It’s that time of the year again. Time to review the year just about past. I’m open to and deserving of criticism and I’ll give myself a big fat “F” on what I predicted would be the fifth biggest political story of the year. In addition to that, even in the darkest recesses of my mind I could not have envisioned the unquestionably biggest political story of 2021.

Going into the year I predicted (in order) the five biggest stories of 2021 would be: the Georgia runoff, the pandemic and its economic repercussions, the relationship of President Biden and the Congress, the continuing revelations of Trump related scandals and Melania Trump divorcing Donald Trump.

The GA runoff had major implications and was a huge story; in fact, 2021 was so wild I’m not sure it made the top five.

The pandemic, and its economic repercussions, dominated the news and will for most if not all of 2022.

The insanity of the GOP delegations in both chambers of Congress alone would give me enough material to write my 260 columns a year. Their relationship to Biden is simple – obstruction. While big legislation has been enacted and other bills are pending, they are overshadowed by hijinks and un-American activity.

Trump scandals are so numerous that it is impossible to cover them all. Often they can’t even make the front page or lead story. It is assured that there are many more to surface before they dry up.

As previously admitted, I was wrong when I took the flyer of anticipating the Trump divorce. I was wrong; for now at least.

With the benefit of hindsight here are my top five political stories of 2021:

The top story has to be January 6th. In fact, with 80% of it to go, this has to be a contender for top American political story of the 21st century.

Next, and it is no surprise, I have the pandemic with both its economic and social implications.

I’ll put the plethora of Trump scandals in the third spot.

In the cleanup spot (I love baseball) is the continuing assault on democracy by the Trump aligned forces of the GOP. From voter intimidation, suppression and nullification efforts at the state and local levels to road blocking voter protection legislation in DC it all has a common and un-American goal.

If they often didn’t occupy high elected office, it would simply be comical and plenty of fodder for political op-ed writers but I have every reason to expect the Trump aligned Republicans to maintain, if not increase, their insanity.

That about puts 2021 to bed. Tomorrow I’ll see what my magic ball has to say about 2022.

This article was written well ahead of publishing in order to accommodate my year end hiatus and is the property of tellthetruthonthem.com. Its content may not be used without citing the source. It may not be reproduced without the permission of Larry Marciniak.