Poster Saturday: For the Glory of Ireland

Brats

There has been protests, some of which have turned violent, about the election of Donald Trump.

Now, I didn't vote for Trump and frankly I don't care for him.  I didn't vote for Clinton either, and I think the Democratic Party received a huge wake up call on Tuesday.

And I also think we might have seen some of this had Clinton won.

But we are seeing it now that Trump has won.

Well, it was an election under the Democratic process.  People who are protesting, and who sympathize with the protests, essentially stand, intellectually, with Southern successionist in 1860.  I.e., if I can't be quarterback I'm taking my football and going home.  Time for them to grow up.

And yes Clinton took, albeit only barely, the popular vote, but the American process, designed to govern a spread out nation, places executive power in the hands of an individual who is chosen in a combined state/popular vote, combination.  This gives the people most of the say, but filtered through their home states.  This is what keeps every President from being a Californian or a Texas.

So they need to grow up.

And, on a final note, Liberals, who have changed their name recently to "Progressives", have become terribly anti democratic, which should give everyone pause.  A lot of the social change that they've been boosting in recently years, well. . . . all the way back to 1973, has come through the courts and is being foisted upon people.  A lot of the reason they have to deal with a President Trump now is because of the judicial coup given voice by Anthony Kennedy last year, which sparked a massive shift in the election demographics that's hardly been noted and is being misinterpreted.  The lesson there is that Liberals might actually have to try to convince voters that their ideas are sound, rather than simply sue their way into nirvana.  Pouting won't do it.

The Casper Weekly Tribune for November 10, 1916: Fine Wilson Sweep

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

The popular vote:

Trump: 47%:  59,611,678

Clinton:  48% 59,814,018

Johnson:  3%  4,058,500

Stein:  1%  1,213,103

Others:  .07%  802,119

A disappointing performance for Stein, given that she was trying to riff of the popular Sanders.  Not very impressive for Johnson either, whom some thought would do well.  That's probably at least 3,000,000 votes off of Trump, however.

Trump becomes President with a minority of votes cast.  Clinton took more, albeit only 200,000 more.  An example, perhaps, of every vote counting, or not, depending upon your view.

What's it mean?

I'll likely do a series of posts on what the recent election means, and lessons learned.

Of course, given my poor performance as a prognosticator in this election, the value of such articles may be fairly questionable.

Be that as it may, I think its interesting to note that fully vested organs of the hard left and hard right have already rushed to print with analysis that amounts to "we were right all along".  Right now, right wing comments of that type necessarily have more credence than those of the left, but the basic gist of some of these is "nope, nope, we've been right all along and don't have to listen to anyone" Suffice it to say they aren't rushing out to buy Thomas Frank's book "Listen, LIberal:  Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People.".  Put another way, simply reassuring yourself that you are right and everyone else is an idiot is an effective analytical tool

Anyhow, I'll put in my two cents, from the outside, here in coming posts.

For the meantime I'll merely note that one thing this election means is that relying upon people like Miley Cyrus to bring you voters is not a sound campaign strategy.

The 2016 Election

I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits.

It's been a wild election year.

Yesterday, Donald Trump won the Presidency.  I frankly thought that impossible.

As I noted here yesterday, I figured that the coronation of Hillary Clinton meant that her enthronement as President would merely need to be ratified yesterday.  I was sure off the mark, and badly so.

So was about 100% of the national press, I'd note ,which was discussing the inevitable Clinton victory as late ago as early last night.  What happened?

Well, a massive working class revolt against both parties happened.  After well over a decade of being lied to, they poked both parties in the eye.  

When this became inevitable or even probable is hard to say, but the Democrats deserve a lot of the blame or credit, depending upon your view, for trying to coronate a 1970s throwback that was widely despised.  Frankly, had Bernie Sanders been nominated by the Democrats he'd likely be yesterday's victor. But rather than do that, they went solidly with a candidate that nobody loved and who was consumed her entire life with politics.  Most people aren't consumed with politics and are disgusted with it right now. So the disgust flowed over onto her.

And the disgust was deserved.  Clinton had spent her entire life in politics in one way or another.  Her role in the Senate may have made sense to the people who voted for her, but to a lot of Americans elsewhere her relocation to New York appeared purely opportunistic.  Her association with her husband, who I never felt to be a bad President, left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people who recalled how she defended some of his bad personal conduct, and it further left people suspecting that her marriage had become a political wagon with a certain direction, whether that was right or wrong.  The Trump comment "such a nasty woman" struck the upper middle class and upper class elements of society as incredibly rude and sexists, but it sort of defined the way a lot of average people already viewed her.

Beyond that, and perhaps more significantly, she defined a certain 1970s view of the world that the Beltway Democrats have and which they deeply believe in, but which is not the same view held by huge segments of the Democratic base, let alone average Americans.  Existing as long ago as the 1920s, but coming up in the world following the disaster of Watergate, this world view virtually defines the Democratic Party's official outlook and has all but killed it off in rural areas which can find nothing to identify with in it.  This even translated to younger Democratic women who did not see a modern American female ideal that they felt any commonality with.  In turn, the old entrenched feminist in the Democratic Party were outright hostile to younger Democratic women whom they felt should shut up and take orders.

Everything combined meant that the Democratic Party nominated somebody who was deeply out of sync with the electorate. The GOP nominated one that was deeply despised indeed, but not in the same way that Clinton was.  We learned yesterday that there were a lot of Democrats and independents who had supported Sanders and detested Trump and Clinton, but forced into a choice, the populist message of Trump called more than the 1970s vision of Clinton.

But that also tells us that a large amount of the vote was based on absolute disgust.

And on to the entire system, quite frankly.

 Bea Arthur in an advertisement for Maud.  Arthur played the brash, loud, pants suit wearing feminist in two 1970s era television series.  For those who recalled it, Clinton tended to come across rather unfortunately as a character from Maud or at least from the era. Younger women never warmed up to her at all, and indeed people who weren't voting by the 1970s were left fairly cold.

