Eleven things for political junkies to be thankful for

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Jonathan Bernstein

Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. It's been a miserable year for politics, really. Impeachment? There's nothing fun in that. Still, those of us who follow this stuff all the time do find some amusement in it, and I like to compile a list of what political junkies have to be thankful for. In other words: Sure, things are terrible, but at least we can have a two-day story about whether the hero dog is a boy or a girl. Ready? Stupid joke Twitter accounts. I'm afraid this one is losing steam, as politics Twitter itself has become a lot less fun than it used to be. But it was good to see that Representative Jim Jordan's poor abandoned jacket has its own account.  All those presidential candidates. Seth Masket counts 44 people who have so far done candidate-like things this cycle. And that's just the Democrats! A field of that size leaves plenty of room for the kind of goofy contenders who — assuming they don't actually come close to winning — provide a little comic relief. This cycle, forget about the vanity campaign of Marianne Williamson, and enjoy the thoroughly unmemorable members of the House who somehow thought they could win.  Landslides. Why? Because they reliably produce at least one new member of the House who is spectacularly unsuited for the office. The 2018 cycle produced one already in former Representative Katie Hill (although she also turned out to be the victim of unjust personal attacks).  C-SPAN. If you don't enjoy C-SPAN ambient sound — when they just keep the audio and video running after some political event — I simply don't understand you. As I've said many times, it was inevitable that Congress would eventually be televised in some way, but the C-SPAN networks offer so much more than that, and we're very lucky to have them. Thank you, Brian Lamb. Chyron analysis. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, media critics would get worked up when news shows would run critical stories about him accompanied by flattering video that the White House had manufactured. In today's version, the critics complain about the caption displayed at the bottom of the screen, known as the chyron, which can overpower whatever video and audio is running along with it — including when producers deliberately use those words to undercut President Donald Trump when he strays from the truth. I'm not sure how important any of this is … but it often produces fun diversions, and therefore makes this list. Wacky candidates! I didn't do this list last year, so I get to include one of the all-time great moments in congressional electioneering: that time when Arizona Representative Paul Gosar's own siblings made an attack ad against him. (Gosar got the last laugh by winning re-election.) FiveThirtyEight's endorsement tracker. I like it for lots of reasons, but I'm adding it to this list because of my favorite 2020 fact: Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the field in support from members of the Democratic National Committee. I'm sure that's part of the DNC's plot against him somehow. The $5 presidential candidate. OK, this one didn't exactly turn out to be true, but I'm counting it anyway: On first report, it appeared that presidential candidate Wayne Messam, the mayor of Miramar, Florida, raised only $5 in the third quarter this year. Later, the report was amended to reflect a less comical amount, but Messam soon afterward officially ended a campaign that had de facto ended weeks earlier. I'm sticking with the $5 story. Wacky cable-news stunts! Kids today probably wouldn't believe that CNN once beamed will.i.am into its studio "via hologram" for a live interview during its election-night coverage, but it's true. Or at least true enough. I'm bitter that no one has tried to top this in the 11 years since it happened, but I hold out hope for next year.  Election Day in the movies and on TV. I'm old-fashioned, so my favorite depictions come from "The Candidate" and from a great episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." But there are plenty of new and old ones worth enjoying. And I'll finish up the way I always do: with the memory of the one and only James Traficant. Beam me up! 1. Victoria Tin-bor Hui at the Monkey Cage on what's next after the elections in Hong Kong. 2. Dan Drezner on young people and public opinion about U.S. foreign policy. 3. Ezra Klein on Attorney General William Barr and the culture wars. 4. Fred Kaplan on Trump and the military. 5. And Greg Sargent on Trump and the Navy. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

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