Chelsea does Chicago (sort of) to tout the strengths of Campaign Clinton to voters

When Chelsea Clinton ventured into the fringes of the Chicago metropolitan area on Sunday, she was trying to accomplish two goals – urge people in what ostensibly is “Obama Country” to consider voting for her mother and to remind Latinos that they are a natural part of the Clinton constituency.

Chelsea is doing the rounds of Indiana, visiting various Hoosier towns and trying to steal some votes from Barack Obama’s base, which also will result in slightly more delegates going to her mother.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, she’s giving some Indianans a sense of personal contact with the Clintons, even though Hillary herself was too busy to visit herself and potential first gentleman Bill Clinton couldn’t be bothered.

Oddly enough, a family member will give some of these people in attendance a memory of Clinton contact that they will remember for years to come.

In some cases (such as appearances at Purdue, Indiana State and Southern Indiana universities), a Chelsea appearance may mean even more, since some college students who are not quite politically astute will feel more comfortable with someone close to their age (Chelsea is not quite 28) than with an “old fogy” like Hillary (she’s 60).

Whodathunkit? This sweet looking little girl grew up into a polished young lady who's working the campaign circuit to try to get her mother elected president. Photograph provided by Hillary Clinton for President.

That age factor has been the reason the Obama campaign has had some appeal (he’s 46, and had a reputation as an instructor at University of Chicago Law School as one of the “cool” professors on campus) to the collegiate set.

SO IT WAS not surprising when Chelsea Clinton took on the appearance Sunday in East Chicago, Ind.

It wasn’t a college-kid event, but she kicked off this segment of an Indiana tour by speaking before the Associacion de Hijos Borinquen – a group of young people that promotes Puerto Rican pride and tries to prepare its members for full-fledged work in the adult version of the local Puerto Rican cultural group.

Chelsea got to do her youth routine, making a batch of people who quite possibly will be voting for the first time ever on May 6 (the Indiana primary) or Nov. 4 (the general election) to want to cast ballots for Hillary R. Clinton.

She actually had a second appearance, one in Chicago proper. But that event was closed to the public, as she was merely trying to get some of the city’s wealthier elements to consider writing checks to Hillary for President so as to allow the Clinton campaign to continue to be competitive.

ONE THING CHELSEA Clinton did not do Sunday was engage in a repeat of two previous campaign appearances, where she became all flustered when locals dared to ask her questions about her father’s sexual trysts with an intern while he was president.

Those appearances resulted in national attention for Chelsea, and the beginnings of a debate over what kinds of questions are appropriate for a political sibling. My own belief is that if a political kid is going to use their image to build up goodwill for a parent, then they’re also going to have to accept the negative – including the occasional hostile reaction from people who are opposed to their parents being in electoral politics.

But Chelsea’s appearances (she will forever have to live down the image of someone who got all flustered at the asking of a rude question) truly were the exception. The last thing that is ever supposed to happen (from a campaign’s perspective) is for news to be made by a candidate’s kid.

When Paul Simon ran for his first term in the U.S. Senate in 1984, his campaign used his wife Jeanne (who was the outspoken member of that family) and offspring, Sheila and Martin, to be his surrogates and make appearances meant to promote the Simon “message” and encourage people to cast their votes for him come Election Day.

THAT IS WHY on a day in autumn 1984, about one month prior to the November election that saw Ronald Reagan fulfill the fantasies of every Republican across the nation, Sheila and Martin made a joint appearance in Bloomington at the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University.

I was a student there at the time (1984 was the first election in which I was old enough to vote), and I still remember the appearance, primarily because it was so non-memorable. The Simon sibs made sure to promote their father’s name without doing anything even remotely controversial.

We could have seen Simon himself had we been willing to make trips to Chicago or Springfield, but our studies kept us on campus.

The surrogate appearances made us young Democrats on the IWU campus feel like we got our touch of face-time with the campaign, and made us feel like we should want to be a part of the Election Day effort that resulted in the southern Illinois congressman winning his election for a statewide office, which he eventually held for 12 years prior to retiring from elective politics.

I SUSPECT THAT is the same feeling that young people in the Puerto Rican cultural group felt when they got to meet Chelsea, even though for her it was just one of four stops she made Sunday and likely is one of just many that is blending into her mind as one mass of campaign activity – with one town hardly more notable than the next.

The Chelsea Clinton event in East Chicago, Ind., served one other purpose.

