Guest Blog. Of the Chicago Cubs and Donald Trump, by Libby Treadwell

After a career in journalism, Libby Treadwell now writes fiction, poetry and an occasional magazine piece under a pen name, and is publisher of Shaggy Dog Press (shaggydogpress.org).

Of the Chicago Cubs and Donald Trump

On November 2, 2016, the world turned upside down. No, Election Day was not until November 8 that year. On November 2 the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

Our grown son, with whom I’d watched many a Cubs game before he married and started watching baseball with his own children, called to share the excitement. And then he added, “You know what this means. Everything has turned around. Donald Trump is going to become president.”

Our elation was enough to let that go with a chuckle. Still, there was that nagging little niggle, that what if he’s right… 

Interestingly, and much to my surprise, Donald Trump’s candidacy made me concentrate on politics. That had always been my husband’s interest. Oh, I’d always paid enough attention to know what I was voting for (or against) and always voted, but the endless dinner-table discussions I married into either bored me or sailed over my head. Possibly that was caused by my own family of Republicans steering clear of the subject around my mother’s family of Democrats. Politics, and religion and business, were not considered conversational fodder.

Well, there was the morning of November 3, 1948, when my father picked up his suburban copy of the Chicago Tribune from our front porch and called my maternal grandmother on Chicago’s North Side to gloat about Dewey’s victory over Truman only to hear, “What do you mean Dewey won? It’s right here in the [city edition] Trib that Truman won.” Alas, my father’s birthday was November 3, and political presents were not to be his, but that election reporting did make for some good conversation.

The first presidential election in which I was old enough to vote was Goldwater-Johnson in 1964, which fell on my birthday, November 4. I had proudly registered as a Republican upon reaching 21 three years earlier after much moaning about not having been old enough to vote for Nixon in the election of 1960. But I did not know what to make of the Goldwater-Johnson choice. However, I worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, so knew plenty of people to ask, starting with our political writer (who gave opinions but no suggestions) and ending with Ann Landers (who gave strict advice to vote for LBJ). I can’t say reaching a decision was a nightmare because sleep did not come much during the week leading up to Election Day.

My father and I jointly celebrated our birthdays. I took the train home after work that day and proudly entered our home as a voter! My mother met me at the front door and when I announced, “I voted!” she whispered, “If it wasn’t for Goldwater DO NOT TELL YOUR FATHER!” (That part was not a shout, rather more of a hiss.) I didn’t vote for Goldwater, and I didn’t tell my father.

As the new century neared, my father would have proudly listened, as did I, to Lincoln Day speakers extolling the virtues of the Big Tent and the continued need to be inclusionary instead of exclusionary, to bring together “voodoo economists” and Keynesians, Conservatives and Evangelicals. The tent had started to grow when America recovered from the embarrassment of Nixon and the insufficiencies of Ford and Carter. Then, like an unborn litter of tiger sharks, the factions inside that tent began to eat one another before delivery.

In 2008 the Tea Party rose and argued against the Neocons; Right to Life took on Pro Choice, Log Cabin Republicans argued to redefine marriage. Between the growing noise and influence of Fox News and overbearing lobbyists like Grover Norquist, I found myself less and less willing or able to vote Republican. What could be so terrible about raising taxes to improve early childhood education? What could be so terrible about ignoring the NRA, checking the power of fossil fuels? I tired of the party’s gamut of vowel language: appalling, erratic, insensitive, offensive and unacceptable. Also yappy.

In 2016 even my father, had he lived to be 110, would have forgiven my Hillary Clinton vote, especially after the elation of the long-sought World Series win for the Cubs. Nobody then suspected that Mr. Trump, the previous laughingstock of New York City, could so quickly turn the presidency of the United States into one big sorry joke.

When that Big Tent devolved to Trump or Never Trump nothing, starting with honesty itself, reflected the Republican Party as we knew it. So I have a warning for those Democrats wondering whether to be moderately progressive or pull out all the stops. Does taking huge steps to jump over growing fissures in our governing process make any sense? Isn’t it more reasonable to find solid footing, then fill in those cracks with something concrete?

Always one to put the environment first, after Trump’s election I began to panic about our open lands and joined the National Parks and California’s State Parks foundations. While thinking about environmental disasters I joined Planned Parenthood, which led to support of the League of Women Voters, then the ACLU. And then Charlottesville happened, and I joined the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now, like many other “Republicans in Exile,” I support only Democrats – financially and verbally with letters and phone calls to Senators and Congressmen as well as get-out-the-vote calls – while remaining a registered Republican. I think my complaints carry more weight when I can argue against my own party and not as an outsider. Where once I resented the term RINO as used by those trying to collapse that big tent – and knew full well a Ryno belonged on second base at Wrigley Field – I now recognize the term as a rallying cry for those who stand by the GOP my father, husband and I knew.

So, was that World Series victory worth the price of Donald Trump’s presidency?

Yes, if we can survive it and return to a government by, of and for the people, with assurance that by the 2024 election at least two new electoral rules will be in place:

          1) Nobody in the country is above the law, including or especially the president,

          2) Everybody running for higher office must turn over financial forms decided upon by both houses of Congress before the campaigns begin.

Then we will prove ourselves once again to be one nation indivisible. That will be something to cheer for as November nears. Maybe this time we’ll all win.