THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Weekly Campaign Update 11

THE IOWA CAUCUS AND
NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY HEAT UP
The presidential campaigns in both major parties are moving
out of low gear in the two states which will vote earliest next
year. Until now, most of the candidates have relied on free media
and the televised debates to promote their causes, but both Iowa
and New Hampshire traditionally require “retail” campaigning
by the candidates themselves with shaking hands, local
appearances, and town meetings. Success in polling until now has
been precipitated by name recognition and news media coverage.
Already a certain volatility in polling has been provoked by those
campaigns whose candidates are both showing up and effective.
TV, cable and radio advertising also now begins in earnest, and
as initiated in 2008 and 2012, nomination campaigns are relying
more and more on social media and GOTV technology. This is
also the time when campaign cash, strategy and organization
begin to count more and more.

FOREIGN POLICY TO COUNT  
MORE IN 2016?
Events in the world and domestic terrorist threats are enabling
foreign policy and security issues to become much more important
in the presidential election than is traditional. Perhaps not since
1956 when a takeover of the Suez Canal by the British and French,
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, occurred just before the
election, will foreign policy issues play such an important role in
the voting.

NOT SO SAFE SEATS?
It always happens that just before the national elections, certain
U.S. house and U.S. senate seats, earlier thought completely “safe,”
become surprisingly competitive. This naturally occurs when there
are unexpected vacancies and surprise retirements, but often
incumbent gaffes and political blunders enable this to happen.
Although it seems extremely unlikely that Republicans would lose
control of the U.S. house, conventional wisdom about senate seats
could be upended by unpredicted circumstances. In any event,
six to none months from now, the list of “safe” Republican and
Democratic incumbents is likely to change.

CHRISTIE’S TURN
Latest polls from New Hampshire show New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie rising to double digits and fourth place among his rivals.
Mr. Christie’s rebound is no accident; he has been campaigning
heavily in the first-in-the-nation primary state, appearing at town
meetings and performing “retail” politics. His favorables are now
the highest among GOP candidates in the state.The governor has
just opened a campaign office in Iowa where his poll numbers have
also previously been low. He is now almost certain to be back on
the stage at the next main Republican debate. Three other GOP
candidates also have made recent gains, including Donald Trump,
Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman.  All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Minnewisowa 2016

The term “Minnewisowa” as a political megastate made
its first appearance during the presidential election of
2004 in an op ed I wrote then in The Washington Times.
It was the re-election year for President George W. Bush,
and the race was going to be close. Living in the prairie
state of Minnesota, after growing up in Pennsylvania, and
attending graduate school in Iowa, I had become aware
how similar in many important ways were the tangential
states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. I often make
up new words, so Minne-wis-owa was a natural.

With 26 electoral votes, Minnewisowa is a battleground
powerhouse in a nation where an increasing number of
states had become predictably and almost inevitably “blue”
or “red.” Recently, the three states had leaned “blue”
(Democratic), but by 2004,, they appeared to be up for
grabs. Iowa, in fact, went for Bush in 2004, and Wisconsin
was very close. Later, in the Obama years, Minnewisowa
returned to blue, but once again in 2016, these states
appear to be competitive.

A recent Survey USA poll in Minnesota surprised most
observers with its results that showed Democratic
frontrunner Hillary Clinton trailing most of the leading
Republican presidential candidates. Dr. Steven Schier at
Carleton College, one of the most impartial and acute
observers of Minnesota politics, wrote that the poll might
be slightly overestimating  the GOP turnout, but even if
that is true, Minnesota is unexpectedly competitive. Most
observers would agree that Iowa and Wisconsin are less
blue on paper than Minnesota, and there are indications that
each of these states could also be presidential battlegrounds.

Minnesota and Wisconsin particularly usually have heavier
Democratic turnouts in presidential years, but Mrs. Clinton
does not seem, as elsewhere, to be generating very much
enthusiasm so far. Both Wisconsin, with its historically
socialist enclaves (in Milwaukee and Madison) and Minnesota
with its traditional populist enclaves (Minneapolis, St Paul
and the northeastern “Range”) show some significant
support for Vermont’s Bernie Sanders.

