For the average American, the end of 2016 can’t come fast enough. The vitriol, rhetoric and personal revelations about many of the cast of characters was so hard-hitting that it literally caused personal distraught for many. For the true political junkies, however, introspection is what makes the world go round and so, for posterity, that warrants one last look back. Who won, who lost and what is the outlook from here? My choices are listed alphabetically, and my attempt to pick a winner (or loser) among the crop is spelled explained at the end.
Happy holidays and I’m sure I can get unanimous consent when I say that, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot…we’ll take a cup of kindness yet.”
Winner of the Year
Kellyanne Conway
Megyn Kelly
Ana Navarro
Reince Priebus
Bernie Sanders
Donald Trump
Elizabeth Warren
Kelly was hardly known beyond Fox News but that changed after she became an early Trump attention grabbing technique. Now, her reputation for professionalism and fairness is as gold as her hair. Navarro proved that keeping her integrity was subordinate to party loyalty. Priebus deserves a Nobel Prize for keeping Republican Party affairs afloat in the face of multiple adverse circumstances that would’ve meant an automatic electric shock prescription for anyone else. At the end of the day, he was able to boast of some major victories on his watch. Similarly, Conway, while not embraced by everyone stylistically (she can spin more than an acrobatic athlete), was able to keep the campaign on message, a challenge that no-doubt made landing a man on the moon seem easy by comparison. Sanders stayed in the race longer than he should have but put Clinton over the top at the Democratic Convention with good grace and from that time forward, stopped at nothing to secure the White House for his one-time rival. Warren’s humor, class and giving it back to Trump solidifies her stance as a Democratic heavyweight. But the President-elect seemed to move mountains – many of which he made himself, simply by beating the odds to even gain the title of President-elect. Now he will lead the free-world for the next four years. Thus, he takes the title.
Loser of the Year
Hillary Clinton
James Comey
Comity In Campaigns
Ted Cruz
Exit Polls
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz
Exit polls have been trying to become anachronistic for years and this year, they may finally have succeeded. Comey was like a yo-yo among the parties. He went from being seen as “Mr. Integrity” and a man above reproach by Democrats and Republicans alike to being loathed by Republicans and a savior by Democrats, then seeing it flipped. Many think his letter was designed to protect his integrity in the face of a near-certain leak had he not produced it. But this will taint his reputation forever. Cruz has been compared to “Lucifer,” and Senate friends can still be put into a phone booth but few can figure out how that differs from his first three years in the Senate. I’m tempted to give the award to Wasserman-Shultz. I joke that, given my name, I know class from crass and Wasserman-Shultz’s name has has undergone a complete reversal from the nice Jewish girl everyone acknowledged she was just a few years back. With her strong-arm tactics as DNC head having backfired bigly, Wasserman-Shultz is lucky she still has the support of her constituents – and that verdict was far from unanimous. But Clinton had a sure-thing and couldn’t beat a man as flawed as Donald Trump because of her own indiscretions, real or perceived, and given the man she was running against, that’s really something. To put it another way, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush who ran as a compassionate conservative. Clinton lost to Trump
Comeback of the Year
Rod Blum (R-Iowa)
Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)
Marco Rubio (R-Florida)
Todd Young (R-Indiana)
Despite calls of his 2014 win a fluke, Blum never really trailed his highly-touted Democratic foe. That was not the case with Young but he benefited from Bayh’s weaknesses and his state’s massive GOP lean. Rubio seemed like a dead-duck with no place to go after his bid for the White House crashed and burned in his own state but his colleagues prevailed on him to try for redemption and Floridians gave it to him. Throughout much of 2016, including less than a month before Election Day, the odds of Johnson returning to the Senate were lower than Hillary Clinton becoming Russian Orthodox. But by running the single most focused campaign of 2016, he catapults ahead of the others who, at varying points of the election cycle, were down but never out.
