How lacking we are in a legitimate comprehension of our very own history

Major ideologue shift from "Honest" Abe … 

It is an argument I often hear from ideologues about how the Democratic Party (although they usually leave off the “ic” out of a lame attempt to diminish the Dems image) is the one that gave us segregation and bigotry.

The ones who argue that the Republican Party is the so-called “Party of Lincoln” that freed the slaves and is the one that has done far more for black people than the open hostility they have received from Democratic politicos.

… to "Fake News" Donald

BUT IT IS one I heard again Tuesday from someone who felt compelled to turn to Facebook to say that that, “a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the party that fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved.”

That same African-American individual also felt compelled to write, “even an illiterate, newly-freed slave knew not to vote for a Democrat.”

Writing as one who just over a week ago went to an early voting center in Cook County and cast a ballot that deliberately went against every single Republican option as a way of undermining President Donald Trump’s influence for the next two years, I’d have to retort that some people truly are dangerous in the way they try to use historic allusions to defend nonsensical historic claims.

Figures such as FDR, along with … 

Yet this woman’s Facebook ramblings are not unique. I’m sure I will hear similar nonsense-thoughts expressed again even after “Election ‘18” is long over-and-done with.

NOW I’M NOT about to deny that the original Republican Party that our state’s very own “Honest Abe” was a part of was eager to maintain the “union” of our nation, and was the opposition to the segregationists who were more than willing to engage in war to preserve the “Southern Way of life” that included chattel slavery.

… JFK and LBJ (below) influenced Dems shift … 

After our nation’s (very un-)Civil War, it was the structure of the Democratic Party that elected government officials who tried to evade the spirit of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments to the Constitution that essentially granted equality to all regardless of race by giving us the policies of “Jim Crow” throughout the South.

… away from segregation ways, … 

But anybody who thinks that’s the extent of the story is spewing nonsense more fake than anything Donald Trump has tried to proclaim as truth.

The reality is that the political parties began to shift back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president – who expressed some support for more progressive ideals and made them a part of the Democratic platform. Although one could honestly say FDR’s support for such ideals were more the doing of first lady Eleanor who got him to do things he might not otherwise have bothered with.

THEN CAME THE Civil Rights years of the 1950s-60s, which John F. Kennedy gave lip service to, but became reality with Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964.

… so naturally, Trump admires Jackson

That act passed with an off-beat combination of Democrats and just enough Republicans who didn’t oppose integrationist ideals to overcome those political people who seriously thought there was truth to the slogan, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow, and Segregation forever!”

As for those who thought there was legitimacy to the “old ways,” they were the ones who made the shift from the Democrats to the Republicans, led largely by the influence of Richard Nixon and later by Ronald Reagan who made the "seggies" feel welcome to the point where their grandchildren now run the GOP and make it quite less grand every time Trump opens his mouth.

Which means those people who try to claim that Democrats are the party of segregation and the old horrid ways are ignoring the massive transformation that occurred in our political structure.

NIXON: Won on a 'Southern' strategy

WHAT MAKES IT more ridiculous is when those same people try to argue that the reason the Democrats no longer represent what they view as “real” people is because of this shift. As though Dems gave up public interests to focus on these racial issues.

I also find it odd that Trump himself has often tried to claim a bipartisan nature of his own political ideology by claiming support and admiration for the presidency of Andrew Jackson. That early 19^th Century figure who was one of the first Democrats to be elected president and who often was backed by those who saw a sense of legitimacy to the old segregationist ways of our society.

Personally, I think people are entitled to vote how they want to. I comprehend that some black voters find a sense of hypocrisy in backing Democrats who seem more concerned with their own self-interests than anything involving the electorate.

So if this woman doesn’t want to vote for Democrats, that’s her business. Just realize that I (and just about anybody who’s ever read a history book of any type) are going to disregard her thoughts as the nonsense-ramblings of an ideologue – which actually is what she has in common with our incumbent president.

  -30-

Will ballots cast for familiar names be enough to overcome self-spending?

Will the son of Richard J. ...