In the end, barring the unforeseen, virtually all Democrats in
these states will vote for Hillary Clinton if she is her party’s
nominee. Mr. Obama, however, generated exceptional
turnout in the black and other minority communities, and
among independent voters (about 25-30% of the total vote).
95% of an 80% turnout, it must be remembered is not the
same as 95% of a 60% turnout. Unless Mrs. Clinton can
change her public perception in the next ten months, she
could lose all or part of Minnewisowa. Just do the numbers.

Of course, the eventual Republican nominee is very important
in this electoral equation. A GOP ticket unacceptable to
regular conservative voters could keep them home, or even
make them hold their nose and vote for another ticket. The
current state of the GOP nomination contest reveals this
possibility.

Iowa, as the first state to vote in the caucus/primary season,
has already drawn considerable candidate visits and attention.
With Governor Scott Walker now withdrawn as a presidential
candidate, Wisconsin will increasingly draw candidates when
they are in the Minnewisowa neighborhood. Most candidates
now already quietly come to Minnesota for fundraising. The
Gopher State has no statewide races in 2016, and lots of liberal
and conservative millionaires who can and do contribute to
campaign war chests.

In 2004, Minnwisowa was a battleground megastate. In 2008 and
2012, it was much less so. But in 2016, with the initial advantage
to the Republicans because of “Obama fatigue” and the unusual
lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, Minnewisowa could be
decisive in an election now shaping up to be hard-fought,
historic and close.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casseman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Origins of U.S. Intelligence

In  early June, 1942, a few days after I was born in Erie,
Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army requisitioned a private girl’s school
named Arlington Hall near its World War II military
headquarters in Virginia. The original facility was soon greatly
enlarged to accommodate about 5100 civilians and more than
2000 military personnel. Many of these men and women worked
for the Signal Intelligence Service (S.I.S.), the code-breaking
branch of the U.S. Army which specialized in “cracking” the
Japanese military codes, and intercepting Japanese secret
communications. (An equivalent site called Bletchley Park in
England similarly specialized in “cracking” the German codes.) 
Soon after the German “Enigma” code was deciphered by
British cryptologists at Bletchley Park, U.S. cryptologists, led by
legendary U.S. cryptologist William Friedman initially broke the
Japanese “Purple” diplomatic code. Later, in 1943, S.I.S.
cryptologists at Arlington Hall deciphered the Japanese military
code. These code-breaking achievements, it is generally agreed,
had much to do with the Allies winning World War II agains the
Axis Powers.

President Roosevelt asked General “Wild Bill” Donovan to create
the Office of Secret Services (O.S.S.) in 1942, and many of his
personnel were stationed at Arlington Hall. There was a great
deal of top secret Arlington Hall activity during World War II,
but there was also a small hospital facility located there which
provided medical services to U.S. Army nurses, S.I.S. and O.S.S.
personnel, and to U.S. Chief of Staff General George Marshall
and his staff.

I hope the reader will excuse my mentioning the post hospital,
but it will explain my special interest in this location as the
center of World War II U.S. Signal Corps intelligence services,
and partly the early days of the O.S.S. (which later became the
Central Intelligence Agency or C.I.A.). The commandant (post
surgeon) of this post hospital was my physician father, then
Major Hyman Lawrence Casselman, and I think I might say
accurately that I was among the youngest persons ever to visit
this secret site during wartime. By November, 1942, my
mother, my older brother Tom (who later grew up to be the
physicist who became one of the fathers of post-war top-secret
infrared detection technology), and I had moved to the
recently-constructed military officers family housing (today
converted to upscale condominiums) in nearby Fairlington,
Virginia. (S.I.S. chief Colonel William Friedman and his famed
cryptologist wife Elizabeth were neighbors and friends of my
parents in Fairlington).

Spending the first four years of my life there became a central
experience of my immediate family’s history, and although I
have only a few fleeting memories of that time, its narrative,
especially of my father’s fascinating experiences, has created
my lifelong interest in the origins of U.S. intelligence services.

