What is the partisan political norm?

I stumbled across some commentaries recently; one of which predicted that the electoral gains to be made come November by Democrats with regards to control of Congress would be balanced out by an overwhelming victory come 2020 for Donald Trump’s re-election as president.

Would a "J.B." win restore the 'norm'

While I also have heard countless people talk of the Illinois political situation by saying this year’s election cycle (where many are convinced Gov. Bruce Rauner is doomed to defeat by Democratic Party challenger J.B. Pritzker) will be an “outlier”.

AS IN A victory by Democrats will be a freak exception. One that should not be taken in any way as evidence of what our state is all about politically.

All of which strikes me as a whole lot of Republican partisan types determined to ignore the realities around them. Either that, or they really do believe that everybody who doesn’t agree with them ideologically is someone who ought to be disregarded.

Probably even flogged publicly, then incarcerated, if the most outrageous of those individuals could have their wildest of fantasies come true.

Then again, listening to the conservative ideologues amongst us, the things they say publicly all too often are wild-enough fantasies.

Is Bruce Rauner the Illinois norm?

BEFORE I GO further, I should state that I think the partisan fluctuations of our political establishment IS the norm. I also think that not only is the way things are, it is the way it should be.

A part of me thinks that Illinois suffered from having the governor’s post in the hands of Republicans for 26 years (even if those GOPers included a city-based attorney like Jim Thompson, or a political professional moderate like Jim Edgar).

And before you try throwing it into my face about the string of Democrats serving as Chicago mayor (dating back to 1931 – the longest electoral winning streak by any political organization in any legitimate Democracy), I’ll concede that our city would be better off if the one-time Party of Lincoln could come up with credible candidates for City Hall posts.

Have we devolved to a national Trump norm?

But when you consider the GOP’s most serious mayoral challenger in decades was that 1983 election cycle when they came up with Bernard Epton to challenge Harold Washington – and that election became so overly-tainted by race for the one-time state legislator from Hyde Park to be taken seriously, it’s no wonder the Republicans are irrelevant locally.

WHAT SHOULD WE think of the politics likely to occur in coming months?

Personally, I’m inclined to think the 2014 election that gave us Bruce Rauner in Springfield and 2016 that produced Donald Trump in D.C. even though his Democratic opponent got some 3 million more of the popular vote were the election cycles that threw our system out of whack. Perhaps this is the year the voters try to balance things back to the norm.

By replacing the governor whose ideas of “reform” are about undermining organized labor and trying to perceive people who represent constituents who rely upon unions as somehow being corrupt because they look out for the union label.

Or by installing a Democrat-influenced Congress (at least in the House of Representatives) that could serve as a counter-acting measure for the remaining two years of the Donald Trump presidential term.

WITH THE 2020 election cycle being the one in which our society’s majority gets to Dump Trump. Or will it be that incredibly-outspoken minority of Trump backers manage to pull off a second electoral miracle?

EPTON: Last serious GOP mayoral hopeful

Perhaps it’s because I remember the 1994 election cycle – the one in which hard-core Republican ideologues managed to gain control in Congress and also experienced a surge in Illinois where the GOP gained control of all the state constitutional offices AND the General Assembly’s entirety.

It was the two-year time period during which Michael Madigan was reduced to the role of “minority leader” and Lee Daniels got to serve as Illinois House Speaker.

Those were supposed to be long-lasting partisan movements that would forever change the way things got done. Yet by ’96, Madigan was back, and Bill Clinton managed to get re-elected with as president. Everything has a habit of balancing out when it comes to partisan politics.

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Pritzker on race – blunt-spoken B.S.? Or simple-minded electoral analysis?

I held off a couple of days on commenting about Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker’s thoughts about the realities of various elected officials on Illinois’ political scene, largely because I have heard many people throughout the years say similar things about black officials.

PRITZKER: Too blunt, or too simple?

If I were to trash Pritzker for his somewhat-insulting analysis (J.B. himself admits he wasn’t all that diplomatic in his decade-old thoughts), I feel like I’d have to recall every nitwit who has ever tried to spin my thoughts about politics.

BUT THE BIT about all of this is the way some officials are trying to make it out as though they have “exposed” Pritzker for saying something radical and offensive, and that this now single-handedly trashes his electoral chances come the March 20 primary.

Even though many of the people spewing such thoughts against Pritzker are also the ones who have said such things themselves.

This particular round of political rhetoric was spouted out by the continuing use for campaign purposes of the recordings the FBI made back in the days when they were trying to get then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to say incriminating things on tape to be used as evidence against him in criminal proceedings.

WHITE: Did J.B. praise, or denigrate, him?

As we all know, Blagojevich is now a convicted felon and still has another six-or-so years to serve before he can think of returning to his spouse, Patti, and their two daughters.

