2019: Winners and Losers

As 2019 draws to a close, it's time for me once again to look and see at who the winners and losers of the year were.  The only two reasons I don't have a list of the winners and losers of the 2010s, which are drawing to a close, is because 1) the 202nd decade of the Gregorian calendar actually doesn't end until the end of 2020, as the Christian calendar does not have a year zero, and 2) there were no real winners of the past decade, as it's clearly been one of the worst ten-year periods in human history.

Because my optimism and idealism have long since dissipated, I found it hard to come up with at least ten winners, and at one point it was hard to come up with even five.  But guess what - I managed to come up with ten winners.  As always, the losers were too easy to come up with, as I only needed ten.  In that respect, it was hard to consider what to leave in and what to leave out, and I hope my list doesn't suffer from having made the wrong decisions.

Without further ado, here are my winners for 2019:   

Nastasia Urbano.  This one is personal for me.  Spain's top model from the 1980s was at the bottom at the start of the year, being homeless in Barcelona, but thanks to her own determination and help from her friends and admirers - including yours truly, who fits into both categories - Nastasia (below) has a home, she's working as a model, and she couldn't be happier.  I love you, Nastasia.  You made it back! :-)

Norah O'Donnell.  She's not the first woman to anchor the CBS Evening News - Katie Couric was the first - but she is likely to have more staying power than any of her recent predecessors of either sex.

Jeff Daniels.  As Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird, Daniels not only proved that you can carry a play that was first a movie based on a novel, you can even make audiences forget someone like Gregory Whatsisname.

the Washington Nationals.  Only a miracle could get the Nationals - a hapless team since their beginnings as the Montreal Expos - to the World Series.  Fortunately, a miracle was at hand - a wild-card berth - and so D.C.'s lovable losers won Major League Baseball's ultimate championship.  Even Chicago Cubs fans were impressed.

Pete Buttigieg.  The small-city mayor with the funny name is the big breakout star of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign, having gone from obscurity to a huge chance for victory in the coming Iowa caucuses.

Lil Nas X.  Even if you hate rap and think pop music is in an irreversible decline (like yours truly), you can't deny the success of the performer legally known as Montero Lamar Hill, whose country-rap collaboration with Billy Ray Cyrus, "Old Town Road," became the first rap record to top the Billboard singles chart for thirteen weeks, was the first single to sell ten million copies while at number one, and earned Hill six Grammy nominations.  (And what does this country-rap record say about rock? Country and rap fans, to paraphrase a classic rock lyric, really don't mind if rockers sit this one out.)

Cedric the Entertainer.  The idea of a white family moving into a black neighborhood sounds like a silly gimmick, but then, what do I know?  "The Neighborhood," starring Mr. Entertainer (as I assume the New York Times calls him), after a successful first season, just began its second season this past fall.

Tiger Woods.  Augusta, Georgia was just the place to be for him, where he won the 2019 Masters and staged a remarkable comeback after having been written off by golf fans for so long.

National security bureaucrats.  Their testimony before the House Intelligence Committee during Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry helped the Democrats' case more than the Democrats themselves did . . . and with fewer histrionics than elected officials of either party.

Democrats in southern states.  The first signs of what could be a bad year for Trump and the Republicans in 2020 were Democrat Andy Beshear winning the governorship of Kentucky and fellow Democrat John Bel Edwards holding the governorship of Louisiana, along with Virginia Democrats winning the legislature in the state's midterm elections.  It looks like the Republicans have gotten as far with Trump as they're going to go . . . except, possibly, in New Jersey, where Democrats saw their state legislative majorities shrink and lost a Democratic congressman to the GOP.

And now, the losers!

Climate change activists.  Greta Thunberg notwithstanding, climate change activists had a year of no progress and no luck.  Carbon emissions are up, the United States is continuing its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the Green New Deal was as popular as an old brown banana, Jay Inslee's climate-change-centered presidential campaign bit the dust,  the Madrid climate summit ended in failure, and even car buyers in Europe are opting for gas-guzzling monster wagons.  The people who could do something about climate change are listening, but they obviously don't want to hear it.

Lori Loughlin.  I could include Felicity Huffman along with Loughlin, as they both paid to have their children enrolled in college in a cheating scam that was the biggest scandal of the year, but Huffman at least admitted her guilt and paid her debt to society.  Loughlin could be going to jail for a long time despite her pleas of innocence.  I keep expecting her to be taken to the slammer while yelling, "No quid pro quo!"

Matthew McConaughey.  Everyone thought McConaughey made the worst movie of 2019 when the thriller Serenity came out . . . in January.  Then he surprised everyone with a worse movie - the March release The Beach Bum, a movie so disdained, this is the first time I've heard of it.  At least those Lincoln commercials pay his bills.

John Crowley.  Never heard of him?  Well, he's the guy who directed The Goldfinch, the movie based on a novel about a boy whose life is forever changed by his mother's death in a terrorist attack.  You may never hear of him again; the movie was such a flop, it became the biggest box-office failure of the year.  Surprisingly, Matthew McConaughey is not in it.

Boeing.  When you have a plane involved in numerous crashes and a satellite that can't reach orbit, you have no right to call yourself an aviation company.

Prince Andrew.  I thought R. Kelly and Ryan Adams were bad boys, but Prince Andrew blows them both out of the water.  Thanks to his, ahem, association with noted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and charges against him for similar, umm, transgressions, the Duke of York found himself having some explaining to do, and he made things exponentially worse for himself when he did offer an explanation.  Proof that, if you don't choose your friends well, you can get into really big trouble.

the U.S. men's soccer team.  When your failure to win the CONCACAF soccer tournament, in the wake of your failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, coincides with the success of the U.S. women's soccer team, which won the Women's World Cup (again) this year, you're not just a losing team.  You're a set-up for a misandric Stephanie Ruhle girl-power riff.

Americans who like small cars.  Detroit is getting rid of its smaller sedans and hatchbacks in favor of monster wagons, Honda may be dumping its subcompact Fit in the U.S. market after 2020, and Volkswagen may only sell performance variants of its compact Golf in the United States and will not sell its Golf-sized ID.3 here.  When will American car buyers think small again?  You'll see high-speed rail here first.

Martin O'Malley.  The former governor of Maryland began 2019 on a sour note by eschewing another run for President.  He ends the year as a failed writer, having put out a book on improving local government that got no attention from the mainstream media (and when Karine Jean-Pierre, his deputy campaign manager from his 2016 presidential bid, promoted her memoir on the PBS NewsHour, she mentioned her associations with Anthony Weiner and John Edwards but not O'Malley).  In between, he squandered what little political capital he had left by supporting Beto O'Rourke for President.  He enters 2020 as a politician with a brilliant future behind him.

Beto O'Rourke.  And speaking of Beto . . . Several other Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 quit before 2019 ended, but no other candidate began with so much promise . . . or ended with so much humiliation. Especially when you consider that Beto quit before Marianne Williamson did.

This may be the last winners and losers list, which I've been doing since 2004, that I ever do.  See, Donald J. Trump is running for re-election as, ahem, President of the United States, and if he gets another four years in the White House, there will be no winners - only losers.  A winners and losers list will likely be inappropriate. Let's hope 2020 provides more victories to focus on than defeats.