EXTRA: JFK, LBJ on hand as Sox win!

Just a little video snippet I stumbled across in my search to shift my mind away from the continued agony of our current president-elect, while also coping with the fact that baseball is no longer being played until March, with the coming of the World Baseball Classic tourney that will conclude at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

I’d like to think this could be a bipartisan snippet, although I’m sure there will be some crackpot upset that John F. Kennedy got his moment in the sun throwing out the first pitch of the season on Opening Day at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., in 1961 – where the Senators began their season against the Chicago White Sox.

IS ANYBODY STILL carrying a grudge that it wasn’t “President Nixon” elected eight years earlier than he wound up being in reality?

For what it’s worth, three White Sox pitchers combined to defeat former White Sox pitcher Dick Donovan in a 4-3 game on April 10.

The White Sox that year finished fourth place, ahead of the ninth place Senators. And the rest of baseball was absorbed by all the attention paid to Mantle/Maris in New York and whether either could top “The Babe” in home runs for the season.

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We, the people, include some incredibly miserable cusses amongst our ranks

Why is it that I refuse to believe the eventual legal case against the police officer now facing criminal charges for the shooting death (that’s putting it mildly) of teenager Laquan McDonald is going to be an easily won case for the prosecution?

EMANUEL: May get some backers

Perhaps it is because of Donald Trump.

NOT TRUMP EXACTLY. But the fact that there are people out there who take the pompous, wealthy nit-wit seriously whenever he opens his mouth – no matter how blatantly ridiculous his pronouncements are.

Take his latest rant – the claim that the United States ought to impose an outright ban on entry to this country of anyone who is of a Muslim religious faith.

No matter about context or degree or purpose or background. Just slam the door shut on all of ‘em.

Then perhaps the country could get back to focusing its attention on how to kick out all the “Mexicans” who are now in the United States. Let’s not forget the Trump presidential aspirations originally focused its ire on Mexico – at least until Trump figured out he could gain more politically by getting the ideologues of our society all worked up against the Middle East.

THERE ARE PLENTY of political people, including many of the Republican persuasion, who are embarrassed by Trump. Personally, I think he’s just too stupid to pay much attention to.

But there are those people who wish to live as though we’re still in 1953 – prior to Brown v. Board of Ed, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., or any of that allegedly rabble-rousing stuff that killed off the image they had of the United States as a place for white people to prevail.

A place where the police were upholding their sworn duty to protect the people when they resorted to physical force in order to subdue certain “other” elements of our society.

TRUMP: HIs 'people' may quietly back Rahm

Which, in a sense, is what I suspect Jason Van Dyke and other police officers thought was happening when McDonald was shot 16 times because officers thought the 3-inch blade clutched in his hand made him a deadly threat.

THEY LITERALLY DID take his weapon from his cold, dead hands (just like actor Charlton Heston said when waving that musket around at a National Rifle Association rally).

The same kind of people who think Trump would make a credible presidential candidate probably also think that too much is being made of police conduct in Chicago. Whether they think the police deserve the benefit of the doubt or that McDonald deserved it, they’ll back him to the end.

Is RIE destined to become LBJ?

And while there are those who are of the exact opposite stance, let’s not forget the mass in the middle – the people who will have to be swayed and, by their very nature, are apathetic. They’d prefer to sit back and do nothing.

Which if they do so, winds up making the loudmouthed ideologue segment of our society the majority – an outcome that takes place all too often.

OF COURSE, THERE is the drawback – it puts Rahm Emamuel in the same class of character as Donald Trump. They both become blowhards who do not deserve credibility but our scorn.

And although Emanuel was already scorned by some in Chicago, this could only spread the amount of ridicule he receives because some people amongst us are determined to make sure Rahm is never able to escape the taint of letting his police run amok – even though the attitudes amongst our cops predate him by so much.

BYRNE: Looking more rational every day

It could wind up being a long three years between now and the next municipal elections in 2019 – and we may wind up getting an Emanuel who makes the mayoral equivalent of Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 campaign statement that he, “shall not seek and … will not accept the nomination of my (political) party as your president.”

And we may have to stop thinking of the mayoral term of Jane Byrne as the screwy time period in recent Chicago history.