Additionally, the late Democratic administration and things associated with it combined with things that have been brewing for a long time overwhelmed both parties.  It turns out that you cannot take in 1,000,000 immigrants a year and tell rust belt voters that they just need to adjust to the new economy, you can't tolerate shipping endless employers overseas and tell those voters that new better jobs will come, you can't tell people who can tell what gender they are actually in that people can determine their "own gender identify", and you can't threaten to reverse course on firearms possession when people have pretty much determined how they feel about that.

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Trump will have to act on his populist world view.  I'm certain that it will be only momentarily before the pundits will start opining about how Trump, now that he is the President Elect, will moderate his views, etc., but there is no reason whatsoever to believe that. So far, his entire behavior has been true to what appears to be his basic character. We can anticipate that he will continue to act that way. And an electorate that, essentially, voted to rip everything down wants it down.  I suspect, therefore, that's what we will get.

I also, quite frankly don't think that this is universally bad. As noted, I never supported Trump, and I did not vote for him yesterday.  I'm in the camp so disgusted by both political parties and their candidates that I could not bring myself to hold my note and vote like so many others did. But I do think that Trump will listen to the blue collar element of American society, and somebody needs to.  I do not think that this segment, which knows its being forced out of work by a combination of forces that are not of its own making, but which are more than a little the fault of policies favoring the wealthy, will be quiet.  Clinton would not really have done anything for those people other than to lament their status, Trump will have to do something.  And I also think that Trump will actually nominate justices to the Supreme Court who do not feel compelled to stick to it, such as Justice Anthony Kennedy or who have a social agenda that colors and informs their decisions.  Justices who decide the law are needed on the Court and I think they'll actually be appointed.

Who knows what else shall occur, however.

Locally, 818 Natrona County voters went for write in candidates, myself included, for President and Vice President.  That has to be a record.

And a warning.

If even here, in solidly Republican Natrona County, 818 voters said no to all the recognized parties, and that doesn't include those who voted for Johnson or Stein, something is really wrong  with the system.

Locally, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's locally repatriated Virginia daughter beat out Greene and has probably taken Wyoming's House seat in Congress for life, or at least until she wedges that into something else, which she almost certainly will.  The seat is the gift of two other candidates who were really from Wyoming and who destroyed each other, but who jointly took more votes in the primary than she did.  Hopefully she'll grow into her position and learn the lesson that the Democratic and Republican establishments did not on the national stage, that people love their local lives more than they do the big issues of any kind.  A local revolt with populist elements is brewing on these issues and it is not impossible that this will turn out to be a pain for politicians from this state who do not know which way the wind is blowing. While Cheney likely will hold her office no matter what, t his year did see a surprisingly resurgent Democratic Party in Wyoming and there is a growing and very active movement that's focused on public lands that isn't afraid of being very vocal.

More locally, Gerald Gay went down in defeat, a victim of statements he could not explain about women.  Gay was controversial in any event as he had sued fellow legislators and the Governor over matters recently and he may have been more set up to topple than people might have supposed.  His comments were inexplicable and did him in.  Dan Neal, whose campaign literature arrived in my mailbox every day for awhile, lost to Republican Jerry Obermuller.  In some ways, I think Neal may have been a victim of his supporters as his own mailings concentrated on public lands while his recent backers mailings urged support of him because of his support of abortion, LBGT rights and "reproductive health", which probably served to turn votes away from him. Being hugged enthusiastically by somebody who people doubt doesn't engender their support for you but Neal probably couldn't, maybe, have told them to shut up and go away, he was doing fine on his own.  Anyhow, at the close of his campaign the enthusiastic embrace by clearly left of center elements was probably just about as welcome as a big hug at your wedding reception from that lush of a girlfriend you never mentioned to your just married spouse.  Maybe he didn't know that.  Chuck Gray, young radio mouthpiece of the far libertarian right did get in, but the Democratic campaign against him was anemic.  I suspect that if Neal had contested with Gray, Neal would have won.  Todd Murphy, whose Facebook ravings brought attention to him in the press, did survive the sort of attention that Gay did not and ended up on the city council, to my enormous surprise.

The county commission was less surprising, with incumbents generally doing well.  A stable race, it seems.

Stripping Tobacco, 1916

LOC Title:  B.F. Howell, Route 4, Bowling Green, Ky. and part of his family stripping tobacco. The 8 and 10-year old boys in photo "tie up waste"; his 12-year old boy and 14-year old girl (not in photo but they lose a good deal of schooling for work) are regular strippers. Photo taken during school hours. Location: Bowling Green, Kentucky.  November 10, 1916.

Ah yes, the good old days. . . missing school to strip tobacco.

Enrico Caruso, November 9, 1916. They also work who sing.

 

Enrico Caruso, November 9, 1916. That cigarette couldn't have been good for that famous voice.

The Wyoming Tribune for November 9, 1916: Hughes leading.

Cheyenne Leader for November 9, 1916: Wilson leads

Pundit Fail

The election is far from over tonight, but I can't help but note that tonight, when I turned on the news, and only a couple of states were in, the pundits on the news channel I was watching had all but wrapped up the election in favor of Clinton, in spite of Trump being ahead.

Now, at 7:30 Mountain Time, they're stumbling all over themselves to explain why their predictions aren't turning out the way they thought.

I don't like either of these candidates. But its very hard not to feel that the press is very much a Clinton fan club in some ways.

Either candidate of the two major parties could win tonight. But the press has failed the nation, in my view.

The tumult and the shouting

I wonder if there's any chance that Facebook shall return to normal tomorrow or later this week. . . . to the extent it was normal.

Hmmm.

I guess that question answers itself.

The Laramie Republican for November 8, 1916. Results Uncertain

The Laramie Republican, however, was only will ing to go with "uncertain".

The Wyoming Tribune, the 3:30 edition. . not so sure now.

By 3:30 the Tribune was less certain, but still thought it was Hughes, probably.

And other news had crept back onto the front page.

Cheyenne State Leader for November 8, 1916. Getting the election right

The less dramatic leader, however, called the election correctly.

The first edition of the Wyoming Tribune for November 8, 1916: HUGHES WINS

Except he didn't.  The Tribune had been hoping for Hughes. . . perhaps a little too much?