The lore from World War II often construed the creation of the
O.S.S. as the beginning of the American spy system. It was true
that the U.S. had no organized or official spy network prior to
Pearl Harbor, (the FBI was supposed to do only domestic police
work), but we did have spies working for us in previous war
periods, including the Mexican War, Civil War,
Spanish-American War and World War I.

But what about before that? Particularly, did we have an
intelligence system in the Revolutionary War? The British
colonial army certainly did under the legendary Major John
Andre, who among other feats, lured Continental Army General
Benedict Arnold to defect and become our nation’s most
notorious traitor. (Major Andre was caught behind Continental
lines, and subsequently hanged as a spy.)

What did our commanding general, George Washington, have
to keep him abreast of secret British military movements?

Until relatively recently, we only knew about individuals such
as Nathan Hale (hung by the British as a spy at age 21 after
declaring “I regret I have but one life to give for my country.”)
Scholars and historians, however, have unearthed a large-scale
and very secret spy network that reported directly to General
Washington and his staff throughout most of the Revolutionary
War.

Known as the “Culper Ring,” a relatively large number of
patriots and apparent loyalists were recruited by Major
Benjamin Talmadge beginning in 1776 in Setauket, New York.
The fascinating story of this important part of the
Revolutionary War has now been told in books, documentaries
and a partly fictionalized TV series called “Turn: America’s
First Spies” (available on a DVD set). [The TV series, based
on a novel, is centered on the character of Abraham Woodhull,
one of Talmadge’s actual first recruits in Setauket, who is
portrayed as a married man having an affair with another
man’s wife. The real Abraham Woodhull was actually
unmarried through the period of the series, and is not known
to have carried on any affairs, but that’s show business.]

Operating initially without organized military intelligence in
1776, Washington was at a distinct disadvantage. There were no
modern communications then --- no telegraph, no telephones,
no radio or television, nothing but handwritten or verbal
communication carried by foot or horseback. Major Benjamin
Talmadge organized, at Washington’s order, not only a true spy
network, but developed a secret code for its communications.
(Washington did not ever know the true identity of most of his
spies, and some of their identities are still not known today.)
It was nothing like the vast operation at, and emanating from,
Arlington Hall more than 150 years later.  The Revolutionary
War network had failures and tragic losses, but it also had
notable successes that enabled General Washington and his
Continental Army to turn the war around and ultimately
succeed against the mighty British army.

Cryptologists in 1942 or today would have little trouble
“cracking” our earliest secret code (General Washington was
known, for example, by the numbers “711”), but it worked just
fine in 1777-1781.

We live in a time when codes, spies and intelligence operate
technologically “light years” ahead of those earliest days of
our history, or even of those days not so long ago during
World War II. We also live in a time of global and national
threats when good intelligence might well mean the difference
between survival and annihilation.

That is why I think the brief history recounted above is worth
telling.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Weekend Update 10

TRUMP POLL NUMBERS 
REMAIN HIGH
New York businessman Donald Trump continues to top the
polls in the Republican race for president. He was briefly in
2nd place when Dr. Ben Carson lead in a some polls, but
Carson now seems to be fading. Other candidates who seem
on the rise include Florida Senator Marco Rubio, New
Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
After weeks of decline, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush
has seen his polls rise slightly. Almost perpetually involved
in controversies, many of his own making, Mr. Trump’s
support persists among many who are polled regardless of
his statements, claims or attacks on other candidates. His
persistent support appears to be tied to his larger-than-life
personality, his deliberate political “incorrectness,” and his
ability to grab headlines and free publicity in the media.
This indicates he will probably continue to lead in the polls
until the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. Should his
popularity survive until Super Tuesday on March 1 and
beyond, his candidacy could become much more formidable.

A NEW GOP OPEN SENATE SEAT
Incumbent GOP Senator lost his bid to be elected governor of
Louisiana, and has announced his retirement from the senate
as well. As a result, his seat will be open in the 2016 election.
While the Democrat won the governorship, a Republican won
the off ice of Louisiana attorney general, and the seat is
expected to remain in conservative hands. Nontheless, if New
Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (with one of the best-known
political surnames in the state) decides to run for the seat, the
race could be competitive.

