Q Toon: Democratic Response

Republicans in this election cycle can't run on the economy, what with an unpopular war started by the most unpopular president ever that has sent fuel prices ballooning, furthering inflation sparked by his ill-conceived tariffs. Many of them are therefore running on culture war issues, number one among them trans-bashing.

(Alabama's Tommy Bubbaville has tried to expand the culture war to include airplane pilots who are "furries" in their off hours. I'm not sure where he came up with that one, although he claimed, "You can't make this stuff up." We know it's not something he read somewhere, because he proudly announced that in order to keep from being confused, he doesn't read. Perhaps he vaguely remembers seeing Chewbacca at the controls of one of them flyin' machine contraptions a while back.)

In a perfect world, Democrats would ignore Republican efforts to divert the electorate's attention away from their party's disastrous record. Instead, we live in a world where Republican-slanted media and Elon Musk-funded PACs doggedly try to keep distracting voters toward Republican talking points.

James Talarico, a target of one of Musk's "He's For They/Them Not You/Us" ads, is running to become the first Democratic Senator from Texas since Talarico was four years old. This week Talarico told  Fox Noise, "As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes. I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it risks safety or fairness.”

Talarico's decision to throw trans student athletes to the wolves has disappointed his trans supporters who had been attracted to his earlier sympathy for the trans community.

As a state representative, Talarico voted against GOP restrictions barring trans student-athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. He said such proposals amounted to a push for the government to "police people's private parts" and would harm "the least of these," a reference to Jesus' remarks in scripture. And he compared the justifications offered for the bans — that trans athletes had a genetic advantage and excluding them would promote safety — to rationales historically used to bar Black athletes from competing in professional sports.

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton announced that she " doesn't support boys playing in girls' sports," and Representative Marcy Kapture voted for a Republican bill to require schools to notify parents of a student's request to change their gender, pronouns, or preferred name, and to deny federal funding to schools that "teach or advance concepts related to gender identity." 

Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has also come out against transgender athletes participating in school sports, although he also promises to veto any “stupid culture-war-Trump bill”

Iowa's Republican legislature has no intention of rescinding its 2022 law criminalizing transgender athletes, so it's not an issue likely to face the state's next governor. At a campaign stop in September, Sand echoed Talarico's faith-based stand on transgender rights in general:

“Now, I’ve been clear … the civil rights repeal for transgender people was wrong,” Sand said. “It was wrong. You should not be fired from your job in the state of Iowa for being different. You should not be evicted from your apartment in the state of Iowa for being different.

“This to me is a question of faith. My faith is all about the outcast, it’s all about the people who are pushed aside, who are not favored. And I think that we have to be making Iowa a place where state government is as welcoming as Iowans are.” 

When pressed at the same event to justify his position on transgender athletes, Sand sidestepped the question.

“This is a conversation I’m interested in having,” he said instead. “I’ve met with One Iowa, I’ve talked to a lot of other trans advocates, and I’m listening to them. I’m open-minded about it. I don’t have anything different to say than what I’ve said before. But again, hearing from you is important, and I don’t think that we recognize how important it is that we just talk to each other. Right?

“Everybody is welcome here. Everybody is welcome at this event, everybody should feel welcome in the state of Iowa. I might not offer you full agreement with everything you believe … I’m doing my best to do what I think is the right thing to do, but I also want to make sure that it’s doing the right thing. Which is why I’m interested in listening to people about that, and I’m going to continue to listen to people.”

As Sand moved on to the next questioner, someone in the back of the crowd called out, “Coward!” Sand heard the voice, but apparently misheard the word, thinking it was “louder.”

These are close races, and Democrats can't really afford to turn off the 1% of voters who are trans (even if the percentage of voters who are trans student athletes is much smaller). Many of us in the cisgender 99% realize that when Republicans get tired of demonizing transgender persons, they will come after some other minority — gays, lesbians, bisexuals, Roma, Latinos (oops, sorry, we're already there), Moslems (ibid.), atheists, Quakers, Unitarians, countertenors, low-T southpaws, vegan paraplegics,  type AB– librarians...

And of course, furries.

