Jack Lessenberry

Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about politics; they have lives instead. They go to work or practice their professions; raise their kids, spend time on their hobbies. Many of them do get somewhat interested every four years, when the time comes to pick a new president. Slightly more than half of them actually vote, which doesn't happen in other elections. What I've been thinking about lately is what an average person must think of the candidates and the parties this year. Based on everything I've seen, my guess is that a lot of them have an impression of Hillary Clinton as a career politician and an accomplished liar who will do anything to get elected. Meanwhile, others see Donald Trump as a vulgar brawling clown who is dangerously inexperienced in government and is hostile to minorities and immigrants. In fact, millions of Americans seem to believe both things, which can't be great for democracy. Not to speak of the impressions little Susie and Tommy, and especially little Ahmed and Rosalva, are forming of their government. The election itself is still exactly four months away, and the images I've just painted are sure to be further reenforced by the candidates themselves, who are already indulging in ad hominem attacks on "Crooked Hillary" and the man Democrats plainly want us to think of as "Deranged Donald." Now, I know that some of this has been going on since John Adams first took on Thomas Jefferson, though until recently the nastiest insults were doled out by supporters and surrogates, not the candidates themselves. Things were so comparatively genteel half a century ago that it made a splash when President Lyndon Johnson called Richard Nixon a "chronic campaigner." But apart from that, it seems to me that the two parties have almost stopped trying to define themselves. Republicans originally burst on the scene as the anti-slavery party. Democrats later became the party that stoutly defended a low tariff on imported goods; Republicans, the party of the high tariff. Later, Democrats were the party of the New Deal, of a social safety net that included Social Security and later Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans became the party of lower taxes. Nowadays, however, it is sometimes clear what the parties are against, but not what they are for. I know Republicans are almost universally against what they call "Obamacare" and that to run for office as a Republican, you have to be against a woman's Constitutional right to have an abortion. I know both parties are bitterly against allowing a president from the other party to fill seats on the U.S. Supreme Court. But ask yourself this: What positive change is each party promising? Aside from the Supreme Court, do you hear Democrats saying, "give us back control of Congress and we'll enact these laws that will benefit you?" Are they even promising sensible gun control, on this day after the massacre of the police officers in Dallas? They aren't, any more than Republicans are telling you what they would do to "make America great again." You are going to hear a lot of complaining that so many of us can't be bothered to vote. I just told you a big part of the reason why. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Yesterday, I talked about how Lake Erie is endangered by pollution from factory farms, which dump hundreds of millions of gallons of animal waste onto the ground every year. This is far too much for the soil to absorb, and a considerable amount gets into the lake. There, the nitrates and phosphorous it contains help spur huge toxic algae blooms.

You might remember two years ago, when people in Toledo couldn't drink the water for a couple days because it had been poisoned by toxic cynobacteria in Lake Erie. That was terrifying, and we were told all sorts of precautions were being taken so that this would never happen again. Well, guess what. According to a number of respected environmental activists I interviewed last week, we are allowing so-called factory farms to dump hundreds of millions of untreated manure and liquid waste on land not far from Lake Erie, often when the ground is still frozen. That means a lot of it eventually flows into the lake. What that does, according to Pam Taylor, a full-time volunteer with a group called the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, is fill the lake with phosphorus and nitrates, nutrients for exactly the kinds of algae that have the potential to poison the water. Ms. Taylor has even more reason to care about the Lake Erie watershed area than most of us do. Her ancestors came to mostly rural Lenawee County in 1837, the same year Michigan became a state, and they've been farming there ever since. She has a vested interest in protecting and strengthening rural Michigan's culture and fragile economy. And you can't do that if the water in the area's major lake is poisoned. What Taylor has been doing these days is important but hardly glamorous; as she puts it, she studies poop. Specifically, the immense volumes of waste produced by factory farms, technically known as CAFOs –Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. These are places that keep huge numbers of animals in absolutely horrible conditions to produce