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EXTRA: A 20-vote lead, will it hold?

Tuesday was the final day by which Chicago Elections Board officials had to validate and count provisional ballots from the April 7 elections, while also processing absentee ballots that were put in the mail (and post-marked accordingly) by Election Day.

The final day of the canvass and the announcement of results for those municipal elections is April 28.

FOR MOST POLITICAL people, it doesn’t matter. There was no way Jesus Garcia would close a 75,000 vote gap to overtake Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But in the 10^th Ward (the land where Indiana is the nearby reality that gives us a Whiting-based oil refinery that really stinks up the air), there was always the chance of a last-minute shift in votes that could alter the aldermanic election results.

Challenger Susan Sadlowski Garza went from a seven-vote lead over Alderman John Pope on Election Night, to an 89-vote lead once all the precincts were counted to a 33-vote lead once the first rounds of absentee ballots were counted.

As of Tuesday, she was down to a 20-vote lead. That’s 5,825 votes for Garza to 5,805 for Pope. As in Garza, a Chicago Teachers Union official who got in the race originally thinking she’d be a running-mate of sorts to Karen Lewis’ mayoral aspirations, has 50.09 percent voter support.

THAT’S CLOSE! THAT’S got to hurt for Pope – a 16-year member of the City Council – if he comes that close to winning re-election, but doesn’t. It would take something of historic proportions for him to prevail now!

By this point, it would seem that Garza is going into the history books along with Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 victory for the U.S. Senate – an 87-vote victory margin, albeit with over 1 million votes cast to the 11,600-plus for the 10th Ward election.

Someone may wind up tagging her with a nickname as memorable as “Landslide Lyndon.” Right now, my mind is a blank. Although I’m sure Garza will settle for the label that ultimately is the only one that matters.

“Winner.”

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When it comes to govt. shutdown, some (political) people just never learn

The new Republican majority that will control Congress is already plotting its retaliation should President Barack Obama proceed with plans to use his ‘executive order’ powers to push through portions of immigration reform.

Republican congressional leaders are going about saying they would consider government shutdowns if Obama were to proceed with what they want to describe as an illegal/immoral act.

AS IN GOVERNMENT agencies would be shuttered. No services would be performed. Those in the public who depend heavily on such services would suffer.

And the public would place the blame on Obama for their losses. Actually, if history is any indication, no they won’t!

They sure didn’t back in the mid-1990s when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich thought his “Contract with America” type of ideologues could bully then-President Bill Clinton into going along with their wishes.

Gingrich & Co. wound up having to back down when the public saw the tactic as cheap politicking by the Republicans that put the people at risk.

WHENEVER REPUBLICANS HAVE threatened Obama’s presidency with a government shutdown, the public has taken the same attitude. In short, Republican officials are the types who are willing to harm what the public needs in order to try to get their way.

I’m convinced the same thing will happen if the GOP tries another government shutdown. If anything, it would help reinforce Obama’s standing with Latino voters – who admittedly are less-than-enthused about the president these days.

Obama has refused to use his influence to push for serious immigration reform; in large part because he has feared antagonizing the conservative ideologues on other issues. The problem with his concern is that those ideologues already are fully stirred-up about Obama, and aren’t going to do anything to help him no matter what he does.

Latino activists who have a special interest in immigration reform realize it is those ideologues who are the real problem. But they see Obama as being too weak to stand up to them and back the promises he made on the issue in past campaigns.

SO PEOPLE ARE waiting to see if Obama keeps his most recent promises – that he would pass some sort of order that implemented partial immigration reforms. The Washington Post has reported recently it might be an order that prevents non-citizens from being deported IF their children are U.S. citizens.

Action could come before year’s end. Although the GOP officials are making it clear they don’t want Obama to do anything on the issue.

I don’t doubt they will get petty in their retaliation. Immigration reform truly is the issue that brings out the worst in these ideologues – particularly since so many of their hang-ups are racially- and ethnically-motivated.

It’s too bad these ideologues don’t realize how much they’d be doing themselves harm politically by taking such actions. All those Latinos who now are wondering if an Obama vote was a mistake would be reminded why they voted against the Republican presidential candidates in the first place – and why they ought to do so again come 2016.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported this week how Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is being urged by some Latino activists to consider a presidential run himself because of this issue.