It was meant to remind the Latino population of East Chicago that they are a natural part of the Clinton constituency, even though surrounding Lake County, Ind., itself is a natural extension of the Chicago area that is the base of Obama Country.

East Chicago is a town with a strong Mexican-American presence and a growing Puerto Rican population. In a state that most people associate with rural white America, East Chicago is a town with nearly 52 percent of its population being people of Hispanic ethnic backgrounds.

CHELSEA WAS IN East Chicago to remind the significant Latino gathering that their ethnic counterparts in other states have been a significant part of the Clinton camp (Obama has only taken Latino vote majorities in Illinois and Virginia) during the 42 states or territories that have held primaries or caucuses thus far.

If she were to let the Latino vote fall into the hands of Obama, some political analysts would interpret it as a sign that Hillary Clinton is losing her grasp on Hispanic support. It may be a lame viewpoint, but most political analysis involves taking a miniscule tidbit and blowing it out into an event of major significance.

Hillary Clinton needs to take the Indiana Hispanic vote just to save face, even if she loses the state as a whole to Obama. And if she were to win the state, but lose the Latinos of Lake County, Ind., Barack backers would claim a moral victory of their own.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Chelsea Clinton apparently is just like many political people – she exists on her own time clock. Her East Chicago appearance got re-scheduled so many times (http://www.post-trib.com/news/880480,chelseaec0406.article) before she finally (http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2008/04/05/updates/breaking_news/doc47f7efcef0857238493585.txt) showed up to give rote answers to questions on various issues.

AT&T spot captured essence of “Chicago Cubs Caray,” not the man's whole broadcast career

I hate to think that the career of comedian John Caponera will suffer a lasting blow due to his latest acting gig – portraying the essence of late baseball broadcaster Harry Caray in a television commercial for AT&T.

But considering the irrational level of thought often achieved by Chicago Cubs fans (who else would root for a ball club that is going to go at least 100 full seasons without a World Series victory), it might be, it could be, it is.

CAPONERA COULD GO through the rest of his acting career as the guy who “besmirched” the reputation of Caray – a decade after his death.

At stake was the television spot that AT&T used to promote its telecommunications services. It consisted of Caponera doing a third-rate impersonation of Caray’s shtick, or at least what it had devolved to by the time he began broadcasting baseball for the Cubs.

Caponera as Caray doing corny puns and words spelled backward while speaking in a slurred voice that was supposed to resemble Caray’s unique speech pattern (which itself was influenced by often imbibing too much Budweiser).

Caray’s widow, Dutchie, remains miffed about the spot, although I understand AT&T felt the need to appease her with an apology for taking the name of Caray in vain.

NOW I CAN understand that since she knew the real man (instead of the drunken caricature most of the rest of us saw on television), she is likely to take anything related to Harry just a bit too seriously.

And I have to confess – I hated the ad as well.

But I couldn’t stand it for a very different reason than all the other people who have supported Dutchie in being disgusted with AT&T for using the Caray image in their effort to promote their products.

What does a long-dead broadcaster whose professional peak occurred decades ago in another city (St. Louis) have to do with AT&T?

I DON’T KNOW.

I never could figure out what the point was of having a Caray impersonator in their advertising. I still don’t know how the Caponera routine in any way promoted AT&T products or services.

It wasn’t even particularly clever in a way that would make us think associate humor or intelligence with AT&T. In short, the commercial deserved to get lost in the shuffle of advertising images that bombard us through our television sets.

Yet to listen to Cubs fans, it was insulting. It degraded the public persona of a wonderful man who ought to be above public criticism. How dare they treat Harry with anything less than respect. We all ought to genuflect before the image of the great Harry Caray, whose five-plus decades-long career as a major league baseball broadcaster reached such intense highs that he is one of the few broadcasters honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

GET REAL, CUBS fans.

I’ll be the first to admit that Caray as a broadcaster was a true talent. He was unique when he was in his prime. Listening to old tapes of Caray doing baseball (being the “Voice of the Fan” who would think nothing of trashing a ballplayer if he got lazy on the playing field) makes us realize how just about all contemporary broadcasters are mediocrities who don’t deserve to say they worked in the same profession as Caray.

But those old recordings would be the Harry Caray who was the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals on KMOX-AM and the network of small-town radio stations across the south and southwest that carried Caray’s accounts of Cardinals games from Alabama to Oklahoma and made the Cardinals “America’s Team” in a way that the Dallas Cowboys could only dream of being.

LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, age causes a person to deteriorate physically. Those of us who followed Caray back in the 1970s when he was the voice of the Chicago White Sox got to see touches of the Harry Caray of old (I still remember him trashing second baseman Jorge Orta by saying, “How could he lose a ball in the sun, he’s from Mexico?”), particularly when he was paired up with Jimmy Piersall – making the two possibly the most sarcastic pairing ever to broadcast baseball games.

By the time Caray got to the Cubs, he was 68. Nobody is going to be the same at that age as they were in their physical prime (the Vin Scully of today is terrible compared to his peak in the 1960s broadcasting the Los Angeles Dodgers – only the fact that most modern broadcasters are absolutely awful allows Scully to still be thought of as one of the best).

Hence, the Caray that did Cubs games often became a god-awful parody that butchered names (particularly of any ballplayer from a Latin American country) and did the awful puns (“Mets spelled backward is Stem,” he really said it on-air). There is a sense that what Caponera did in the commercial was nothing more than capturing the essence of Chicago Cubs Caray, rather than focusing on Harry in his prime.

Cardinals Caray is the broadcaster who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, while Cubs Caray was tacky and sometimes hard to watch. (White Sox Caray was a different breed altogether – he said and did things no other ball club would have tolerated because Sox owner Bill Veeck was such a maverick himself).

I ALWAYS THOUGHT that Caray should have seriously considered retiring some time about 1984. That would have allowed him to end his career with a winning ballclub (the Cubs won their first division title ever that year, and finished a regular season in first place for the first time since 1945).

It also would have allowed him to get a sense of revenge against the White Sox, where he was cut loose after 1981 because then-new owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn wanted to reshape the broadcasts in their own image (Does anybody else remember the Chicago broadcast work of Don Drysdale?) rather than Caray’s image of a hard-drinking South Sider (which in some ways is so fitting for the Sox).

Caray would have been able to retire on his own terms, and on top of his game. We never would have had to endure the aging man whose performance diminished his reputation. And he wouldn’t have provided fodder for half-wit impersonations like the one done by Caponera.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: John Caponera says he wasn’t trying to be insulting to the memory (http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/hoekstra/872646,CST-FTR-harry02.article) of Harry Caray. Lots of Cubs fans (most of whom take themselves way too seriously) disagree.

The restaurant chain (http://www.harrycarays.com/) that pays tribute to the broadcaster who made “Holy Cow” a baseball catchphrase, even though fans of Phil Rizzuto of the New York Yankees like to think he said it first (he didn’t).

Some words of wisdom (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quocaray.shtml) from Harry Christopher Carabina.

In an era when sports broadcasters are nothing more than former ballplayers who need a job, Caray (http://www.radiohof.org/sportscasters/harrycaray.html) is a unique breed. He was an actual broadcast professional whose concern was being on the air, not just being inside the ballpark so he wouldn’t have to work for a living.

Pincham, Wright both worthy of respect

Back in the days when R. Eugene Pincham was a judge on the Illinois appellate court for Chicago, the city’s politics were a blood sport where the sides were not “Democrat” and “Republican” or “liberal” and “conservative.”

They were “black” and “white” – as in race (back in those days, “African-American” as a category wasn’t in regular use, and I remember times when any Chicago reporter who tried to work the phrase into his copy was mocked mercilessly).

IN THE 1980s when Harold Washington’s very presence at City Hall aroused the anger of much of white Chicago, the politically partisan split in our government came from the color of one’s skin. It wasn’t just “white” people who spoke out.

Pincham put himself in the Chicago political history books when he told a rally of potential black voters at an Operation PUSH rally in 1987 they ought to feel obligated to support Washington’s re-election as mayor.

Or, as he so “eloquently” put it: “Any man south of Madison Street who casts a vote in the Feb. 24 election who doesn’t cast a vote for Harold Washington ought to be hung.”

The significance of that comment is that south of Madison Street is the Great South Side, which has evolved into a collection of African-American neighborhoods with occasional patches of white and Spanish-speaking people mixed in (unlike the North Side, which is predominantly white ethnic with occasional Spanish-speaking and Asian neighborhoods and almost NO black people).

PINCHAM’S CAREER BECAME defined by that comment. To Anglo Chicago, he became a bigot – one who real bigots would bring up whenever anyone tried to call them on their nonsense.

