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Do you consider a newsletter made up entirely of questions to be a throwaway copout, or the best way to bring Wide World of News readers inside the latest sense of what is going on?
Are you able to see sharp reported analysis embedded inside a series of either/or questions, or do you see instead a themeless mélange of a flavorless pudding from which you learn nothing?
Do you like it when the newsletter has no links to content (because it signals that you don’t today need to read what my grandfather called “newspapers”), or do you miss the “essential reading” service if you don’t get it daily?
Do you realize that the point of today’s edition is to let you know that, even if you are someone who pays close attention, the defining dynamic of our shared public life right now is that almost everything that will be determinative is undetermined, or don’t you?
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THE BIDEN AGENDA
Will Joe Biden try to convince the Democratic congressional leadership to pass his pandemic relief proposal intact, or will he just consider his proffered plan a starting point?
Could anything like what Biden proposed Thursday get 60 votes in the Senate, or will Democrats have to switch to the reconciliation process (or to a series of smaller bills)?
Will other early Biden legislative efforts also get Hill and media attention, or will the COVID measure blot out everything else for now?
In general, will Biden be able to keep separate partisan and kumbaya tracks going, or will something have to give?
Put another way, can Biden keep seeking bipartisan compromise on some issues even if he abandons efforts to get Republicans on board for his first big proposal, or will the GOP quickly return to is 2009 posture of reflexively and automatically opposing pretty much everything the Democratic president is for?
Put another way, is there a scenario in which Mitch McConnell believes it is in his interest to work with Joe Biden to pass bipartisan legislation, or not?
Will Biden have much of his cabinet in place by February 1, or will there be snags and delays?
If and when do Biden and Chuck Schumer get to the point when they can no longer resist eliminating the filibuster, or do they never try to achieve that goal (or: never achieve that goal because they can’t get 50 votes to do it even if they try?)?
Will the administration see and great Big Tech as allies, or will Team Biden take on the nation states?
Will Kamala Harris have more power and influence than Ron Klain in the administration, or not?
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THE PANDEMIC STRUGGLE
Will the Biden administration do substantially better at combatting the disease than the Trump administration did, or will Democrats confront the same kind of challenges?
Will Biden quickly succeed in some specific areas (vaccinations, school and business reopenings, etc), or will the basic problems remain for the foreseeable future?
Is the U.S. on track via the vaccine to get the pandemic under control, or will this nightmare continue into 2022?
Will federal-state interactions fundamentally change, or will they stay largely the same?
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THE SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL
Will Nancy Pelosi send over the impeachment matter to the Senate before 1/20, or hold it until later?
Will Chuck Schumer and McConnell quickly work out a bipartisan agreement on how to proceed with an impeachment trial and with other business, or will there be a stalemate on these matters (thus setting the template for how matters run in the Biden Era)?
Will the House impeachment managers opt for a long, complicated trial, or a short, simple one?
Will Donald Trump mount a defense, or not really?
Will McConnell lead an effort to convict the president (and thus bar him from holding federal office again), or will a trial end in acquittal and recriminations?
Will there actually be a Senate trial, or will the courts say a Senate effort to convict and punish a former president is not constitutionally kosher?
Will Joe Biden step in and encourage the impeachment process to end, or will he defer defer defer?
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DONALD J. TRUMP AND HIS ADOPTED POLITICAL PARTY
Will the president end his term with more pardons and provocative actions, or go out like a Twitter-less muted lamb?
Will Trump get a self-pardon, a Pence pardon, or a Biden pardon (or a Cuomo pardon?), or will he be fully vulnerable to indictment starting on 1/20?
Will Trump try to be a part of the nation’s daily media diet, or will he retreat, regroup, and retrench?
Will the press let Trump be a part of the nation’s daily media diet, or will they go cold turkey?
Will congressional Republicans be engaged in civil war between the Cheney-Romney wing of the party and ….the vast majority of the rest of the party, or will they paper over the recent past and unite against the left?
Will the 2024 chatter be dominated by ambitious U.S. Senators, or will DeSantis, Baker, Hogan and other governors take the many extra steps required for beyond the Beltway aspirants to be regularly mentioned by the Great Mentioners as legit prospects?