It's Groundhog Day!
(Again.)
In the classic 1993 movie Groundhog Day, Phil (Bill Murray) discovers he is reliving the same day over and over again. A profoundly self-centered man, Phil goes through the five stages of grief before finally accepting the new circumstances of his life. He spends much of the film trying to use his unique position to enrich himself with worldly pleasures, but eventually discovers that real happiness comes from helping those around him. It is only when Phil stops thinking of himself and dedicates his life to service of others that his curse is lifted and the movie has a happy ending.
America has gone through a similar pattern with its political cycles. In the 1992 election, the blue team captured the Oval Office and held both chambers of Congress. 8 years later, the red team claimed them all, only to see everything flip to the blue team in 2008. Eight years after that, the red team reclaimed the trifecta; 4 years after that, the blue team won the Presidency and Congress; and then in 2024, voters swiveled total control back to the Republicans. Hey, woodchuck chuckers, it’s Groundhog Day!
As one watches the oscillations of the political pendulum, the thought process of new voters and swing voters seems apparent. The party currently in power is terrible, they conclude, so let’s replace them with the other one. After a few years, the electorate realizes the party currently in power is terrible, and decides to replace them with the other one. Hey, woodchuck chuckers, it’s Groundhog Day!
In many ways, Trump 47 might feel like a repeat of Trump 45. But for many people, things are worse. A survey last summer found that 55% of Americans agreed with the statement: “The economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me.” People are feeling the economic squeeze, while Congress just let the government shut down AGAIN because they haven’t passed a budget due October 1! Hey, woodchuck chuckers, it’s Groundhog Day!
Running gags can be comedy gold—think of all the times Lucy yanked the football away from Charlie Brown—but eventually the humor shifts from “I can’t believe they did that unexpected thing!” to “I can’t believe they fell for the same thing again!” After decades of politicians’ broken promises and general dysfunction—in all of 2023, the 118th Congress passed a staggering TWENTY-SEVEN bills—it’s time to break the cycle with a new model.
I started these annual Groundhog Day posts back in 2021, pitching an upgraded political system. The framers left a list of duties for Americans in the Constitution, and we’ve gotten away from them, individually and as a nation. A union of swing voters, willing to vote for both the red team and the blue team, can leverage their power as deciders to shape the national conversation around those duties. Like self-centered Phil in Groundhog Day, when we learn to put others first, we can break out of the left and right paradigm and steer the story to a happy ending.
That being said, I’ve been making the same “unionize as voters” pitch for a bunch of years without any sweeping success, so I’m trying a new one. Groundhog Day is the story of a man whose life resets like clockwork; nations have a similar cycle. In 2026, as America turns 250, we can have a jubilee—a year for forgiveness of spiritual and economic debts. (We’ve accumulated a few along the way.)
My model still includes collectively bargaining for passage of transformative legislation before the election. While the previous packages addressed Martin Luther King Jr.’s triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism, the POPULIST Act1 focuses more on economic injustice. That means not just addressing poverty caused by a backward monetary system, but the poverty caused by concentrations of corporate power. (Business profits, for example, are more than $13,000 higher per household than when Trump 45 took office.) A jubilee offers a chance to rebalance the scales; check out my new campaign site at votewithbrian.com.
Hey, woodchuck chuckers, it’s Groundhog Day! Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter, but the United States doesn’t need to be afraid of its shadow. A jubilee can bring an end to our economic winter and guide us to a bright and bountiful future—one with liberty and justice for all.
Partnership of Ordinary People Undermining Lobbyist Influence for Societal Transformation Act of 2026