Looking at the campaign finances for the candidates wishing to become Illinois governor, it was interesting to see that fringe candidate Daniel Biss raised more money ($1.015 million) than both Chris Kennedy AND Ameya Pawar combined.

But Biss’ campaign fund doesn’t even come close to that of J.B. Pritzker, who barely raised a dime. The 9-1 fundraising advantage Pritzker held over Biss during the past three months was solely because Pritzker was wealthy enough to pay for his own campaign efforts.

... be able to provide this Kennedy nephew ...

WHICH MEANS DEMOCRATS may well have a candidate who won’t get totally buried by the self-funding efforts of Gov. Bruce Rauner, who himself outspends Pritzker by a 6-1 ratio with the money he provides – although much of the governor's efforts will go toward trying to get more Republicans elected to the General Assembly.

Rauner wants allies who will support his gubernatorial desires and follow orders!

There’s going to be a lot of money spent by candidates wishing to spread their messages of ill-will toward their opposition. We’re going to be flooded with negative messages about how we’d be completely stupid to consider casting ballots for certain candidates.

Better we should go with THE OTHER guy. Nobody’s going to really tell us why we should vote for them. It will be an ugly campaign.

THAT IS WHY I find it interesting to see that Kennedy’s campaign has hired a new finance chairman – it’s Bill Daley, as in brother of Mayor Richard M., former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton.

... with similar political aid as in '60 cycle?

And let’s not forget that he was chairman of Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign of 2000.

Of course, as a former chairman of Amalgamated Bank, he has ties to many of the “big money” people of Chicago and can sway them into making significant campaign contributions to his candidate.

Which may well be the reason why Kennedy picked him. His is the campaign that raised $703,767.10 during the last reporting period, and spent $652,523.79 of it. This is not a campaign swimming in cash.

KENNEDY PROBABLY DREAMS that Daley can turn to his political contacts and get them to write out the significant-sized checks that would enable his campaign to come close to fully competing with the Pritzkers and Rauners of the political world.

Although it may be the general mood of this campaign season that we, the people, are too disgusted with government officials to want to make any kind of sizable donations. It may be that only the self-funded will be able to do much of anything.

That does seem to be the mentality of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who while he hasn’t made an official endorsement seems to like the idea of a Candidate Pritzker because he could afford to pay his own way.

Consider that Pritzker spent some $9 million during the past three months, and $14 million total thus far – all of which came from his own bank accounts.

BUT IT ALSO would be ironic if it turns out to be that a Daley winds up making it possible for a Kennedy to win voters in Illinois. You just know we’re going to get a ton of sarcastic comments from people recalling the rumor mill of the 1960 presidential election cycle.

BISS: Raised more than anyone, but nobody cares?

Can the son of Richard J. find a way to make the nephew of JFK the governor, similar to how old man Daley led the effort that got Jack Kennedy the Illinois Electoral College votes that helped him beat Richard Nixon for president?

Or is Kennedy just too far behind (even outraised by the state senator from Evanston)? Although we should acknowledge the polls that have shown at this early stage Kennedy still leads Pritzker and other candidates in voter support – the name does appear to mean something.

Particularly when one considers the most recent Morning Consult poll that showed Rauner with 49 percent disapproval rating (and only 40 percent approving of him). If he keeps that up, it may not matter how much money he spends on himself – a Democrat could wind up prevailing come that Nov. 6 of next year.

  -30-

EXTRA: How time passes

Some of us always want to think of the presidency of John F. Kennedy as a moment of youth and vigor being shot into our national psyche (while others want to think of it as the moment the “grown-ups” lost control).

White House and Chicago pols intertwined in the past

So what should we think of the fact that Kennedy, if he somehow magically were still alive, would now be 100?

IT WAS ON this date a century ago that Kennedy was born in Boston (he was 46 at the time of his death). We’re probably never going to come to a consensus as to how he should be regarded.

Chicago turned out vote for JFK

And we likely will forevermore dispute the significance Chicago and its electorate played in his 1960 ascension to the White House. Or just how much in debt the Kennedys were to Mayor Richard J. Daley in turning out the vote that put Illinois in his Electoral College column that led to victory?