Monday at the Bar and other things: Troubled Lawyers, Troubled Tribal Court, Deluded Law Students and Troubled Trials.

A veritable Monday morning cornucopia of legal stuff.

None of it particularly cheery, however.

And none of it having anything to do with tomorrow's election.  So maybe it's not as bad as it could be.  Indeed, all of the election stuff on this site today (which has been frankly over posting recently) pertains to the election of 1916.

At least that is one which we know how the story unfolds.

The November issue of the Wyoming Lawyer, or maybe it was the October issue (I don't tend to read them right away) recently arrived and I finally got around to perusing it.   It often takes me awhile, as I frequently do not find the articles to be terribly interesting, other than the new case synopsis. I can usually read anything it that I find interesting in about five minutes, which perhaps I should be embarrassed to admit.  This time, however, I was surprised by a couple of items.

The Wyoming State Bar has been really trying to draw attention to its Lawyers Assistance program.  It goes by an acronym I ought to remember, but I don't.  Anyhow, it has been doing this.  I guess a lot of states now have these.  These are all designed to try to aid lawyers that are having troubles in one fashion or another.  And by trouble I mean addictions or depression, and things of that type. 

As has been noted here before, lawyers are far more prone to these things than other professions.  Perhaps we always have been, but I doubt it.  I think the profession has evolved in that direction and frankly I think the forces that have created the conditions that give rise to these things are not going away soon.

Indeed, it's a bit disturbing to realize that the profession is basically running what amounts to field hospitals for its wounded.

 Medics in training, World War Two. . . analogy for the State Bar?

So once again, maybe, we have the unfortunate analogy between practicing law, and fighting in wars.  I know that seems a stretch, but when we start seeing an institution that is setting up crisis entities to deal with its own psychologically wounded. . .. hmm.

Anyway, the issue had articles by two lawyers I've worked in cases with.  I don't know either of them very well, but I do know them,.  In their articles they noted they had problems in the past and detailed them a bit.  One had problems years ago, and related taking them on when there was no help available.  I was, frankly, shocked as he's in the category of people I'd regard as a "big success". This fellow wasn't specific, but it sounds like he was struggling with anxiety issues or depression and ultimately sought help from his physician for it, who didn't really know what to do and sent him to a counselor.  Apparently that helped him out of that swamp.  He was recently, it was reported, an expert in a case and donated the fees for that to the State Bar's program. Pretty darned admirable. . . both to do that and to be willing to write about it.

The other article was by a lawyer younger than me who spoke of his battle with alcohol.  He related that this problem predated his entry into law school, so the law I suppose can't be blamed for that, but the program did help him in overcoming it.  He was apparently the first graduate of the Bar's program on that, and apparently it helped him where other programs hadn't.  Having worked with him, I was frankly shocked to learn that he had a problem. I'd never have guessed it.  Of course, maybe his story diverts a bit here as he didn't become an alcoholic, it should be noted, due to the practice of law, but entered it as one.  I sure have to say that I never realized that, but maybe being a lawyer sort of saved his life I guess, in a way.

Pretty brave of those guys to write those articles.

But, I think we have to confess that if even the big guns in the law, whom have what seem to be hugely successful practices, are driven into periods of despair there's something at work here and its not just the individuals.  Something bad.  And whatever it is, probably requires fundamental reform of a deep nature.  A line of work shouldn't be destructive to its practitioners.  Something here seems to be.  We lawyers like to claim that we have the best justice system in the world (something I frankly do not believe is true), but a system that destroys its own in surprising numbers isn't the "best".

Shortly after I read the article noted above, I was spending a tired morning working on something outside the office when a lawyer I know suddenly went off on the profession.  It shocked me as he's always seemed to be one of the happiest practitioners I've ever known, although recently he has seemed troubled and not himself.  Anyhow, in a totally unsolicited outburst, he really came down hard on the practice.  I'll not be able to think of him the same way again.

This is the second time I've had this happen in recent weeks. The first time was during a deposition in front of a subpoenaed office.  Here too, I was really surprised as I didn't expect this from these quarters. In that case, I only know the lawyer as an opponent in cases and I don't even really know him personally at all, although he's extremely gregarious. Again he seems a super happy

And that oddly led me to consider Law School. 

Before I note that, I'll also note, fwiw, even though its completely unrelated, that the same lawyer mentioned last related a story about a really well known lawyer that was truly foul.  I don't think he thought of that way, but I note this as we've been hearing a lot about the comments Donald Trump made (let's set aside the accusations of conduct) that shocked many people. Well, I was shocked about these as they were vile and also involved comments of a vulgar nature, although not about acts of any kind against other people, other than they sounded downright abusive to the lawyer relating the story, which was from when he was a young lawyer.

I note this, as I wonder how common such vulgar comments are in some context.  Probably a lot more than I care to know.

Anyhow, law school and delusion.

I read yesterday, in the Casper Star Tribune, an article about a Vietnam veteran who returned home and briefly went to law school before returning to work on his family's ranch in LaGrange.  It was an interesting article.  Just two days ago I was working cattle, when an old rancher I know mentioned to me "it seems like you are busier and busier (with the law) all the time".  I said yes, and then he said "well, I guess that's okay if you enjoy it."

That might be right.  

But I think almost every rancher enjoys his work. Statistically, in the US, a lot of people do not.  According to what state bars and the ABA puts out, a fairly high percentage of lawyers don't, but then I have seen the reliability of those statistics questioned as well.  Maybe we really don't know the answer.  But it's interesting to hear work put in the context of being worthwhile if, but only if, "you enjoy it."

And that gets me back to law school.

Law schools teaches people nothing at all about the actual practice of law.  Nothing.  Most law professors at this time don't know anything about the practice of law themselves.  As Judge Posner recently noted, law schools tend to be refuges from the actual practice of law and populated by people who fled it. And yet law schools put out propaganda about  how nifty the practice of law is, and how nifty a law degree is.  They still even occasionally put out the complete crap that "you can do anything with a law degree", which is bull.