DURING THOSE TALKS, Blagojevich spoke with prominent Democratic financial contributor Pritzker, and I’m sure the fact it might create the impression amongst the clueless that Pritzker himself did something illegal pleases the J.B. opponents.

JACKSON: Used to have a political future

But as for what he said, it was Pritzker suggesting that Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White was the best possible replacement Blagojevich could pick to fill the vacancy created when our state’s U.S. senator, Barack Obama, became president in 2008.

Because he was not “crass” like then-Illinois Senate President Emil Jones. Besides, getting White out of the secretary of state’s office would have meant Blagojevich getting to pick a person who could then fill the mass of jobs controlled by that office – which does much more than just issue your driver’s license.

JONES: Oft-overlooked

As for then-Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Pritzker made it clear he sympathized with Blagojevich not wanting the son of Rev. Jesse Jackson to have such a political post – even though the speculation back in ’08 was that Jackson might be the most-logical person for the post.

EXCEPT TO BLAGOJEVICH, who had the ego all outraged that he had been surpassed on a national sense by Obama and would get dumped on again by Jesse, Jr.

In short, a lot of this would have been considered stating the incredibly obvious a decade ago. For all I know, there may be some people who will read such thoughts coming from Pritzker who will think he’s on to something and may be more likely to vote for him.

BLAGOJEVICH: Reliving pol history?

Personally, I think some of the thoughts were expressed a little crassly themselves.

But then again, since when is anybody on our local political scene all that eloquent or articulate? What about any of this would truly make Pritzker worse?

WE MAY WANT to fantasize that Obama rose our state’s political sensibilities to a higher moral plane. But Barack was someone who knew how to make his political accommodations – he wouldn’t have got elected to the top political post if he hadn’t.

So as for the people who want us to think they’re now looking out for black people at large by criticizing Pritzker, I suspect many of them could really care less about anyone other than themselves.

How much does it add to White's appeal?

They’ll use race if they think it can benefit their own political interests, but then back away once it no longer serves their purposes.

Besides, a part of me has always thought that one of White’s political benefits was his athletic background – a one-time baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization. Is that denigrative of the man’s political acumen to bring that point up?

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Neither ‘Justice Gorsuch’ concept, nor Donnelly's Dem vote, a surprise

We’re in a particularly partisan era of our society politically. We have a federal government that is determined to impose its will upon us all, and let the opposition know its irrelevance!
 

DONNELLY: One of 3 Dems to back Gorsuch

So anybody who thought there was a chance that Neil Gorsuch would be denied the Supreme Court position to which President Donald J. Trump appointed him was seriously kidding themselves.

THE ONLY REASON that the federal healthcare reform program imposed during the presidency of Barack Obama remains in place is because of the incompetence politically and socially of the current government leadership in Washington, D.C.

The will to do away with the Affordable Care Act was just as intense as it was to approve Gorsuch’s appointment. In fact, if anything, the failure to successfully repeal Obama’s health care reform only strengthened the resolve to ensure that the Senate approved the appointment to the high court.

Republicans were sick and tired of looking inept and incapable of governing. After all, what’s the point of having the White House AND complete control of Congress if you can’t strong-arm issues into public policy?

So it was inevitable that the Senate leadership would use their “nuclear” option to eliminate the rules that allowed an outspoken minority from preventing a final vote on Gorsuch’s appointment. It was also a “done deal” that when the issue came up Friday for a vote, the Republican majority in the Senate would approve him.

DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION WOULDN’T matter in the least.

From the perspective of a political observer, the question I had was how many Democrats would wind up casting votes in favor of the appointment because they don’t want to give Republicans the opportunity to “tag” them as flaming liberals, subversives or whatever other cheap rhetoric the GOP dreams up for the 2018 election cycle.

It turns out three of the 46 Democrats wound up siding with the 51 Republicans who voted to approve Gorsuch (Johnny Isakson of Georgia was absent on Friday).

GORSUCH: That's 'Justice' Gorsuch now!!!

One of those three was Joseph Donnelly, a senator from Indiana (the South Bend area, specifically, and a guy who takes great pride in being a Notre Dame alumnus).

DONNELLY ISN’T EXACTLY a wild-eyed radical (although many GOPers do think that of everybody who isn’t in complete lock-step agreement with them). He’s certainly no Jan Schakowsky – as in the oft-outspoken Congresswoman from Evanston.

But he’s progressive enough on many issues, and he certainly has been willing to set foot in Chicago to take political support from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and campaign contributions from many of the same people who fund the political aspirations of our own state’s Democratic leadership.

So is Donnelly a sell-out?

Or is he just someone who’s thinking strategically about his vote. Knowing there’s no way his own caucus is going to be able to kill the Gorsuch appointment, he wound up siding with it so that a “no” vote on his part couldn’t become an issue to be used against him when he seeks re-election in the 2018 cycle.

