EXTRA: BossMadigan.com attacks getting lamer and lamer on Kennedy

I’m starting to wonder if the Illinois Republican Party really fears the idea of Chris Kennedy (the son of Bobby and nephew to JFK) running for Illinois governor because they know (but won’t admit) that many people in this state can’t stand the incumbent.

Bruce Rauner has a personal fortune that he spent to get himself elected in the first place, and now seems determined to do it again – particularly by turning the 2018 election cycle into a symbolic brawl between himself and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

THAT WOULD EXPLAIN the many petty, trite attacks on Democrats living outside of Chicago, all of which are virtually alike, in that Rauner wants to isolate Chicago from the rest of Illinois.

It’s the only way he wins. If Chicago does wind up taking an interest in the election for governor two years from now, then he loses his re-election bid.

Lately, the Illinois GOP has been sending me (and many others) copies of these attacks – the latest of which on Tuesday once again goes after the idea of Kennedy (who for many years was the manager of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, a Kennedy family-owned property).

This one reminds us of the high regard many people hold the Kennedy family (particularly Uncle Jack), and says Chris has disrespected the family name.

“INSTEAD OF FOLLOWING in their footsteps, Chris Kennedy chose to serve corrupt politicians like Mike Madigan,” said Illinois Republican spokesman Steven Yaffe.

I’m actually kind of surprised by that line of attack. I would have thought the Republicans would have accused Chris Kennedy of following in the family footsteps. Because, after all, the Republicans who still haven’t gotten over Richard Nixon’s 1960 loss to John Kennedy are usually the ones who claim that the Cook County Democratic organization stole that election.

In the form of Mayor (and Dem Chairman) Richard J. Daley managing to “steal” enough votes to ensure that Illinois went for the Democrats that year in the Electoral College.

The crooked Chicago Machine working once again to rob the people of this state on behalf of a Kennedy! Which the Illinois Republican Party is now, with their latest advertising spot, is indirectly praising as a family (including Uncle Ted, as well) of statesmen.

YEAH IT’S A lame argument. It’s totally stupid! It makes little to no sense. Anybody with a brain would see that.

But it’s no more pathetic than many of the other accusations the Illinois Republican Party has already spewed on behalf of an election cycle nearly 23 months off in the future. And Republican political operatives are counting on the fact that people won't pay attention to the details of their "attacks," just the general outline of slime being spewed.

Nor the more vicious arguments and talking points we’re going to be verbally assaulted with in the next two years. To the point that it might be enough to get me away from watching television at all – so as to avoid being slathered in stupidity!

Now one should not presume I’m backing Kennedy for governor. I don’t have a clue. I haven’t given it much thought, particularly because Kennedy has a past track record of talking himself up as a political candidate without actually going through the process of running for office.

BESIDES, THERE’S ALWAYS the chance that someone else of significance could come along to challenge Rauner – whose defeat would be a Democratic priority just as many Republicans would love to see anybody but Madigan as a legislative leader.

It’s all about partisan crud. We’re in for an ugly brawl – perhaps all the more if J.B. Pritzker and his family fortune (the Hyatt hotels) wind up turning this into a brawl between the billionaires.

Particularly if either one of them were to try to pretend to have even the least bit of comprehension about what working people endure in their lives.

Then have it topped off with doses of rhetorical nonsense such as we’re now hearing about Kennedy and Madigan. I’m reaching for the ear plugs right about now.

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An ongoing education of the American electorate in ways & means of voting

The 2000 election cycle is the one that taught us about the “hanging chad,” and gave us a crash course in just how subjective the process of counting votes can be, while this is the year we learn of the realities of the Electoral College.
 

BIDEN: Will confirm next month that Trump won

I’m all for anything that gives the public a better comprehension of the processes by which we elect people to public office. Yet it disturbs me that it takes instances of screw-ups for the bulk of us to show any instance in learning the lessons.