Some are comparing such a potential bid to the one that the Rev. Jesse Jackson made back in 1984 – he didn’t come close to winning, but did draw attention to political concerns of the African-American electorate.

Although I think one has to go back another two decades to see the likely outcome for immigration reform.

It ties back to the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who was sympathetic to the civil rights movement but was unwilling to fully back it out of fear of antagonizing those southern political people who were Democrats and expected federal government to support the segregationist way of life that existed then.

IT ULTIMATELY TOOK the hard-core political skills of Kennedy’s successor – Lyndon B. Johnson – to get enough votes in Congress to overcome the segregationist segment and push the Civil Rights Act into law.

There are those who think Obama inspired us to want to do better as a society, similar to the days of Kennedy.

Does this mean that the way to finally resolve the issue of eliminating the bureaucratic mess that is our current national immigration policy is not to follow the lead of Newt, but instead to find ourselves the next LBJ?!?

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It only takes one to win

I recall an Election Night back when I was at the old City News Bureau when one of my brand-new colleagues was confused about the vote-counting process – she didn’t get why there were still votes being counted on a Wednesday afternoon.

Me being the “old pro” (I think it was my second election cycle I covered), I knew about the assorted ballots that don’t actually get counted until days after Election Day.

ALTHOUGH THE VOTES that do get counted usually offer up a clear-enough picture of “Who won?!?” that nobody really cares about the exact total.

It takes an election cycle like the one currently taking place for Illinois treasurer to remind us that there’s a reason it matters that the official vote certification doesn’t take place until December (as in the 8^th, when the Illinois State Board of Elections will give us the final totals that will be recorded for political geek posterity).

For it has been just over a week since Election Day, and we don’t know yet who our new state treasurer is (although Republican Tom Cross has said he thinks it will be him, while Democrat Michael Frerichs says he’s not giving up).

I have noticed the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield has put on its website a gadget that tries to give us the up-to-the-minute vote total. Although the fact that rural counties are doing nothing to update their total until the last possible minute means we really don’t know who won.

AS OF MID-DAY Tuesday, Cross allegedly had 1,671,018 votes to 1,670,526 votes for Frerichs. There also were 144,614 votes for Libertarian candidate Matthew Skopek.

When turned into the percentages that most people seem to prefer to think of, Cross has 47.93 percent of the vote to Frerichs’ 47.92 percent – with just over 4 percent for Skopek.

Considering that vote-by-mail ballots will stop being accepted on next week Tuesday, there are the prayers that an overwhelming Cook County vote (9,000 provisional ballots that have to be determined whether or not they are legitimate and count for anything) could somehow push Frerichs over the top.

Although there are others who think the fact that 101 rural counties went for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner means they could also provide just enough additional votes to withstand any gains made by Frerichs – who as a Champaign resident wasn’t exactly someone Chicago voters were going to take up the cause of as a political crusade.

IF CROSS, WHO supposedly was the favorite because of his name recognition – although I doubt most real people have any clue who the legislative leaders are, with the exception of Michael Madigan – winds up winning, it would be something of a gain for Republicans.

I have heard some political operatives go on and on about how this is now a Republican-leaning state government because four of the six state constitutional officers would be of the GOP persuasion (nobody voted for Lt. Gov.-elect Evelyn Sanguineti specifically, but she counts as an individual).

Which is probably the reason why Democratic political operatives would like to win the post. It would make this the election cycle in which the political parties traded posts, rather than lost anything.

Although I don’t know anyone who’d trade “governor” for “treasurer.”

I’M NOT ABOUT to predict how close this one will wind up – although I realize that it only takes a one-vote margin to win the post for the next four years.

Perhaps we’re on our way to an Illinois version of that 1948 election for the Senate from Texas – where Lyndon Johnson got his victory by 87 votes.

“Landslide Lyndon” has more of a ring to it than any kind of nickname that would get tagged to either Cross or Frerichs. Although I’m sure either one would eagerly take a lead – no matter how slim it appears to the public.

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