Encore, encore?!?

Did Marie Newman really behave in such a tacky, offensive manner on primary Election Night 2018 that she has killed off any future chances she has to win electoral office?

It certainly seems that Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., and his backers are counting on such a strategy in order to win office again. Which makes us wonder – did Newman really misbehave? Or is Lipinski truly fearful of the candidate whom he barely beat last year?

FOR THOSE OF you with short attention spans, Newman was the suburban woman who challenged Lipinski on the notion that he’s too conservative on social issues to be allowed to think of himself as a Democrat in good standing.

Lipinski managed to prevail in the Democratic primary – winning 51 percent to 49 percent. Largely because the Illinois 3^rd Congressional district consists largely of Chicago’s Southwest Side neighborhoods, where many voters look upon it as a plus that Lipinski’s father is former Congressman and Alderman Bill Lipinski.

He also represents that segment of the populace that thinks Democrats ought to be a blue-collar political party that ought not be too concerned with the social issues such as abortion (of which Lipinski is solidly in opposition).

There were those people who think that’s not what the Democrats ought to be about any longer, and they did try to use Newman to dump Dan from office – falling just short of a primary victory.

NEWMAN APPARENTLY IS thinking along the lines of, “I came close to winning last time, this time will be the charm.”

NEWMAN: Trying again in 2020

That led her to saying on Tuesday she’s running again for Congress. She’ll challenge Lipinski once again – and hopes she can find another 2 percent of voter support to give her a victory this time. While another person, Abe Matthew of Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, says he’ll also run – thereby clogging up the political mechanisms.

Personally, I always get skeptical of candidates who come close to winning, but fail. Political history is filled with many such tales of people who tried again – only to wind up falling short by nowhere near as small a voter margin as they lost by the first time.

LIPINSKI: Can he fight her off again?

Remember H. Ross Perot – who in 1992 ran an independent political campaign that managed to take 19 percent of the overall vote and was a factor in incumbent President George Bush’s failure to beat Democrat Bill Clinton?

THAT LED THE Texas billionaire to think he had potential for a significant political movement, and he tried again in 1996. Only to fall so far short (8 percent overall) that I suspect most people these days have forgotten he ever existed politically.

Could Newman wind up embarrassing herself in a similar manner?

Lipinski himself told the Chicago Sun-Times, “I would be surprised if Marie Newman runs again after her angry, mean-spirited speech on TV on Election Night.” Looking around the Internet, various people commented she was “downright bitter” and “didn’t concede with any class.”

Did Newman really manage to create a lasting image at the end of her last campaign that kills off any hopes for a political future? Or is this merely wishful thinking on the part of Lipinski that he won’t have to seriously campaign for re-election in 2020?

MY OWN CHECK of the Internet for Election Night video unveiled a snippet of Newman saying, “I would like for Mr. Lipinski to have a very painful evening,” while refusing to admit political defeat. While Rich Miller of the Capitol Fax newsletter said of Newman’s behavior, “I’ve seen much worse.”

PEROT '96: A long-forgotten campaign

It probably helps that many have let the Lipinski/Newman primary slip into the crevasses of their minds – remembering more clearly the general election campaign against Art Jones – a political activist with past ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations.

Which meant the Republican Party had to go out of its way to dissociate themselves from him. The real question for 2020 may be to see if the Illinois GOP remains so weak and unorganized that it won’t be able to put up a legitimate challenger to Lipinski as what happened in 2018?

As opposed to whether Newman can hold together all the people eager to see a less-ideologically-motivated person than Lipinski represent them in Congress – while figuring out a way to get 2 percent more voter support for herself.

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Must we relive Election Day ’92? It wasn’t that interesting 1st time around

PEROT: Looks good next to Trump

I must confess; I actually gained a bit of respect (sort of) for Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot – but only because Donald Trump comes across as a bigger buffoon than the big-eared would-be politico ever was.

For Trump made it seem like he expects to fill the same niche that Perot filled some 23 years ago when he made his initial presidential bid.

REMEMBER HOW THE 1992 presidential election cycle came down to George Bush (the elder) against Bill Clinton, with Perot deciding that the public needed to pick someone else – and that somebody was meant to be him?