Although the part that most astounds me over the idea of a centenarian Kennedy is that it means his “first lady,” Jacqueline (whom we perpetually envision in her youthful form) would herself now be 87!

Of course, that’s not the only “anniversary” we could be acknowledging this day. There’s always the labor dispute that got ugly in the South Deering neighborhood on Memorial Day eighty years ago.

ANYBODY WHO THINKS that the Chicago police conduct of the 1968 Democratic Convention protests was an isolated incident doesn’t know of the protest that turned ugly when Republic Steel officials called the police – who then came in, began beating picketers and wound up killing 10 men (all of whom were local residents who worked at the plant).

A leftover structure from the old Republic Steel plant

It’s no wonder that neighborhood residents still pay an annual tribute to those who died. And the fact that Daley himself always tried to justify the police conduct of ’68 by saying no one was killed as a result.

Just one discrepancy, for those who want to nitpick.

The actual date of Memorial Day back in ’37 was May 30. So it will be 80 years ago Tuesday that people lost their lives at a now-remote site along Avenue O.

  -30-

EXTRA: JFK, LBJ on hand as Sox win!

Just a little video snippet I stumbled across in my search to shift my mind away from the continued agony of our current president-elect, while also coping with the fact that baseball is no longer being played until March, with the coming of the World Baseball Classic tourney that will conclude at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

I’d like to think this could be a bipartisan snippet, although I’m sure there will be some crackpot upset that John F. Kennedy got his moment in the sun throwing out the first pitch of the season on Opening Day at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., in 1961 – where the Senators began their season against the Chicago White Sox.

IS ANYBODY STILL carrying a grudge that it wasn’t “President Nixon” elected eight years earlier than he wound up being in reality?

For what it’s worth, three White Sox pitchers combined to defeat former White Sox pitcher Dick Donovan in a 4-3 game on April 10.

The White Sox that year finished fourth place, ahead of the ninth place Senators. And the rest of baseball was absorbed by all the attention paid to Mantle/Maris in New York and whether either could top “The Babe” in home runs for the season.

  -30-

EXTRA: Treasurer-elect Mike Frerichs

It seems we finally have a new state treasurer. And no, we didn’t have to endure a lengthy legal fight along the lines of the Gore v. Bush battle of 2000.

It was Wednesday morning that Republican nominee Tom Cross decided to concede defeat to Democrat Mike Frerichs in the Nov. 4 elections. Even Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider went along and issued a statement along those lines, although he seemed more interested in praising Cross than admitting GOP defeat.

THEN AGAIN, I don’t think Frerichs – a state senator from Champaign -- cares, so long as the record shows he got more votes than did Cross – a state representative from Oswego and former Illinois House Republican leader.

For the record, it seems that Frerichs got about 9,400 more votes than did Cross – taking barely over 48 percent of the vote to Cross’ just under 48 percent. The remainder of the ballots actually cast went to Libertarian nominee Matthew Skopek.

There are those who are ranting that Chicago and suburban Cook County “stole” the election – mostly from people who truly do not comprehend how small their rural counties are compared to the inner part of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Although for those who were going out of their way during the past two weeks to see daily updates about the vote (as assorted mail-in and provisional ballots continued to be counted) noticed that Frerichs crept into the lead earlier this week and managed to hold it BEFORE the final Chicago/suburb totals were in.

FOR THOSE WHO want to think Chicago rammed a Democrat through as state treasurer against their will, it would seem that what the Chicago-area vote did was bolstered the margin of victory.

Instead of winning by a few hundred votes, Frerichs becomes treasurer-elect by a figure just low-enough that it can’t be rounded off to 10,000.

Which is still a close result for a statewide election in which about 3 million people cast ballots. If anything, it may be some of those outer counties that kept Cross from the office that way too many political observers wanted to believe he was going to win.

Frerichs actually won Will County with 58.5 percent of the vote, and also took north suburban Lake County. And his suburban Cook percent was only 53.67 percent.

WHICH COULD WELL be why Cross chose not to get involved in any kind of demand for a recount – which is not something Illinois law allows for on an automatic basis.

