Pop Politics

Happy New Year.

I started out 2026 as I’ve started out so many years, with a kiss and the sound of fireworks ringing in my ears.  January 1st is almost always the best day of any year.  All the unpleasantness of the previous year is behind us (as if unpleasantness pays attention to the calendar).  The future is ahead of us.

Sometimes, we forget how quickly things can change.

Last year, at this time, Charlie Kirk was still alive and no one had any idea that, by the time the year ended, he would not only be gone but that the worst people in the conservative movement would be trying to tear down everything that he built.  By the end of 2025, the biggest threat to the GOP was no longer the Democrats.  Instead, it was (and still is) people like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Nick Fuentes.

Last year, at this time, a lot of us were resigned to the idea of Andrew Cuomo making a much dreaded comeback in the New York mayoral election.  Zohran Mamdani was just another overly privileged member of the DSA, making promises that we all assumed no one would be stupid enough to believe.  But, as I write this, Mamdani has been sworn in as mayor and the Cuomo political dynasty appears to finally be finished.

I don’t expect much from Mamdani and, if I had to make a prediction, I would guess that, in a few months, many New Yorkers will find his smug smile to be a lot less charming.  I still remember the Obama era so I know how things go whenever a new liberal messiah is elected.  Mamdani will fail to deliver.  New York will suffer.  The press will do its best to cover for him, just as they once did for Andrew Cuomo.

But I would probably be even more upset if Andrew Cuomo was the one who had been sworn in today.  After the way Cuomo botched things during the Pandemic, the last thing he deserves is to hold any public office.  Today, of course, everyone pretends that they were always against Cuomo.  I’m old enough that I can remember all the breathless articles from 2020, begging Andrew to run for President.  It’s interesting how quickly things can change.  Six years later after being touted as the next President of the United States, Andrew Cuomo is unelectable and Chris Cuomo is no longer with CNN.

(Andrew’s father also tried to run for Mayor of New York, back in 1977.  He lost to Ed Koch, in a campaign that featured signs reading, “Vote for Cuomo — Not The Homo.”  Mario Cuomo always claimed he had nothing to do with the signs.  Rumor has it that they were originally the idea of Andrew, who was 20 year-old college student at the time.)

Last year, at this time, Tim Walz was preparing to set off on a speaking tour that would lay the groundwork for a 2028 presidential campaign.  A year later, Walz’s future as a national leader seems to be dead.  (Actually, Walz’s future as a national leader died during the 2024 Vice Presidential debate but Walz never seemed to understand that.)  There’s some pleasure to be found in watching Tim Walz, who was so obnoxiously hyped when Kamala Harris first named him as her running mate, flounder.  I can still remember how, in 2024, the national media tried to describe him as being “America’s Dad,” while the rest of us just saw a goofy ignoramus who thought jazz hands were just what the electorate wanted.  I imagine Walz will still win reelection in 2026.  You can always rest assured that the Minnesota Republican Party will find a way to trip over itself.  Walz is facing the biggest scandal of his career but if the Minnesota GOP can’t put up a better candidate than Mike Lindell, it won’t matter.

Who knows what the future holds.  Pain, probably.  But right now, let’s just enjoy the best day of the year.

I haven’t been blogging for most of this year because I just found everything in this country too frustrating to write about. I was frustrated when Trump easily won the Republican nomination. I was frustrated with the way the press covered up Biden’s obvious decline. I’ve been just as frustrated with the Harris campaign. Every time I start to think that Trump may have finally grown a little as a potential leader, I see his latest True Social post and I realize that Trump remains Trump, for better and for definitely worse. If anything, getting kicked off twitter and no longer having his ramblings seen by millions of people was probably the best thing that ever could have happened to Trump.

But I’m less frustrated today than I was a month ago. If Trump wins, it’ll just be four years. If Harris wins, it’ll just be four years of her incompetence guaranteeing someone else will win four years from now. Those four years might not be easy but eventually, the country will finally be allowed to move on.