meat as cheaply as possible. What she does is to monitor and track the connections between the manure CAFOs produce and the harmful algae blooms that form in Western Lake Erie. Michigan does have fewer of these than Ohio or Indiana, she told me, but she doesn't want to let those responsible off the hook by saying, as some do, "this is an Ohio problem." What her group hopes to do is demonstrate beyond doubt that these giant installations are the main reason for the pollution. Taylor taught business in high school in Adrian for 21 years before retiring five years ago. "I am not against farmers making a living," she told me and added, "I think people should have the right to operate the own businesses." But she thinks that CAFOs are not only the problem, they are only viable because they are propped up with expensive agricultural subsidies politicians refuse to end. "You have these farms with 4,000 cows producing as much waste as a city of 80,000 people. Imagine if the farm had to pay the true expense of dealing with that." So far, she says, she's had little success trying to get our lawmakers to face the problem. "The Michigan legislature has been horrible," she said. But she plans to keep trying to raise public consciousness about Lake Erie. After all, what else can she do? I don't know if she remembers Pogo, the comic strip character who used to say, "we have met the enemy, and he is us." I do know we should all do more to help her win a ceasefire. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Well, the Fourth of July is over and it is now, emotionally as well as officially, summer. The presidential primary season is over too. That, unlike even a Michigan winter, seemed to last forever. But we now know – with all due respect to the Libertarian and Green party candidates – either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be our next president. The only excitement remaining is to find out who they will select as their vice presidential candidates. Incidentally, among the many bizarre things about the way in which we select our presidents, one of the oddest may be this: We've spent more than a year considering who the presidential candidates would be. There were innumerable televised debates. More than sixty million people voted in the primaries. However, there's absolutely nothing democratic about the way in which the winners select their running mates, the men or women who would become president if they should resign or die. But if that sounds odd, consider the entire campaign. Over the weekend, I happened to wander in to a couple parties in Northern Michigan held by members of the upper one percent. We are talking about retired corporate executives and lawyers, old money families from Chicago and Cincinnati with palatial lakefront homes in places like Charlevoix and Walloon Lake. Most of them are reflexively Republican. Some may reluctantly vote for Donald Trump. But most will not. They not only find him boorish and distasteful, he frightens them. They fear he would wreck the economy, which works pretty well for them, and possibly endanger world stability. They don't like his nativism. They see his pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico as childish campaign rhetoric. Nobody I talked with thought that could never really happen. But they, especially those connected to the auto industry, are especially appalled by his protectionist trade positions. Few are Clinton fans, but they felt she was a known quantity who might make them pay somewhat more in taxes, but who would not upset the world order. That's pretty much how the one percent felt half a century ago, when Barry Goldwater captured the Republican nomination and led his party to a historic defeat. In some ways, Trump is more radical. But Goldwater was never seen as having a chance, and consistently trailed in the polls by as much as thirty percent. Donald Trump, the latest polls show, is behind by no more than five percent, which is barely more than the statistical margin of error. This is hard to believe, when you think just of the things he has said about women or minorities. What's really going on here? The answer is pretty clear, though it seems to have baffled both the one percenters and Clinton herself. Millions of Americans are angry, frightened and confused. Vast numbers of manufacturing jobs have vanished, without good paying jobs to replace them. There are far more auto assembly jobs in Mexico and far fewer here, since NAFTA. Nobody in the establishment has really been speaking to America's displaced workers. Whatever you think of Trump, he is. That may be the biggest hidden story of this election, and I'm not sure that most of those in politics or the media really have a clue. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Well, the Fourth of July is over and it is now, emotionally as well as officially, summer. The presidential primary season is over too. That, unlike even a Michigan winter, seemed to last forever. But we now know – with all due respect to the Libertarian and Green party candidates – either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be our next president. The only excitement remaining is to find out who they will select as their vice presidential candidates.