IN FACT, THE Reuters wire service pointed out in their story that all three of the Democratic senators who voted for Gorsuch are up for re-election next year and come from states (Indiana, West Virginia and North Dakota) where Trump won the Electoral College in 2016.

There are those who think this kind of strategic action rings false. Politicians should vote what they think (or what they think their constituents think), rather than what they think will help their preservation. But it does happen.

 

OBAMA: Acted similarly on select issues

Let’s not forget Barack Obama from back when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois – his voting record includes an “aye” vote for a measure related to supporting construction of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border. For that matter, so does the record of Hillary Clinton when she was the junior senator from New York.

Does anybody believe either of them is in agreement with Trump on that issue, or any other? Nor does it lessen the impact that Gorsuch (who at age 49 becomes the first Supreme Court justice younger than myself) can potentially have if he chooses to put the “Trump” brand on the court and so many aspects of our society.

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EXTRA: Can Trump truly govern? Or good for nothing but barking orders!

It will be interesting to see how President Donald J. Trump handles the naming of his pick to fill a nearly year-old vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States; a move he has said could come on Tuesday.
 

GARLAND: Never get to see him on high court

Not only will it mean the end of Merrick Garland  (a Chicago-born and suburban Lincolnwood native) as a possibility for the nation’s high court, it will finally put us in a position where we can see if the new president is actually capable of working with government to get things done.

FOR ALL WE’VE seen him do thus far is issue multitudes of executive orders, many of which the Washington Post reports are not really executive orders – but presidential memorandums.

As in Donald J. makes grand pronouncements on various issues, mostly to express attitudes desired by the nativist-leaning ideologues who actually voted for him to be president.

Or also to make statements meant to repudiate whatever had happened during the past eight years. In short, we have seen nothing more than “President You’re Fired!” bellowing like a buffoon. The encouraging part of all this is that nothing has occurred that can’t easily be undone when the day comes that we get a real-live grownup working in the Oval Office.

In fact, it has become the reality of the U.S. presidency that whenever the post changes to someone of an opposition political party, executive orders are issued to undo many of the general principles espoused by the previous administration.

SUCH AS THE “Mexico City Policy” by which Republican administrations have told federal agencies not to do anything that would encourage abortion in foreign nations. Democratic presidents, including Barack Obama, always did away with the policy.

But all this is a matter of making pronouncements, being president at the moments when you speak and people are supposed to just listen. Actually offering their own opinions, or taking actions intended to refute you, hasn’t been a part of Trump’s presidential experience.

Not yet!

 

TRUMP: Will we ever see him govern?

We’ll see in evaluating his pick for the high court just how much of a legal mind he wants. Or is he looking for someone who will forevermore think of his allegiance to Trump himself. Is Trump capable of making an independent pick, then getting it through the political mechanizations of Congress?

ALTHOUGH FOR THAT matter, it could wind up being a pick that was made by the Republican establishment that spent the bulk of 2016 ensuring that Barack Obama did not actually get to pick three individuals (out of nine total) to the Supreme Court. Because it was bad enough, in their minds, that he got two picks and was able to undermine (with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) the vision they have of an all-white, male establishment.

Is Trump merely the errand boy the ideologue establishment of Congress plans to use to ram through their own agenda for our society – allowing Donald J’s ego to be bloated even moreso because it will serve their purposes? And take the blame when their ideals are found to be offensive by the true majority of people in our society! Is Trump so eager to be "president" that he's willing to be besmirched by the conservative ideologues amongst us?

Would Trump be willing to speak out if the GOP agenda doesn’t strictly match his own? Would that become the potential breaking point that could make the next four years even goofier than the current conservative mess we have now? Is political civil war what we're in for, the "right" versus the "alt-right," with rational people sitting on the sidelines and trying not to get caught in the crossfire?

Trump about to leave his imprint on this particular hallowed hall.  Will he soil it? Photograph provided by Supreme Court of the United States

Tylenol; as in we’ll all going to be using massive doses for the national headache our society will develop from observing all the nonsense done in coming months and years in the name of partisan politics.

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EXTRA: Electoral apathy?

A lawn sign I encountered while traipsing through the Beverly neighborhood Wednesday afternoon.

Picking nobody for president

Apparently, I'm not alone in the apathy I initially felt for all the candidates seeking the presidency in this year's election cycle. Although it seems that my ability to find some level by which I can support Hillary Clinton's candidacy is something that some people can't come to.

IT MAKES ME wonder how many of these people will be amongst the great apathetic who just won't bother to turn out to vote. Which could have the affect of resulting in the electoral victory of the candidate who likely most appalls you.