Just knowing that Joe Biden is ending his career as a marginalized, humiliated figure is enough to make me believe in some sort of cosmic justice.

I feel like I can finally write about the world again without wanting to find a new world to live on. So, I guess I’m back.

From Hotair:

Biden Was ‘Possibly Sick or Injured’ Days Before Dropping Out of Race

It’s a fair question. What really did happen in the days leading to Biden’s withdrawal from the race? It’s one of the most earth-shattering event in American political history and yet, we really don’t know much about it or just how bad Biden’s cognitive decline actually was behind closed doors.

As it is say in the linked article, the information will leak out eventually. I doubt it’s a story that’s going to leave anyone looking good. But considering that we are living day-to-day with the consequences of Biden’s incompetence, whether it’s in the communities effected by the hurricane or in the Middle East, it’s a story we deserve to know.

There’s a theory going around that Joe Biden is intentionally trying to sink Kamala’s campaign by continually tying her to his own unpopular policies.

It’s a nice theory and I see the appeal but it also assumes that Biden would ever realize that his policies are unpopular. Even before age set in, Biden was remarkable for lack of self-awareness. I’m sure that Biden probably still sees himself as being Middle Class Joe, beloved by people everywhere.

Considering how long Biden spent salivating for the presidency, I would not be surprised if he was bitter. But deliberately sabotaging another candidate suggests a level of intelligence that old Joe has never really displayed.

I saw this story earlier today.

Helicopter pilot threatened with arrest after flying rescue missions in flood-ravaged NC

Stories like this are why people hate the government.  At times, it seems like the government is more concerned with keeping other people from helping than with actually helping themselves.

I know that I said I wasn’t going to watch the debate but, after seeing a few comments that were posted on social media while it was going on, I couldn’t stop myself. I watched the debate on Wednesday morning.

Vice Presidential debates don’t win elections, of course. The Republicans have to be sorry about that because Vance dominated the debate from beginning to end. Tim Walz looked like a deer in the headlights and his attempts to be folksy were far less effective in a debate environment than on a stage during a rally. For those of us who long ago tired of Walz’s common man schtick, the debate was fun to watch. Walz’s performance reminded me of the way Tim Kaine sabotaged his future presidential ambitions by his bizarre debate performance in 2016. Walz could still become vice president because Trump has his own unique set of weaknesses but it’s going to be a long time before he recovers from this debate.

If you’re a Republican, you had to be happy watching Vance but it’s also possible that you may have also considered that, out of all the strong and charismatic politicians in the Republican Party, it’s a shame that the party base insists on nominating the one candidate who often seems to be his own worst enemy.

For now, though, there is only one out of four national candidates who has truly proven himself on a debate stage and that is J.D. Vance.

I am probably going to skip the vice presidential debate.  I’m not an undecided voter nor do I really see the point of having a debate after early voting has already started in a handful of states.  As well, we vote  for President.  We don’t vote for Vice President.  There’s really nothing that this debate has to offer me other than aggravation and stress so I’m going to watch a movie and maybe a baseball game.

Even if things were different, I would probably not want to watch the debate because Tim Walz annoys me like few other politicians ever have.  J.D. Vance may not be likable but he pretty much is who he says he is.  (The same can be said for Trump.)  Walz, on the other hand, is someone who does a burlesque imitation of the “common man.”  It takes a lot more than wearing a t-shirt and putting on a camo hat to actually be middle class.

Of course, all politicians cosplay at being middle class.  Remember when Joe Biden kept telling us that his nickname was “Middle Class Joe,” even though no one could remember him ever being called that?  But Walz tries too hard and is so obnoxious about it that it’s difficult to watch.  Walz reducing the citizens of flyover country to a bunch of bumpkins who says “damn” a lot is insulting to everyone who actually has to work for a living.

There’s been a lot of talk about Walz not being a great debater.  A lot of it is coming from Democratic sources.  Are they trying to lower expectations?  Or at they hoping that Republicans will get so cocky that they’ll wander into a trap, like Trump did with Harris?