Newly Elected Officeholder Most Likely To Be Barack
Nanette Barragan (D-California)
Val Demings (D-Florida)
Eric Greitens (R-Missouri)
Kamala Harris (D-California)
Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida)
Darren Soto (D-Florida)
While no one will likely achieve the meteoric rise of our nation’s 44th President, some, particularly Harris, will go places fast. The California Attorney-General and Senator-elect is already receiving mention for 2020. Greitens is Missouri’s young, Jewish Governor-elect who unified a very fractious GOP that culminated with the party sweeping every state office. Demings has impressed many as sheriff of Orange County (Orlando) and while another Orlandoan, Soto, is a rising star and a skill legislator – undoubtedly a ray of sunshine for Florida Democrats desperately seeking a statewide bench. Barragan and Murphy are beautiful, sassy and whip-smart freshmen-elect with wonderful stories. But Harris already has stardome, and her ascendancy to the Senate may mean history for 2020: If both she and Elizabeth Warren take the plunge, it’ll be the first time two women are top competitors for a major party nomination for president.
Departing Public Servant Who Will Most Be Missed
Barbara Boxer (D-California)
Lois Capps (D-California)
Dan Coats (R-Indiana)
Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland)
Harry Reid (Nevada)
Joe Sam Queen (D-North Carolina)
The latter may raise eyebrows as few even in North Carolina know who this man is. But the folk-like three-term state representative of the Great Smoky Mountains insisted on stumping the state for fellow Democrats even with his own seat in jeopardy. It likely cost him a close race. Mikulski is among the most talented and effective members of Congress but, her treatment of staff is heinous. The tiny Boxer had a Jordan-like presence in the Senate but many saw her time for moving on as at hand. Reid is not tiny at all – in fact, as a boxer, he’s intimidated many. But he saw the need for new blood as well. Coats is considered a decent man well-liked on both sides of the aisle and Capps has consistently topped the Washingtonians annual survey among Capitol Hill employees for being “just plain nice.”
Y’all Don’t Come Back Now
Corrine Brown (D-Florida)
Joe Garcia (D-Florida)
Alan Grayson (D-Florida)
Frank Guinta (New Hampshire)
Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas)
Huelskamp, with his ideological rigidity, is absolutely loathed by his own party’s Congressional leadership and the Hill staff. On the other side of the aisle, Brown has angered her own party by with her lackadaisical style and fight of more competitive districts to salvage her own career, which may have succeeded had it not been for a 22 count corruption indictment. Garcia has now lost four of the past five elections, including his most recent comeback attempt in which he was not the choice of D.C. Democrats who preferred a stronger candidate. The Cuban-American raised eyebrows for declaring “Communism works” and received numerous You Tube hits for seemingly eating his earwax. But when he uttered the line, “Hillary is under no illusions that you want to have sex with her, or that she’s going to seduce you, or out-think you,” he proved why his fellow Dems wanted more. But it is Grayson who earned the vocal enmity of nearly all of his Capitol Hill colleagues throughout his six years in Washington. It’s a reputation that may not only have cost him the nomination to face Rubio, but also valuable support for his wife to win his House seat.
Best Campaign of 2016
Will Hurd (R-Texas)
Darrell Issa (R-California)
Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)
Jason Kander (D-Missouri)
Eric Paulsen (R-Minnesota)
As Republicans in swing districts on a ticket headed by Trump, Hurd and Paulsen had to be creative and were. The same is true of Issa who perhaps went overboard with creativity. In another column, I referred to mailings with Obama in the background of “chutzpah on steroids,” though if this year told us anything, voters like chutzpah (Issa won by just 1,600 votes). Johnson’s ads showed he really had a handle on his uphill but ultimately winning campaign. But Kander putting together a semiautomatic blindfolded single-handedly changed the trajectory of his long shot bid to unseat Blunt. He fell a little short but demonstrated how to appeal to rural regions of his state and urban liberals at the same time.
