ONCE IN A GENERATION

‘CRITICAL ELECTION’

Republican domination for decades?

POLICY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: DO APPOINTEES REALLY MATTER?

By Alan Z. Forman

The Democrats just got walloped but they refuse to comprehend the debilitating fallout from it yet.

For they were annihilated not just by the Re-publicans… but by the entire country.  

And not simply beaten to a pulp by President Trump, but unlikely to recover for at least a generation, depending on how successful (or unsuccessful) the 47th President turns out to be. 

The jury however is still out on that, and may well be for quite some time to come. But if the country perceives the outcome of an election as a landslide, then that’s just what it is: a landslide. And in the current case, a mandate as well.

In America, in politics, as with the stock market, perception is often more important than reality.

Case in point:  The Democratic Party has fallen victim to what all indicators portend to be a seismic shift in the national electorate — a “critical election” — as identified by the great political scientist of the late 20th Century, Walter Dean Burnham, a protégé of the legendary V.O. Key, Jr., who was the most prominent political theorist to ever study voting patterns and behavior in the United States.  

Among other prescient observations, Key likened politics to a “contest” linking the changing patterns of public opinion to the governmental system.  And Burnham identified what he termed “Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics” in his landmark 1970 book that focused on how party systems in America generally prevail for several decades but are then upended by an election so momentous as to literally crush the party in power and bring about long-term change in voter thinking and identification. 

In Burnham’s thesis a critical election occurs in every generation, when a charismatic president gets elected and brings about a tectonic shift in voter identification in the country, literally decimating the party in power.  The latest occurred in 1932 with the landslide victory of Franklin Roosevelt over incumbent President Herbert Hoover, when the country — which had identified as Republican since Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s — metamorphosed virtually overnight and became Democrat… which has endured to this day until it crashed and burned on November 5, 2024.

Burnham thought the Reagan election of 1980, when Jimmy Carter and the Democrats were soundly repudiated, would turn out to be a critical election, but the monumental shift failed to occur despite domination by the GOP for the next three presidential terms… only to be upended by Bill Clinton’s stunning reversal of the trend in 1992.

THE GREAT GURU OF WOKE

The Trump election of 2024 however appears to be quite different:  The Democrats have been left not just leaderless but in total disarray by Donald Trump.  Not even the Great Guru of Woke, Barack Obama, can save them from themselves, nor has he been able to rise and lead the party, having decimated his credibility with his own constituency by ordering young black men to vote for Kamala Harris solely because she’s black (and female), and then doubling down in subsequent days when the constituency turned against him.

His lavish properties and lifestyle also do not enable him to identify favorably with the working class.  Whereas Trump, despite his billionaire status, is able to do so with ease:  for example, riding on a garbage truck and “working” at McDonald’s.

(Had Obama not been so imperious as to refuse to walk back his racist order to the young black men, he might have survived the indiscretion and continued as party leader — but that’s a topic for another time.)

Time will tell if this thesis holds up, but all indicators are that it is the order of the day.  The Democrats have no leader, and no identifiable purpose going forward.  For all the handwringing and recriminations — and blame, yes blame — that’s being bandied about in feeble attempts to explain their massive failure and betrayal in the years leading up to and including 2024, they fail (or refuse) to recognize their real dilemma:  They are doomed to futility caused by the debacle of their own making.

Instead they scramble mightily to sabotage in advance everything the President-Elect may try to do, irrespective of and tone-deaf to the damage that any failed presidency does to the country, regardless of which party may be in power.

The first major party realign-ment in America happened when Vice President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Re-publican, defeated incum-bent President John Adams, who was a Federalist, in 1800; when Democrat An-drew Jackson came to power in 1829; when Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was elected in 1860; and in modern times, when Franklin Roosevelt overwhelmingly defeated Herbert Hoover in 1932 following decades of GOP domination since the early part of the century. 

What defines these elections as “critical” is that national party identification shifted dramatically and continued until the next “critical election.”  As such, America has been a Democrat country since FDR — but now appears to be shifting to Republican domination.

The incoming Trump Administration promises to be a model of efficiency, notwithstand-ing the political opinions of its admirers and detractors.  It matters little who the Presi-dent’s nominations and appointees to the cabinet and other top jobs are:  None of these people will be making policy; they will merely be administrators assigned to carry out the wishes of the White House.