TRUMP: No ears, but bigger ego

There are those people who, to this day, claim Perot was the deciding factor – stealing votes away from Bush and resulting in the two terms of Clinton as president.

Of course, I’d argue that a guy who only got 19 percent of the popular vote nationally and was unable to win the Electoral College in any state wasn’t that much of a factor.

Perot inspired a certain segment of the electorate that usually is politically apathetic to actually get off their duffs and cast votes for president. Without Perot on the ballot, Bill Clinton still would have won, but the voter turnout would have been a record low.

SO WHAT’S MY point in reciting this mini-history lesson? It’s just that it seems we’re going to get the same circumstances arising come the 2016 election cycle.

CLINTON: The better half?

A Clinton (as in former first lady Hillary) against a Bush (as in presidential son and brother Jeb). With a rich guy with an over-bloated ego deciding he’s running for president as well.

That is what Donald Trump has become – just a slightly more urban version of a rich buffoon who thinks he’s entitled to his wealth and anyone he can buy off into thinking he has a clue.

The Hill newspaper out of Capitol Hill in Washington reported that Trump says he’s inclined to back away from his talk of running for the GOP nomination for president because the Republican National Committee isn’t showing him the kind of respect he thinks he deserves.

BUSH: Erasing the taste of W?

IF HE RUNS as a political independent, he can go about saying or doing whatever he wants without anyone letting him know he’s become an embarrassment to the people whom he would theoretically be representing.

Then, Trump wouldn’t be stuck in a field of 16 (including himself, thus far) Republican candidates. He’d be the lone wolf.

Although I think it would expose Trump for the political weakling he truly is. His roughly one-quarter of the Republican vote that polls show he has would actually be ridiculous.

Since the rest of the party would wind up backing the resulting party winner – which could be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

HILLARY VS. JEB, with Trump also taking some votes. I could envision exactly which kind of people would bother voting for the man who thinks the whole world needs to be branded with the “Trump” logo (Would the White House become the Trump Mansion?).

It may well be the nativist element with a particularly irrational hang-up concerning Mexico – the ones who think that Trump made some legitimate point with his trip to Laredo and who are delusional enough to think an impenetrable wall can be erected.

MEZVINSKY: The first grand-daughter?

And perhaps the ones who don’t trust Bush (the Third) because he married a Mexican woman; making the potential first children Mexican-American by ethnicity.

A truly xenophobic campaign that would wind up being more goofy and embarrassing to the nation than anything Perot ever said or did.

IT MIGHT ALSO be the element that ensures we get the concept of “President Hillary R. Clinton” and Charlotte Mezvinsky as the “first granddaughter.”

Unless the Democratic Party side of the electorate decides that Clinton has campaigned unofficially for so many years that they’re now tired of her before they ever get a chance to experience her.

A topic for another day’s commentary, to be sure!

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150 years since Lincoln became immortal; what would he be today?

Anybody who hangs around political people gets used to certain catchphrases and concepts being tossed out when one wants to score political points.

One such idea I have often heard expressed is the notion that, if he were alive now, Abraham Lincoln certainly would not be a Republican. I can’t keep track of the number of Democrats who have suggested that a modern-day Lincoln would have converted to their political party.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN skeptical of the suggestion. Not so much because I think Republican partisans of the modern-day are somehow correct in their way of thinking about the biggest-name politico Illinois has ever produced.

It’s just that I think Lincoln himself might have become so repulsed by some of the actions committed GOP of the 21^st Century that if he had left, it would be to create yet another political party.

Perhaps someone like H. Ross Perot, goofy ears and all, is the modern-day equivalent of Lincoln. Not that I’m implying the Texas billionaire who actually gained a significant number of votes when he tried running for president in 1992 has much in common with Lincoln.

But perhaps I just think Lincoln would be ornery and independent enough to find all of the current political structure somewhat repugnant!

LET’S NOT FORGET that during his lifetime, Lincoln was affiliated primarily with the Whig Party. When the potential for slavery to spread into the territories we now think of as the Plains states split the Whigs into factions, Lincoln wound up eventually going with the one that opposed slavery.