That relates to the above, quite frankly, as I think that we now have an environment where a lot of people enter a field that they don't, to put it in the rancher's frame of reference, "enjoy".  Its apparently making a lot of lawyers miserable, if the statistics are to be believed.  Law schools are culpable in that in that they're doing nothing to educate their young charges in that fact.  Indeed, law schools, being populated by professors that are only dimly connected, quite often, with real work, are complicit in creating an illusion for the young that law is a happy, exciting, morally upstanding, profession.  Maybe that's inevitable, as who would emphasize that it's really hard work with a high dissatisfaction and psychological problem rate, with lots of substance abuse problems (apparently, if we believe the stats).  But I think law professors are largely clueless, or worse yet, they're early refugees from the profession and aren't clueless, but complicit.

Maybe some firms are, however, educating their young charges on these topics, even if accidentally.  One of the firms I know of had a young woman who graduated high school with my son. She was a valedictorian for her class last year.  She seemed very nice and pleasant and apparently had a life long dream, I'm told, of becoming a lawyer.  And she planned her future education that way.  Well, according to what I heard, the members of her firm slowly came to her before she departed the state to further her education and mostly warned her not to become a lawyer.  Again, I was amazed.  I guess that's to their credit, but what an indictment of the profession. Rather than encourage her they set out to crush her plans, one by one, but in the apparent hope of saving her from what they worried would be a mistake. Apparently it worked and she's abandoned that career plan, even if she doesn't, I'm told have a replacement.  That's remarkable, and disturbing.

But, back to the rancher's comment, if it seems a high percentage of lawyers don't "enjoy" their profession, but are seeming to endure (a scary thought, really), maybe that's the American norm?  Some time ago I ran an article from one of the statistics outfits that revealed a majority of Americans actually dislike their jobs, and it was a high percentage.  According to news outfits, which may be somewhat exaggerating the way the poll put it, "70%" of Americans "hate" their jobs.  Even if that's not quite right, that's a sad statistic.  And perhaps, therefore, lawyers aren't that unusual.

Which takes me back to Saturday's public lands rally.

 

One of the speakers at that rally was Chris Madson, formerly the editor of Wyoming Wildlife.

I think Madson, fwiw, was a good editor, but his writings tended to be very gloomy, more I thought than deserved.  Reading him tended to be a bit like watching The Seventh Seal and The Last Emperor in a double feature.  But, he served a purpose.

Well, at the rally he was predictably gloomy, but had this interesting observation, which he repeated in an article (as he mentioned) on his website:

These days, Americans are dispossessed, confined in our apartments, on our quarter-acre lots, estranged from the land that, in large part, has defined our character as a people and a nation. We are held prisoner by economics. One of the few physical expressions of freedom we have left is the public domain. Together, we can use it without destroying it; we can enjoy it without dividing it.

I don't know that we're dispossessed, but could be, for the reasons that he noted.  And I think, frankly, that the wholesale adoption of the modern global, everything is about consumption, we must have ever more crowded cities and every more cubicles economy, is causing a lot of the dissatisfaction in work mentioned above, legal or otherwise. We weren't made for four walls and big cities. But increasingly, we are left with fewer choices but to adopt those conditions.  One more reason, as Madson noted, to preserve public lands as public.

On the "best justice system in the world" and on public lands, that justice system, let the Bundy wildlife refuge occupiers off the hook. This has to be a case of jury nullification, and the jury should be ashamed.

I almost always ask for juries, but I have to wonder in a thing like this if a jury serves justice.  I suppose there will always be guys who drop the ball on juries, but this is an OJ jury like fumble.  They should be ashamed of themselves and I hope they come to be.  As another speaker noted at the rally, the local ranchers hadn't wanted them there and it wasn't the occupiers who missed duck season on that refuge that year, members of the public that they were, but rather local duck hunters.  People like the Bundys are a threat to local agriculture and a threat to public land use.  The sooner they bear the just implications of their actions the better, so perhaps in their upcoming trial they'll actually get justice from the best justice system in the world.

Among lawyers having a miserable time right now we'd have to include Tribal Court . . . well now Arapaho Tribal Court, Judge St. Clair.  Apparently the CFR court that will take over for the Shoshones has told him to get out of the court he's occupying, as it belongs to the BIA.  My goodness, what a horrible mess.  Where will they go?

 

 Poor photograph of the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court.  The BIA has told the (now Arapaho) Tribal Court to get out.

I think there was a building on the Reservation that was an Army court.  And I think it's over by the parade ground on Ft. Washakie.  I don't know what its used for now, but if that building contained a court (and I only vaguely believe that it did) it hasn't been used that way for decades.  And how can one geographic space contain two courts based not on territorial jurisdiction, but on a combination of territory and race?

Addendum

As an addendum to this less that cheery entry, we note that Janet Reno, who was the first female Attorney General of the United States, died today at age 78. She had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease.

Her death, coming as it does, on the even of the 2016 General Election is likely to pass less noticed than it otherwise would.  I'll simply note it here. She was appointed AG by Bill Clinton and held the post for a longer period than anyone in the prior 150 years had. Her occupancy of the position was not without controversy, if for no other reason than the Clinton era seems to be the commencement of the modern political period we are in which has featured controversy about everything.

Of some note, however, her first may have seemed to be a really significant first to a greater extent than the first which we're likely so see tomorrow, that being the first woman President.  I still hear that first touted on the weekend news shows but I really think, at this point, nobody cares.  What seems to have been missed on that  is that by this point the acceptance of women and minorities in every walk of life is so general that a first woman President is truly an irrelevant statistic to most people.  The election of Elizabeth Rankin to Congress a century ago was actually truly much more of a milestone.

General Election Day, 2016

We've looked at 1916.  So now on to 2016.

So tomorrow is the General Election.

I thought about posting this as General Disaster Day, which his sort of how I feel about it.  Perhaps that's too glum. But the nation, today, will pick, because it cannot seem to accept that more than two parties can compete in an election, and because years of lying to the electorate has created situation in which the Republican party was overtaken by the populist revolt lead by a person of questionable qualifications (to the say the least) and the Democratic party barely survived a hostile takeover to emerge with its 1970s Democratic Princess intact, but barely. The diehard supporters of Trump hope he'll burn everything down and the diehard supports of Clinton are hoping for the Coronation of Queen Maud.  Everyone else is left wondering how we got here.