THE CULT PASSION TO PURGE
The publicity surrounding student and faculty protests at
big-name public colleges and universities, as well as private
prestigious higher learning institutions, including Ivy League
schools, is approaching a coverage of a “cult of an historical
purge.” The irony of this is that the protests arise from the
accurate historical revelations, most of them already known, of
the mistakes and prejudices of major figures in American
history, most of them being Democratic Party icons. But instead
of a calm and thoughtful contextual discussion of these flaws,
the conversation has been transformed into the compulsion to
purge the names of these figures, which include Thomas
Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson, from the
history of the Democratic Party and the nation. Years before,
some university professors launched an attempt to impeach the
memory of Abraham Lincoln for his shortcomings, and since
the most “indispensable man” in the American revolution, George
Washington, was a slaveholder, it is probably only a matter of time
until the radical left attempts to “erase” him. too. Next on the
list, of course, would be Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson whose human frailties are already well-known,
but who remain liberal icons. Not all Democrats, of course, agree
with this cult of denial, but unless many of them speak up soon
to stop the purging, the Democratic Party will become a party of
ciphers with unknown parentage.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: The Numbers That Really Count In 2016

It’s almost a year away now, but it might be useful and sobering
to remember what will be the numbers that really count on
Election Day, 2016.

Those number s won’t be demographic figures, pre-election polls,
exit polls or even the actual popular vote. The numbers that will
count will be the numbers in the electoral college. There is a total
of 538 electors from the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Each state is allotted  two electoral votes for  their two U.S.
senators plus one electoral vote for each of their members in the
U.S. house. The District of Columbia has no voting members of
Congress, but has been allotted three electoral votes.

In order to be elected president of the United States, a
candidate must receive 270 electoral votes, or a simple majority.
If no candidate receives 270 electoral votes, the election goes to
the U.S. house of representatives where each member of that body
votes for their choice by a majority vote. By law, they need not
follow the popular vote in their state. By custom, they vote for the
candidate of their own political party.

Technically, any elector might vote for any candidate he or she
chooses, but almost always electors vote for the candidate who
receives the most popular votes in their states. Two states now
have a variance on this, and divide their electoral votes by
congressional district. (A national movement which is gaining
steam now in the states would in effect eliminate the  electoral
vote in favor of the popular vote, but this will have no impact in
2016.)

So what does the landscape of the electoral college vote look like
now?

The electoral college numbers currently are up in the air. The
conventional wisdom is that its totals are very similar to the
actual totals in 2012 when Barack Obama was re-elected
president with 332 electoral votes to 206 for Mitt Romney.

It would appear, however, that the results of the 2016 electoral
college might be more divergent than conventional wisdom now
suggests. In the traditional scenario, the only states which might
change sides in 2016 are Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado
and Nevada (all won by the Democrats), and North Carolina,
Missouri and Indiana (all won by the Republicans). This scenario
suggests an advantage for the Democratic ticket.

Another scenario, now perhaps as likely as the conventional one,
has an expanded list of battleground states, and adds Wisconsin,
Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico.
Each of these states cast their electoral votes for Democrat
Obama in 2012. If they become competitive in 2016, it strongly
suggests a Republican advantage in the presidential election.
The current poll weakness of  Democratic frontrunner Hillary
Clinton supports this scenario.  Even in very “blue” (Democratic)
Minnesota, a major recent poll has her trailing most of the GOP
candidates.

Of course, these scenarios can change, but we are now only two
months from actual voting (in the Iowa caucus), and both fields
are shrinking (although the GOP field remains overlarge).

Recent international events have so far not helped either
President Obama or those Democrats who wish to succeed him.
The economy remains fragile. On the other hand, Republicans
continue to dally with inexperienced presidential candidates,
and risk throwing away the critical votes of independents.

What has remained constant so far in this cycle is the strong
winds of electoral unrest among voters on all sides. This will be
the key to which direction the political hurricane, now forming,
goes when it hits land only a few weeks from now.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.       