There is a generation of Chicagoans who always want to think of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Pincham as the real racists, somehow wrongly biased against the white majority (even though in Chicago, the black population is slightly larger than the white one – with the Latino population growing at a rate that it will equal the two within about a decade).

Those people now want to add the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the list for the comments he made during various sermons, and would like for us to think of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as someone who is tainted by association with a racist like Wright.

I’ve made it clear before, and I will repeat myself again. I don’t buy it.

PINCHAM AND WRIGHT came out of an era where the power of the law was used against them, keeping them in a form of servitude and lashing out against them whenever it was to the advantage of the white majority.

It was that type of mentality that formed Pincham’s philosophy on life – he became a lawyer so as to fight the white establishment whenever it would try to abuse the rights of black people. Making sure that the judicial system didn’t run roughshod over the rights of criminal defendants (who are human beings too, even though some people don’t like to have to concede that fact) was the focus of his career.

If that meant that a legal system that was used to being able to bash black people around suddenly had a judge who would not support such abuses, then I suppose it would be natural that certain elements would want to think negatively about Pincham’s legal legacy.

I remember in particular when Pincham ran for mayor of Chicago using the label of the Harold Washington Party – an organization that briefly had legal status as a fully legitimate political party (I wonder if the Green Party in Illinois is destined to fade away in a similar manner – but that’s a different subject).

PINCHAM’S QUOTE ABOUT Washington was dredged up everywhere white people went, but black people understood the frustration that caused a man of his generation to make such a statement and think in such a way.

I never did encounter a black person who would admit to voting for anybody except for Pincham in that election, and Pincham actually managed to win a majority of votes in 15 wards – all of which on the South and West sides that had African-American majority populations.

Recalling Pincham is relevant because of Wright’s plight these days.

Wright’s career as a South Side pastor consists of work done to try to bolster the lives of the African-American majority that lived around his church and chose to worship there because its “Afro-centric” view of the world promoted a sense that their lives had value.

BUT CERTAIN HALF-WITS are trying to reduce Wright to the level of someone whose support for black people meant he did not support white people, as though providing support for “black” or “white” people are not compatible goals.

Obama is being trashed by his opponents (most of whom have eagerly been looking for an excuse to publicly say they don’t support him) for remaining in Wright’s congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ, which has a majority black congregation and preaches a message of African-American empowerment.

Even Hillary R. Clinton has said she would have dropped out of that church, had she ever heard a sermon like Wright’s.

BUT I ACTUALLY gain respect for Obama because he is not trying to pander to the potential votes of white people who want to get angry about people like Wright or Pincham, who in their comments remind us that our nation has an ugly history when it comes to racial matters.

Many of those people are the types who dream that the ugly past will wither away if we just ignore it. Others want to take an attitude that they are not bigoted against non-white people who realize the “error” of their ways and accept the “proper” means of doing things – which usually translates to the “Anglo” way.

Somehow, I don’t think Pincham experienced a “deathbed epiphany” this week that he was wrong to fight for the rights of people who might otherwise have been trod on by a judicial system that was set up to occasionally entrap them.

NOR DO I expect Wright to ever think he was mistaken in trying to use his ministry to promote the image of African-American people.

What about the fact that he used harsh language on occasion to do so? Wright’s speaking style really can best be described as “southern preacher.” But when other preachers use that style, we hear about “fire and brimstone” and can laugh it off. For Wright, too many of us want to condemn him for it.

Until we can accept that difference of style, this country’s multi-racial and –ethnic population will never be able to fully get past its racial divide.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: R. Eugene Pincham remained active as an attorney (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/chi-judge-pincham-obit-webapr04,0,6348192.story) even after retiring as a judge. He was one of the attorneys retained by musician R. Kelly in his ongoing legal battles in Cook County criminal court.

Peraica tactics include HDO ‘demonization’

Is this going to be the tactic of those people who want to take down a Latino politico – dredge up the letters “HDO” and try to scare white ethnic Chicago into believing that those crazy Hispanics are somehow more corrupt than their Irish and Polish and Croatian counterparts at City Hall ever were?

It is the means being used by Tony Peraica, the Republican nominee for state’s attorney of Cook County, to try to trash his opponent. He has to resort to this in large part because Democratic opponent Anita Alvarez is so far better qualified for the top prosecutor’s post (roughly two decades experience) that he can’t argue on the merits of his record.

