Congress returns to Washington this week, with an extremely limited amount of time left to get anything done before the year-end holidays. As I wrote last week, the lame-duck Congress has many very important things to get done, some of which may be incredibly time-consuming in the Senate (such as having to proactively raise the debt ceiling using budget reconciliation rules, which will permit the bill to pass with only Democratic votes). However, at least the time pressures in the Senate will not include filling as many federal judgeships as possible, since Democrats will still be in control after January 3rd. What would have been critical if the political power was about to shift in the chamber can now wait until next year -- and it might even be easier and faster then, if Senator Raphael Warnock wins re-election in next Tuesday's Georgia runoff election. If Democrats have 51 senators in the new Congress, they won't have to have any power-sharing arrangements with Republicans, which will speed up the committee process in a big way. But even with the judicial confirmations off the table for now, there's still quite a lot for the Senate to do, to attempt to (as one article memorably put it) "crazyproof" as much as possible before the Republicans take over the House of Representatives. But one thing that should not be undertaken in the lame-duck Senate is moving Senator Joe Manchin's pet "permitting reform" bill forward.

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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.

This isn't a definitive list, of course. I am also thankful for my friends and my loving family; from my wonderful wife to all the relatives I now zoom with on a regular basis (COVID sparked a lot of changes that have indeed improved life, all of which I am thankful for as well). And I am thankful for personal reasons as well, but those type of thanks are really reserved for pre-turkey-gobbling remarks around the dinner table and not for public consumption.

Instead, here are the ones I would like to share with all my readers. I hope that you and yours have a very thankful day yourselves and eat until you are stuffed. [And for our Canadian readers, please backdate this column to last month, so it is appropriate for the northern version of Thanksgiving!]

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That is a rather convoluted headline, but I had to work the word "turkey" in there somehow, so I apologize. But the thought is real -- the lame-duck session of Congress has a lot to get done in a very short period of time, and if it doesn't succeed on multiple fronts it will set the stage for future chaos. The time to act is now, because the consequences of not acting would be severe.

There are two critical things the lame-duck Congress must achieve, as well as a number of other issues it would be nice to see some progress on. The Senate actually started with one of these, by advancing the Respect For Marriage Act past a filibuster attempt with an impressive 62-37 vote. They still have to hold a final vote on it, and then send it over to the House but it is looking like this will be the first thing accomplished in the lame-duck session. It should rightly be seen as a rebuke of the Supreme Court's radical overreach, so it is important.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at the end of last week the appointment of a special counsel to lead the various Department of Justice investigations against Donald Trump. Since then, the Monday-morning-quarterbacking has been fierce and all over the map as to whether this was a proper and necessary step, and (if so) whether the timing of it had been right or not. Meanwhile Trump (of course) denounced the whole thing as persecution by (as he put it) a "super-radical-left special counsel." Trump, of course, provided no evidence whatsoever to back up such a claim. All par for the course with Trump, who believes that anyone who doesn't see him as pure as the driven snow simply must (almost by definition, to him) be some sort of super-radical-lefty.

Trump, from all reports, was at least halfway convinced that announcing his third campaign for the presidency would somehow give him the same "get out of court free" card as he had when he was president. This was never the case, but it's easy to see how he could have been convinced otherwise, when you consider the quality of the "legal advisors" he has left. If anything, his announcement probably sped things up, because Garland obviously felt obliged to answer Trump's campaign announcement in some way.

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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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Nancy Pelosi will always be considered a historic speaker of the House of Representatives for many reasons -- the most facile of which to see is that she was the first woman to be speaker in all of American history. She was closer to the presidency than any woman had gotten before (this was true up until Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president). Historic things happened during her leadership, and she was always at the center of them. She acquired political power and wielded it well, which is really no surprise since she literally learned politics "at her daddy's knee," as a little girl. She has done Baltimore proud, to put that another way, as well as the D'Alesandro family (a Maryland political dynasty).