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Weekly Campaign Update 9

CHRISTIE RE-RISING?
Seemingly long ago, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was
among the brightest lights shining ahead for the 2016 race for
president. Then a local scandal was used to attempt to
derail his ambitions. As next year’s election approaches, Mr.
Christie seems to be making a comeback, especially in the early
caucus/primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa where he
has been campaigning hard. At least two major media
commentators have quite recently suggested he is making a
comeback, and poll numbers, for whatever they are worth,
show sharp rises for him among his field of rivals, and in his
favorables. Along with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Mr. Christie
is making the biggest recent gains only weeks before the
formal campaign season begins in earnest.

TRYING TO FORGET HISTORY
By now, the public has been witness to a pattern of forced
history forgetting among Democrats and radical university
students and professors who want to “punish” some of the
leading figures in past American life for some of what they
said or did in their own time. The latest “target” is none other
than the previously celebrated Democratic icon President
Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, it seems, held some very nasty
views about black Americans. Similarly, George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson are to be “deleted”
from history by Democrats and liberals for being slaveholders.
Earlier, President Abraham Lincoln was demoted by some
liberal scholars for his known stand that he preferred to
save the Union over freeing the slaves. If this keeps up,
history books will have to report that the nation was founded
and later led by shadowy anonymous figures, not to mention
that Union Civil War soldiers were led by an anonymous
drunk commanding general. If we remove “womanizers”
from U.S. history, then those acceptable for public
biographies would fill less than one page of one book. Of
course, the shortcomings and mistakes of our past leaders
are not to be condoned, but since almost every figure in
American history had one or more flaws, where is the line of
forgetting to be drawn and imposed?

WAS BIDEN WRONG ABOUT 
DIVIDING IRAQ?
Even before he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate,
Senator Joe Biden, once chairman of the senate foreign relations
committee, advocated dividing Iraq into three independent
countries so that Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds could live with much
less ethnic and religious strife. His proposal was greeted with
loud disdain by both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and
conservatives. Now, many years later, Biden’s proposal seems
to be a reasonable solution not only for Iraq, but neighboring
Syria as well.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: The End Of "Liberal" Higher Education?

The current spectacle of campus upheaval in so many U.S.
colleges and universities is a dark omen for what has become
in recent years a “liberal” education. (Please notice that I do
not say “liberal arts” education.) Unfortunately, U.S. higher
education on very many campuses, including virtually all of
those which have traditionally held the most prestige, has
become overwhelmingly politicized to the far left, a
consequence of the views and impositions of many
professors at these institutions.

Campus life began to change dramatically in the 1960s as
many students and professors joined a national antiwar
movement protesting our involvement in Viet Nam. This was
the time that I was attending both undergraduate and graduate
universities, one in the East and the other in the Midwest. (In
full disclosure, I participated in some of those protests.)

After Viet Nam, campus life in most institutions of higher
learning “quieted down,” only to re-heat following the end of
the Cold War in the early 1990s when aggressive U.S.
radicalism and neo-Marxism, having no power base in the
then-defunct Soviet Union and the turning-to-state-capitalism
of China, went into political hibernation on American campuses.

During the administration of President George W. Bush, this
radical impetus was revived on campuses across the nation,
and was accompanied by the rise of “political correctness”
and various “hot button” issues such as global warming and
racism.

The attempt to intimidate college administrations by student
and professor protest, of course, is not new, but one might
think that college presidents today would have learned
something from the past. The shameful spectacle of college
presidents now pandering to these protesters indicates that
they have not learned much from the past.

In the 1960s, the most expensive college education (at an Ivy
League university, for example) was about $2500 per year. Today,
that price tag is approaching $70,000 per year! By paralyzing
campuses, destroying a true “liberal education,” and wrecking
the value of higher education in the work place, the current
upheaval, it would seem, is sowing the seeds of its own
destruction. How many parents, regardless of their own views,
are willing to shell out between $10,000 and $70,000 per year
per student for a degree that will have reduced or little value?

Colleges and universities will survive, but the current sad
spectacle will likely only hasten the demise of traditional campus
life. For the first time in history, there is a credible alternative,
and that is quality online higher education.

In their quest to destruct American higher education, the radical
students and professors only hasten the exhaustion of their own
unstable and self-annihilating movement.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.