To me, one of the most horrific stories over the last year came in December, when a lady named Lucille Strickland was walking her five-year-old son to kindergarten in Detroit. Suddenly, a pack of four pit bull-type dogs appeared, grabbed the child, pulled him under a fence and into their yard and killed him. Neither the child nor his mother had done anything to provoke the dogs. Police came and killed the dogs, but were too late to save the child. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy went after the owner, a man with a past criminal record named Geneke Lyons, and attempted to convict him of second-degree murder. But before the case went to the jury, Wayne County Circuit Judge James Callahan refused to allow the jury to consider the second-degree murder charge. They then promptly found Lyons guilty of manslaughter and other charges, which could have landed him in prison for up to 15 years. But on Thursday the judge refused to give him a harsh sentence. Instead, he gave Lyons a year in which he is allowed to go to work, but has to spend his nights in jail, followed by four years of probation. The judge said he thought that Lyons had turned his life around, and "did not intend for this child to be viciously attacked." Well, I wasn't in the courtroom, didn't see the trial, and may not have access to information Judge Callahan did. But we have a terrible problem in this country with dogs that are essentially weapons, and most of which are pit bulls. Pit bull is sort of a generic name for a type of dog that is often bred for fighting. The name is sometimes applied to a couple purebred breeds and dogs that are crossbred with similar species. According to a research outfit called DogsBite.org, pit bull type dogs make up less than seven percent of the dogs in America, but have been responsible for almost two-thirds of the 360 dog bite deaths in this nation over the last 11 years. Rottweilers were the only other breed notable for killing humans, and they were a very distant second. I know something about dogs, having had them all my adult life, and a brother who is a highly respected dog psychologist. Currently I have an Australian Shepherd who is, quite simply, one of the best friends I have ever had I don't ever want to live without a dog. But while there are some very noble people who rescue pit bulls, some of which go on to live quite normal lives with decent families, these dogs are mostly bred to be weapons, or for use in illegal dog fighting rings. It is no accident that they kill more people than any other breed. And we aren't doing enough to stop it. Geneke Lyons did not have those pit bulls to play ball with him at the park, and he allowed them to run free. They tore a child apart, because that is what dogs like that do. There are vast numbers of people, not just in our inner cities, who are buying pit bulls in a misguided attempt at self-protection. I'm not sure giving him what amounts to a slap on the wrist sends the right message. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

This has been a surprising political year, to put it mildly, and there are still more than four months to go before the actual election. Whatever happens, it is safe to say that nobody a year ago really thought Donald Trump would be the Republican Presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton was expected to be the Democratic choice – but nobody imagined that a grumpy old socialist named Bernie Sanders would do as well as he did. In fact, the biggest upset on the Democratic side this spring was Sanders' stunning victory in the Michigan primary. Conventional polls showed Clinton ahead by as much as a whopping 37 points. But one poll was very different. Matt Grossman, the new director of Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research showed the result was within the margin of error. ... other polls were relying too much on older models of who was most likely to vote, and hadn't taken into account how the electorate is changing. When I asked him about why he was the only one who came close to getting it right, Grossman told me that the other polls were relying too much on older models of who was most likely to vote, and hadn't taken into account how the electorate is changing. There are reasons to think this wasn't a fluke. The 37-year-old Grossman has a fast-growing national reputation as an expert on American political parties, the electorate, and on how policy is made and how interest groups impact the process. So I went to see him yesterday to discuss how he sees the broader contours of this election and what's happening in America. Based on his research, there is good news and bad for both sides. Grossman puts Trump's chance of winning the election as no greater than about 25%, which is actually a little higher than the legendary Nate Silver gives him. But Grossman doesn't expect it to be a historic landslide, or for the familiar map of red and blue states to significantly change. He also now gives Democrats slightly less than an even chance at taking back the U.S. Senate - and no more than a 10 to 15% chance of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives. He also now gives Democrats slightly less than an even chance at taking back the