But Pelosi's breaking of the glass ceiling is really not the most important reason why she will be remembered as a historic speaker. Because she was so effective. She was the strongest leader of the House since probably Tip O'Neill -- and that is really saying something. She wielded power with great skill and she managed to accomplish a feat that many (including myself) had believed almost impossible: she successfully herded the Democratic cats in the House. She got them all moving in one direction, she held them together through thick and thin, and even when she was merely the minority leader she still showed she had better control over her caucus than whatever Republican was in charge of the House.

That is a phenomenal achievement. And it is almost certainly going to be the one she will be most remembered for. She got things done. She held her caucus together. She didn't give up when she lost the majority the first time (as most speakers do), she instead put in the years as minority leader and led her Democrats back into power. She served under four presidents. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they eventually name a House office building after her, as she has earned such an accolade with her record.

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Today, the United States Senate voted 62-37 to codify marriage equality into federal law, and to overturn the Defense Of Marriage Act from the 1990s which did the opposite. DOMA has already been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but as we've all seen, rights guaranteed by one Supreme Court can be chucked out the window by subsequent Supreme Courts. So today's vote on the Respect For Marriage Act was important, and not merely symbolic.

Gay marriage used to be a big wedge issue for the right. That's where DOMA came from in the first place, after all. It was a convenient political wedge to use against Democrats -- who were very timid about supporting gay marriage for a very long time. Please recall that Barack Obama didn't support gay marriage when he got elected in 2008 -- which wasn't all that long ago.

But support among the public has gone through an astonishing change in a relatively short period of time too. When DOMA was passed, almost 70 percent of the public did not approve of gay marriage. Now 71 percent do. The crossover -- where more people supported it than not -- happened during Obama's term. That is a jaw-dropping turnaround in public attitude. Even the Mormon church voiced support for the bill that passed today -- which is pretty astonishing as well, considering how fervently they fought against the idea for so long.

What used to be a solid Republican position on the issue ("I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman") is now increasingly untenable. Over half (55 percent) of all Republican voters now support marriage equality. And that number is just going to grow, because of the generational aspect of it. While only 30 percent of Republicans 65 years old or older support gay marriage, an astonishing 64 percent of 18-to-29 year old Republicans do. The old attitudes are dying off, quite literally.

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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.

But it's gotten hard to avoid, so headlines like mine are indeed showing up here and there. While the Republicans are now on the brink of wresting control from Nancy Pelosi in the House, it is far from the triumphant and sweeping victory they had all been expecting and promising. It is a massive disappointment, because their majority will be just as tight as it has been for Pelosi for the past two years. And Kevin McCarthy is nowhere near the leader Pelosi is, when it comes to herding cats. Before Pelosi's reign, Democrats were only loosely affiliated and groups of them would cross the aisle on a regular basis, in a perpetual chase of the elusive "bipartisanship" they all cherished (back then). Under Pelosi, House Democrats have been remarkable in how they stand together, both in the majority and in the minority. With the current crop of Republicans McCarthy faces an almost-impossible task, and he is simply not up to it in any way.

Consider that the radicals in the Republican House ranks have caused the last two speakers to quit in disgust. Both John Boehner and Paul Ryan tried to get the Tea Partiers to see reason, but in the end they failed to do so. Now the radical faction is stronger and much more outspoken -- and much more inclined to resist any attempts at compromise. This is going to leave McCarthy in the same position Ryan and Boehner were in, because the only way he'll get anything done is to get a handful of reasonable Republicans to vote with the Democrats to pass the necessary bills to keep the government running. Which will, of course, enrage the radicals.

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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.

The effect of Trump's announcement will be multifaceted. But what it all really boils down to is this: everyone will be talking about it. Here I am talking about it, and it's not even going to happen for another whole day. Trump will once again occupy the center ring under the American political big top.

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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.

This is downright historic. As of this writing, the outcome is still in doubt -- control of both chambers of Congress is still up in the air. But no matter how the remaining races turn out, Democrats managed an expectations-defying performance.

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