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| Just 63 more 'shopping days' for a candidate |
We’re supposed to see a batch of activity that steps up the level of rhetoric that gets spewed about why the opponent is a repulsive idiot and the only sensible vote is one for my candidate.
YET
THE REALITY of the 21st Century is that Tuesday isn’t any more
important to the candidates seeking election this year than on any other date.
Any campaign that waited until now to get serious is one that is seriously dead
in the water.
I’m
not saying the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump spat for president can’t get
uglier than it already has. Or that Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker
Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, have been doing through various legislative
campaigns.
After
all, Rauner would love to have real political power – which he would get if only
he could have a General Assembly composed of people who don’t feel their
allegiance is to the people in organized labor whom the governor views as the
root of state government’s “problem.”
While
Madigan and labor view the new governor as the problem that must be kept in
check, People in Illinois, or at least in certain legislative districts, will
have a choice to make when it comes to picking that schleppy, anonymous
representative they usually pay little attention to.
OF
COURSE, THE presidential campaign is offering up a similar choice for voters.
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| MADIGAN: Continued gov opposition? |
It’s
less about Hillary vs. The Donald and more about whose influence do you want
over government. Particularly with the Supreme Court of the United States.
That
vacancy caused by the death earlier this year of Justice Antonin Scalia is
still open, and the partisan desire to control who picks the replacement is
still just as intense.
Heck,
for many of the Republican Party operatives who are appalled by the presence of
Trump at the top of their party’s ticket, they’re voting for Trump because they
want to ensure it isn’t Clinton or Democratic interests that get to shift the
balance of the nation’s high court.
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| RAUNER: Giving governor his way |
THEY
DIDN’T OBJECT when Ronald Reagan used his presidential powers to shift the
leaning of the federal courts to Republicans back in the 1980s, but they seem
to resent the idea that partisan leanings are not permanent.
History
could wind up seeing a “President Clinton” (the second) as one who reversed the
political tinge of the courts’ partisanship.
Which
is why some people who personally don’t think much of Hillary will wind up
voting for her – the notion of a federal court that isn’t hostile to our
ever-changing society and doesn’t seem determined to hold us back in the 18th
Century is something that does appeal to some.
Which
also is intriguing in the way Illinois’ legislative races may wind up being
influenced by presidential politics. Will people have to choose between federal
and state governments, or which way they want the whole mess to lean?
BECAUSE
RAUNER HIMSELF is one who has tried to tamper down his own leanings in the
presidential campaign. Because the last thing he wants is people becoming so
disgusted with Trump that they don’t bother to vote for the Republican in their
home district who’d represent them in the Legislature.
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| TRUMP: Impacting more than his election |
Or
maybe the first thing he wants is some of those people who pick Hillary for
president deciding they don’t want Madigan to influence their local legislator,
so they choose to vote Republican instead, on that part of the ballot.
The
one safe prediction we can make about what will happen 63 days from Tuesday is
that none of the usual rules will apply. The whole thing could become a
free-for-all – one that will make the next two months one of those time periods
we recall for years to come.
And
some of us certainly will wind up having to learn to live down the shame of
explaining in the future why they actually cast a ballot for whichever knucklehead they wind up voting for
come Nov. 8.
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