Saved by a Traffic Jam

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Winners and Losers!

The impeachment of Pete Hegseth has been delayed into next year thanks to a DC traffic jam. The resolution to charge the former Fox News weekend couch-filler fell 7 votes short … with 11 Democrats missing the vote because of a D.C. traffic jam. All 7 Michigan Republicans voted to keep Hegseth on the job, including departing members John James, Bill Huizenga and Tom Barrett.

With the mid-term election now in the rearview mirror, the focus in both Washington and Lansing are on leadership elections.
Congressional Republicans signaled their intention to wage political war on the new Democratic majority by choosing Jim Jordan as leader of their shrunken caucus. Jordan has made his mark by never wearing a jacket, yelling at double-speed in hearings, and being a constant presence on right-wing cable news. In his 20 years in Congress, he has never had a bill signed into law. Zero. But he has famously and aggressively helped cover up rampant sexual assault from Ohio State University to Epstein’s Island and the White House.

Senate Democrats are ready for a battle over majority leader. Despite a record of flipping 8 seats … with the pending likelihood of a 9th in Alaska … there’s open opposition to keeping Chuck Schumer. The New York senator sustained a major blow on Wednesday when Bernie Sanders and Elissa Slotkin teamed up for a news conference calling for a change. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed is also calling for a change of leadership and, like Slotkin, points to Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen. Van Hollen has announced he is challenging Schumer. Will he/they succeed? Not likely, but maybe.

In Lansing, the legislative leadership has been decided for both parties. Still pending is leadership of the two major political parties. Both will vote on their leadership at February conventions.

The Democratic Party’s convention promises to be a totally ho-hum event. Michigan Dems are poised to reelect party chair Curtis Hertel, who has picked up endorsements from seemingly all of the party’s major names, including Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson, Garland Gilchrist, both U.S. Senators, leadership of both incoming legislative caucuses, and UAW President Shawn Fain, though there are rumblings from the lunatic fringe about a challenge to Hertel. Good luck with that.

Republicans, reeling from historic losses up and down the ballot, are in open revolt – and have been all year in never-before-seen public fashion – against the current party chair Senator Jim Runestad, who has been dead-man-walking since nearly the conclusion of the 2025 convention that first elected him. The 2027 GOP convention will most likely turn into a UFC-calibre brawl with multiple potential challengers to Runestad, who is unlikely to survive the early rounds of voting if he has the fool sense to even run.

Donald Trump, while initially conceding that Democrats kicked butt nationally, now has decided to wage open warfare against his political opposition. In the last week, he has:

Ordered his Justice Department to launch fraud investigations in Democrat-run states and cities
Threatened to criminally prosecute members of Congress who have the temerity to investigate his crime family
Appointed the utterly vile Stephen Miller as chief of staff
Revived his ranting over rigged elections, now claiming the size of Democratic victories clearly could only have happened if there had been fraud.
Complained on Truth Social about a lack of prosecutions of Slotkin and 7 other Democrats for their video reminding soldiers that they have an obligation to refuse to follow illegal orders.

In other words – more of the same political b.s. that led to the Blue Tsunami.

And anyone longing for a daily torrent of high-stakes national campaigns is in luck. The 2028 presidential sweepstakes are well underway. Openly and aggressively on the Democratic side; cautiously and mostly behind the scenes on the Republican side, because contenders from JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and more do not dare risk triggering Trump’s lizard brain backlash by openly campaigning while he still maintains some signs of biological life.

Last week we focused on the winners in the mid-terms, virtually all of them Democrats at the state and national level. This week, Jeff, a few moments on the other side of the equation: the biggest losers. Obviously the biggest loser politically was someone who will never admit a loss: Donald Trump. But he’s got lots of company in the losers’ bracket.

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