The results stand to be bad for the country, probably, no matter what happens.

If Princess Hillary is elected Queen Maud, the result will be the complete takeover of aggressively secular humanism in a liberal form in the United States  Supreme Court.  That will enshrine a version of the Constitution in Yoga Pants and Birkenstock's for at least a generation, if not permanently.

If Mogul Donald is elected, well who the heck knows?  At least there would be reason to hope that the Supreme Court would be able to actual read the Constitution, as opposed to having more of the likes of Justice Kennedy who can't seem to find his copy.

This grim situation puts really conscientious votes into a pretty depressing place.  For serious Catholic voters (as well as Orthodox voters, and others, for example) the situation is summed up by Monsignor Charles Pope pretty well:

Among the moral issues that have been most politicized are non-negotiable issues for any Catholic: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same sex “marriage.”  These are non-negotiable issues because there is no room for nuance or degree of support. You are either for them or against them. There is no middle ground. They are outright forbidden by Church teaching and no Catholic may agree with or support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research or same-sex “marriage” in any degree whatsoever. This goes for every Catholic from the highest political officials to the lowliest and most unknown Catholic in the pew. This precedes politics, party loyalties, political leanings or any such thing.

But did I mention Satan is no idiot? Indeed, he has convinced many that Catholics who clearly articulate Catholic moral teaching on these non-negotiable issues are merely “talking about politics; and how dare they!” And cowed by this satanic trick and lie many clergy and other Catholics sadly cave and run for cover in speaking to these issues at all, not just in political seasons. Other dissenting Catholics buy Satan’s lie because it gives them cover and helps to silence foes.

To again be clear, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex “marriage” are moral issues, and the Church must teach against them no matter where the political lines fall.

The Catholic position on these matters currently coincides with one political party’s platform over another. But this not the intention or fault of the Catholic Church. These are matters that most Americans once agreed on and are now matters that have divided out along political lines.

That effectively means that, for really the first time in decades, maybe well over a century, voters in this class basically are placed in the position of voting for somebody they might outright despise because moral issues leave them no other choice.

Likewise, many serious conservatives who otherwise detest Trump are left with no other option. Where are supports of the Second Amendment left to go?  Nowhere, really.  Where are those who have a serious philosophical view of a limited government to go?  Well, they have no place at all to go, but they really can't go to Clinton.

This dismisses, of course, the third party choices.

If we did not have an anti democratic two party system neither of these poor choices would cross the bar.  However, over the course of two centuries we've built a belief into our system that there can only be two parties, and have actually supported this legislatively, such that for most voters there doesn't seem to be more than two choices and for those in swing states, given the moral issues, there isn't.

But perhaps we can hope for more, and perhaps this election may serve to do that.

For those in swing states, their choice is between Trump and Clinton. The moral issues are too great to pretend otherwise.  But for those in states that are going to go for one or the other with a certainty this is the election to register the protest.  These voters, if they are not for Trump or Clinton can truly say enough.  And they should.

And in doing so, they don't have to pick seemingly clueless Johnson or wacky Stein.  Indeed, it's ironic that our two best known third parties are pretty repugnant in and of themselves.  Libertarianism, in the form that exist in the Libertarian Party, is a political philosophy best left to the subreddits of the politically naive, who never really hope their ideas come into fruition.  Stein's seems so far off the rails that she could be mistaken for somebody dedicated not to being elected.

These aren't the only third parties by any means.  There's the highly conservative Constitution Party, which seems conservative on a national level, if wacky on a local level. There's the new Christian Democratic Party the American Solidarity Party.  And there are others.  In the age of Google, it's pretty easy to learn about them.

So, perhaps in the non swing states we will get a record "enough" vote that will have some impact.

And perhaps we can hope that whoever wins, Congress won't change much in  the makeup, but will in its sense of responsibility.  That would mean four years, basically, of "Tim, I don't think so" for whomever is President.

Which, sadly, is the best we can hope for.

Enacting prohibition by referendum. November 7, 1916.

 A pro-prohibition song, which we've run before here.

Arizona, which had the initiative and referendum system, voted itself into prohibition.

The initiative amended the Arizona Constitution to prohibit the sale, possession of distribution of intoxicating beverages.

The move towards nationwide prohibition was very clearly on.

South Dakota did likewise on this day, using the same process.

As did Montana.

Such an initiative failed in Missouri, however.  And Maryland.  And California.

But it passed in Idaho.

The November 1916 Election in Wyoming

Today is the centennial of the 1916 General Election, and of course the eve of the 2016 General Election. We have the advantage of the 1916 one, of course, in that we know how things turned out.  Something those voters who went to the polls in 1916 did not, both in the near term, and the short term.

I discussed the 1916 election a bit on our companion blog,  Today In Wyoming's History in that blog's November 7th entry.  In that entry I noted:

1916  President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected over Charles Evans Hughes, but the race was so close that the results were not known until November 11.Wyoming's electorate gave 55% of the vote to Wilson.

1916  John B. Kendrick elected to the Senate from Wyoming.

1916     Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.  She would boldly cast "no" votes on the measures to declare war in World War One and World War Two.

As a total aside, I have to say, agree with Montana's Rankin or not, she sure had the courage of her convictions.

I also addressed the 1916 Election, also on Today In Wyoming's History, on the sidebar addressing Elections and History In Wyoming.  In that entry, I noted:

Woodrow Wilson took Wyoming's electoral vote that year (1912), receiving 42% of the popular vote.  The combined Taft and Roosevelt vote surpassed that, with Roosevelt taking 27% of the vote, a greater share than that taken by Taft.  Socialist Eugene Debs came in with an amazing 6%.  Given this, it is not possible to simply write off the election to the split in the Republican Party that year.  The combined Debs and Roosevelt vote made up a whopping 33% of the Wyoming electorate that was expressing support for a radical change in direction in national politics.  Wilson's 42% was not insignificant either. Even simply writing off the fact that any Democratic candidate of that era would have received at least 1/3d of the state vote, a surprising number of Wyomingites seemed to be espousing the progressive, and even radical, ideas that were the combined platforms of the Progressive and Democratic parties. Even accepting that the Democrats had come at this development through the Populist, which was reflected in their earlier nomination of Bryan, and in Wilson's appointing him to the position of Secretary of State, it seems something was afoot.  