SPECIFICALLY, PERAICA IS waving around copies of El Dia, a Spanish-language newspaper based out of Cicero (and not exactly a heavy-hitter in the world of Chicago’s Spanish media), which ran on its front page a photograph taken at a political fundraiser.

It is the standard shot of an aspiring politico (Alvarez) standing next to someone else and trying to smile. It is meant to give the person in the picture with the politico some sort of personal souvenir, and perhaps a bit of physical evidence that an actual relationship exists between the two.

Peraica is trying to use the photograph for the same reason – it is a picture of Alvarez posing with the son of the newspaper’s owner. It turns out that Jorge Montes de Oca, Jr. actually had a warrant issued for his arrest at the time of the March 6 fundraiser at a neighborhood restaurant.

In theory, as a high-ranking deputy in the state’s attorney’s office who aspires the top job in the Nov. 4 election, Alvarez is a law enforcement official who should have arrested Oca.

SHE DIDN’T.

I’m not going to get all bent out of shape about this. I don’t view it as a moment of corruption (as Peraica would like us to think of it). It is more a sense of reality that makes me realize I don’t expect anybody to know off the top of their head at all times the names of every single person who happens to have an arrest warrant issued in their name.

I particularly am willing to overlook this lapse (I believe that had it been brought to her attention, Alvarez would have acted like the life-long employee of the state’s attorney’s office that she is) because the warrant was not even issued in Cook County.

It was issued by a judge in neighboring Lake County, Ill., after Oca allegedly wrote bad checks to a car dealership in the far northern suburbs of Chicago. Since his photographic appearance with Alvarez, he has been picked up by police, hit with the relevant criminal charges, and is only free now because he posted the mandatory 10 percent of bond set at $30,000.

NOW IF SOMEONE could come up with evidence that Alvarez in some way is trying to cover up for him, or get his charges reduced, or in some way is interfering with the ability of Lake County officials to prosecute the case, that would be a sign of inappropriate behavior by a potential state’s attorney.

That would be an example of potential corrupt behavior. Heck, it would be just a good story.

Peraica doesn’t have any of that.

He just has that Alvarez was in the same room with someone whom the police were interested in, and didn’t do anything because she didn’t know anything.

I WOULD BE willing to overlook this ridiculous charge, if that were the extent to which Peraica took it. But he went further, dragging the acronym “HDO” into the mix by noting that the fundraiser was largely attended by HDO members.

For those of you who are clueless about City Hall and Chicago politics, HDO is the Hispanic Democratic Organization. It is the political action committee used by some Latinos who want to be involved in Chicago politics, which theoretically makes it no different than the organizations used by women, labor unions or any other special interest group that wants to get ahead politically.

It also is a group whose founder faces criminal charges for his alleged involvement in the city’s now-defunct “Hired Truck Program,” where private companies were hired to provide trucks and drivers to do municipal work.

Federal prosecutors say some of the companies had ties to organized crime, while others paid bribes to city officials to get contracts. In many cases, the companies hired by the city were grossly overpaid for their work, or the companies did no work whatsoever.

PERAICA WANTS TO create the impression of the Hispanic politicos dragging a city program into corrupt behavior, and then trying to show that Alvarez is merely one of their followers. “The HDO has been at the epicenter of all the corruption that has done on at the city of Chicago,” Peraica told WBBM-TV, which played the story up big during their Tuesday evening newscast.

That is just a ridiculous statement. There’s too much improper behavior that takes place at Chicago City Hall for “epicenter of all the corruption” to be true.

HDO didn’t give Chicago corruption. It merely is trying to use the means of the past by which other ethnic groups used politics to get ahead – not realizing that the ways of Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna are long dead and buried, although their zombie corpse occasionally tries to come crawling out of the grave.

The other thing to realize about HDO is that it does not speak for all Latino political people in Chicago. It is a group whose leaders are firmly behind the policies of Mayor Richard M. Daley. Its members routinely focus their political work on bashing the candidacies of would-be Latino politicos who appeared as though they might oppose Daley if they won elective office.

HDO’s REAL “SIN” is that it is willing to put politics ahead of the concept of increased Latino political empowerment – it has been known to back the candidacies of white politicos in Latino neighborhoods in order to help Daley maintain his political control in Chicago.

Of course, none of this nuance came through in Peraica’s charges. He just wanted to create the image of a batch of corrupt Hispanic people, one of whom was literally a “wanted man” by the police – with Alvarez smiling for pretty pictures.

