Auld Lang Syne
So here we are, the end of another calendar year. Hard to not take stock of the past 12 months as one changes out the wall calendar with one last look at the pictures before tossing it away.
And once you figure out you have fewer grains of sand in the top half of the hour glass than the bottom…these markers tend to hit a little harder. Birthdays, anniversaries at work, the change of the calendar.
For the past couple of weeks, when I’m typing something, for some reason my fingers have pounded out 2026 when I meant 2025…what do you want to bet that when it actually is 2026, I won’t type it correctly to save my life. We used to measure that by how long it took you to write the correct year when drafting a check at the grocery store…but I’m not sure anyone under the age of 40 knows what a check is, much less how to write one out.
It certainly has been a year of activity on the political front, some of it productive. But for every major reconciliation bill that became law, there are at least five things that weren’t done that should have been…funding the government, codifying presidential executive orders, and passing an overdue multi-year farm bill top the list.
2026 will be even more active than we expected on the election front, with plenty of contested primaries in addition to the general election…my guess is that at this time next year, we’ll be seeing a Democrat flip a GOP U.S. Senate seat here in Iowa…and we’ll be preparing for a Democrat to take the governor’s chair as well. But in the typical fashion of an Iowa voter, all four U.S. House seats will probably remain red, and all the rest of the statewide offices will be won by Republicans as well.
In so many ways, I think 2026 will be a year of major change. I can’t tell you exactly what form that might take, or how it will impact you or me, but as we kick 2025 to the curb, better buckle up—I don’t see smooth sailing ahead.