He saves himself significant legal expenses, leaves open the option of a political future (by not being a sore loser), and only manages to offend the hard-core Republican partisans who can’t get over the fact that having a gubernatorial nominee who took 101 of 102 counties does NOT mean a political wipeout of the opposition.

As for those who are going to rant about “stolen” elections, I don’t think the rest of us should be too concerned. Those people were going to be offended no matter what happened – and they’ll probably revert back to ranting about Kennedy/Nixon of 1960 before long.

  -30-

Kennedy niche in our collective memory only now coming into focus

We’re at the half-century mark – 50 years Friday since the moment when someone with objections to then-President John F. Kennedy’s existence decided to take the matter into his own hands with a rifle.

Half century-old newsprint ...

Yet in the very acknowledgement of the fact that it takes time for the people to figure out what they think about anything, it is not the least bit surprising that it is only now we’re starting to figure out what we think of those two-and-a-half years that Kennedy was president.

WE’RE ALL NOW realizing that those ideologues of the 1960s who screeched and screamed that Kennedy was a subversive were just being ridiculous. A pair of recent polls by the Gallup Organization shows that not only does Kennedy get the highest-overall approval rating of 20^th Century presidents, he also has the closet partisan split.

Both people of Democratic and Republican partisan leanings look favorably on the days of JFK. By now, enough time has passed that the trash talk of the past has withered away.

Now my point is not to present a Kennedy love-fest of any kind. Personally, I think the man died way too soon before he could accomplish acts that would have given his presidency a lasting legacy.

JFK and the whole concept of the “New Frontier” and “Camelot” is all about a promise that went unfulfilled.

BUT IT SEEMS to take us time to make that realization. As evidenced by another recent Gallup poll – one that judged the most recent presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Republican partisans are determined to believe that Obama will ultimately be judged by history as the worst president.

... making somebody rich on eBay. But, ...

Although if the experience we had in Chicago in coping with the “Council Wars” of the mid-1980s is any evidence, it seems that the people who ultimately will be remembered as the “worst” are the ones whose ideological taint is such that they devoted all their time to thwarting Obama.

There are those people amongst us who are going to have to come up with some serious apologies for their current actions – or else live with the permanent taint of scuzziness that they’re painting themselves with now!

... how much of its "fact" ...

IT MAY WELL turn out to be the worst thing we will be able to say about Obama is that he was too weak and ineffectual to crush his political opposition – thereby preventing him from achieving his accomplishments.

Of course, this isn’t a one-way political game – those with Democratic Party leanings are determined to believe the years of Bush, the younger, will turn out to be remembered as the “worst” presidency of our time (too many of us don’t pay attention to anything before our time).

Some are determined to believe he will rank worse than Richard M. Nixon – although that would be an accomplishment since Gallup found evidence that he’s the one presidency that can unite the parties in the ill-will they remember of it.

Although my own comical memory of the demise of Nixon was that on the day he resigned, an encyclopedia salesman literally showed up at my parents’ doorstep. He literally had a display book to tout his product that included the fact that Gerald R. Ford had risen to replace the president – even though that had become official just a few hours before!

BUT AS FOR the Nixon/Kennedy campaign prior or the events of 50 years ago Friday, I can’t play that “game” some people like to talk about – the one in which they reminisce about where they were at the exact moment they learned Kennedy was shot.

I didn’t exist. My mother used to reminisce about the day (and when I was a kid used to keep Kennedy memorial tribute issues of Life magazine tucked away in a drawer). But it was another nine months before she and my father married – and nearly two years before I was born.

... still holds up today?

I actually wonder what she would have made (she passed away just over three years ago) of all the hoo-hah being spread about Friday. Here’s hoping that those of us still amongst us who remember the day have goals of what could have been achieved had Kennedy survived actually become reality someday.

And that the day will come when we can reach a non-ideological view of what our most recent presidents have meant to us.

  -30-

EXTRA: We're focused on No. 16. But what would Lincoln (really) think?

Perhaps it is appropriate that Illinois is the 16^th governmental entity in the United States to pass into law a measure that permits gay couples the same option to be in a legal marriage as anyone else.

Pols wish they were Lincoln, but would he want them?