When It's Least Expected, You're Elected

Our Graphical History Tour returns to Iowa in 1926

"Making a Banquet for the Democrats" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 4, 1926

If you were on the Tour when we welcomed "Ding" Darling back to his drawing board in April, you may remember Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart, a Progressive Republican whose 1924 election win was overturned by his fellow Senators almost a year and a half after Iowans had cast their votes. The Republicans in the majority decided that they would rather add Daniel Steck to the Democratic minority than continue suffering Brookhart in their own caucus.

Brookhart, wielding an axe on the left in Darling's cartoon, immediately announced that he would challenge Iowa's other Senator, Republican Albert Cummins (with the sword in the foreground). Darling includes a third Republican candidate, Howard Clark, a banker who offered himself as a compromise candidate.

"Why Good Men Don't Go In For Politics" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 6, 1926

The leading two candidates ran a bitter race for the time. The incumbent campaigned on a motto of "Cummins or Communism”; Brookhart complained that a railroads bill Cummins had co-sponsored benefited Wall Street at farmers' expense.  

"Well, Now Where To" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Evening Tribune, June 8, 1926

When the sun came up after election day, Brookhart had bested the rest of the field, winning just over 50% of Republicans' votes. (Senator Cummins died the next month at age 75; attorney David Stewart was appointed to serve out the remaining months of Cummins's term.)

"Hoeing His Own Row" by Bill Sykes in Life, June 3, 1926

Brookart's victory was widely seen as a rebuke to Republicans and the Coolidge administration for shelving the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, a central theme of Brookhart's campaign. Responding to a post-war drop in the price of American farm crops, the bill's sponsors, both Republicans, proposed having the federal government buy a set amount from farmers to sell at a loss.

"He Don't Know Nothin' About Hosses" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 9, 1926

McNary-Haugen was opposed by laissez-faire business interests, predominantly in eastern states, as costing money, involving the government in business, and encouraging farmers to reduce production. Big business and the railroad magnates further objected to the bill's endorsement of farmers banding together in cooperatives to negotiate commodities price levels.

"Now, Consarn Ye, Don't Go Hog-Wild" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 10, 1926

Smith Brookhart's primary win was another in a series of rebukes by the party faithful to one aspect or another of Coolidge administration policies. 

"Lotsa Pep" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June 12, 1926

Brookhart, by the way, was a staunch advocate of Prohibition, although cartoonists overlooked that aspect of his election; Cummins and Clark supported it, too, and Coolidge was pledged to enforce it. Prohibition, rather than agricultural subsidies, had been the dominant issue in the primary elections in Pennsylvania in May (we visited them here). 

But now Quaker State Republicans had a new issue.

"The Biggest Parade Yet" by Jesse Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. June 16, 1926

Reflecting new electioneering methods of the 20th Century, campaign spending on the Pennsylvania primaries prompted congressional hearings in June, as it was revealed to have reached levels unheard of to that date. 

Jesse Cargill's cartoon recalls the previously unprecedented spending by Republican Truman H. Newberry in his 1918 primary race against Henry Ford for Michigan's Senate seat. Newberry's conviction for having spent ten times the maximum legal amount of $10,000 allowed under the Corrupt Practices Act was overturned by the Supreme Court, on the grounds that the federal government had no authority to regulate partisan primary elections. Newberry ended up resigning from the Senate in 1922, anyway.

"Late Primary Returns" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 16, 1926

Nelson Harding rests this cartoon on the actual dollar amounts reportedly spent by the Republican gubernatorial and senatorial candidates. If they seem almost quaint today, I'd note that they dwarf Mr. Newberry's expenditures to insignificance.

Adjusted for inflation, the 2026 amounts would be $20,885,171 by Pepper-Fisher, $11,221,269 by Vare-Beidelman, and $3,668,864 by Pinchot.

"And They All Chipped In" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. June 28, 1926

While a main focus of the Pennsylvania primaries was on the issue of Prohibition, Rollin Kirby did not spare criticism of the Manufacturers Association. (It should also be noted that the majority of Gov. Gifford Pinchot's campaign expenditures came from his own very deep pockets.)

And since we're updating earlier History Tour stops...

"Not Very Neighborly" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1926

The governments of Great Lakes states from Wisconsin to Ohio opposed a plan to connect Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River through Chicago's sanitary district canal. Arguing in its favor, the Chicago Tribune concluded that "it becomes increasingly difficult to find any motive behind their antagonism other than a great sectional selfishness."