It’s patently obvious that policy will be made personally by President Trump, in concert with his longtime aide and trusted advisor Stephen Miller, who as Deputy Chief of Policy is now the most powerful person in Washington next to Trump himself, tasked with enforcing all edicts from the White House.

THESE EMPLOYEES ARE ADMINISTRATORS

Miller will be the President’s policeman and enforcer, and he will oversee every federal department and cabinet secretary; and if anyone steps out of line that person will be reprimanded and/or fired straightaway.  It does not mean the Cabinet’s not important — it is — but we need to understand that these employees of the President, even at the highest level, are administrators, not policymakers.

The Senate would do well to recognize that in the confirmation process.

How this plays out will determine the effectiveness of the Trump Revolution.  But what-ever happens, it will be a dramatic change from the leaderless government the country has been subjected to in recent years — and which continues into the present — where no one seems to know who’s making major decisions or who’s in charge.

The Left’s been rendered leaderless, its head has been chopped off. It may well not recover for at least a quarter-century… maybe more.

So, welcome to the new world order in Washington!  If Key and Burnham’s thesis is correct in 2024 (as it has been historically proven), it will be the way of life in America for many years, and possibly even decades, to come.

alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org

Republican Ronald Reagan, right, defeated President Jimmy Carter in the Election of 1980, after attacking the incumbent for his downbeat whining regarding a “malaise” in America.

Can the 2020 polls be trusted?

THE “WRONG” CANDIDATE,
POISONOUS VITRIOL… AND
THE DEVIL THAT WE KNOW
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Jimmy Carter lost the Presidential Election of 1980 by a landslide largely because of what he correctly identified as a “crisis in confidence” in America that became popularly known as his “Malaise Speech.”

Unemployment was rising; inflation had run rampant; interest rates were sky-high… and Amerian hostages had been held in Iran for over a year, as citizens were forced to wait long hours in service station lines and could only fill their cars’ gas tanks on alternate days.

The nation faced a deep “dark winter,” not unlike the one Joe Biden is spreading gloom & doom about right now.

Carter delivered the speech in July 1979 from the Oval Office in the White House after sequestering himself for 10 days at Camp David seeking advice on what to do.

But did America give up? Did the nation cower in fear because the President was shuddering… and shutting-down inside the White House and Camp David? hiding in the basement as it were.

No…. Because a year later Ronald Reagan exemplified a message of supreme confidence and hope, which he rode to an electoral vote landslide that put an end to Jimmy Carter’s ominous message of impending calamity and disaster.

Carter was correct: America was in a malaise. But tragically for him — and us — he failed to comprehend the responsibility of great leaders to shore up confidence among the population, to remind the citizens of the greatest nation ever to exist on the face of the earth that they could overcome any and all adversity simply by thinking positive, acting upbeat, working together to achieve results… even miracles.
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              November 6, Election Day 2018

But if either side tomorrow wins big, it will not be good for America:

A “blue tide” will mire the country in presidential and possibly judicial impeachment proceedings to the extent that Congress will get nothing done for many months or even years to come.

A “red tide” will anoint an unpopular President and render him unstoppable.

Historically in America, the incumbent president’s party loses seats in Congress in the midterm election when the president is not on the ballot. Hence the conventional wisdom/expectation that the current Republican majority in the House of Representatives will diminish if not disappear in tomorrow’s election — a factor which ordinarily would have little to do with Donald Trump personally.

However the Democrats and the President himself have made Trump the major factor in this midterm election even though he is not running in 2018, a virtually unprecedented occurrence for which the pollsters seem to have no valid benchmark on which to base predictions.

In the last hundred years there have only been three times that the president’s party has gained congressional seats in the midterm election, and each of those times the president himself was a major factor in the election even though he was not on the ballot.

The first occurrence was when Franklin Roosevelt was President in 1934, two years following his landslide victory over Herbert Hoover; and his enormous popularity resulting from bold moves to lift the country out of the Great Depression made him a personal favorite in the balloting that year. In 1934 the Democrats increased their majority in the House by nine votes.

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The Topless Gospel Choir, by Hal Riedl, is currently available on Amazon for $2.99. Click here to purchase on Kindle

THE CITY’S NOT NAMED, BUT IT’S OBVIOUS;
THE VICTIM’S A STATE PAROLE OFFICIAL;
THE SUSPECTS ARE BEYOND NUMBER

Written by Hal Riedl, an ex-Dept. of Corrections
case management specialist and book reviewer
for The Sunday Sun, it’s available from Amazon
for $2.99  Click here to purchase on Kindle
 
When the wife of the State Parole Commission Chairman comes home from an early-morning run, she finds her husband dead on the front sidewalk, having been dispatched by a professional assassin with two bullets at the top of his spine.

