This Article will meander between objective analysis and subjective reflection on the 2016 General Election. Statistics cited herein were taken from the “unofficial” results from the Lake County website.
Lake County Voting
More than 206,000 Lake County voters (nearly 57% of registered voters) turned out to cast a ballot. Of those voting on the issue, nearly 81% approved Indiana’s new “right to hunt” Constitutional Amendment. Though unopposed to regulated hunting and fishing, the CLB opposed the Amendment which would also prevent local regulation of fur trapping and the “hunting” of confined animals. See the CLB Featured Article of August 12, 2016 titled “At Ballot’s End and My Digression.”
In the Presidential race the Clinton/Kaine ticket garnered an unimpressive 57.67% of the Lake County tally. Errant son Evan Bayh fared somewhat better at 61.86% in the Senate race. In the race for Governor the Gregg/Hale ticket scored 64.66% of the Lake County vote, just ahead of fellow Democrats Lorenzo Arredondo (running for Attorney General) at 64.62% and incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz at 64.30%. Though winning in Lake County, all the Democrats named in this paragraph lost statewide to Republican opponents who had a very good day on November 8th.
Who led the Lake County Democratic ticket? I omit from consideration those office winners who ran unopposed or whose district is less than all of Lake County…And the Winner is Marissa McDermott, Judge-Elect of the Lake Circuit Court with 65.42% of the vote. She beat, among others, Clinton, Bayh, and Gregg. Hail Marissa!
All seven Lake Superior Court Judges standing for retention were approved by a comfortable margin. The two Court of Appeals Judges who were on Calumet Region ballots were likewise retained by comfortable margins. Since the 1970’s adoption of the “merit selection” of Lake Superior Court Judges, only two have lost a retention vote. I can think of at least three other Lake Superior Court Judges (no longer in office) who survived a retention vote despite serious deficits in their judicial fitness. It may be time to raise the retention bar to require more than a simple majority for the retention of a Lake Superior Court Judge. Raising the retention bar to 55% or 60% would be a way of challenging our Lake Superior judges to excel in office.
The Presidency and the Deal-Breaker
We all knew that Donald Trump would win Indiana’s electoral votes, but the Trump electoral vote (as opposed to popular vote) nationally was a surprise to me, and probably to you. I agreed with political analysts who described the contest as being between two “deeply flawed” opponents. One notable difference was that Clinton was the anointed heir-apparent to lead the Democratic Party while Trump ascended by way of hostile takeover of the GOP, relying more on chaos than organization.
Though I remain (with some reluctance) a “big D” Democrat, I could not cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. The statistics from the first part of this Article suggest that I was not alone. Hillary came with too much baggage, even if we ignore Bill. While “perfection” will never be found in a politician and while you may never find a candidate whose values are exactly the same as yours, there are occasional deal-breaker events that render a candidate unacceptable regardless of all else. Consider Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon or George H. Bush’s “no new taxes” reversal.
With Hillary Clinton the deal-breaker moment for me arrived January 23, 2013 during her Benghazi hearing testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The background centered on the murders of four Americans at the virtually undefended U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The attack occurred when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and (thereby) responsible for security at U.S. diplomatic stations worldwide. Risk assessment, however, was not the sole responsibility of the State Department.
In the immediate wake of the Benghazi attack, the Obama administration deployed National Security advisor Susan Rice to proclaim a palpably false version of events. The official explanation was that the attack was a spontaneous (and thus unforeseeable) reaction to the release of a trailer for a proposed film critical of Mohammed. In fact, the attack came from an organized group of Islamic extremists whose credible threat had been ignored. When challenged to confess the truth about the nature of the attack Hillary responded: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” To Hillary I would say that TRUTH always makes a difference. When officeholders withhold the truth, they earn the suspicion of citizens. When officeholders lie to the public, they earn the contempt of citizens. While Hillary was not the source of the Benghazi lie, she was a defender of it. Goodbye, Hillary. Live well in your retirement. Any public lie (or other deception in avoidance of truth) from a politician concerning matters of government is a breach of the public trust and evidence of unfitness for office. So I say to politicians that you lie at your peril. To fellow voters I say that you are part of the problem when you forget or forgive those lies on election day or when you penalize a candidate for telling an inconvenient or unpopular truth.
The Presidential Apprentice and the Supreme Court
For the next year or so the CLB may refer to President-Elect Trump as the “Presidential Apprentice,” a description coined here to the best of my knowledge. Mr. Trump will have much to learn in a short time. While he is energetic, I am uncertain of his attention span. I wish him well in the endeavor. Those watching the “60 Minutes” segment aired November 13th saw a Donald Trump behaving like a President-Elect.
But what about the SCOTUS? The Scalia seat will remain open through the end of the Obama administration. Then “President” Trump will nominate (for Senate confirmation) a conservative, “pro-life” candidate for the seat. With a Republican majority, Trump’s first and subsequent nominees can look forward to confirmation. How many more SCOTUS vacancies should we expect? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83; Anthony Kennedy is 80; Stephen Breyer is 78. All the other Justices are under 70. It appears likely that at least one more Supreme Court vacancy will occur within the next four years. The current conservative majority will likely be preserved and strengthened in the coming Trump administration.
I would expect the SCOTUS to continue upholding Second Amendment rights. Roe v. Wade could be narrowed or overturned, sending the whole abortion issue back to the States. I would expect marriage equality to remain unchanged but without expansion of gender or sexual orientation rights generally. Conservative Justices may protect First Amendment free speech and free exercise rights while giving way on the Establishment clause by allowing government money to find its way to religious organizations. As for the Fourth Amendment, I worry about privacy in general and the Exclusionary Rule in particular.
A CLB prediction. Hillary Clinton disclosed her medical history of concussion, blood clots, and an underactive thyroid. There is very probably an undisclosed problem with her right 6th cranial nerve as evidenced by her eyes sometimes looking in different directions. The CLB predicts that before the end of 2017 there will be additional evidence of health problems known to Hillary and her doctors but undisclosed to the public.
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