Which wound up becoming the Republican Party, and Lincoln became their first presidential candidate who managed to win the election.

I do believe that the extent to which the old Southern agenda of “state’s rights” being used to justify repulsive racial policies and other means of imposing on the civil rights of certain people who don’t fit their image of who belongs in this country would have bothered Lincoln.

But I wonder if Lincoln would see the modern-day Democratic Party as being a bit dysfunctional in its own right – so many factions that have trouble uniting that the Republicans in their ideological rigidity are still capable of winning elections.

OF COURSE, THE reason we pay so much attention to Lincoln’s memory is because of the events of 150 years ago Tuesday. Just days after the first military surrender that essentially ended the Civil War (even though fighting continued in spurts for two more months), Lincoln was shot. Under circumstances that ensure his critics in life were permanently disgraced.

Lincoln died early the next morning, laid out in a bed so small that he had to be put on it on an angle. And yes, generations of Chicago schoolchildren have gone on field trips to the Chicago Historical Society museum to see that bed (along with the charred crackers that survived the Chicago Fire of 1871).

In fact, a part of me would be inclined to go to the museum Tuesday to see the bed, except that it is on loan for the year to the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. That’s a bit much of a drive for me to make on a whim.

So perhaps we should spend part of the day pondering Lincoln’s memory, which gets distorted in so many ways by people eager to simplify his story – particularly those too eager to engage in Confederate historic revisionism.

LINCOLN MAY NOT have been the pure abolitionist who was willing to do away with slavery of black people for the common good. Although his critics of the day were certainly willing to see him that way to benefit their own hostile thoughts.

Just last week, the Washington Post published a commentary suggesting that, “Today’s GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis, not of Lincoln.”

That might be a bit simplistic a thought, but there is a certain amount of truth to it – in that I wonder if modern-day Republicans find a bit of shame in the fact that their political party historically was known as the “Party of Lincoln.”

Wishing instead they could regard Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon of the “Southern Strategy” and Ronald Reagan (who throughout the years chased off those Republicans who were motivated by Lincoln’s ideals) as their true founders.

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Politics about working together, not barking out orders to minions of Illinois

There’s a reason why I have never liked the idea of business executives thinking they could just step into electoral office – the fact that they usually openly admit a desire to run government like they do their business.



Put a cork in it



It doesn’t work that way. Nor should it.

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY thinks it would be good for Donald Trump to become president and start barking out “You’re Fired!” to various officials the way he does to nobodies who appeared with him on television is even more ridiculous than Trump himself for giving aid and comfort to those individuals who want to perpetuate the myth that Barack Obama isn’t a natural-born U.S. citizen.

It is good to see that even among the Republican partisans to whom Trump is appealing (only 7 percent, with 32 percent of GOPers thinking him completely unfit) in his desires to run for U.S. president in 2012, the billionaire real estate developer with a hobby for acquiring younger, and younger still, trophy wives has high negative perception ratings (one-third of GOP types think Trump is unfit to be president).

The last thing our society needs is a would-be dictator who thinks he can give commands to people to impose his particular narrow vision upon the world. Such a thought is so offensive that the most accurate phrase I can think of to describe such an official is “un-American.”

That same sentiment I feel toward Trump is the same that I felt some two decades ago when Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot went through his presidential delusions (some 19 percent of the populace thought he was fit, but not enough in any one state for him to get a single Electoral College vote).

AND IN SOME ways, it also is how I feel about state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, who for awhile flirted with the idea of serving as mayor of Chicago – only to find out that his religious background that had always been his biggest plus in his narrow segment of society (African-American Chicago, South Side) was a drawback.

MEEKS: On his way out?



Now Meeks isn’t a business official. If anything, he may be worse, a clergyman. The reverend who operates one of the largest churches in Chicago came into public life amidst a congregation of individuals inclined to let him lead them.

The rest of us won’t.

That is what I really think is behind his talk to WLS-AM radio on Thursday, when he said he’s seriously considering giving up his political post and focusing his attention on his church.

