Donkey serenade

...For the moment, however, I would like to dwell on the seemingly lesser evil of incivility...

...It is also easy to see why James Thompson, who up until the primary election had some reason to worry, is a very happy man...

...Here's complacency for you...

...It's easy to see why Hitler changed his name from Schicklgriiber...

...These were the people who were defeated by the LaRouche candidates, who spent only a couple of hundred dollars during the campaign...

...In his precinct the LaRouche candidate beat Sangmeister...

...Another person on the Stevenson ticket was Aurelia Pucinski...

...A week before the primary, Stevenson apparently told reporters that Pucinski was running unopposed...

...You could etch glass with his broad A's...

...That battle was meant to be the focus of the primary election...

...2) arrogance on the part of Chicago Democrats...

...Ratings convince producers and sponsors that we love these programs...

...BENEDICT DRISCOLL (Benedict Driscoll is a Midwest~base_d, free-lance reporter...

...One problem: Illinois election law prevents third parties from using the name, or any part of the name, of an existing party...

...But maybe we should think of the line (was it from Marx...

...She had her work cut out: she was to have opposed Jim Edgar, a popular Republican secretary of state, known among other things for tough battles against drunk drivers...

...LaRouche is a man whose estate is surrounded by armed guards to protect him from what he imagines to be death threats received from agents of Communism, Zionism, international terrorism, the drug trade, the Trilateral Commission, and the Queen of England...

...At their first post-victory news conference they berated newspeople for not covering them and insisted that they would answer questions only when they were good and ready, if they felt like it...

...Brilliant media manipulators...

...How it happened is a tale of ineptitude and complacency, and at the very least it will shake up Illinois Democratic politics more than anything has in years, including all the battles between Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, and the Chicago machine with which he has been battling ever since he took office...

...It has corroded individual responsibility to the common good and motivates decisions ranging from selling secrets to the Soviets to approving unsafe spaceshuttle launches...

...And public participation in call-in and live audience shows enthusiastically demonstrates that indeed we do...

...He has always seemed uncomfortable running for office, as if this were an embarrassing thing for a man, known to have gone to an Eastern college, to go through...

...In previous Illinois elections, the LaRouche people have won precinct committee battles, and precinct committee people are the people who go door to door and act nice and offer to get the lame, the halt, and the blind to the polls...

...Illinois has been looking forward to some profound political dialogue...

...Adlai is thought to be an intelligent man, largely because he speaks slowly...

...It has become clear to me that we Americans who once prized generosity, openness, and friendliness among our national characteristics no longer do so...

...The hot question around the state was whether Thompson could pull off another victory in the event of a competent challenge from Stevenson...

...He has also suggested that if the Democrats can't legally knock them off the ballot, the Democrats will run as a third party, perhaps as "the True Democrats...

...they also, in a curious interchange, intensify their negative qualities...

...Some Chicagoans are blaming the LaRouche victory on downstate fight-wing yahoos and ignoramuses...

...Because of the complacency and arrogance of the leadership, no one had heard those foreign-sounding names, and from Chicago and its collar counties to Cairo in Little Egypt, people voted for white bread and American-sounding (i.e., WASP) names, knowing absolutely nothing about the candidates...

...During his last campaign Stevenson was forced, or so he felt, to deny that he was a wimp...

...He also called Thompson "a whale of a governor," referring to Thompson's girth...

...As to the stupidity and prejudice of those who voted in the primary, the fact is that the LaRouche people managed to get their names first on the ballot in many places through entirely legal means...

...Stevenson is a man whose years in the Senate, voluntarily ended, were (to put it kindly) lack-luster...

...Despite this he came close to beating Thompson, something which seems to have frightened a governor who calls himself "Big Jim" and whose accent changes, depending on the degree of sincerity he is affecting and on his audience (one accent for Chicago, another for downstate fairs...

...These regional concerns aside, there is a valuable lesson here in how not to take democratic processes for granted...

...If the Democrats lose in November, it will not be because of the brilliance of the LaRouche people or the subtlety of their tactics...

...Adlai Stevenson said without laughing that he finds their beliefs "completely unacceptable...

...Properly presented, he would have been the ideal running mate...

...After the Philippines and Argentina we have -- Illinois...

...and (3) stupidity and prejudice on the part of those who voted in the primary...

...Displays of greed and gross incivility are the staples of the tele' vision and radio shows we choose to entertain us or inform us...

...about history repeating itself, coming the first time as tragedy and the second as farce...