Worst Campaign of 2016
Evan Bayh (D-Indiana)
Richard Burr (R-North Carolina)
Trey Hollingsworth (Indiana)
John Mica (R-Florida)
Ted Strickland (D-Ohio)
Strickland’s camp ran a few questionable ads but in reality never had a chance against a well-funded incumbent with a boatload of cash. Hollingsworth was labeled “Tennessee Trey,” for having become a Hoosier a year before deciding to seek an open Congressional seat – and having his dad finance a $3 million super PAC on his behalf. Blunt did little to distance himself from lobbyist and Burr learned the dangers of waiting til Congress adjourns to start your campaign. But both held on. That was not the case for Mica who had many of the same problems as the other two. But Bayh learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea to boast of spending time in your home state just after announcing a comeback bid after six years as a well-paid lobbyist in the nations capitol.
Candidates We’ve Hopefully Seen The Last Of
Lincoln Chafee (D-Rhode Island)
Jim Gilmore (R-Virginia)
Mike Huckabee (R-Arkansas)
Gary Johnson (Libertarian-New Mexico)
George Pataki (R-New York)
Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania)
I’m not saying these folks should be barred from running for council in their home towns – though the population of their respective municipalities probably exceeds the number of votes each man got but the days of seeking national office are behind. It’s a four way tie.
Most Longwinded
Scott Crass
Rudy Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Donald Trump
All of us have had our day but Trump taking 45 minutes to get to the point at his victory rallies has to take the cake.
New Words/Phrases in the American Lexicon
Aleppo
Alt-Right
Basket of Deplorables
Bigly
Yuge
The temptation was there to also include that now infamous phrase from “Access Hollywood” which will undoubtedly be regularly used in real “locker-room talk” but that is not something I want to advocate. And some, like alt-right, we’d like to forget about. But “basket of deplorables” takes the cake. Expect that to become as “yuge” and as “bigly” among average conversation as “cool beans.”
I Can’t Believe This Is Real
California voters rejecting proposition requiring actors in porn films to use condoms
Marco Rubio’s “You know what they say about guys with small hands” shtick
Donald Trump trying to implicate Ted Cruz’s father as an accomplice of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Kennedy assassination
Donald Trump’s 3 a.m. tweets urging Americans to “check out (Miss Universe Alicia Machado’s) sex tape.”
Melania Trump vowing to make preventing cyber-bullying her pet cause as First Lady
Many were angered that Rubio had to resort to stand-up comedy, though he contends he only tried that as a last resort because he was “out-Trumped” for attention by the Donald. Trump’s accusation about Cruz’s dad was scary for a legitimate Presidential contender. The California initiative was more emblematic of the surreality of the year than anything else, as were many of candidate-Trump’s 3 a.m. tweets. As for Mrs. Trump’s initiative, it is a very timely and worthwhile endeavor but one that will force her to reconcile a thing or two with her husband’s incessant tweets.
Analysts/Commentators of the Year
Dr. Michael Bitzer
Kyle Kondik
Steve Kornacki
Jon Ralston
Stevbe Schale
Sean Trende
David Wasserman
I’d be hard pressed to choose a favorite, so I absolutely will not. Kondik of the Center For Politics at the University of Virginia, authored The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks The President. Kornacki has a knack for explaining an often complicated system into entertaining and informative presentations for the politically versed and not. Ralston has long been considered the zen-master of Nevada politics but his knowledge was particularly relied on for his instant crunching of each-day early voting numbers (Nevada has two weeks of early voting) and meticulously comparing them to four years ago. The end result was almost spot-on with his expectations and an indication that a state once thought to be slipping from the Democrats grasp – at both the Presidential and Senate level, would indeed come home at the end. The same goes for Bitzer in North Carolina. Schale’s analysis of Florida was spot-on. While he thought Clinton would pull it out, he never deviated from his view that it would ultimately be very close. Wasserman was among the only analyst who realistically thought, as far back as the Spring, that Pennsylvania (and the rest of the “blue-wall” for that matter)could slip into Trump’s column. Beyond that, his knowledge of political geography through the county levels and ability to crunch numbers in a nano-second is noticed by even the most casual observers of his work.