Just think if having people sit out this election cycle actually makes the great outspoken masses who adore Donald Trump no matter how piggish his behavior can be into a large-enough group that can actually win the election come Nov. 8.

Or if it just encourages the level of apathy that a growing number of our society winds up feeling toward electoral politics.

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Trump too eager to win the “Who Do I Hate The Most” contest amongst voters

I don’t know if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump really is a bigot.

 

Will real-life Trump recover from Election Day fall?

Personally, I’d be inclined to think that anybody with his kind of money would have moved out of New York City and given up any ties to the place years ago, because it exposes him to the kind of people his campaign is criticizing so often.

WHICH IS WHY I don’t find it ludicrous that there are gay rights activists from New York who say that Trump is actually one of the most reasonable business people they have dealt with.

We may well be getting a version of Trump best thought of as Candidate Don – the one who spews trash talk and blathers on incoherently at times if he thinks it will garner him votes come Nov. 8 – a.k.a., Election Day!

Family man Don may well be a completely compassionate human being whom we masses will never get to know.

Yet I have no problem with the rhetoric that Trump gets tagged with accusing him of being a small-minded bigot whose vision of “making America great” means going back to the early 19^th Century.

AN ERA IN which power and influence were put in the hands of certain white men (not all, in many ways poor people might as well have been black for all the influence they had back then).

But that aspect seems to have been forgotten by those in our society’s lower economic rungs who somehow envision that it is our interest in equality and justice for all that has somehow deprived them of the benefits they think they’re entitled to.

And it is those people to whom the Trump campaign is relying upon if they’re to have any chance of winning the Electoral College vote in November and Trump to take the oath of office in January, with Melania at his side while perverts the world over fantasize about what she’d look like if she took her top off.

This segment of society sees the political coming of Trump as the chance to take back what they view as wrongly being usurped by someone else, someone much less deserving than they are.

HONESTLY, I CAN’T help but feel that if the modern demographics of the 21^st Century really prevail on Election Day, it will be a Trump defeat. Someone is bound to ungraciously go out of his (or her) way to call him a “loser.” (Just like he did to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.).

But just as McCain’s 2008 presidential bid didn’t get any credit from Latinos for the efforts he had made previously to seriously revamp immigration policy, Trump will be ravaged by the Latino segment of the electorate.

That’s what he gets for kicking off his own campaign with an attack on Mexicans (who are, after all, a significant share of the U.S. Latino population). There are various polls showing that Trump will take even less Latino votes than did the Mitt Romney (a.k.a., Mr. Self-Deportation) of 2012.

And it’s not like just Latinos are inclined to look down on Trump. There may well be people who have been awaiting their chance for years to vote against Hillary Clinton. But Trump has the equal negatives because of whom he chose to rely upon for electoral support.

I CAN’T FEEL too much compassion for Trump. After all, he picked his own electoral strategy – and from all appearances is openly defying anyone who tries to offer him advice on how to conduct himself like a legitimate candidate for government office.

It’s just a shame that his idea of “Candidate Don” was one so brash and garish. Just think of what he might have been able to accomplish had he shown a little less arrogance in presuming that his real estate developer skills gave him a sense of how to run a country.

This is, after all, the election cycle where the predominant thought amongst voters is, “Who Do I Hate The Most?!?”

It’s a shame that Trump seems determined to get a majority of voters to, “pick me, that’s who!”

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EXTRA: In your guts, you know he’s nuts -- will we soon hear of Trump?

How long until we start getting parody campaign buttons along these lines?

For Democrat political operatives with a sense of history already are using the Internet to disseminate an old television spot from the 1964 presidential campaign; one in which an actor portrays a would-be Republican voter who can’t handle the notion of accepting the GOP nominee – Barry Goldwater – for that election cycle.

I DO FIND it intriguing that political observers of a Republican orientation often like to claim that the 1964 election was the one in which Democrats did themselves serious harm by creating the impression that the Republican Party was the one that would appeal to people of a conservative ideological bent.

Which led to the Southern Strategy of Richard M. Nixon in the ’68 election cycle and a series of future campaign strategies that one could claim have culminated with the conservative takeover of the political process that allowed Donald Trump to gain the Republican nomination this year.

We could be going through a bit of Goldwater nostalgia to remind us of the long-time senator from Arizona who made his bid for national prominence some 52 years ago.

How long until Trump-ites retaliate by reminding us that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was, herself, one of the famed “Goldwater Girls” who came from a family of Republicans from suburban Park Ridge – or at least  until their daughter went off and experienced the Sixties while in college.

IN SHORT, WE could be getting more than our share of Barry Goldwater nostalgia in coming weeks as we remember the candidacy who, for good or bad, motivated the conservative ideologues of our nation into action.

Although the day we see a parody spot of “Daisy” against Trump, that’s probably when the nostalgia kick will have gone too far.

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