For Abraham Lincoln – the public official whom many political people like to emulate themselves after – was the 16^th president of our nation.

AND GOV. PAT Quinn couldn’t help but try to bring some Lincolnesque atmosphere into play when he performed the ceremonies that made the law effective in Illinois – come June 1.

Quinn had a desk that once belonged to Lincoln set up for him at the UIC Forum, and he used it to actually sign the bill into law.

Supposedly, Lincoln used the desk when he wrote one of his inaugural addresses. Perhaps people can fantasize that he used it while writing the Gettysburg Address whose memory we have been celebrating in recent weeks.

It’s probably a cheap piece of furniture that meant little to Lincoln personally. But it isn’t unusual for politicians from Illinois to try trotting out Lincoln artifacts in hopes it gives them more credibility.

I RECALL WHEN then-Secretary of State George Ryan conducted a drawing in 1991 (that wound up giving the Republican Party’s operatives control over the redistrict process for that decade). Ryan came up with a glass bowl that supposedly once belonged to Lincoln.

Perhaps it was once a bowl containing some pieces of fruit in the Lincoln home living room. But it gained an aura not otherwise worthy of 1840s glassware.

Other politicians have produced stove-pipe hats that supposedly were once worn by Lincoln – hoping it would bolster the significance of their actions.

QUINN: Wanted Lincoln-esque aura

So Quinn dredging up a Lincoln desk? We should have expected it.

THAT DOESN’T MEAN, however, that we should think of Wednesday’s actions as being all that more important. It had enough significance that we followed in the path of Iowa and Minnesota – but seem to be far ahead of Indiana when it comes to the gay marriage issue.

In the latter state, the conservative ideologues are determined to take a stance on behalf of Hoosierdom – they’re pushing for an amendment to the Indiana state Constitution that would specify marriages for gay couples would NOT be legitimate.

Based on the reporting coming out of Indianapolis, it seems like the GOP leaders wish this issue would go away. They’re not about to do anything to follow in the lead of Illinois – and may well be the last Midwestern U.S. state to get with the program on this issue.

But will they be dragged all the way the other way?

IT WOULD REINFORCE the belief I have (as a result of personal observation throughout the years) that there are those within the GOP who are ashamed that their political party was once commonly known as the “Party of Lincoln.”

Yet I also think that when Democratic Party operatives try to spew talk that if Lincoln were alive today, he’d be a Dem! Even though I found it interesting to hear Newton Minow Wednesday on the "Chicago Tonight" program that John F. Kennedy himself wanted to visit Lincoln's Springfield home the first time he ever visited the capital city in 1956.

A Dem tie? That may be too much of a stretch. Yet I can’t help but think he’d be appalled on some level on the idea that the political party he helped to create (Lincoln was the first Republican ever elected president) has gone so far the opposite direction.

KENNEDY: Respected the Lincoln mood

Would he be shaking his head in shame? Would he feel empathy for gay people that he appeared to feel for black people – even if there is rhetorical evidence he considered them too different to ever fit in with the masses of this nation?

IT MAKES ME wonder. Lincoln in his lifetime was a member of the Whig Party who converted to Republicanism. The idea of political change was in him – even if the Dems on Wednesday tried to play off his image as being one of them.

Could he well be the leader of a legitimate third party if he were around in the 21^st Century? One that would show the Tea Party types to be a batch of dinks too wrapped up in themselves to acknowledge the greater good?

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not sure I really think Wednesday's bill-signing ceremony was "historic" in nature. But the Catholic ritual of exorcism that took place in Springfield, Ill., would be considered comical -- if not for the fact that it feeds into the hateful beliefs that ought to be exorcised from our society.
 

How much of today’s political rhetoric will someday be apologized for as silly?

It will be 150 years this week since Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address – his brief speech at the battlefield-turned-cemetery that helped to put the Civil War into a high, moral context – rather than just a bloodbath.

Significance not immediately realized

Yet there were those who disparaged Lincoln during his lifetime. He truly was a person who could never have comprehended the glory with which his image is now draped, based on anything that happened during his lifetime.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, the Harrisburg Patriot-News newspaper in Pennsylvania went so far as to apologize for what its predecessor (the Patriot & Union newspaper) wrote about the speech when it occurred.