 

Former head of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey, President Woodrow Wilson.

Indeed, in the same year, the sitting Governor, elected in 1910, Joseph M. Carey, left the Republican Party and joined the Progressive Party.  Carey, like most (but not all) of the Progressives, including  Theodore Roosevelt himself, would eventually return to the Republican Party, but it's at least interesting to note that a sitting, elected, Wyoming Governor publicly abandoned his party to join a third party.  A think like that would simply be inconceivable today.

Governor Carey just months prior to his defection to the Progressive Party, with a bored looking Dorothy Knight, the daughter of a Wyoming Supreme Court justice, at the launch of the USS Wyoming.

This tread, moreover, continued.  Carey's successor in the Governor's office was not a member of the Republican Party, nor a Progressive, but Democrat John B. Kendrick.  Kendrick did not remain in that office for long, however, as he was elected to the United States Senate by the electorate, now able to directly elect Senators, in 1916, a position he held until his death in 1933.  His companion in the Senate for most of that time, however, was very long serving Republican Senator Francis E. Warren (who of course had also been a Governor) who served until his death in 1929, when he was replaced by Republican Senator Patrick Sullivan.

 

Senator John B. Kendrick.

A slow shift began to take place in the early teens, however.  In the 1916 Presidential election the state again supported Wilson, giving him 49% of the vote.  3% supported Socialist candidate Allan Benson, and those votes would certainly have gone for a any more left wing candidate than the Republican Charles Hughes, but a period in which Wyoming leaned Republican but which would swing towards Democrats was emerging.  The state went very strongly for Warren Harding in 1920 (60%) and for Coolidge in 1924.  In 1924, however, the Democrats fared very poorly in the Presidential election, with the Progressive Candidate Robert LaFollette, who had taken up where Theodore Roosevelt would not have wanted to leave off for him, and then some, receiving 31% of the Wyoming vote.  David, the Democrat, came in a poor third, showing that a strong Progressive streak remained in the Wyoming electorate at that time.  That election saw the nation nearly completely go for Coolidge except in the South, which went for Davis.  Geographically it was one of the most divided elections in the nation's history.

I'll be posting some newspapers from 1916 that give a flavor of the election that year (and indeed already have) but I thought here I might look at a couple of things a little more in depth.  And, as I noted above, there were clearly some long term trends at work that would continue to play out for the next several years.  Robert LaFollette taking 31% of the Wyoming vote in 1924?  Amazing, in that LaFollette was a real socialist, not a social democrat like this year's Bernie Sanders.

Anyway, let's look at the 1916 election.

Who was voting?

Well, for one thing, in Wyoming, women were voting, as they had since statehood.  This wasn't so in all of the United States, however.  Oddly, in a large part of the East, together with the South, women did not have the franchise and would not until the 19th Amendment became law in 1920.  In western states, however, they largely had the franchise, which would  probably not be what many people would guess today.  Wyoming's state nickname, The Equality State, stems from it having always had the franchise for women.

Indians, however, could not vote in much of the United States as they were not citizens even in their own land.  American Indians would not become uniformly citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.  That seems simply stunning, but that was the case.  The concept of being born within the United States automatically making a person a citizen did not apply to them if the sovereignty of their tribes was still recognized.  Indian tribes retain sovereignty today, but all the native born, of any race, are of course regarded as citizens now.  I don't know that they didn't have the franchise in Wyoming, but I strongly suspect that they did not as the two tribes that resided in Wyoming, and still do, were part of the western reservation system, which would have made their having had citizenship up until 1924 highly unlikely.

Other minorities, I'd note, did have unrestricted access to the ballot in Wyoming.  This went back to the state's early history.  Indeed, by 1916 both women and blacks had served on juries in Wyoming, and while that went back in forth in regards to women, it did not as to blacks. Indeed at least one black juror had served on a death penalty case in  Wyoming prior to 1916.

As I noted in the long second thread linked in above Wyoming was not a conservative state the way that is now, in 1916. This is something a person must approach with caution as its easy to assume too much of the opposite, and conservative and liberal in the current context isn't something that's easily to uniformly compare with conservative and "liberal" in past eras.  Still, some comparison is interesting.

As I first noted in the sidebar mentioned above, a person has to consider that early in the state's history, it was the GOP that was, or could be, liberal, in context, while the Democrats were the opposite. As I noted there:

Wyoming obtained statehood in 1890.  1890 was still well within the influence of the Civil War, and that continued to have an impact on politics that late, and for about a decade after that. The fortunes of the Republican Party had been somewhat solidified as a result of the war, but that was also true for the Democrats.  In a way, what succession had attempted was reflected in the popularity of the political parties.  The GOP was very strong in the North, and the Democratic Party dominated the South.  States in the Midwest tended to be in a state of flux.  In the West, were most of the territory was just that, territory, the GOP was by far the strongest party as a rule.

The GOP of that era, 1860s, had a strong "liberal" element in it, which was particularly reflective of its anti slavery policy of 1860-1865.  That part of the party had grown in strength during the war, and by the end of the war Radical Republicans, who favored a harsh Reconstruction designed to immediately address racial issues in the South, were a strong element in the party.  They never took control of it, however. The party also was pro business, and was in favor of governmental assistance to business when it seemed merited.  The best example of that is probably the Transcontinental Railroad, which was backed by the Federal Government and which was a massive expenditure in various ways. That wasn't the only example, however. The Homestead Act, which gave away Federal Property, which had formerly been held until turned over completely to newly admitted states, created an official policy of bribing emigrants with offers of land from the Federal stock of the same.  The Homestead Act was a Republican Act.  The Mining Law of 1872, which worked in a similar fashion, likewise was a Republican Act.

 

Republican President U. S. Grant.  Two time GOP winner and hero of the Civil War.

The Democrats, in contrast, were more of a "conservative" party in some ways, although again the distinction cannot be directly carried into modern times. Democrats tended to favor individual "state rights" more than Republicans did.  For that reason Democrats had generally opposed the Union effort during the Civil War, no matter where they lived.

