Our delayed countdown of the Top 50 Hot Air posts of 2019 continues today with the first half of our top 20! Incentives abound today, not just to revisit these stories but within the stories themselves. We have impeachment, another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appearance, mainstream media failures, plus one excellent CBS scoop that nearly everyone ignored. (No, really!) And how exactly will history remember Adam Schiff?

In countdown order, here are the posts in this part of the Hot Air Top 50 in 2019:

• #20: Freshman Dem Who Led Impeachment Charge: Let Me Get Back To You Next Week On How I’m Going To Vote, Okay? — This was such a too-cute-by-half PR strategy that it should be called an Elissa Slotkin from now on. Whenever a politician pretends to be morally torn on a question after prompting it him/herself only to be sure he/she will go with the party line no matter what, we can call it “the full Slotkin,” right?
• #19: Boston Judge Refused To Dismiss Charges Against Antifa, Jailed Lawyer Who Argued With Him — “So the progressive DA, the ACLU, and the progressive defense attorney are all unhappy with Judge Sinnott,” wrote John Sexton at the time. The only people happy with this decision was the police union … and presumably lots of law-abiding citizens fed up with street intimidation.
• #18: California Governor Suddenly Not So Popular — A rare moment of discernment for Golden State voters? Not so much as you’d think … or as deserved, unfortunately.
• #17: AOC: My Approval-Rating Drop Is The Result Of Racism And Sexism (And Fox News) — At least Gavin Newsom didn’t whine about his approval decline. Ocasio Cortez blamed her decline on, well … see above, but also the GOP and the “centrists,” scare quotes hers. If that’s how she feels about centrists, small wonder that her popularity got a lot more fringy.
• #16: A City That Opened Its Doors To Asylum Seekers Has Come To Regret It — And Portland, Oregon makes another appearance in the Top 50! Once again, people set incentives only to be shocked when others react to them in entirely predictable ways.
• #15: California Shocked To Find Bill Decriminalizing Retail Theft Resulted In… More Retail Theft — What was I just saying about setting incentives? If you discount the penalties for crimes, you incentivize more of it — and the people of California are paying the price for their new incentive structure.
• #14: Breaking: FBI Arrests Top FEMA Administrator, Two Others For Hurricane Maria Relief Fraud — This got a lot of attention from Hot Air readers, but the CBS News scoop from reporter David Begnaud didn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream media. Could that be because it tended to corroborate Donald Trump’s claim of widespread corruption regarding the relief fund? This didn’t entirely match up with those claims, but it was apparently too close for comfort.
• #13: Self-Defense Via “Assault Weapon”? Three Masked Teens Open Fire On Georgia Homeowner — And Don’t Live To Regret It — Another tragic reminder that the point of self-defense isn’t parity, it’s superiority. Or better yet, another reminder of don’t start none, won’t be none.
• #12: Finally! Pro-Abortion Actress Confronted While Protesting Fetal Heartbeat Bill — Which actress? Readers of Twitchy would know. It’s a rare moment in which a Hollywood celebrity has some immediate pushback, in this case over the industry’s attempt to boycott Georgia over an abortion-limiting bill.
• #11: Brit Hume: One Of The Wonders Of Modern Media Is Its Failure To See Through Adam Schiff — After Schiff tried to cover his butt over the Horowitz report, former Fox News anchor Brit Hume made this trenchant observation about media failures over the last three years. Personally, I think it will be worse than this; people will eventually look at this period as a new McCarthyist era. Schiff should be remembered as one of the worst culprits, but let’s not forget who set those incentives for Schiff, too …