I BELIEVE WE’D be better as a society if we put some serious thought into who we choose to hold public office. Yet we don’t. In fact, some of us seriously resent the notion that public office even exists, and that people like me think they ought to be thinking about it.

Seriously, I suspect that most of us remember the term “Electoral College” as something that came up in a high school class taken long ago that they promptly let slip from their memories. I’m sure that upcoming party with a beer keg was more interesting, and the alcoholic consumption probably killed off the brain cells that once contained government details.

So it takes an instance where a presidential candidate takes nearly 2.9 million more votes than her opponent, yet loses under the rules we have in place, to get people to think seriously about the Electoral College – which personally is something I consider to be an obsolete concept.

It was created at a time when the Founding Fathers believed the public (or at least the white, male portion of it) would not know enough to properly pick a president. So they were supposed to pick learned people to represent them, and those people would pick the president.

TRUMP: He and Bush beneficiaries of quirks

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE process has evolved since then into one where the electors are supposed to represent the mood of the people of their state. The electors who gathered in Springfield on Monday were Democratic partisans who made sure Illinois will go into the history books as a sensible place that resisted the rancid rhetoric and twittish Tweets of one Donald J. Trump.

But no one seriously expected any significant numbers of electors to change their stances. I suspect those who were chosen to back Trump’s campaign are taking pride in being able to say they gave us “President Donald J. Trump,” and probably think it was a sense of cosmic justice that their guy “won” despite losing the popular vote!

BUSH: Is he embarrassed by any tie to Trump?

All of this means that come Jan. 6, when Congress holds its joint session to formally affirm the Electoral College count taken Monday, I suspect there will be at least one (probably more) political pundit eager to proclaim the look of depression on Joe Biden’s face (don’t forget, he serves as Senate president) when he has to formally announce that Trump really will be Number 45 in the line of men who served as U.S. president.

Anybody who was paying attention in school would have learned about this lengthy process that leads up to the naming of a new president – although I’m sure there are those for whom this is new.

AND ALSO SOME who are upset that the unofficial vote count from back on Nov. 8 didn’t just make the whole thing official.

CLINTON: How many non-voters overcome Trump?

Just as I’m sure there were people who back in 2000 couldn’t comprehend the need for another vote count to answer questions about the one in Florida that first gave the state’s electors to Al Gore, then to George W. Bush, and left enough questions in the public’s minds that there are people who will forevermore think we don’t know what it was that Florida voters intended to do. Because a ballot's intent isn't always blatantly obvious.

Of course, understanding the process is one thing. Actually getting off one’s duff and casting a ballot is all the more important. Because of the evidence that certain segments of the electorate that might have been disgusted by the concept of “President Trump” were too lazy to bother to vote at all.

As odd as it might sound that Clinton needed more than her 2.86 million lead in votes to actually win this election cycle, that is the reality of our current system. The sooner we all realize that, the better off we will be!

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Unpresidented = Potatoe?

There are those of us of a certain age who were always grateful that George H.W. Bush remained in solid-enough health that we never experienced the notion of Dan Quayle being elevated from the vice-presidency to the head of our federal government.
 

QUAYLE: What would his 'presidency' been like?

He being the man who showed a certain intellectual incuriosity (we still laugh at his gaffe of using an archaic spelling of “potato” in trying to correct a child at a spelling bee.

FOR PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald J. Trump is showing us that he has the same traits. Despite an advanced education (Fordham University and the Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania), he is proof that being able to pass college classes is no guarantee that someone ought to be considered intelligent.

Heck, Trump gave us his own Quayle-type gaffe with a recent Twitter message where he meant to use the word “unprecedented.” Only his new job title apparently is dominant on his mind these days, because it came out “unpresidented.”

Trump will never get to live this gaffe down, just as we still remember that extra “e” on potato that Quayle gave us nearly three decades ago – and that may well be a prominent part of his obituary on that day years from now (he hopes!) when he departs us.

Not that this should be any surprise.

