Did we get a preview of the ’20 presidential “brawl” this year in Chgo?

Could Lightfoot campaign give us clues as to how … 

Let me state up front – I don’t have a clue who I support for president. Although I’m inclined to think that both former Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are too old to be taken seriously as candidates.

A notion that I’m sure will offend certain political people who are viewing the 2020 election cycle as one in which their guy can finally achieve long-desired aspirations.

BUT I HAVE to admit to dreading the Democratic primary for president, largely because I fear the twenty-some people saying they want to run for the office will all get so pig-headed and believe there’s no way they can lose.

There’s no way anybody would vote for Donald Trump over them, and it’s everybody else who needs to get a clue and get out of the election.

All I know is that I fear it will be that very attitude that will enable the re-election of “the Donald” and ensure that this Age of Trump stretches out to the maximum length permitted by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

With also the likelihood that Trump (already 72 years old) could theoretically be the oldest president ever surpassing Ronald Reagan if he were to live long enough to finish a second term in office.

… we get the re-election of Donald Trump?

IT BECOMES POSSIBLE because the large number of Democratic presidential aspirants will do nothing more than create confusion amongst the electorate. People won’t have a clue who to cast ballots for.

Which could mean the followers of this Age of Trump will feel emboldened to the point that they’ll be the ones who feel compelled to vote. Which means they’ll get all wrapped up in talk of presidential mandates – as in Trump’s minority voter support would have to be treated as though it truly represents the will of the American people.

Ugh!

Now why is it that I feel like this? Largely, it’s because I feel like I’ve already seen this saga play out with last week’s election of Lori Lightfoot as mayor of Chicago. An election cycle I have to confess I was glad to see come to an end.

HAVING TO WEED through the dozens of people who talked of being mayor weeding down to 21 people who finally put their names on the ballot – with 14 of them ultimately qualifying.

BIDEN: Past his presidential prime?

I don’t think there ever was a consensus behind any one candidate. Even after the process weeded down the candidate field to a two-person run-off.

I know the Lori Lightfoot backers are going to be offended that I don’t see an overwhelming victory for her over Toni Preckwinkle. Because even a week after Election Day, I still can’t get over the atrocious voter turnout.

For an election cycle that was supposed to be historic and a case where, to have a chance to dump Rahm Emanuel, it really seems that the bulk of Chicagoans didn’t care.

REALLY! SOME TWO-thirds of the registered voters of Chicago didn’t bother to vote. They didn’t care enough – brought about largely by the confusion from having so many candidates convinced that everybody was destined to fall in love with them. It was nowhere near the swarm of voters (about 83 percent) who turned out in 1983 when Harold Washington became mayor.

BUTTIGIEG: Can he pop out of masses?

And now, that the Chicago election cycle of 2019 is complete, I almost fear we’re destined to repeat the electoral chaos come 2020 at the national level. As if the electoral nonsense wasn’t absurd enough this year, we get to do it again next year.

Double Ugh!!! And groan!!!

So if you’re asking me who I back for president, I have to say I want most of these current wannabe candidates to come to their senses and drop out so we can have a manageable field from which to pick. Either that, or we’re destined to get an encore of Inaugural ceremonies in 2021 in which Trump will claim even more people turned out to celebrate his greatness than did back in January 2017.

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The further away from Chicago, the better – that is, if it has to happen at all!

It has become the immigration-related issue that just won’t die, and manages to take on a more intense character of pathos with each evolution it makes in the process.

The old Dwight Correctional Center for women ceased to exist in 2013

No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump’s fantasies of erecting a wall of sorts along the U.S./Mexico border.

THIS IS ABOUT the notion of building detention facilities with which to lock up people awaiting immigration-related offenses that could result in their eventual deportation from this country.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have dreams of using facilities scattered across the nation – including one whose intent would be to hold people found living in the Chicago-area while lacking a valid Visa or legitimate citizenship status.

Currently, people facing immigration violations often get sent off to county jails with which the federal government has contracts with. In our case, many people caught here wind up in the McHenry County Jail to wait while their immigration cases are resolved.

A concept that offends many people because it means that people who haven’t committed a criminal offense (no matter how much the ideologues want to think it ought to be regarded as one) are being locked up with people who HAVE committed crimes and are merely awaiting the day they’re sent off to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections to serve their time.

THE IDEA IS that having these separate detention facilities means we can take the immigration cases out of jail with criminals. But we can still treat the individuals like criminals – which is what the ideologues are really after!

The problem is that people of rationality hate the idea of any kind of facility that is jail-like from being in or near their communities.

Dwight not far enough from Chgo for project

That is why local officials in places like Joliet, Crete and Hopkins Park in Illinois, along with Hobart, Gary and Elkhart County in Indiana, have all turned down the idea – not giving in to the fact that many of these places (particularly Gary, Ind.) could use the economic boost that could be derived from construction of a new facility and the possibility of jobs for people already living there.

This is just not a popular idea, which is why it seems officials are looking for a site further and further away from the heart of Chicago that will say “yes” and accept their plans.

THE BLOOMINGTON PANTAGRAPH is reporting that officials are looking at Dwight (a Livingston County community not far from the interstate connecting Chicago to St. Louis) as a possible site.

Local planning commission officials are considering annexation of a site near down so they can offer it up to federal officials for the plan.

Perhaps people are figuring Dwight is the right kind of place for detention facilities because, for many years, Dwight was the location of the Illinois Corrections Department facility for women found guilty of criminal offenses.

Maybe they also figure that a community with less than 2 percent Latino ethnic composition of its population won’t share the kind of hang-ups that communities up our way have with regards to such facilities.

ALTHOUGH THIS COULD be one of those instances where people surprise us by overcoming whatever hang-ups they may have and wind up doing the right thing.

As much as I like the idea that this ‘detention’ concept for immigration is now solidly outside of the Chicago metropolitan area (most of us only regard Dwight as a train stop between here and Springfield when they’re forced to use Amtrak), it is a concept that would be better off withering away altogether.

This detention center in Tacoma, Wash., could be replicated in Dwight

Because we ought to be trying to figure out ways to make better sense of our federal immigration laws and clean up the bureaucratic mess that we now have.

Instead of building facilities so we can house people with pending cases so we can let them stretch out even longer – before the ideologues try to have their way of deporting everybody from this country who isn’t exactly like themselves.

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