If 2024 was a year of political upheaval, will 2025 be a year of political reform?

The future has a story. And while we can’t see the future, examining our past can be powerful.

That said, two quotes come to mind.

Let’s start with George Bernard Shaw (quoting German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel):

“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

Politically, 2024 has left me and many others baffled.

It’s been a year since saw President Joe Biden abandon his re-election bid after having been expelled by senior leaders of his own party.

vice-president Kamala Harris elected as party candidate and emerged during a debate with former President Donald Trump.

Polls showed the two men leading a tight race. But the polls were wrong!

It’s a year that saw Trump convicted of 34 crimes, almost murdered And earn the right to return to the Oval Office.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, became Trump’s right-hand man in 2024 and promised to help cut the budget and streamline government.

Now the president-elect is turning America into Florida, which could have resounding consequences. Look at the multitude of Sunshine State friends, neighbors and loyalists Trump is appointing to key administration positions: Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles and others.

Mar-a-Lago may be 1,000 miles south of Washington, D.C., but it’s where Trump holds court and shapes an administration in “his own image.”

Without a doubt, 2024 has been a year of political upheaval, and not just in the good old United States.

According to Pew ResearchVoters in more than 60 countries went to the polls and ousted incumbents on both the left and the right. “Shaken by rising pricedistributed over cultural issues and angry with political status quovoters in many countries sent a message of frustration.”

This has created opportunities for right-wing populist agendas in many European parliamentary elections, including in France, Austria, Romania, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Germany.

And of course, Trump’s Make America Great Again Movement was the dominant force in the Republican Party and dominates the president-elect’s agenda.

How successful will Trump be in transforming America? How will the events of 2024 shape the future body politic? What have we learned from history?

Well, let’s get back to where we started here.

Is Shaw right – or did Stephen Hawking perhaps put things better?

“We spend a lot of time studying history which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.”

Stephen Hawking

News4JAX political analyst and director of the Public Policy Institute at Jacksonville University, Rick Mullaney, joins me on this week’s “Politics and Power” to examine 2024, a political year unlike any other others, and how it could shape the political landscape in 2025.

Watch at 7 p.m. or 9 p.m. Tuesday on our News4JAX+ feed or find it at any time on request, from Wednesday morning, on News4JAX.com, News4JAX+ And our YouTube channel.