"Among all the voices raised against the Mississippi valley waterway proposal, those of Michigan and Ohio have perhaps been the loudest. The Mississippi valley states are constrained to wonder whether it is entirely coincidence that Michigan and Ohio, are, of all the central western states, the most advantageously placed in relation to the St. Lawrence route to the sea, their ports of Toledo and Detroit standing at the head of Lake Erie, obviating the need of passing around the whole state of Michigan, as must ships from Illinois, Indiana, western Michigan, and Wisconsin ports.

"It seems strange indeed that Wisconsin, Indiana, and western Michigan are not with the Mississippi valley on the side of the waterway. ... Their natural route to the sea is by way of the Mississippi, not the St. Lawrence. The valley states search for their reason and find nothing but the Chicago diversion — a five inch lowering of the lake levels out of a total lowering of almost three feet."

"While Rip Van Winkle Snores" by Hal Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 12, 1926

The Cleveland Plain Dealer countered,

"Advocates of the rivers and harbors bill now pending in the senate, which authorizes the improvement of the Illinois river and by clear implication recognizes the legality of Chicago's attack on the level of the lakes, try constantly to make it appear that opponents are opposed to a waterway from Lake Michigan to the gulf. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

"Every speaker representing the interests threatened by Chicago's continued extraction of water has made it plain that the fight of Ohio and other lake states is not against a lakes-to-gulf canal but is against a policy which for twenty-five years has been raiding the commerce of the lakes...

"This rivers and harbors bill as it passed the house over the protest of practically every member of the lake district, except those from Illinois, is almost a perfect example of pork barrel legislation."

In another editorial, the Tribune attacked what it called "the Ohio gang," which the Plain Dealer presumed meant diversion opponents Senator Frank Willis and Rep. Theodore Burton.

"For some years, Ohio has been the brat of the American family," the Tribune fulminated, "overfed and dirty. If Congress can't wash its ears and keep it in its place, the Mississippi valley will see that the effects are felt in Congress."

"You Can't Blame the Children" by Jesse Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. June 19, 1926

Canadian editorial cartoonists who had weighed in against Chicago's lakes-to-gulf canal in earlier stops of our Graphical History Tour were silent on the U.S. Congress's Rivers and Harbors bill in June, distracted by other matters. We'll turn to their issues later this month.

"Liable to Get His Feet Wet" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, June 11, 1926

Although Sam Hunter did take a moment to keep Toronto readers apprised of that Iowa senate primary.

Ding Ding Ding: Late Breaking Correction

"The Comeback" by Ed LeCocq for Des Moines Register, ca. April 26, 1925

In a recent Graphical History Tour of editorial cartoons eulogizing Fighting Bob LaFollette, I had wondered why I couldn't find an example by the Des Moines Register's Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, a frequent LaFollette critic. Nor could I find a cartoon by him during the Scopes Monkey Trial and the subsequent passing of William Jennings Bryan. Instead, the Register had been running cartoons by Edward C. LeCocq.

I can now report that Darling was laid low for several months in 1925 with peritonitis, according to updates on the Register front page in March and April.

The University of Iowa library identifies the above LeCocq cartoon as having appeared in the Register on Sunday, April 26, 1925, which is the date on the clipping from a Tribune somewhere. I'm not finding it in the Register on that date or any other that month.

Darling's last cartoon before taking sick appeared on March 23, 1925. For a few weeks thereafter, the Register had no editorial cartoon on its front page; its March 24 front page included a boxed notice that "Due to the illness of Jay N. Darling (Ding), the cartoons will be omitted temporarily from the first page of The Register."

After a few weeks, the Register front page sported a few syndicated cartoons by Winsor McCay and Rollin Kirby. It ran the first of LeCocq's cartoons on April 19; he was soon drawing daily editorial cartoons for the front page for the rest of the year.

"If You Don't Think the World Moves, Just Try Stopping for a Year" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, April 5, 1926

Darling finally returned to the Register's front page on April 5, 1926, along with his editor's report that

Jay N. Darling, "Ding," returns to the Register's front page this morning with the first cartoon he has drawn after more than a year's absence. Mr. Darling has completely recovered his health, following the serious illness with peritonitis with which he was stricken March 19, 1925. Ed LeCocq, the young cartoonist who substituted for Mr. Darling, will draw cartoons for the Evening Tribune.