THE WHOLE THEORY behind Trump’s rise to political significance has been one of appealing to a certain segment of society that is suspicious of anyone who claims to be too intellectual.

TRUMP: Maybe he'll show us!

Which means I’m sure the Trump Nation, so to speak, is coming up with sarcastic wisecracks in reference to anyone who brings up the fact that Trump can’t spell “unprecedented.”

For all I know, many of these people may have seen Trump’s latest Tweet from a twit and didn’t even realize there was a spelling error until it was pointed out to them.

And for these kinds of people, there’s nothing lower than a know-it-all who always seems to be capable of pointing out when they make a mistake.

Nobody would mistake Melania Trump ...

THEY DON’T WANT to have someone point out their gaffes, or those of the people they want to believe are truly wisened (as some in our society seem to think of Trump just because he has managed to survive in the business world without his bankruptcies actually managing to financially bust him).

... for Marilyn Quayle, although w/ her hair,

Which is probably how they also feel about those who point out that they voted for a bigot, or were willing to look the other way to the bigoted backers who are the key to comprehending how Trump managed to “win” an election despite gaining some 2.8 million votes fewer than Hillary Clinton.

What I think we’re going to experience in the next few years (four, or maybe less if he really does get bored of being in the Oval Office) is the sense of what life would have been like if we had ever had to experience the concept of “President Quayle.”

Considering that I previously had considered the Trump presidency to be the equivalent of California experiencing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Minnesota being silly enough to think one-time pro wrestler Jesse Ventura ought to be in charge, I wonder if being the next Dan Quayle is a step up – or down!

THE TWO HAVE a certain sense of similarity when it comes to a lack of interest in what anybody else thinks about them.

... Marilyn could have been Mary Tyler Moore

Except, perhaps for the type of women they like to surround themselves with. Trump goes for a certain type of woman whose sense of glamour brings to mind the old cliché, “It costs a lot of money to look that cheap.”

While Quayle gave us as a spouse Marilyn, the woman whose “flip” hairstyle brought back memories of Mary Tyler Moore back in the days when she was the TV spouse of Dick Van Dyke.

We’re going to get enough gaffes in coming years so that there’s a good chance that “unpresidented” may fall by the wayside – just because he’ll manage to say or do something even more stupid.

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Give it up! We’re keeping Madigan; we'll see if that's for better or worse

There’s one political prediction I feel confident in making – come Jan.11, 2017, the Illinois House of Representatives will convene for the beginning of a new two-year session, and as its first official act will choose state Rep. Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to be its leader.

MADIGAN: He's returning, for good or bad

People of a political bent who are concocting scenarios by which Illinois House members dump Madigan, who has been leader of the House for all but two years since the early 1980s, are quite possibly more out of touch than those who are expecting the Electoral College to dump on Donald Trump come Monday.

BUT THEN AGAIN, I’m skeptical that the leadership of the Illinois Republican Party, which for years has been trying to demonize the Madigan name and has stepped up their efforts in recent weeks, would want to have anybody else as their opposition besides the long-time “Mr. Speaker.”

Who else could they spew hostile rhetoric against and find anyone foolish enough to believe it? Would their trash talk seem anything but laughable against a House speaker Barbara Flynn Currie or Lou Lang?

I think that for Gov. Bruce Rauner to have a chance of overcoming the hostile attitude toward himself that has developed in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, he needs to have an equal “demon,” so to speak.

Otherwise, a Rauner re-election bid for 2018 would be doomed to defeat. But with a Madigan who gets the blame for favoring Chicago over all else in Illinois, it becomes a political brawl.

ONE THAT COULD, quite possibly, become as nasty and ugly as the recently-completed Clinton/Trump brawl became.

 

DRURY: Not likely to beat the Speaker

An Illinois version – Rauner, or whomever the Democrats wind up nominating for governor who the party will try to turn into a Madigan lackey.