A huge difference between the parties at that time was that the GOP had a legacy of freeing the slaves and the Democrats had effectively been the party of slavery.  After the war, for that reason, the Democrats remained extremely strong in the South, where they continued to promote policies that were racist in nature.  The GOP drew the support of recently freed slaves, but it was moderate in its attempts to assist them.

So, in short, Wyoming was a Republican state early on and as such, it fit into the middle of the road to "progressive in terms of its political leanings.  This was very much the case for much of the West. There was a conservative wing of the GOP to be sure, but at that time, it was really the Democratic Party that was uniformly conservative.  Republicans in the West, moreover, leaned towards the more liberal wing of the GOP.

Republicans dominated Wyoming's politics at every level right up until the Johnson County War.  That event caused a disruption in Republican fortunes, although they soon recovered.  Nonetheless it would be a mistake to assume that Wyomingites were unfailingly loyal to the GOP.  Indeed, the extent of their progressive leanings was revealed in the next several Presidential elections in which Wyomingites uniformly went to the "left" with their vote.  As noted in the thread linked in above:

This would help explain the results of the Presidential election, in Wyoming, of the same year (1892).  In that year, pro business, Bourbon Democrat, Grover Cleveland became the only President to regain office after having lost a bid for reelection.  Cleveland was a candidate that those leaning Republican could generally support, which explain in part how his political fortunes revived, but he did not gain support in Wyoming.  In Wyoming, as we will see in a later entry, the state's electorate voting for representatives to the Electoral College for the first time, given its recent statehood, went for Populist James Weaver..  The general election of 1892 saw four candidates compete for electoral votes.  In Wyoming, President Harrison ended up polling just over 50% with Populist James Weaver taking 46% of the Wyoming vote.  The remaining percentage of the vote seemingly went to John Bidwell of the Prohibition Party.  Cleveland's percentage of the Wyoming vote was infinitesimal.

Populist candidate James B. Weaver in 1892.  He took Colorado's electoral vote that year and came close to taking Wyoming's

As surprising as this is, Wyoming was not unique in these regards.  Weaver polled so well in Colorado that he pulled out ahead of Harrison in that state and took that state's electoral votes.  He also won in Idaho, Nevada and North Dakota.  Cleveland was obviously very unpopular in the Rocky Mountain West in the 1892 election.  Indeed, Cleveland only took California and Texas in the West, and polled most strongly in the East and the South.  He polled particular well in the Deep South that year, although Weaver also, ironically, did well in the South.  Cleveland's status as a Democrat probably carried him in the South.

This probably is an interesting comment on both the evolution of political parties, and the make up of the Wyoming electorate at the time. Wyoming remained a Republican state then as now, but at that time the Republican Party had started to split between "progressive" and "conservative" factions.  While their fiscal policies significantly differed in general, the Democratic party had not yet started to have a significant populist branch, but it was already the case that its northern candidates, like Cleveland, were more easily recognizable to northern Republican voters than Southern Democrats were.  While Weaver didn't take any Southern state, he did however receive a large number of votes in the deep South, however, reflecting the emergence of Populist thought in the Southern Yeoman class.

All of this is quite remarkable in the modern context.  Weaver isn't probably really directly comparable to any modern candidate, but none the less he wouldn't be a candidate that we'd expect to have done well in Wyoming, based upon its modern politics, expect perhaps in the context of his populist appeal.  That populist appeal, moreover, would next lead Wyomingites to vote for a candidate which we  might, perhaps, compare a bit to Bernie Sanders of our day.  Indeed, continuing on:

This pattern repeated itself in the Presidential Election of 1896, in which William Jennings Bryan took Wyoming's vote over that of Civil War veteran William McKinley.  Bryan was a radical by all accounts, and his having gained both the Populist and the Democratic nominates reflected that parties swing to Populist thought nationally.  But Bryan was also popular in the West, as the Wyoming vote demonstrated.  Bryan took a whopping 51% of the Wyoming vote.

 

William Jennings Bryan, candidate for the Democrats and Populists, and Congressman from Nebraska.  Ultimately, his career would conclude as the misplaced Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson.

In the same election, the State sent former Governor Osborne to Congress, thereby electing a Democrat to the House of Representatives.  Seemingly, this reflected a populist streak of some sort that extended to all Federal candidates in Wyoming that year.  They returned a Republican to the Governor's office, however, in 1894, so the trend was hardly universal in the state.  And long serving, if generally forgotten, Clarence D. Clark remained in office throughout this period.

We next get to a beloved figure, and one that is no surprise that Wyomingites loved and continue to love, even if we forget that he was, by the end of his political life, one of the most radical American politicians to ever have significant support.

The next Presidential election would see Theodore Roosevelt run for office, and Roosevelt was a very popular President in the West.  He was also from the "progressive" branch of the Republican Party, so any Populist elements that were headed towards being Democratic were effectively cut off.

 Noted biologist, hunter, outdoorsman, conservationist, rancher, historian, and politician, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Republican fortunes gained during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, and when his hand picked successor, his Vice President William Howard Taft ran in 1908, Wyoming demonstrated that it had lost its fondness for William Jennings Bryan, who ran against him. Taft took 55% of the Wyoming vote.  Perhaps reflecting some residual racialism, or perhaps recent immigration from Eastern Europe in some counties, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs amazingly took 4.5% of the vote.  Statewide, Wyomingites seemed satisfied with Republican candidates once again.

 

Former Governor of the Philippines and Vice President, and future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Howard Taft.

Taft had the misfortune of following Roosevelt, who was a great man, but who was still a young man, in relative terms, and who just couldn't avoid politics.  Taft basically acted as a reformist candidate, but a somewhat moderate one, and Roosevelt, for his part, was becoming increasingly radical.  By the election of 1912, the split in the Republican Party that this represented broke the party apart and after Taft was nominated it actually became two parties, with the Rooseveltians becoming the Progressive Party.  The Progressive Party would be a radical party even by today's standards, and it says something about the politics of the time that it mounted a very serious campaign and had nationwide support.  At the same time, the Democrats began to tack towards the Progressives themselves and pick up parts of their platform.  The transformation of the Democratic Party into a liberal party really began with the Presidential election of 1912, and the party by the end of the election was never again quite what it had been, although the change would continue on for years thereafter.