(Side note: the Des Moines Evening Tribune-News would not have been the source of the cartoon at the top of this post; it did not publish on Sundays.)

A Seat at the Table

Yesterday's Comic Strip of the Day included a cartoon of mine that I had posted to my Facebook and Xitter pages after this week's New Hampshire primary:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Feb. 1988

I'm honored and flattered, and accept the mild criticism leveled at it. The thing, however, is that it's a 36-year-old cartoon.

The first-in-the-nation status of Iowa's presidential caucus and New Hampshire's presidential primary are cherished among media types and natives of those two states, but have long been resented elsewhere. The states are predominantly rural and overwhelmingly white, and rather unrepresentative of the nation at large. The candidates have months to meet and mingle with the hoi polloi there, who talk jokingly of deciding against a particular candidate because they got to meet him or her only once.

In years when the race is still competitive after New Hampshire, the candidates dash through the ensuing states — blink and they're gone. This year, of course, the media have declared the race over and are impatiently tapping their toes for Trump and Biden to give their nomination acceptance speeches, the other 48 states rendered irrelevant to having any say in who will be on the November ballot (take that, Colorado and Maine!).

I was a college student in Minnesota in 1980 when that state tried to move its presidential caucuses to the same date as New Hampshire's primary. The Democratic Party punished Minnesota for that effrontery, warning that the delegates Minnesota caucus-goers selected that night would not be seated at the national convention — since it had been the 1976 New Hampshire that vaulted Jimmy Carter from obscurity to front-runner status, the incumbent president owed the Granite State that much consideration.

If one were to pick some state to replace Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the line, which one is more representative of the nation at large?

How about Illinois?

It's got urban. It's got rural. It's got Chicago and Cairo. It's got Blacks, Latinos, Italians, Poles, Irish, Swedes, Serbs, and Lithuanians. It's got corn and coastline. It's got baseball, football, basketball and hockey. It's got hundreds of undocumented immigrants stuck at O'Hare. It's got weekend hunters and career criminals, both of whom cherish their stockpile of guns and screw the rest of Illinoisans who get in their way. It's got Boystown and Cardinal Cupich.

Let's see Iowa or New Hampshire top that!

Memorial Day's Look Back

A century ago, there was already talk about folks forgetting the reason for the holiday today. Saving my sneak peek for another day, here's Ceperley's take on the topic.

"If It Wasn't for Grandpa..." by William A. Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, May 30, 1923

 

Q Toon: But We Play Woke on TV

I'm taking a week off from alarmist cartoons about the fascist wing of the Requblican Party.

And drawing instead about the corporations that fund them.

By now, you cannot but notice how interracial and non-intergenderal couples have begun to appear in television and internet commercials, once the exclusive domain of white heterosexuals. (Although I've always had my suspicions about Mr. Whipple.)

Leaving interracial families aside for the nonce, unless the same-sex couples are pressing you to ask your doctor about anti-retroviral medication, you might blink and miss them. Which is why the guys in today's cartoon are stuck in that split second of time.

Many of these same advertisers wanting to appear (for lack of a better word) woke have, however, been helping fill Republican politicians' campaign coffers for decades, even as the party marches farther and farther into antiLGBTQ and racist territory. Repressive and restrictive laws are proliferating in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Iowa.

Chuck Magro. John May. Donnie King. Cory Harris. Charles Scharf.

These are the CEOs of five of the most powerful corporations operating in Iowa: Corteva. John Deere. Tyson. Wellmark. Wells Fargo.

Where are they? Should we request a wellness check to make sure they’re OK?

These CEOs lead corporate monopolies making billions every year off the bodies and brains of Iowans, including LGBTQ Iowans, yet they’ve been missing in action as Iowa Republicans propose the largest number of anti-LGBTQ bills ever in a single legislative session.

These bills include everything from attempts to ban books (because kids reading about LGBTQ characters is dangerous, while meatpacking plant child labor isn’t) to an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in the state (forget the issue of constitutionality).

The time has come to realize that corporate monopolies are no friend of the LGBTQ community when the going gets tough.