THAT WOULD BE the smartest thing he has ever done in public life.

Meeks tried running for mayor, and also has hinted he would like to be Illinois governor. But in the end, the only office he ever held was that of a state senator from the far Southeast Side of Chicago, and some of its surrounding suburbs.

Even there, Meeks expresses frustration because one of the big goals he always wanted to achieve is something that will likely always run into staunch opposition – school vouchers.

Meeks sees the issue as one of getting some government funds to enable the lower-income people who comprise the bulk of his congregation to be able to consider sending their children to private schools – rather than being stuck in the under-funded and over-whelmed public schools that service their neighborhoods.

I DON’T BLAME Meeks for being willing to try something radical to benefit the people of his inner-city legislative district. I would think less of him if he merely wanted to maintain the status quo and ignore the issue.

But the reality of most voucher programs I have heard of being considered by Illinois officials is that they would only provide a small payment. The bulk of private school tuition would still have to be paid for by families.

And considering the thousands of dollars that a private school can cost, it is likely that the least fortunate whom Meeks claims to benefit would still be unable to attend such schools. Vouchers would wind up benefitting those more wealthy people by giving them a little bit of aid just because they’d rather ignore the public school system.

Our educators and officials ought to be worrying about improving the system, not undermining it. That attitude has been shared by a majority of government officials who have thwarted voucher talk.

WHICH IS WHY Meeks is frustrated. He couldn’t wear his collar and intimidate people into thinking they had to listen to him on this issue, or any other.

So perhaps it is for the best if Meeks returns his full attention to the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago. He may well still have a presence in politics, as being the man that government officials turn to in order to get the Election Day support of his flock.

His sermons may become even more feisty as he tells first-hand stories of the vapidity of politics and elected officials. But Meeks as a legislator has been unable to push much of anything through the General Assembly into law, and now he wants out.

Which is the same fate I could easily see happening to Trump should he run for president. He’d tell Congress “You’re Fired!,” only to have them respond with, “Drop Dead!”

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COHEN CAPERS: Is Baxter Swilley the Illinois equivalent of Admiral Stockdale?

“Who am I? Why am I here?”

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Those were the “immortal” words of Admiral James B. Stockdale, the man whom political observers initially thought could become something along the line of John McCain (both were POWs during the Vietnam War), but wound up becoming a doddering old man seriously out of his element in the world of electoral politics.

For those of you to whom 18 years is too long a time period to remember, the admiral was the man Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot turned to during his 1992 presidential campaign as a political independent when he needed a running mate.

STOCKDALE WAS THE vice presidential hopeful who wound up making then-Vice President Dan Quayle look downright competent by comparison. (By comparison, Perot made Stockdale look competent, but that is a story for a different day).

Now why am I bothering to recall that campaign from two decades ago that, while it managed to take 19 percent of the actual vote, was unable to win a single vote in the Electoral College?

It’s just that I’m wondering if we in Illinois are destined to see something similar with the way in which Scott Lee Cohen is determined to think of himself as a gubernatorial candidate.

Which means he needed a running mate. If one wants to think of the eccentric Cohen as a modern-day Ross Perot, then that makes Baxter Swilley the 21st Century equivalent of the admiral.

SO HOW LONG will it be until Swilley gives us some quotable line showing us his ability (or lack thereof) to comprehend the reality of electoral politics?

Swilley has never held electoral office. But he does have a little more political experience than Stockdale did. He was, after all, the guy who worked as a staffer on the Cohen campaign that actually managed to beat five other Democrats who were running for the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor.

For what it’s worth, Swilley is a native of suburban Maywood (Stockdale was a native of downstate Abingdon) and is an African-American male, which Cohen hopes adds a sense of diversity to his campaign – assuming that Cohen/Swilley are able to get the 25,000 valid signatures of support required of any independent political candidate in Illinois to get a spot on the ballot.

On a more serious note, he’s “staff,” not “candidate material.” He worked as a political director in Missouri for the 2004 presidential dreams of John Edwards, and also has worked on the campaign staffs of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Jackson, Miss., Mayor Harvey Johnson.

