply chain problems were so acute. So President Joe Biden and Congress are about to step into the fray and derail the possibility of a strike (so to speak). They could do so in a variety of ways, but whatever happens is likely to happen quite quickly (given the deadlines involved).

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I should begin with a program note: this will be the last column for this week. See you back here next Monday! I am taking the vacation off because really, who wants to read about politics over Thanksgiving weekend anyway?

It's been a slow political week in the news (other than all the bad news on the legal front for Donald Trump), so instead of chasing stories today I thought I would just make a little list of things I am personally thankful for and leave it at that.

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It was another rather momentous week in politics, as the Republicans chalked up enough midterm wins to retake control of the House of Representatives but fell short in the Senate, where Democrats picked up one seat (which is enough to assure them control) with one race still waiting for a runoff election in early December. The GOP will have a razor-thin House majority, which is quite likely to produce nothing but chaos for the next two years. After the results were known, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she (and her whole team) would step away from leadership roles and allow a generational shift to happen in the Democratic House caucus. And Donald Trump formally announced his third bid for the presidency, which didn't exactly go over as well as he might have hoped. Plus there will be the first White House wedding in years, and Joe Biden will become the first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office when he turns 80 years old on Sunday. All in all, a big week.

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Unfortunately, that phrase doesn't have the alliteration of "Democrats in disarray," but it was tough to figure out what "R" word could work (other than "Republicans Are Revolting," which always just kind of seems self-evident to me, but I digress...), so I just went with the non-alliterative substitution. "Democrats In Disarray," of course, has become a running joke, because that is the mainstream political media's go-to headline whenever they're feeling especially lazy. It's also a joke precisely because of where we find ourselves right now -- when the Republicans are engaging in internecine warfare, the media often shrugs and doesn't pay any of it nearly the attention they do to Democratic intraparty tiffs.

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Donald Trump is, in a word, performative. His entire political career has been one long installation of performance art. He lives to see good television ratings. It is his own personal measure of his self-worth. And tomorrow night, he'll be unveiling his next act.

It's far from being a secret what this act will consist of. Tomorrow night, Donald Trump will announce his third bid for the United States presidency. He has wanted to make this announcement for months now, but has so far been talked into delaying it by his advisors. Tomorrow, the delay will be over and Trump will throw his hat back into the ring.

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Well, that was a better week than we expected, we have to say.

The 2022 midterm elections are now over (although the counting still isn't) and the one big takeaway is that either Republicans dropped the ball or Democrats ran excellent campaigns all over the country. Or maybe some combination of the two. The red wave simply did not appear as predicted. A "blue breakwater" turned it back.

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Reasonable Republicans now have the best chance they have had in almost two years to reclaim their party and realign it so that it is not in perpetual orbit around the whims of one unhinged man -- a man whose track record of losing elections grew much larger this Tuesday. Donald Trump is now being called the thing he fears most -- a loser -- by members of his own party. The right-wing media is even jumping on the "Dump Trump" bandwagon. The next few weeks could be pivotal for the ultimate direction of the Republican Party, in fact. It could either recede into the swamp of fawning obsequiousness towards Trump (that it has been stuck in since 2016), or it could decide that a brand new direction is what is needed right now.

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