It has been a real struggle to decide on a single winner for LN’s Donald Trump Big-League Loser of the Year Award for 2017 – in honor of the Donald so aggressively re-introducing both the B-word and especially the L-word back into the American lexicon (by the way, does he actually say “Big-League” or “Bigly”? The debate rages). I find myself beset with a bewildering embarrassment of riches. There are way too many worthy losers/candidates to make such a definitive judgment. But allow me to offer you the dubious benefit of my thought pattern:
If we were going with the most prominent political loser of the year, Al Franken and John Conyers come immediately to mind. After all, rare is the year when both your character and political beliefs are repudiated. That would give those two the edge over Roy Moore, whose repudiation came only in the character realm.
When it comes to cultural losers, the hands-down winner would have to be Harvey Weinstein. Even the National Enquirer seems to have lost count of the number of allegations of sexual misconduct against the spectacularly hypocritical left-wing Hollywood producer, up to and including rape. And he will go down in history as the one who begot the #MeToo movement.
In the media, Matt Lauer would be the obvious choice, not just because of the disgusting allegations against him – none of which he has denied – but because he fell from the highest perch of all the alleged sexual predators. Charlie Rose would finish a somewhat distant second.
If we were making this a group award, you might expect us to hand the award to the left. But you would be wrong. Their repudiation came mostly in 2016, and even with no message other than a psychotic rage against the 45th president, they have somehow managed to win a couple of high-profile races in Virginia and Alabama and even more inexplicably, appear poised to gain seats in Congress next year. Go figure.
Remember this guy? Don’t feel bad, no one does.
No, if this were a group award, the runaway winners would be NeverTrump Republicans. Not content to provide aid and comfort to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election because of what they claimed candidate Trump would do and be as president, they now persist in explaining away the things President Trump has actually done that are virtually identical to what they have loudly supported for time immemorial. They lost their last vestige of credibility when many of them nitpicked at the tax reform bill and stubbornly refused to give Trump an ounce of credit and admit the obvious: that a tax bill allowing the government to confiscate three trillion dollars less from taxpayers and businesses is going to enhance liberty and improve the economy. These people have reduced themselves from leading voices for conservative principles to the worst thing you can be in Washington: irrelevant.
Forced at gunpoint to make a single selection for this soon-to-be-coveted award, we would have to go with a man whose cumulative losses were the greatest across all the areas described above. And so, we honor the man whose entire record of accomplishment over eight years is being tossed out the window. His party was stripped of all power. His unilateral actions are being reversed with the stroke of a pen. His signature healthcare accomplishment is being dismantled piece by piece. His globalism replaced is losing ground to nationalism. His progressive cultural mores were challenged and weakened. His climate change agenda was reversed. His truckload of regulations is being canceled. His principal trade deal is trashed, and his non-treaty treaty with Iran is in grave danger. His good friends in the fawning establishment media are no longer able to prop him up. Add to that revelations of his blatantly political use of the FBI and Justice Department to try and destroy the man who ultimately succeeded him, and his credentials for the award become almost inarguable.
We stipulate that the winner of this award is hardly a surprise. We all knew the fundamental transformation of America was stopped dead in its tracks on November 8, 2016. But nevertheless, congratulations to the winner of LN’s Donald Trump Big-League Loser of the Year Award: Barack Obama.