We pick back up here with the entry noted above and find that in 1916, Wyoming went for a slate of Democrats.  With the history provided above, this isn't too surprising.

Or is it? What does this say about the state in 1916?

Well, it was populist, which it still is.  It was also "progressive", in the context of what that meant as defined by Roosevelt's Progressive Party. That is radically to the left even now, in some ways.  Having said that, much of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in recent years almost any Wyomingite of 1916 would have found to be bizarre, if not appalling.  In the context of the times, it's clear that the population of the state, including the great and powerful of the state, had a concern for the "little man" and tended to favor the political and economic interest of average individuals over business. This, indeed, reflected itself in the state's laws which were generally aimed in that direction. Socially, however, the state was not radical, even though this was an era in which true radicalism was on the rise, and this too expressed itself in the state's laws.

It's often noted here that the purpose of this blog is to explore this particular era, and hence this is what we are doing with this and many other posts.  I know, from prior experience, even mentioning this change in Wyoming's political orientation is upsetting to some.  But Wyoming's orientation was common throughout the West at this time.  It reflects the views of the founding generation of the state, and colors the culture of the time.

Woodrow Wilson narrowly reelected on this day in 1916

Woodrow Wilson beat Charles E. Hughes, barely, in the Presidential Election of 1916.  He ran on having kept the United States out of war, but that wouldn't last much longer.

President Woodrow Wilson.

Charles E. Hughes.

John B. Kendrick was elected to the Senate from Wyoming.

.And Montana's Jeanette Rankin, who has the unique distinction of having voted no to the U.S. declarations of war in World War One and World War Two, became the first woman elected to Congress.

The Laramie Daily Boomerang for November 7, 1916. Wars and highways.

The Laramie Daily Boomerang, which is still published today, didn't bother much with elections in its November 7, 1916 edition.  It focused on the news of other things, including the crisis in Mexico, prohibition in Virginia, Polish independence and the Lincoln Highway eliminating polls.

The Boomerang, perhaps, may have felt that the voters had made up their minds and focused on other things.

The Douglas Budget for November 7, 1916. Be loyal to our party.

The newspaper for the small town of Douglas simply urged voters to Republican party loyalty.  A. R. Merritt, however, of the RCU Store, didn't worry about whether you were a member of the "the Republican and Progressive Party, the Democratic Party, the Socialist Party and the Prohibition Party" (all parties that were actually fielding candidates on a serious basis), as long as you had the right party dress.

The Wyoming Tribune for November 7, 1916, 3:30 Edition: Early reports indicate Hughes

The Wyoming Tribune, which had been solidly Republican in the 1916 campaign, looked forward to Hughes being elected and was predicting John B. Kendrick's "Waterloo" in its 3:30 edition.

The early reports, as we'll see, may have not been right.

The Cheyenne Leader for November 7, 1916: The Leader takes a shot at the Tribune.

The Cheyenne Leader was backing Wilson and Kendrick, and it had apparently had enough of the Tribune.

Of note, the Leader was taking a "bring the boys back home" approach to the election, in part, obviously indicating that a vote for Hughes was a vote for prolonged entanglement in Mexico.

The Casper Record for November 7, 1916. All America Joins Shout "Wilson's The Man!"

The Casper Record confidently predicted that "all America" would shout for Wilson.  It also came out for Pat Sullivan, rising local politician, Irish immigrant, and very successful local sheepman.  He built a house which was, up until recently, the largest house in Casper.  Of interest, at least one of the ranching families mentioned in the article is still ranching in the same location, which is a bit comforting.

We also learn that the Midwest Hotel was about to go up, which it did.  And C. H. Townsend directed our attention to rugs.

This Land Is Your Land

Lex Anteinternet: Rally for Public Lands, Casper Wyoming, November 5, 2016

Rally for Public Lands, Casper Wyoming, November 5, 2016

Churches of the West: Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church, Story Wyoming

Churches of the West: Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church, Story Wyoming

This is Our Lady of the Pines in Story, Wyoming. This Catholic Church is served by the parish in Sheridan, Wyoming.

This church is in a spectacular mountain setting.

"Fall Back". Daylight Savings Time ended at 2:00 a.m. this morning.

Lex Anteinternet: No, just go away: This was our entry on this last year or the year before:

No, just go away

 

World War One era poster, from when Daylight Savings Time was a brand new announce.

I have not been able to adjust to the return to normal time this year.

Not even close.

I'm waking up most morning's about 3:30 am.  That would have been early even when Daylight Saving's Time was on, as that would have been about 4:30, but that is about the time I had been waking up, in part because I've been spending a lot of time in East Texas, where that's about 5:30.  Indeed, my inability to adjust back to regular time is working
out for me in the context of being up plenty early enough to do anything I need to do in East Texas, but it's the pits back here in my home state.

I really hate Daylight Saving's Time.  I understand the thesis that it was built on, but I think it's wholly obsolete and simply ought to be dumped.

I hope I adjust better this year.  Once again, I've been in East Texas a lot and my sleep schedule has been messed up to start with.

Maybe the new President, whomever that is, will, in a flash of insight, ban Daylight Savings Time. . . .probably not.

The Wyoming Tribune for November 6, 1916. The Nation's Hope, and Do You Want 5,000 Troops at Ft. Russell?

The Wyoming Tribune declared candidate Hughes the "nation's hope" the day prior to the General Election.  It also appealed to the business interest in Cheyenne, indicating that a vote for Hughes was a vote to put 5,000 troops at Ft. D. A. Russell, and their paychecks, of course, with them.

The Cheyenne State Leader for November 6, 1916

The day prior to the election readers of the leader had their attention directed to Mexico, including the war in Mexico and the relatively recent battle of Carrizal.

A late supposed scandal received attention from the paper as well, regarding a purchase of property by John B. Kendrick prior to his being Governor.  And, interestingly, the paper abbreviated the name of its base city as "Chian".