The Patriot-News “regrets the error” that the Patriot & Union wrote that Lincoln made “silly remarks” that were motivated by partisan politics.

“Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time,” were mistaken in their coverage, the 21^st Century take of the Harrisburg-based newspaper wrote.

Now I’m not about to say whether or not a reporter-type of the past was intoxicated (anything’s possible). Nor am I going to rant about how this correction was self-serving and did nothing more than to get a local paper some national attention.

Reason for recent presidential criticism

BUT WHEN I learned of this editorial, it couldn’t help but make me think of our modern-day situation. One in which our current president gets all the abuse the ideologues think he is worthy of, and where anyone who doesn’t share in their rancid rhetoric gets decried as somehow being “un-American.”

And with the fact that the Affordable Care Act’s implementation isn’t going smoothly, there are those who are willing to pile on to the president as well.

It should not be any surprise that the president’s approval rating isn’t all that high these days (40 percent approval rating, according to the Gallup Organization, with 53 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance).

There’s also a recent Gallup poll that says only 28 percent of people questioned think Obama will be remembered as an “outstanding” or “above average” president, with 31 percent saying he’ll be “average” and 40 percent saying he’ll be remembered as “below average/poor.” That's far from the worst -- both Presidents Bush are thought of less-highly, as are former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon.

An impression from JFK's own time

THAT STUDY FOUND that John F. Kennedy (who this week will have been deceased for 50 years – too many morbid “anniversaries” in coming days) is regarded the most-highly in history amongst recent presidents.

Although I can recall many studies throughout the years that show Kennedy’s legacy approval rating, so to speak, bouncing up-and-down depending on the circumstances.

My point being that these things are flexible. They’re alterable. Nothing is carved in stone.

I wonder what it will be like when much of the rhetoric we hear and read about Obama these days will sound ridiculously dated, or just ridiculous.

WE PROBABLY SHOULD remember that much of the trash-talk Lincoln faced was just as over-the-top as what Obama gets these days – particularly from the ranks of trash-talk radio that seeks to make money by appealing to their Tea Party-type listeners.

Apology owed, although not likely to ever come

It has been eight years since I visited the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and my most vivid memory was of the exhibit devoted to the nasty rhetoric. Literally getting to read the libelous stories and commentary and hearing some of the slurs read aloud.

There are a lot more publications than the Patriot-News that probably owe Lincoln’s legacy an apology. How many publications are going to have their future incarnations issuing apologies to Obama (probably long after he’s departed this Earth) for the things they wrote, or allowed to be said without challenging them?

Will they be able to get away with just an apology – that will come across as self-serving in the future as the one Lincoln got earlier this month?

  -30-

EXTRA: Trying hard to be quotable?

“America is not about what can be done for us. It is about what can be accomplished by us” – President Barack Obama, victory speech at the McCormick Place.

  -0-



BIDEN: A new and lasting nickname?

It struck me that Barack Obama was trying to speak for the ages, just like there are times when I try writing a commentary out of the misguided notion that I’m writing a piece of copy that has the potential to be read for ages.

It usually results in some overblown copy that reads more pompous than anything else.

WHICH IS WHAT I kind of thought of the victory speech Obama gave early Wednesday at the McCormick Place.

That particular line he spoke struck me as an attempt to remind us of the famed John F. Kennedy line about “asking not” what we can get from our country, but what we can do for it.

Yet somehow, Kennedy comes off as more eloquent.

Obama even managed to try to steal from himself – specifically from that speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston which was the moment when most people in this country first heard of the then-state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood.

OR DO YOU think his line “We remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forevermore will be, the United States of America” was something we’ve never heard before?

If anything, the moment of originality may well have come from Obama’s labeling of Vice President Joe Biden as the “happy warrior.” Will Biden ever live down that label?

Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh on Obama. Inspirational rhetoric doesn’t come along every day.

Just as we also ought to consider the concession speech given by Mitt Romney – which I have largely already forgotten. At least he didn’t say something stupid that we’d forever remember him for!

  -30-