There actually is a St. Louis Metro East-area legislator named Scott Drury, D-Highwood, who is trying to talk himself up as an alternate choice to Madigan for House speaker. Although I’m skeptical that any significant number (or any, actually) of Democrats would defect from Madigan to back him.

 

RAUNER: He needs a foe if  he's to win in '18

One thing I remember being told by Democratic legislators back in my day of covering the General Assembly is that Madigan usually doesn’t order his caucus on how to vote.

EXCEPT FOR WHEN it comes to their vote for House speaker. In exchange for his financial and staffing support in getting them elected to their legislative seats, they must agree to back him as their leader.

Anybody who dared take his money THEN vote against him for speaker would find themselves in a bigger hole than did soon-to-be former state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, who couldn’t even win his primary re-election bid this year.

There’s also the comments made this week by state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, that he’d be willing to consider term limits for the House speaker’s post IF it meant that government officials could finally move forward on approving budgets for state government – rather than the year-and-a-half of nothingness we have experienced.

Republican spokesman Steven Yaffe said Friday, “it’s encouraging to see Democrats break away from Mike Madigan’s irrational opposition to any form of term limits and his unwillingness to compromise.”

WHO WOULD YAFFE be able to issue such statements against if Madigan wasn’t present. Particularly when he adds, “Democrats and Republicans alike should work together to pass bipartisan reforms that the people of Illinois are demanding.”

 

TRUMP: Who says 'like' is needed?

It sounds nice, but anybody with sense realizes is nonsense – what Rauner wants a Legislature that will reaffirm his own partisan goals; as in Democrats who will shut up and keep their objections to themselves and do what they’re told!

Which was pretty much the attitude in place during 1995-96 when Madigan was reduced to the role of minority leader and the Republican legislative majority that couldn’t sustain itself went out of its way to demean urban interests in this state.

I don’t doubt the people of central and Southern Illinois would be pleased. But election trends (look at the Democratic gains in Illinois in what otherwise was a dismal Dem election cycle of ’16) show that if this truly becomes a Madigan vs. Rauner, Who Do You Hate the Most-type of election, the governor could find himself on the short end – regardless of his personal wealth and all the votes he thinks it will buy!

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EXTRA: Illinois’ political high point? It seems to be Cook County!

The highest elevation in Illinois is the Charles Mound not far from Galena, but when it comes to a political sense I’m wondering if the high point is right here in Cook County.
 

ORR: Oversaw record-high voter turnout

It might even be somewhere around suburban Oak Park. That is, if we look at the statistics available for voter turnout and electoral support for the Nov. 8 elections that are becoming a more distant memory with each passing day – albeit one that we’re never likely to forget entirely.

THE COOK COUNTY clerk’s office released its analysis of the election turnout that showed this was an election cycle in which the people cared. If Hillary Clinton wants to find a “fall guy” for her Election Day defeat, she had better not look to the county of her birth.

We turned out, and we backed her presidential aspirations big-time!

For the record, Hillary Clinton got the highest number of votes ever (699,003) by a presidential candidate. Even more than Barack Obama did in that 2008 election cycle that captured the nation’s imagination (or contempt, for the kind of people who are inclined to believe that Donald Trump’s victory was their revenge for having to endure eight years of an Obama presidency).

Oak Park Township in the western suburbs had an 83.4 percent voter turnout.

BUT TURNOUT WAS high all over the county. There were 1.51 million people registered to vote before Election Day, and another 24,000-plus showed up at polling places and registered to vote that very day.

With Cook County Clerk David Orr justifying that by saying, “More than 24,000 residents who wouldn’t have been able to cast a ballot were able to vote as a direct result of Election Day Registration.”

Those figures are records for Cook County voter turnout, although it will be interesting to see if they can be topped come the 2020 election cycle. Or was this phenomenon truly a product of the freakish nature of the ’16 Clinton/Trump brawl that I’m pretty sure no one has recovered from as of yet.