This tactic does not shock me in the least. This is, after all, the man who engaged in the ultimate “sore loser” behavior after losing his 2006 bid to be Cook County Board president to Todd Stroger. Peraica is not somebody who’s going to take the political high road.

I FULLY EXPECT Peraica to keep hitting us with subtle (like a sledgehammer) reminders that Alvarez is Mexican-American, hoping that he can stir up enough people who have a problem with the concept of the first Latina to win a county-wide office to get their votes.

That is why Alvarez herself was totally justified when she responded as she did to Peraica’s charge by refusing to discuss whether or not she had her picture taken with Oca (She did, so what!) and instead denounced the whole attack as “racist.”

“To insinuate that any public official of Hispanic heritage has connections to the HDO is racist,” she said, in a prepared statement. “These allegations are completely absurd and if they were not coming from (Cook County Board) Commissioner Tony Peraica, our campaign would consider this an April Fool’s Day joke.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I expect Republican state’s attorney hopeful Tony Peraica to spend the bulk of this year making outrageous claims about his Democratic opponent. I’d also expect a responsible news media organization to realize when it is being fed garbage charges (http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/alvarez.peraica.scandal.2.689886.html) by a politico. Oh well, at least I was 50 percent correct.

Somebody needed an editor

Ernie Banks, back in the days when he was a young man and the second-best shortstop then playing baseball in Chicago.

I always suspected that Chicago Cubs fans were functionally illiterate.

Now that their statue of Cubs icon Ernie Banks has had its base fixed so as to reflect the grammatically correct version of Banks’ famed "Let’s Play Two" saying that expresses his love of baseball, I can’t help but think the most pathetic part of this episode is the artist trying to justify his error by claiming he created something that “sounded right” in his mind.

Either he wasn’t paying attention during grammar and English composition, or too many Cubs games have turned his brain to mush.

So now the Banks statue can collect bird droppings at Clark and Addison streets similar to the way the statue of long-time baseball broadcaster Haray Caray at Addison and Sheffield streets attracts people who insist on putting cans of Budweiser beer in Harry’s hand.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story will have to fulfill local baseball fans for the next five days until Monday (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2008/04/02/editing_required_for_ernie_banks_statute/1941/), which is the only Opening Day in Chicago that truly matters.

What’s the true purpose of a political poll?

I find polls taken during a political campaign to be intriguing. I find them to be an up-close look at the electorate and what they think about certain issues and people, and why.

Of course, most people find them confusing because they don’t truly understand what it is they should be looking for, or just what it is the poll results are really telling them. So they get frustrated when the poll results from weeks or months before Election Day vary so greatly with the actual election results.

WHEN LOOKING AT the results of a political poll, there are two factors to keep in mind. The “bottom line” figures of who is leading are often the most irrelevant part of the poll, and the accuracy of a poll depends greatly upon who is being surveyed.

All polls are 100 percent accurate in reporting what it is that the potential voters said. Whether the voters follow through with their talk is the key to determining whether the poll results will match the future reality.

The most important factor is to consider that polls take a small sample of people, figuring that by choosing them at random, one is getting a chunk of the U.S. population that is representative of the nation as a whole.

Election Day voting is more accurate than any given poll, particularly if activity at the polling place gets as ugly as in this 1858 Election Day cartoon in Harper's Weekly. Illustration provided by Library of Congress collection.

The Gallup Organization polls typically try to survey 1,000 people per day, before compiling results to tell us who is leading and who is not. Who’s to say the findings of any one day do not lean too heavily on one segment of the population, thereby distorting its results.

TAKE THE GALLUP polls for the Democratic presidential primary.

Gallup released results during the weekend that said Barack Obama had a 10-point lead in support over opponent Hillary R. Clinton (52 percent to 42 percent) on March 29. One day later, he still had a sizable lead – although his support dropped to 51 percent.

But on Tuesday (just two days later), the Gallup group released their latest daily results showing Obama leading Clinton 49 percent to 45 percent.

Did something really happen so dramatic during those days that Clinton suddenly gained in support? Could it be that Obama’s double-digit lead never really existed – except among the 1,000-or-so people who happened to get a telephone call from the Gallup group in the days leading up to those results?

OR PERHAPS A larger-than-usual batch of Clinton supporters received a call for the polls leading up to Tuesday’s results. Does this mean that Obama’s drop to a 4 point lead (which could really be only a 1 point lead if the margin of error is taken into account) never really happened?

