Winners & Losers

Each year, “The McLaughlin Group,” the longest-running panel show on national TV, which began in 1982, announces its awards for the winners and losers and the best and the worst of the year.

Rereading my list of 39 awardees suggests something about how our world is changing.

As “Person of the Year” and “Biggest Winner,” the choice was easy, Donald Trump. American Pharoah, Triple Crown winner of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, was my runner-up.

But three selections tell another side of the story of Trump’s triumph. My “Biggest Loser” was the Republican establishment. As “Most Overrated,” I chose Republican governors as presidential candidates. As “Worst Politician,” I chose Jeb Bush, son and brother of presidents, who began as the GOP front-runner with $100 million in the bank and is now hovering around 3 percent.

The “Most Underrated” for me was the revelation that, under Obama, guns sales have doubled to 18 million a year. For 2015, one estimate is 20 million guns sold, and 185,000 on Black Friday alone.

There are more guns now in the USA than there are people.

My choice for “Best Government Dollar Spent” was for first responders, especially the cops who risk their lives.

Taken together, these stories underscore the “Black vs. Blue” conflict in America, where some black folks believe the lives of their young are less valued, while other Americans look on cops as the first line of defense for their families in increasingly dangerous times.

The racial divide we thought had closed has returned to re-poison our politics. And with the crime rate not only higher in the African-American community, but rising, there are inevitably going to be more and more black vs. blue collisions on which Americans take sides.

My choice for “Most Defining Political Moment” — the Paris and San Bernardino massacres — and “Worst Political Theater” — the ISIS beheadings and executions — may also point to what is coming.

From Virginia Tech to Tucson, from Ford Hood to Sandy Hook, from Columbine to Aurora, and from the Washington Navy Yard to Charleston, we have seen the enormous coverage garnered by the premeditated atrocities of our homegrown mass murderers.

Others seeking that same publicity will almost surely follow their example. So, too, the international attention that Charlie Hebdo and San Bernardino reaped will likely prove to be irresistible magnets to new ISIS and al-Qaida suicide bombers and killers.

But, as ever, we shall persevere. Happy New Year!

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