SWILLEY ALSO WAS one of the people who worked to try to get the International Olympic Committee to put the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Chicago.

Which means he may know how to stage a campaign event for Cohen. But can he be the focus of those events? We’re talking about a newcomer to Illinois politics, which some people think is exactly what the state needs. Of course, I can’t help but wonder how clueless these people would be if they ever actually got elected to office, which is why I have a tough time taking seriously any political “movement” that wants to dump all incumbents.

In fact, Swilley has such a limited background that much of the coverage of Cohen’s choice of a running mate had to focus on whether or not he truly was Cohen’s top choice. Is this really what Scott Lee thinks is a qualified person to serve as governor of Illinois, should he happen to get on the ballot, win the election, then die or otherwise become too incapacitated to serve out a four-year term?

Depending on which report one reads, Cohen makes general statements saying Swilley was his ideal pick, or was his second choice after being turned down by state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago – who began his own political career by getting elected to the state Legislature as a political independent.

THERE EVEN WERE some reports indicating that Cohen would have liked to have had a woman at his side in the role of lieutenant governor – in hopes that her presence might force constant repetition of all those stories about his past involvement with prostitutes and his falling behind on child support payments to his ex-wife to go away.

Either that was not the case, or he couldn’t find a woman willing to work with him for the next month-and-a-half (the period during which he must get those nominating signatures of support).

To me, that is the key to this whole issue.

Swilley may very well be a lieutenant governor “candidate” until June 21, at which time the campaign will die before ever getting started because it could not get sufficient support to force the Illinois State Board of Elections to put it on the ballot along with Quinn/Simon, Brady/Plummer or Whitney/Crawford (can’t forget the Green Party, although I’m sure most Illinoisans will).

IS SWILLEY GOING to be the guy who in the lieutenant governor debate makes Jason Plummer look a little less vaccuous than his 27-year-old inflated resume would otherwise be?

Then again, there might be one area where Swilley could never hope to beat Admiral Stockdale. He got turned into a caracature on Saturday Night Live by the late Phil Hartman (who could bark out, “Who am I? Why am I here?” with such a harsh snarl and a glazed look in his eyes that he made the admiral appear completely insane.

Somehow, I doubt that Kenan Thompson will ever devote the time to portraying Swilley (he’s too busy preparing for his next Roland Burris impersonation).

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Is Saturday Night Live relevant or not?

I find it ridiculous for people to complain that Saturday Night Live is somehow responsible for the Barack Obama campaign’s inability to “finish off” opponent Hillary R. Clinton’s presidential dreams.

The same people who say the show is kissing up to Clinton at the expense of Obama are the same ones who go around claiming the show is irrelevant because nobody watches (almost like the Yogi Berra-ism, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded”).

PERSONALLY, I CAN’T remember the last time I watched a full episode of the show (although I recently watched a DVD of episodes from the show’s first season and occasionally catch cable television reruns of earlier years), but I am skeptical that any portrayal of Clinton would be enough to sway the Mood of America.

Throughout the years, the NBC program of comedy sketches that in some ways is little more than a rip-off of that Chicago institution, “The Second City,” has incorporated the politics of the times into its humor.

Everybody still remembers Chevy Chase’s “impersonation” of then-President Gerald Ford, although it really was nothing more than Chase stumbling around and acting stupid – just because of the two times Ford fell on the airport tarmac. Chevy Chase and Dana Carvey are two of the few Saturday Night Live cast members who actually dictated the way the public perceived a politico. I doubt Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton is going to make this duo a trio. Just off the top of my head, I also recall Dana Carvey as President Bush the elder (and as whacked-out Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot), and the impersonations done by Dan Aykroyd and Norm MacDonald of one-time Senate leader Bob Dole that cemented the impression to many people of the Kansas politico as a mean, bitter old man.

BUT THIS IDEA that the show’s political humor somehow tars or praises every single politico is just wrong. Anyone who is trying to blame a television program for a political candidate’s flaws is just looking for excuses.

Ultimately, reality triumphs over dramatic interpretations, particularly when it comes to a political character with such a well-defined personality as Hillary Rodham Clinton. There’s nothing that Amy Poehler (the one-time Chicago actress who these days is doing a “Clinton” character on the show) could say or do to change their perception.