I would like to trust the results of the other survey released Tuesday by the Gallup group – one that can be interpreted as meaning that the American people do not want to see an Obama/Clinton (or Clinton/Obama) pairing at the top of the Democratic ticket on Election Day.

Fifty-five percent of Democrats and independent voters leaning toward Democrats want Obama to have someone other than Hillary as his running mate.

Such results could mean that the voting public is realizing that the two candidates are too similar to each other and the presence of the other on the ballot would add nothing to the party’s chances of winning control of the presidency for the next four years come November.

BUT TO ME, the most significant figure offered up in this batch of poll results was 58 percent. That is the percentage of the 1,000 people questioned in recent days who said they would want Obama to be the vice presidential nominee – should Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination.

That indicates that a good chunk of the population likely wants Obama to have some sort of presence in the White House, whether he gets to work in the Oval Office and live down the hall, or has to settle for life at Number One Observatory Circle (the official vice-presidential residence).

That could be the ultimate sign that Obama is handling the fiery rhetoric by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, properly. If people were truly as disgusted as some of the conservative pundits want us to believe, Obama’s figures would be dropping – people would be looking for him to whither away politically, not remain in a position of authority.

Now there’s always the possibility that I’m selectively looking for results to back up my own beliefs – I already cast my ballot for Obama and his pledged delegates from my congressional district. Of course, that’s also true for anyone doing poll analysis.

IT ALSO IS why I am skeptical when political people say they never trust the poll results done by commercial groups and often commissioned by large news media organizations that want to have something of their own to take credit for. They always say their own internal polls are more reliable.

Actually, they often ask different questions that are meant to inspire people to answer in a particular way – which can distort the results in terms of trying to determine the actual “mood” of the people, rather than the “mood” as the political person wants it to be.

Even when internal polls are more reliable, it more often than not is because political people have a better sense of what to look for in the numbers. Rather than trying to focus on the “bottom line” figure, one should look at any kind of breakdown of different groups and who they are supporting (or rejecting).

Getting a sense that any one group differs from the majority is the relevant fact. One can then decide whether a campaign strategy change would help shift that vote, or whether it should just be “written off” and attention focused on the groups that do like a particular candidate or strategy.

BUT SOMETIMES, POLITICAL people use polls to try to reassure themselves that their efforts are not in vain.

I still remember the 1998 Democratic primary election for Illinois governor, when in the final weekend before the election, the campaign of John Schmidt publicized its internal polls showing him with a slim lead over all three of his opponents.

The Schmidt campaign made a point of saying it was through discussing poll results because, with the election so close, they had the lead. What more was there to say?

In reality, the Schmidt campaign had a slim lead, but other polls showed they lost it in those final days. In fact, a good chunk of Schmidt backers chose not to even bother to vote, and he wound up finishing that primary in third place.

FINALLY, THERE’S ALSO the fact that pollsters are human. They can miss things.

Take the American Institute of Public Opinion (which has since morphed into the group that bears founder George Gallup’s name) surveys of the 1948 presidential election, all of which showed Republican Thomas Dewey handily defeating incumbent Harry S Truman – who had one of the highest unpopularity ratings ever for a president.

But they stopped polling a few weeks before the election, which meant they missed the factor of a lot of “third-party” supporters who decided to back Democrat Truman rather than Dewey of the GOP.

THAT FACT CAME out when, in the weeks after the election, Gallup’s people re-surveyed everybody they had previously polled to try to find out who changed their mind, only to find out that no significant numbers of Democrats or Republicans did so. Their after-election poll showed Dewey won (and the Chicago Tribune would have been accurate).

Polls are only as good as the information that goes into them. Which is why the political people are not wrong when they spout their cliché “The only poll that matters is Election Day.”

An actual vote is always more accurate than a promise of a vote.

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We can't escape the debate on race

TINLEY PARK, Ill. -- I was out Monday in the land where Cook and Will counties converge in a series of zigzags so numerous that one often has to double check to see which county they are standing in at any one moment in time.

The Odyssey Club is a housing development at the edge of the southwest suburban village adjacent to a private golf course that obviously is built on farmland; the plots across Vollmer Road remain empty and could still accommodate crops.

YET IT IS clear that this housing subdivision is meant to be an upscale development that sparks urban growth into the area and will obliterate all the open land within a decade. Odyssey is located all of what will someday be just a few blocks from a high school (Lincoln Way-North in Frankfort Township) and is one mile straight south of the Brookside Marketplace shopping center, the location of the Lane Bryant store that was the site of the still-unsolved quintuple slayings earlier this year.

