The Politics of Snow
Author: Greg Valliere
January 28, 2026
Countless mayors have been ousted in recent decades because of an inability to plow the roads. Aside from maintaining public safety, snow removal may be their most important task.
Now an uproar has infected the East Coast from the Carolinas to Toronto and incumbents are worried.
The problem is not a lack of money or effort — the problem is an inability to quickly dispose of the ice-encrusted mess, which seemingly is frozen in place as temperatures hit zero.
But no excuses will work; no arguments will assuage angry drivers, mostly in the suburbs, who have been trapped.
If this drags on — of there’s another big storm — it could trim 2 or 3 tenths of a percent from first quarter GDP growth. Not a lot of shopping this month.
A slowing economy is the last thing this administration needs, as cries grow louder to impeach Kristi Noem for her performance in Minneapolis.
The only good news is that this exceptional weather has brought huge amounts of precipitation to both coasts. The drought is over.
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