Now for those fans of the show (personally, I think it died after the Aykroyd/John Belushi pairing left in the late 1970s) who cite the examples of Chase, MacDonald and Carvey as examples that I’m wrong, I’d say they are proof that I’m right.

That is three actors during the run of a show that has lasted 32 years. That’s not many, even though the show usually tries to lead off every single episode with a sketch of political parody.

JUST LIKE MANY people only think of the name Brad Hall as “Mr. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss,” there are a lot of Saturday Night Live actors who did political impersonations, but nobody remembers.

Although people still remember the sketch when Ron Reagan Jr. appeared as himself and danced around “the White House” in his underwear as a parody of Tom Cruise in the film “Risky Business,” does anybody remember who played Reagan the elder in that sketch? (Randy Quaid, with Terry Sweeney as first lady Nancy – I had to look it up).

And while Phil Hartman kind of had the ability to parody President Clinton’s southern drawl, neither he nor any of the follow-up actors who impersonated Bill have really gotten his mannerisms down.

I’m sorry, but it just isn’t sufficient to say “I’m Bill Clinton” while wearing heart-covered boxer shorts and acting like a lecherous pervert around ladies of the twenty-something generation.

EVEN CHASE’S IMPERSONATION was more a product of its era (the mid-1970s), rather than any serious interpretation of what President Ford was really about. Watching those old Jerry Ford sketches is agonizing because they have not aged well – they are about as awful as listening to all 18 minutes of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

I wonder if the reason Obama supporters are looking to this lame excuse for the primary losses in Texas and Ohio is because Saturday Night Live has not come up with a quality Obama character.

“All publicity is good publicity,” and Barack as the focus of a humorous sketch every week would benefit him. They didn’t complain when The Second City devoted an entire series of their live comedy shows to an Obama interpretation entitled “Between Barack and a Hard Place.” Obama himself attended the show.

Obama has also had his share of pop-culture moments on national television. I still remember his spot from two years ago where he appeared to be declaring himself to be a presidential candidate, but all it turned out to be was a Monday Night Football spot that plugged the Chicago Bears.

JUST THIS WEEK, Obama is on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. For anyone who’s about to say that Rolling Stone is for old fogies, I’d argue so is Saturday Night Live. Obama-mania has had its share of high-profile moments. To claim he is somehow being neglected is silly.

I’d be more concerned if Jon Stewart were doing fawning Hillary bits on The Daily Show. Even though Stewart always makes it clear he is an actor (the fourth-male lead in “Death to Smoochy”) who does a “fake news show,” too many people take his comedy bits too seriously – as though one can get a serious understanding of the world from Stewart’s jokes.

Most of Poehler’s “Clinton” work is destined to be watched by people flipping around their cable channels who happen to stumble across the E! network just after midnight.

Eventually, it likely will turn out to be like Dana Carvey’s 1988 impersonation of J. Danforth Quayle taking the oath of office as vice president. The gag was that his intellectual capacities were so diminished that he had to be fed the oath word by word by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but it is not among the more memorable.

WHEN IT COMES to Saturday Night Live political humor, there is one sketch I remember. It was the show’s parody of the 1992 presidential debate (Hartman as Clinton, Carvey as both Bush and Perot), which started off with long-time NBC announcer Don Pardo telling us that the ’92 presidential campaign was the, “challenge to avoid saying something stupid.”

To this day, I hear Pardo’s voice reciting that line in the seconds before I deal face to face with any political person – regardless of their party or views on the issues. Stupid statements just have a knack of rolling from the tongues of the politicos.

They even come from the lips of political followers who try to blame a comedy show that has seen its best days for Obama’s flaws of recent weeks.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Too many L.A. geeks take television way too seriously. It (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-snl13mar13,1,6959732.story) is just the “boob tube,” nothing more.

Is it that the modern media trivializes politics, or is it the trivial nature of modern politics (http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080313/OPINION05/803130304/1006/OPINION) that causes the content of too much news programming to be, for lack of a better word, stupid?