Now, the neighborhood gets another bit of notoriety – it likely will be the future home of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He’s the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who until recently was known to the public as the personal pastor of such African-American celebs as Oprah Winfrey and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., just to name a few.

Now, of course, he’s the black preacher who illustrates perfectly the difference between the way many white and black people view the racial situation in this country.

Wright’s rhetoric offends many white people who don’t want to have to confront the racial tensions that still exist, while many black people are willing to accept Wright’s rabble-rousing rants on the grounds they understand the perspective that motivates such distrust of the white majority amongst older black people in this country.

WRIGHT WILL GET to spend his retirement years outside of the South Side. His church bought the site in the housing development under construction, and is arranging for a new home to be built for Wright’s personal use.

The SouthtownStar newspaper reported (in dramatic fashion on the front page of Saturday’s newspaper) that the home will include a family room with fireplace and bar, an exercise room, four-car garage, a master bedroom with a whirlpool and custom shower, and also another room that could be adapted in the future to include either an indoor swimming pool or a private movie theater.

I must admit that when driving past the area on Monday (the development is fenced in, and I wasn’t willing to risk arrest just to get up to the actual site of the house), the first thought that ran through my mind is that the development was not where I initially would have expected Wright to retire.

The Chicago south and southwest suburbs are developing larger African-American populations, but there are still some towns that remain overwhelmingly white in complexion and where the locals grit their teeth at the sight of a black person in their midst.

THE AREA WHERE Wright will live actually falls right on the border of two drastically different towns. Matteson, which is across the street from the Odyssey housing development, is 62.6 percent African-American. Tinley Park (which will be Wright’s home address) is only 1.9 percent African-American – and 93.2 percent white.

My point is to say that many of Wright’s immediate neighbors are going to be surprised when they learn which celebrity pastor is living in their midst. One village Trustee, Greg Hannon, alluded to such an attitude, telling the SouthtownStar newspaper that Odyssey is, “where people kind of decide to get away from things.”

But I think Wright’s moving into the neighborhood is a good thing. I’d like to think it will force some people who wanted to avoid having to think about race to have to address the issue. It also will do some good if area people come to see Wright as just another human being – shopping for groceries at the local SuperTarget or stocking that potential home theater with equipment purchased at the local Best Buy store.

Insofar as it relates to the presidential primary, it was naïve for the Obama campaign to think it could get through an election cycle without ever having the racial question come up. In fact, it would be wrong to think that the issue is one that should not be discussed.

THE LINGERING RACIAL distrust that remains in the United States (and threatens to undermine many of the accomplishments made in this country) isn’t going to go away until people of all races confront their attitudes honestly. It is not a problem that will go away on its own once everybody who was alive when segregation was legally acceptable has died off.

It also is obvious (to me, at least, since I still remember the Chicago mayoral elections of 1983) that the first election of an African-American as president (or even someone of bi-racial heritage like Obama) is going to come about despite the efforts of an outspoken few to whom the idea is anathema.

We have to confront the issue. It’s not like Obama can pretend he’s not African-American, anymore than Harold Washington could have gotten through a mayoral campaign without race being an issue (although Washington himself would joke that people opposed him because, “maybe they don’t like the way I part my hair?”)

It is once we have confronted the racial issue and forcibly pushed it aside that we can then view future African-American political candidates more clearly on their merits.

NO FUTURE AFRICAN-American person who runs for Chicago mayor will go through the same grief that Washington went through, and Obama is going to get hit with some things in the next few months because of his racial composition that no political person in the future will have to deal with – if Obama deals with them in a manner befitting class and his professional and academic qualifications.

And insofar as Wright is concerned, I hope he enjoys his new hometown. I hope that local half-wits don’t take it upon themselves to try to make the reverend uncomfortable there.

Despite the Lane Bryant slayings, Tinley Park is a fairly quiet community with many amenities nearby. That is why the people who live there (including my mother) chose the community to begin with, and I expect it is why Wright wants to spend his retiring years there.

See, they already have something in common.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Is the SouthtownStar trying to alert the public to the “menace” in their midst (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/867089,032908wright.article) with their front-page coverage of the fact that the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright is having his church build him a home in the Chicago southwest suburbs? That was the tone of the story the newspaper published, and which the Chicago Sun-Times reprinted.