Voter turnout was high all the way around, but as one ventured outside of the Chicago metro area the more that the high turnout produced political support for Trump, rather than Hillary.

BUT COOK’S HIGH population (about 45 percent of the whole state) is why Hillary won Illinois with ease, while the bulk of the Great Lakes states was swayed over to Camp Trump.

So perhaps it is all the more appropriate that the low elevation point of Illinois is the point where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge – down by Cairo.

A low-point, in so many ways, for Democrats

That’s the part where Trump support was so strong that it helped translate into the few Republican electoral victories this state experienced this time around.

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Does ethnic, racial diversity in slating really create voter candidate appeal?

It was a guiding principal of slating candidates to run for political office known as “the three I’s,” and it would seem to be in place in 21^st Century Chicago – albeit in a slightly adapted form.

VALENCIA: Keeping Latino streak alive

The “three I’s” implied that candidates have to work as a team in order get the most votes, and the “team” has to have an individual who would directly appeal to everybody – hence a perfect ticket ought to include someone who’s Irish, someone who’s Italian and also someone who’s Jewish, which for purposes of an easy label became Israel.

THE THIRD “I.”

We still have that principle in place, although now it means we need to have a white candidate, a black candidate and someone with ethnic origins in Latin America. Which doesn’t create for a cutesy label, but is the same basic idea.

It seems that Mayor Rahm Emanuel followed the principle earlier this week when he announced his appointment of a replacement city clerk – Anna Valencia, who had actually been one of his staffers before getting a post that gives her a title with some authority.

Of course, being city clerk means she’s in charge of the office that usually manages to frustrate people when they have to deal with it – particularly when it comes to that time of the year when people have to renew the vehicle registration stickers they’re required to post on their cars (and pay for) in order to legally drive.

BEING THE STICKER saleswoman may not sound like much. But it means that Valencia will have a chance to run for a city-wide government post come the 2019 election cycle.

Valencia will get her name on automobiles all across Chicago when new stickers come out

Valencia gets the post because previous Clerk Susana Mendoza gave the city office up to become the Illinois comptroller through 2018. She gained that post back in 2011 when then-Clerk Miguel del Valle ran unsuccessfully for mayor.

You literally have to go back to 2006 to find a non-Latino city clerk (it was James Laski, who had to resign following his criminal indictment and conviction),

Which put the pressure on Emanuel to appoint a replacement clerk with Latin American origins (del Valle was born in Puerto Rico and came to Chicago when he was 4, while Mendoza’s parents were immigrants from Mexico).

MENDOZA: Movin' on up from City Hall these days

OF COURSE, THERE also were those people with African-American origins who would have liked to have seen a black person put into another city-wide position. Although I doubt Emanuel would have had the nerve to take on the Latino community of Chicago (about one-quarter of the city’s population) in a political fight when he has so many other people to quarrel with.

Besides, there is city Treasurer Kurt Summers who is black, and it reinforces the idea of an ethnic/racial split of the city’s governmental power. Although I can’t help but chuckle at the confusion the old-school Irish of Chicago’s political culture feel about the notion of the “white” person (Emanuel as mayor) being represented by someone who is Jewish. And I also remember when the treasurer’s office was the one used by Miriam Santos, who was the first Latina official in Chicago city government back in the 1990s.

Insofar as Valencia is concerned, she was a city lobbyist, and also worked as a campaign manager for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and for Reps. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and Gary Peters, D-Mich. (now a senator, and NOT the one-time White Sox pitcher) with the Illinois Senate Democratic Victory Fund and for state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago.

She has worked in various posts at city, state and federal government, which is impressive. Particularly since she’s only 31 – the fact that truly catches my attention. She was a mere baby back in the days when I roamed around the city looking for news stories for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

EMANUEL: Playing by rules to keep power

BUT TIME DOES pass, and as Emanuel said himself, her youth means she’s the next generation of Chicago leadership rising through the ranks. Personally, I’m not quite ready to proclaim proclaim Valencia as the first Latina to become mayor (maybe around the 2035 election cycle?).

