As 2021 draws to a close, we have to say it's been a rather mixed year all around. COVID-19 is still a threat, but nowhere near the threat it was at this time last year. Sane people have gotten vaccinated three times while the lunatic fringe still endangers us all by refusing to get even one "Fauci ouchie." And we seem to all be very slowly learning the letters of the Greek alphabet, as Delta may now be giving way to Omicron. So we're not out of the coronavirus woods yet.

But please remember at this time last year, nobody had been vaccinated, while now 82 percent of Americans age 12 and over have at least gotten their first shot and 70 percent have been fully vaccinated. We've obviously not quite yet reached the fabled "herd immunity" but we are getting a lot closer to that goal, at least.

Also a comfort is the fact that sane and rational individuals are running the federal government, instead of narcissistic lunatics and grifters and insurrectionists. The year started off with one of the most shocking events in modern American history, as a mob of conspiracy theorists and Trump cultists tried to stop Congress from finalizing the presidential election. Some of them are now in jail, while prosecutions continue. Granted, the leaders of this movement are still walking around free, but at least their attempt at overthrowing the government failed. That's something to be thankful for, obviously.

I have to say it has been a lot easier to write about politics this year than for the past four years. There have been frustrations and disappointments, of course, but they are all well within the normal range of political maneuvering instead of being batpoop crazy. That's a definite improvement, and it makes it a lot easier to sit down every day and write about current political events. At some points, I've actually been bored with the slow pace of things happening in Washington -- a statement I have honestly not made since Barack Obama was sitting in the Oval Office. So there's that, too.

Behind the scenes here at ChrisWeigant.com, things have been improving. We're using a new computer that isn't 20 years old, the office has been completely redone and revamped (a COVID project that has taken all year and is still not complete, but is nearing the finish line at least), and the process of reading and commenting on the news has improved greatly.

However, this hasn't been without its drawbacks. Due to the amount of time it has taken (as well as my inherent laziness), I have been severely remiss in answering the comments section this year. I do apologize and promise to make an effort to improve -- my first new year's resolution. You readers deserve better, I realize, so mea culpa maxima for falling down on the job so much.

Nobody's perfect, right?

But at least I have a much better outlook on next year, no matter what happens in the midterm congressional elections. I haven't thought about just walking away from blogging at all this year, which (again) is more than I can say for the previous four. So I am fully committed to providing reality-based commentary for all of 2022.

Continue Reading »

It is December once again, so we're going to have to take care of some year-end business today. And tomorrow too, for that matter.

Let's begin with that -- our tentative schedule for the month. Today, we'll be throwing open the nominations for the first half of our year-end awards, so feel free to peruse the categories listed below and send your thoughts as to who you think deserves any of them. I didn't start asking for public nominations during the first years these columns ran, but I have been more than impressed at the quality of suggestions I've gotten since I have, so I do encourage everyone to suggest nominees! I take them all very seriously (except for the ones that make me burst out laughing, of course).

Continue Reading »

Democrats, as a whole, are pretty bad about messaging. Every so often a brilliant orator breaks this mold (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) by displaying an ease of communicating with average Americans on a relatable level while still clearly getting their point across. But for the most part, Democratic politicians struggle to master what should be a basic political artform. This problem shows up in an acute way when the subject is the economy. Democrats perpetually shy away from touting economic gains because they fear sounding "out of touch" with the people out there who are still struggling. Republicans, on the other hand, never worry about this at all -- they tout their own successes as a never-before-seen golden age of economic bliss, no matter what is actually going on around kitchen tables across the country. The GOP hammers home this "things are great!" message so effectively that a lot of people start thinking positively about the future even if their own circumstances haven't changed (or have actually gotten worse). Democrats never tap into this inherent optimism because they're always worried that someone somewhere is going to react negatively to hearing some positive news.

Continue Reading »

The Supreme Court has put America on notice. Once again, it is about to roll back a basic constitutional right for a major part of the country's population. They did so previously on voting rights when they gutted the Voting Rights Act, and they're about to do so again on the right to an abortion. The clock is now ticking on Roe v. Wade, and time will run out whenever they issue their opinion on the Mississippi case before them, which is expected to happen next June (at the end of their yearly term).

