EXTRA: Hillary win a Hoosier miracle? Or a Democratic fantasy?

When it comes to the Great Lakes states, Illinois has become the Democratic stronghold, while the other states are the ones that can flip back and forth between the two major political parties based on the mood of the nation as a whole.

Will we unite Nov. 8? Or remain split by State Line Rd.

Then, there’s Indiana – the Hoosier state, our neighbor to the east. The one place in the Great Lakes region Republicans usually can count on to gain some support in the Electoral College presidential tally.

BARACK OBAMA WON the state when he first ran for president in 2008. But the last time before that a Democrat won the state was in 1964 – the year that Barry Goldwater showed us how “nuts” he was and lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.

It may be a key to the line of thinking amongst those Indiana residents who persist in calling themselves Democrats – mostly those people who live in or near Indianapolis and Gary.

Is Donald Trump more nuts than Goldwater to the point where Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential bid could actually take the state? Or is this just an absurd fantasy by people with too much free time on their hands to concoct screwy political theories?

It is a line being speculated upon by those Indiana residents who live close enough to the Illinois/Indiana border that they’re really part of the Chicago area – even though some of them like to pretend they’re not.

HILLARY COULD ACTUALLY win Indiana’s 11 Electoral College votes. That would be a disaster to the hopes of Donald Trump since there are certain places in the country he absolutely has to prevail if he’s to have any chance of winning the Nov. 8 election.

Part of it is that the Trump camp is too ridiculously absurd to be taken seriously.

While Democrats supposedly benefit from two other factors – that the state’s candidate for a U.S. Senate seat is the well-known former governor and senator Evan Bayh who has been out of politics since 2010 but decided to go for a comeback this year.

 

Could Chicago influence in Indiana help Hillary

There’s also the fact that Gov. Mike Pence gave up his position to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Meaning the new Republican gubernatorial nominee is Eric Holcomb, the lieutenant governor who himself has only been in that post for a couple of months when former Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann decided that being president of a community college in Indiana was more prestigious than being a ‘lite gov.”

THOSE FACTORS COULD combine with the “Trump is nuts” line of logic to scare some Hoosiers into thinking semi-friendly toward the Democratic ticket.

As one Gary councilwoman, LaVetta Sparks-Wade, said of Trump, “The man has no filter. He doesn’t seem to have any control over what he says. He doesn’t seem to be able to control what he does.”

That is a sentiment common to political observers of all persuasions these days.

Yet still, I have to admit to being skeptical that Indiana will go for Hillary and there will be a clean sweep of the Great Lakes states for the Democrats – and not just because Trump himself is putting efforts into taking Ohio paired up with Indiana.

HILLARY WON THE vote in Lake County, Ind., back in the May primary, but Bernie Sanders took the state among those who wanted to vote Democrat. While more Indiana residents chose Republican ballots, and used them to give Trump a majority vote in the GOP primary.

Could it just be the wishful thinking of people so isolated in Gary, Ind., that they don’t see the rest of the world? Or could it be the outrage that the Trump people don’t see because they can’t comprehend the whole world doesn’t share their Hillary rage?

For as the aforementioned Sparks-Wade said, “If the people wind up deciding that a Donald Trump presidency is any good, then we (in society) are in trouble.”

Ultimately, we’ll get to see if “Illiana” truly comes together on Election Day for the Democrats. Or was it the same type of wishful thinking that made some people nearly three decades ago think that Michael Dukakis was cut of presidential timber?

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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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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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Passing of a political era? Not necessarily for the public good

Time passes. Circumstances change. It’s probably for the best that people move on as well, or else we’d have a lot of frustrated old-timers disgusted at what had become of the institutions to which they devoted their lives.

To me, a reminder of the way things change politically was evidenced by the passing of a pair of members of Illinois’ congressional delegation who became serious players on the national political scene – but who might not even be electable in the 21^st Century.

LANE EVANS OF the Quad Cities died last week due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease – which was the reason he stepped down from his House of Representatives’ seat in 2006 following 24 years on Capitol Hill.

While Phil Crane, who represented the Northwest suburbs in Congress for 35 years, died Saturday at the home of his daughter in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Crane was a Republican who was a strong supporter of Ronald Reagan – even though for a short time in 1980 he considered running for president against the “Gipper.” While Evans was a Democrat who was a strong supporter of organized labor who had one of the most hostile voting records in Congress.

Hostile, that is, if one believed that Reagan was a deity whose stances ought to be worshipped.

YET BOTH MANAGED to survive for so long in Congress because they always managed to keep the interests of their home districts in mind.

Evans was one of those members of Congress who made a point of returning to his home district every weekend, going out of his way not to become a semi-permanent resident of the District of Columbia.

He knew that it wouldn’t matter what kind of national reputation he would develop if people back home who actually voted for him felt he wasn’t paying attention to their concerns.

Which may be why those in his western Illinois congressional district of more conservative ideological leanings were willing to keep sending him back to Washington, and he ultimately got to step down on (sort of) his own terms – rather than leaving in defeat (like Brad Schneider, whose loss last week means Robert Dold gets a political comeback of his own, but that’s a different story).

NOW, THE ILLINOIS political scene has become so partisan based on an urban vs. rural split, it is likely that those western Illinois voters would have dumped on Evans merely for refusing to be a part of the Republican Party.

Look at last week’s gubernatorial election – where Pat Quinn lost 101 of Illinois’ 102 counties, but still could have won if certain wards on Chicago’s North Side had turned out to vote in larger numbers.

We’ve become partisan to the point where the existence of a future Lane Evans is questionable. Although I wonder if we’ve become so stringent in our political definitions that even a Phil Crane is unlikely.

Strictly speaking, Crane would be sympathetic to the modern-day ideologues who have taken over the congressional leadership. His death warranted a statement from Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider that said Crane, “will have a lasting effect for generations to come.”

BUT IN TODAY’S era, I have to wonder if Crane – a former professor of history at Peoria’s Bradley University – would be considered too academic. As though his PhD (Indiana University) would make him suspicious to those who want to think that the political and academic people make situations overly complicated.

For those who want rigidity to ideology over any of those annoying things called “facts.” For those who think that somebody like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his rhetorical nonsense ought to be taken seriously.

The fact that he was among those who backed Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential aspirations (is it, “In your heart, you know he’s right?” or “In your guts, you know he’s nuts”) might make some think he’s too old to appreciate the modern era – regardless of what he actually believed.

Which makes me wonder if someday Evans (whose funeral services were Monday) and Crane (whose funeral will be Thursday) will wind up commiserating in the hereafter – looking down on Capitol Hill and commiserating about how the current era of knuckleheads have made a complete mess of things!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: On this Veterans Day, we should remember: Phil Crane served two years in the U.S. Army, while Lane Evans was a Marine.