But it does amuse me to see how times change, while managing to incorporate some of the basic principles of maintaining political power to keep the peace.

Or else run the risk of having some trouble-making person with Republican political leanings from the Sauganash or Mount Greenwood neighborhoods from coming in and taking advantage of the resulting political dissent that could end the nearly 90-year streak of Democrats holding control of the mayor’s office.

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Are we destined for “President Pence?” Should that scare us more than Trump?

Spending time as I do working as a reporter-type person on the other side of State Line Road, I have found a group of Democrats to whom the concept of the upcoming presidency of Donald J. Trump is not the most terrifying thought.
 

PENCE: From Indiana to U.S.A., could it happen?

For them to really get a jolt of fear down their political spines, it is the thought of “President Michael R. Pence,” their state’s former governor, ascending to the top post of the United States government.

PENCE GAINED HIS national infamy back when Indiana gave us a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that went so far over the top, even the conservative elements that govern the Hoosier State (which is truly a Bizarro-world take on what we have here in Illinois) felt compelled to scale it back.

But it was the measure that would have put the law on the side of those people who wanted to cite their religious beliefs as the reason to discriminate against people who weren’t like themselves.

Particularly when it comes to those who differ based on sexual orientation issues. But it gave Pence a national reputation – one that helped bolster Trump’s chances of getting elected back when the conservative ideologues weren’t sure if they could trust the rich to be president.

Now, Trump is the president-elect, and Pence moves up to the position of being one step down from becoming U.S. president – should something happen that would prevent Trump from being capable of finishing his term.

WHICH IN THIS political environment may well be a real concept – and just because at age 70, Trump is one of the oldest men ever elected president of this country.

There are those who speculate how unlikely it is that Trump will finish out the four years of the term to which he was elected last month and which will begin in January.

Of course, there are different reasons for their speculations.

 

TRUMP: Will he finish what he starts?

Some believe Trump is just too much of a political amateur to realize what he has got himself into, and will either become frustrated or bored when he finally realizes that image of himself as being the guy who bellows “You’re Fired!” at everybody who displeases him just doesn’t work in government.

HE COULD EASILY turn out to be like Sarah Palin – whose government credentials prior to her 2008 vice presidential bid were being governor of Alaska. But she didn’t even finish out that one term – making it only about two years into it before using her newfound VP nominee status to justify moving on to more visible ventures.

Which in her case amount to being a political loudmouth who spews her thoughts to whomever will listen (and usually winds up giving the real majority of us a good laugh).

Would Trump quit when he realizes life in the White House and on Air Force One isn’t garish and gaudy enough to live up to his tastes?

Or there’s the more extreme option – one that says Trump will do something severe enough to warrant his impeachment. I can’t envision what it would be, but anything is possible in this unpredictable political climate.

I COULD ENVISION a scenario in which his alleged Republican allies, some of whom were never thrilled with his presence instead of a more-reliable GOPer, turn on him. Or it could be the ideologues who banded together to give him that likely Electoral College victory next week decide that he’s not keeping his word to impose all those tyrannical measures that Trump talked about during his campaign that THEY TRULY DESIRE!

 

CLINTON: We can only dream of her presidency

Saying he’s not likely to move to prosecute one-time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton like he said he would during the campaign is a serious broken promise – along the lines of “Read my lips, no new taxes” is to more rational people when discussing the legacy of the first President George Bush.

I state it in that sarcastic manner because on a serious level, the only “crime” that Clinton committed was having the unmitigated gall to think she had any right to seek the presidency in the first place.

People who think like that could easily turn on their guy, particularly if they think they have a more stable and reliable conservative voice in place in the form of Pence – of which the thought of him in the Oval Office does give shudders down the back of the progressive majority peeved that the Electoral College didn’t reflect their reality in this particular election cycle.

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