...Downstate, Illinois Democratic leaders complained that they were given no literature to pass out about Sangmeister and other lesser-known Democrats...

...This time Stevenson decided to play tough...

...They have a point, but Michael Madigan is the House Democratic Speaker and as Chicago as you can get...

...This time around he chose as his running mate a state senator, George Sangmeister, who is widely considered an intelligent and competent legislator...

...Illinois has a Republican governor, James Thompson, who will be the longest-serving governor in the history of the state if he is re-elected in November...

...They are: (1) complacency on the part of the Illinois Democratic leadership...

...11 April 1986:199About the arrogance of Chicago Democrats: there were sample ballots printed which didn't bother to mention statewide offices (aren't Democrats, or for that matter Chicagoans generally, born with a knowledge of who's been slated and who hasn't...

...The programs reflect their viewers and hearers...

...The assumption seems to have been that everyone in the state would know, through some sort of osmosis, apparently, who it was the party had slated, and who was a LaRouche candidate - - but even the latter didn't count since, until the night of the primary, no one in the media, or the pa/'ty, seemed aware of The LaRouche presence on the ballot...

...Americans, generous and open though they might have been, were always given to rough banter and the friendly insult...

...They are fight to think the LaRouche people are awful...

...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy INFECTIOUS INCIVILITIS THE DEMISE OF PUBLIC DEBATE D URING MY short vacation from these pages I have had time to become aware of some disturbing changes in our society...

...but dealt only with local ward battles...

...Now the Democrats are calling foul...

...Unless something unlikely happens between now and November, they will be the official Democratic party candidates...

...One bit of gossip, unconfirmed but interesting, is that Sangmeister's people complained about LaRouchian irregularities early on, and were told by party officials, "forget about them...

...If the Democrats (if that's what they'll be calling themselves in November) lose this one it will be because they blew it...

...The same thing happened in lots of Chicago precincts...

...Then a couple of candidates from Lyndon LaRouche's political cult, the Democratic Policy Committee, managed to get on the ballot9 They defeated the party choices for lieutenant governor and secretary of state during the March primary...

...But we are talking of manifestations that go far beyond the jesting permitted to friends...

...Greed has so corrupted our business climate that true national productivity takes second place to the artificially produced profits of merger-mania...

...There are a number of elements which must be taken seriously...

...Last election, Thompson narrowly defeated Adlai E. Stevenson III, son of the late candidate for president, ambassador to the United Nations, and governor of Illinois...

...Citing his years in the Marines, he has described himself as "a lean, mean fighting machine," trying at the same time to sound patrician...

...Hers is a widelyknown Chicago political name, but downstate hardly anyone knows her...

...In the process, they let you know who the candidates are, and what they stand for...

...None of the above may ever happen again, at least not with such a lack of vigilance...

...That will no doubt relieve a lot of voters...

...A certain amount of such give and take was the mark of congenial get-togethers (although this was markedly more true of all-male gatherings...

...We are talking about the open attack on character and motive, the open acCommonweal: 200...

...It is now a pale second to the fact that in order to stay a Democrat in November, Adlai Stevenson may have to run on a ticket with people who may fairly be described as kin to, if not in fact, neo-Nazis...

...It is reflected in the entertainment contests which glorify acquisitiveness...

...LaRouche II II startles Illinois DONKEY SERENADE TAKING DEMOCRACY FOR GRANTED T HOSE OF US who love democracy have been encouraged by recent victories: Alfonsin in Argentina, Aquino in the Philippines...

...His Illinois candidates are running on a platform which would test everyone for AIDS and quarantine the losers, something they manage to tie in with opposition to Gramm-Rudman...

...The lesson is that the Democrats seem to have lost it, fair and square, by not paying attention to anything outside an accustomed and narrow arena...

...Taking them in order: the Democrats nominated a man whose name is popular in Illinois...

...They took votes, and voters, for granted, and ignored something happening right in front of them...

...His last campaign was badly run, and although Republicans were inclined to be surprised that he came so close to beating Thompson, many Democrats were outraged that having come so close, he failed to win because.of internal organizational ineptitude...

...How did it happen...

...That's part of the way democracy works, and part of the way it worked, and failed to work, this time...

...These are the people who think Jews and Nazis are allies in the drug trade...

...Their names were Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, and they opposed people named Sangmeister and Pucinski...

...The race was extraordinarily close, despite a campaign which even some Stevenson supporters acknowledge was inept...

...A friend of mine has suggested that this is not so much because he is thoughtful, but because he can't think very fast...