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow because, tonight, I will be skipping the debate and watching highlights later.  I’m getting aggravated just writing about it.

(I do think the 2016 Vice Presidential debate made a slight difference.  After months of stories about Hillary Clinton’s competence and her superior decision making capabilities, Tim Kaine’s disastrous performance really did make Trump’s case that he would only hire “the best people.”  Of course, Trump often did the opposite once he became President but hindsight is 20/20.  Tim Kaine disappeared from the campaign trail after that debate and so did the once-annual “Tim Kaine should run for President” think pieces.)

The images that have been coming out of the flooding in West Virginina, Tennessee, North Carolina, and the rest of Appalachia have been devastating to see.  As of this writing, our government seems to be strangely unconcerned about the people effected by the flooding, almost as if things were being run by people to petty to be concerned by disasters that occur in what is derisively called fly-over country.  The only thing worse than all of that is that the national media doesn’t seem to really care.  Unless these disasters happen in the Northeast (like Sandy) or under a Republican president (like Katrina), the media tends to treat these things as just being a regional story.  And when something like this happens in a red state, the media almost seems to take the attitude that the people deserve to suffer for presumably voting the “wrong” way.

There is hope, though.  Considering all the negativity that we hear about America from academia and, again, the media, it’s always interesting to observe the way that many American citizens are always willing to help out their neighbors.  When the government fails, the citizens step up.  For a nation that is supposedly defined by bigotry and self-interest, we certainly are quick to help each other out.  It’s almost as if this country isn’t as bad as the online mob would like us to believe.  The helicopter pilots who are volunteering their time to conduct rescue missions, the members of the Cajun Navy, the people who donate food and water, these people will never get the recognition that they deserve.  If anything, they’ll be criticized for stepping up where the federal government failed.  (There’s nothing that the people in D.C. hate more than people taking it upon themselves to help out their fellow Americans.)  But all of them are heroes and all of them deserve to be applauded.

Only three Republican candidates have qualified for CNN’s upcoming Republican debate, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump.

That’s the way it should be.  Chris Christie is far past his prime and is more popular with the Democrats than with the Republicans.  Vivek had his moment and proved incapable of capitalizing on it.  Asa Hutchison is only running for his ego.  The Republican nomination is going to go to either Haley, DeSantis, or Trump and it’s time to get serious about that.  No other candidate is going to come out of nowhere to provide another option.  Glenn Youngkin, Brian Kemp, and Greg Abbott are staying in Virginia, Georgia, and Texas.  Kristi Noem is too busy trying to win a cabinet position to run the risk of messing it all up by jumping into the election at the last minute.  As for Chris Sununu and Kim Reynolds, they have both made their endorsements and it’s too late to turn back now.  If you’re a Republican who doesn’t want Trump to once again win the GOP nomination, you’re either going to have to support either Haley or DeSantis.

Trump, of course, will not be showing up for the debate.  I thought that strategy would be disastrous but it’s actually worked out to Trump’s advantage.  It’ll be DeSantis vs Haley on CNN while Trump does a FOX town hall and Vivek does some show with the online grifters who will be his future business partners.

For me, it’ll probably be a Netflix night.

Apparently, my biggest challenge is keeping this blog updated! It’s a new year and my resolution is to blog every day. If I don’t have anything interesting to talk about, I’ll just be boring!

Yesterday, I arrived back in Dallas early in the morning. Lisa and I went to a friend’s New Year’s party and we brought in 2024 standing on top of a roof in Deep Ellum. It was a cold night but that didn’t stop a few people from sending off fireworks. I remember at the height of the COVID lockdowns, there were a lot of health authorities ordering people not to stay home and not set off fireworks on New Year’s. That night, all across America, the skies were lit up by fireworks being set off by people who refused to give in to fear. It made me feel proud of my fellow citizens.

I hope that 2024 will give me even more reasons to be proud.