U.S. Senate – and no more than a 10 to 15% chance of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives. America, he told me, is a country that now has rough parity between the parties – though they have become very different. Republicans indeed have become a primarily ideological party, while Democrats are, perhaps more than ever, a collection of interest groups. Grossman has a new book that will be published in August called Asymmetric Politics, which shows not only how the parties are different, but how they work in practice. That doesn't mean we are necessarily doomed to dysfunction. Instead, his research indicates as a nation we are "philosophically conservative and operationally liberal." Americans like to denounce government, in other words, but see no contradiction in demanding their particular special benefits, he noted wryly. But when liberals do manage to start new programs these days, they tend to use the tools of the free market to do it. For example, the Affordable Care Act, which relies on private insurers, not a single payer government system. Grossman knows there may well be unforeseen developments in the next few months that may dramatically affect this race. He and his researchers are preparing to take two major polls in Michigan this fall. After his success this spring, I intend to pay close attention. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

This has been a surprising political year, to put it mildly, and there are still more than four months to go before the actual election. Whatever happens, it is safe to say that nobody a year ago really thought Donald Trump would be the Republican Presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton was expected to be the Democratic choice – but nobody imagined that a grumpy old socialist named Bernie Sanders would do as well as he did. In fact, the biggest upset on the Democratic side this spring was Sanders’

Detroit is commonly and correctly thought to be doing better than it has been in a long time. There's a sense of hope again. The streetlights are back, and the bankruptcy's over. There are still more problems than solutions. There is still too much blight and too few jobs. One state senator from the city had to quit this spring after they sent him to jail, and a state representative with eight felony convictions was charged with three more yesterday. But there's hope and culture and unique whimsy and nostalgia. Last night, people filled a funky little movie house called Cinema Detroit, in an abandoned elementary school in what was once the scary Cass Corridor, but is now the fashionable Midtown. There, they paid to raptly watch a replay of a baseball game that had been played exactly forty years ago that night, in a stadium that no longer exists. Everyone knew how the game turned out. So did I, because I happened to have been there. The game was absolutely meaningless in terms of that year's pennant race. The colors in the videotape were faded; the broadcast, an old network game of the week, included forty-year-commercials for companies that no longer exist. But nobody cared, because they were there to celebrate magic. Forty years ago, Detroit had plenty of troubles too. Baseball has never been just like other sports; it is a game that inspires literature and essays about the meaning of a city's soul. The Detroit Tigers had been the worst team in baseball the year before, and were pretty awful that year too, America's bicentennial year. Then one day that spring they called up a tall skinny rookie pitcher from Massachusetts with a goofy grin and a shock of orange hair that reminded everyone of Big Bird on Sesame Street. If that wasn't enough, he talked to the ball. He also got down on his knees and groomed the pitcher's mound with his hands. But what really mattered was that he was phenomenal. He had perfect control and an overpowering fastball and radiated an utter, infectious joy and love of the game. He was utterly thrilled to be making sixteen thousand dollars a year. That was the night America discovered Mark "the Bird" Fidrych, as he pitched against the New York Yankees on national TV. The Tigers finished next to last, and Yanks were headed to the World Series. But the Yankees never had a chance that night. When the game ended, forty-eight thousand people wouldn't leave the park until his teammates forced the Bird to come out of the dugout and greet them. He would go on to win 19 games, start the All-Star game and make people happy who didn't even like baseball. But the next year he hurt his knee, and then he hurt his arm, and then it was all over. The Bird stayed cheerful and went home and bought a farm, until seven years ago he crawled under his truck to work on it with the motor running. You don't want to know the details. What you should know is that last night women in their sixties left lipstick kisses on his picture, and a crowd gathered to cheer a forty-year-old baseball game. Where else but Detroit? Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Detroit is commonly and correctly thought to be doing better than it has been in a long time. There’s a sense of hope again. The streetlights are back, and the bankruptcy’s over. There are still more problems than solutions.