Well, what with the midweek holiday and all, it's looking like we're only going to have one new column this week. I'll probably post a few re-run columns as well, just for everyone's amusement, but won't be writing a new one until this Friday, when we continue with our annual year-end awards.

Because we got some great suggestions when we first posted this, we thought today it'd be a good idea to solicit some more nominations for the second awards column. So here are the categories for Part 2, and as before if you don't want your login name used (to give credit), then please let me know that in the comments.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and stays safe in their travels this week. Oh, and go Ravens! Heh. Just had to get that one in there....

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Welcome back once again to our year-end "McLaughlin Awards," named for the awards categories we lifted from the McLaughlin Report years ago. We've added a category here and there over time, but it's still the same basic list.

Before we get to all of our awards, we have to thank everyone (both online and off) for their suggestions and nominations. I always try to get as many of these as possible, to cover all the stuff I forgot about, and it always helps.

Before we begin, though, allow me one moment to make a pitch to join in this site's pledge drive. Our fundraising seems to have stalled somewhat, and we're a long way from our goal, so we'd like to ask everyone who enjoys this site (or even just these Friday columns) to dig deep and send a few bucks our way so we can keep the lights on in 2020 (and keep the site ad-free). Do I have to bring up the kittens? Because I will, if I have to! Heh.

Enough shameless begging, though, let's just get on with the show.

   Biggest Winner Of 2019

Um... the Baltimore Ravens? Heh.

We had a few entrants for Biggest Winner of the year, some rather generic ("Russia") and some very specific (the residents of Virginia, who will now enjoy Democratic rule in the governor's office and both houses of the legislature -- nominated by reader "italyrusty," I should mention).

We could have gone with Greta Thunberg, who was showered with prizes this year, most notably including Time magazine's "Person of the Year" (which drove Trump into an epic hissy fit over losing...). She is certainly deserving of every award she gets, that's for sure.

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Tonight we saw the sixth in the series of Democratic presidential debates, and my first and strongest impression is that I for one am glad the field is being narrowed. Seven on the stage was enough, in other words, for me.

Although we had three candidates who are polling way down in the single digits, there was much less desperation on display. Previously, all the candidates at the bottom of the polls all were striving for that big breakout moment, and it showed. This time around, there was a slight air of desperation about Amy Klobuchar, but none at all from either Tom Steyer or Andrew Yang. The lack of "I'm going to jump in and shout something out" which has been present from the less-popular candidates on stage was indeed welcome, because it left a lot more time for substantive discussions.

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Program Note:

Welcome to the second part of our look at how impeachment was seen by Alexander Hamilton, when he was arguing in the anonymous Federalist Papers for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Today, we have Federalist Paper Number 66, or "Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered." It was published in the New York Packet newspaper in March of 1788.

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Program Note:

I'll be spending today and tomorrow in preparation for our year-end awards columns, so I thought I'd run a special historical look back for my readers by reprinting the two Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton on the subject of impeachment. Obviously, this is relevant to current events in Washington.

Both of these (today's and tomorrow's) were published in the New York Packet newspaper in March of 1788. As with all the Federalist Papers, they were published anonymously under the signature "PUBLIUS." The Federalist Papers were a series of arguments in favor of adopting the newly-written Constitution, and were countered by the lesser-known Anti-Federalist Papers, a series of arguments against adopting the new form of government being considered.

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It has only been two weeks since we last took a good look at the Democratic presidential field, but we've got another debate coming this week on Thursday night and we'll likely not be able to examine the horserace until the new year, so we thought it'd be worth a last look for 2019.

The field has gotten a wee bit smaller in the past two weeks, as Kamala Harris dropped out, leaving only (!) 15 Democrats still running. Michael Bloomberg has jumped into a solid fifth place, and Pete Buttigieg's poll bounce has faded a bit. So there have indeed been developments worth talking about.

Campaign News

The voters and the donors are having their say, and it is finally winnowing the debate stage. That's really the biggest campaign news in a nutshell.

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And so we come to the close of the most momentous week in Washington of the year. In one week's time, we've seen articles of impeachment move to the floor of the House of Representatives, an agreement between House Democrats and the White House to move forward on the U.S./Mexico/Canada Agreement, a truce declared in the budget battles (that had threatened to shut down the government once again), Democrats agreeing to the creation of the "Space Force" in exchange for paid family leave for federal workers, a tentative trade cease-fire declared with China, the Senate unanimously backing up the overwhelming vote in the House to declare the Armenian genocide for what it was, the release of an inspector general's report that totally debunked most of the conspiracy theories about the initiation of the counterintelligence operation at the edges of the 2016 Trump campaign, President Trump being forced to pay a $2 million fine for misuse of his own charitable foundation, and the House passing a landmark bill to fight the greed of drug companies by finally using the federal government's buying power to force lower prices on prescription medication. Again: all of these rather large things happened in a single week.

That's pretty productive, you've got to admit. Although the impeachment battle was the one issue which sucked up all the media oxygen, there were plenty of other things going on in Washington that didn't get anywhere near enough attention. Like Donald Trump having an epic hissy fit over not being named Time magazine's "person of the year." But we're getting ahead of ourselves....

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One week from tonight the top Democratic presidential candidates will gather once again, for another televised debate. There will be fewer of them on the stage this time around, since as of this writing only seven of them have qualified. After the first of the new year, the debate schedule will accelerate, as we'll get four debates in January and February, one in each of the early-voting states. Taken together, these five debates may be the most influential yet, since voters will assumably be paying more attention. But throughout the whole process, my metric has always been to picture each of the candidates on a stage not with their fellow Democrats, but with Donald Trump. Because that is precisely what they're all vying for -- the chance to take on Trump in the general election.

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Occasionally, I like to take a look far down the road in an effort to see long-term political dynamics that others may be missing. I'm often accused of taking too long a look when I do. But I have to admit, a story today in Politico brought forth the same reaction from me, because it is concerned with the dynamics of Joe Biden's re-election effort, in 2024. I'll pause for a moment while you digest that one.

The gist of the article is that Biden is privately considering the possibility of only being a one-term president, by choice. This, of course, skips over the entire 2020 nomination process and general election, but it is couched in a contemporary question: should Biden now pre-emptively announce that if elected, he will only serve one term? After all, should he be elected, he will be 82 years old at the end of his first term in office. Is America ready for its first octogenarian president?

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Today, House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. This is a historic development, since it has only previously happened on three other occasions. Somewhat surprisingly, the Democrats opted to only focus very narrowly in the charges they brought, limiting them to the fallout from Trump's attempt to get the Ukrainian government to do opposition research on a political opponent. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership made a decision in drafting such narrowly-focused articles, since they had the option of including other obviously-impeachable offenses, but in the end chose not to.

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