Continue Reading »

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving a new law in Mississippi which bans abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy (more technically: 15 weeks from the woman's last menstrual cycle). This law was enacted as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case which legalized abortion in this country. And after the arguments were heard the only real question most observers had was whether the court will overturn Roe outright, or just gut it so completely that it will become all but meaningless (as they did earlier to the Voting Rights Act). Either way, it seems we need to start contemplating what a post-Roe country will look like.

Continue Reading »

Nope -- we're definitely not in Kansas anymore. We're not even where we're supposed to be, which is Pennsylvania. We may be in New Jersey; it's not immediately clear (which brings up a rather ironic twist on "There's no place like home," I suppose, since we're not really sure where his home actually is right now...). But today the following news appeared from some fantastical locale or another:

Continue Reading »

December is going to be one of those rare months when Congress actually has to get some things done. These days, nothing big happens in Congress without either a hard deadline or an overwhelming sense of political urgency to get something done fast. Both of these will hopefully be in play next month, on different pieces of legislation. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could do one big thing to increase the urgency on one particular bill.

Continue Reading »

Good economic news keeps right on happening, even if this message isn't really reaching the public in a big way. The mainstream media, of course, bears a lot of responsibility for this, as they love to focus on anything going wrong rather than any good news, so stories about inflation (the price of gas, specifically) and supply-chain problems flood the airwaves while the steadily-improving unemployment situation gets maybe a one-day mention when new figures come out. But at heart, it is the Democratic Party's failure for not shifting the public conversation to positive news about the economy.

Today, new weekly unemployment numbers were released and America just had its best week in over 50 years. Let that sink in for a moment. Fewer people filed for unemployment last week than any other week since 1969. The last time we had such a good week, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were all still alive. That is some spectacularly good economic news, because not only does it signify that we are now over the Delta wave of economic pandemic effects but that the economy is roaring back far stronger and faster than it did after the Great Recession. The overall (monthly) national unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent last month as well.

President Joe Biden has seen more jobs created in the American economy than any other president during his first 10 months in office. So many jobs have been created on Biden's watch that there is now a shortage of workers to fill them. This shifts a lot more power to the job-seekers and away from the employers. This shows up in the record number of people who are quitting jobs in the past two months as well, since most of them are quitting to accept better jobs. Wages have been going up, as employers are forced to react to this shift. This is all very good news for employees.

Continue Reading »

Are we at the start of a new fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, or is it perhaps just a little bump in the road -- a wavelet instead of a wave? At this point it is impossible to tell, as the data seems to be at an inflection point and could go either way. Add to that the upcoming holiday season, and it's really anyone's guess where we'll be in January.

The fourth wave -- the Delta wave -- crested right as September began. At the high point, the daily new case average was about 160,000 per day. That's bad, but it wasn't as bad as the third wave, which hit last winter (and was exacerbated by all the holiday travel and get-togethers). The third wave was the worst point of the entire pandemic, topping 250,000 new cases per day in early January of this year. But since January, the vaccine has helped make it much harder for the virus (even the Delta variant) to spread.

We are almost at 60 percent of all Americans fully vaccinated. Right before the vaccine was approved for children ages 5 to 11, over 70 percent of adults had been fully vaccinated and over 80 percent had gotten at least their first shot. That is a monumental difference from last winter, obviously.

Continue Reading »

As we head into Thanksgiving week of 2021, it seems a lot of political chatter has already begun to focus on the presidential race of 2024. Yes, you heard that right -- three years in advance of the election, speculation is running wild on both sides of the aisle. To which I say: "Can we please just stop? I mean, seriously... isn't there anything else to talk about? Please?"

I'm not even going to link to anyone else's articles here today, because that would just be feeding the monster with mouse clicks. But there are plenty of them out there, if anyone feels the need to start weighing everyone's chances three years early.

On the left, the contest has been framed as a head-to-head showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Joe Biden, everyone assumed, would be too old and decide to take himself out of the running.

This is ridiculous on any number of levels. President Biden countered all this rampant speculation with his own leak -- that he was still fully committed to running for re-election. Biden is trying to clear the field, at least for now. Both Harris and Buttigieg demur when asked, responding with some version of: "Who could even possibly be thinking that?" But such wide-eyed "Who, me?" statements are simply not believable, since both of them have indeed likely been weighing their own chances each and every morning when they look in the mirror (and see a future president looking back at them).

Continue Reading »