A senior prosecutor and a detective are assigned to represent the City — which is never named, but based on Baltimore — on a task force assembled by State Patrol. The Governor is said to assign the highest priority to the apprehension and prosecution of the killers.

An excerpt from Riedl’s The Topless Gospel Choir follows below, with more available on Amazon (click here) along with purchase information.

This is the city primeval.
The murmuring Bloods and the Dreadlocks
Meet to package their poison.
Their guns and their phones are stood down,
Their mules and their mouthpieces gather.
A shipment of untold proportions
Bids fair to make them all rich.

Leo’s epic poem, his way to kill time in court until the judge comes out.

The cellphone dings. A text reads, “Get your ass outside and call me. Lulu.”

Leo knows he has time until the judge appears. Nothing’s going on in chambers, but Vance never comes out before 10. It’s a matter of principle, of lordship, with him. Let the teeming marketplace of the criminal docket seethe and fret, a judge has his dignity and his blood pressure.

The crowd in the long dim echoing corridor is thick. Baby mothers with small children; grandmothers, defendants on bail, defense counsel on cellphones; cops in their civilian best, their ID badges on lanyards round their necks; a few folks looking lost and frightened — witnesses, most likely. The karma in this place, Leo thinks, is horrid. If these walls could talk, they would scream.

He finds the unoccupied end of a corridor bench and calls Lulu. That would be Louise. Where does she get off texting him like this? She thinks intimidation works, but it only browns him off. Still, he might as well get it over with. She won’t let up until she hears from him. He punches in her number for a live conversation.

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Journey, A Western is Baltimore-born author Stephen H. Foreman’s latest novel. He discusses it here exclusively on Voice of Baltimore and will do so again publicly at a June 17th reading at The Ivy Bookshop on Falls Road.

HOMEGROWN NOVELIST
TO DISCUSS HIS LATEST
PUBLICATION JUNE 17
AT THE IVY BOOKSHOP

Stephen Foreman grew up here
and was locally educated,
a graduate of City College
and Morgan State University
 
What follows is a brief synopsis of the novel, available at The Ivy Bookshop and on Amazon.com (Click  here  and here.)  Excerpts will be published by Voice of Baltimore in coming weeks.
 
By Stephen H. Foreman
 
Set in the early eighteen hundreds in the wild desert wilderness of New Mexico Territory, the novel Journey, A Western follows the lives of three distinctly different characters whose destinies are one.

There’s Journey herself – the name is short for Sojourner — a fiercely inde- pendent, horse-whispering 16-year- old of mysterious origins. Reuben Moon, the stoic half-Mexican, half- Apache hunter/tracker who raises her. And Esau Burdock, a brutal and pragmatic, wealthy slave trader.

The story opens on a November night in 1833, the sky on fire with meteors, each character alone, experiencing the storm. The narrative then delves into their individual histories.

Journey is born to a runaway slave who dies giving birth to her in the wilderness. Reuben comes upon the scene and manages to save the baby’s life. He raises her with Prita, a noseless Apache woman who was exiled for adultery, and Joel and Leah, a Quaker couple involved in the Underground Railroad.

Reuben loses both his parents by the time he is eight, his mother to cholera and his father to a Comanche raid. After witnessing the murder, he is raised as a Comanche captive. With an unnervingly natural talent for horses, he lives among them, and is eventually allowed as a young man to go free.

Esau is born to a petty criminal on the streets of London and is caught red handed at age 14 and given a choice: hang or go to New Orleans in indentured servitude. Over the years he claws his way up the ranks, and through grit and many would say evil, becomes a massively successful plantation master in New Mexico Territory.

JOURNEY JOINS THE RACE BUT DOESN’T WIN

Journey, Reuben, and Esau’s stories collide in the summer of 1834 when Esau holds a rendezvous of horse racing and trading.

Despite being only 16, and a girl at that, Journey joins the race. She doesn’t win, but she’s caught the attention of Esau. A year later, a mountain lion is terrorizing the area and Esau comes across Journey and Reuben in the desert as he hunts for it.

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