For these corporations, maintaining favor with the Republicans who run the state is more important than standing up for LGBTQ Iowans, including their own workers. They know if they dare defy Iowa Republicans, their ability to maintain the monopoly power they use to deliver their excessive profits will be threatened. ...

Perhaps one can't blame Corporate America for being intimidated by the example Florida has set after Disney Corporation dared to stand up for its LGBTQ employees and customers. Not every corporation has quite as sweet a deal as Disney had up to this year from the states where they operate; but nearly every major corporation has plied legislatures with campaign donations in order to secure special benefits of one kind or another: Tax Incremental Financing districts, property tax waivers, monopoly protection, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and so on and so forth.

And they don't want those bennies taken away after so much investment in those politicians.

If we in the LGBTQ+ community want to know who our real friends are in the business world, that Des Moines Register editorial suggests we look to the folks who can't afford to pay premium prices for friends in the statehouse:

[I]t’s again small-business owners who possess the courage to speak up. Dozens of small businesses like the print shop Raygun, the bookstore Reading in Public, and the brewery Firetrucker Brewery have all taken stands alongside LGBTQ Iowans and against Iowa Republicans’ proposed legislation.

Wouldn’t Iowa’s LGBTQ community be better off with fewer corporate monopolies and more Rayguns, Reading in Publics, and Firetruckers? The answer is yes.

Ask your doctor if small businesses are right for you.

Toon: Taking the Seat Back, Revisited

It's possible that only we editorial cartooning nerds will get the reference made in my cartoon today.

Most of you are aware of the full-bore assault on voting rights underway in Republican state legislatures all across the country. Iowa has shortened in-person voting hours by a full hour in the evening because, I don't know, voting fraud between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m.

Republicans said the rules are needed to guard against voting fraud, though they noted Iowa has no history of election irregularities and that November’s election saw record turnout with no hint of problems in the state.

In Georgia, Republicans are making it a criminal offense to offer water to voters forced to stand in line for hours on end in order to exercise their constitutional rights. They are well aware that rural and suburban voters never have to wait anywhere near that long at their polling places; this measure has nothing to do with making sure voters aren't being bribed with bottles of Evian.

Just about everywhere the Republicans are making it tough for city folk to vote, by cutting the availability of early voting, absentee voting, and voting by mail. This on top of earlier voting restrictions such as requiring photo ID but not allowing student or municipal IDs. (Oh, sure, if you don't have a car, you can get a state-approved ID; but you still have to schlep way the fork out to the exurbs to the DMV office for it.)

Even Republican election officials readily admit that the 2020 general election was the most secure and fraud-free election in history. Republican elected officials, however, say that their voting restrictions are necessary to address allegations of voting irregularities — allegations which they themselves have fabricated.

Now, for some of you, I may need to explain that this cartoon references one by the great Bill Mauldin upon the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963. 

"I've Decided I Want My Seat Back" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, September 6, 1963

It's not as famous as the Weeping Lincoln he would draw less than three months later. Still, I think it found its way into enough high school and college textbooks that you don't necessarily have to be an editorial cartoonist yourself to recognize it.

Saturday Morning Book Report

"If It Isn't the Corn Borer, It's Something Else" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, May 23, 1975

Last month, I mentioned having bought a book of cartoons by Des Moines Register editorial cartoonist Frank Miller in a resale store. (I should clarify that if you came here by googling for the Frank Miller who drew Batman, Sin City, and Daredevil cartoons, that's someone else entirely. But you're welcome to read on.)

I first encountered Miller's cartoons in the Milwaukee Journal, which used to run three portrait-oriented, syndicated editorial cartoons side by side on its Saturday editorial page. The newspaper racks in library where I went to college had the Des Moines Register, which was one of the last U.S. newspapers running its editorial cartoonist on the front page, so I got to see his work much more often in those years.

"A Low Opinion" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, June 28, 1956

Over the course of the book, you watch Miller develop his curious pen-and-ink style with copious shading that appeared hastily scribbled. But not haphazard; the earliest drawings in the book are drawn in charcoal, and this shading appears to be Miller's way of emulating charcoal with pen and ink. Sometimes, as in the cartoon at the top of this post, characters' faces would be entirely in shadow — not something you see in most cartoons.

The editorial cartoons section of the book opens with Miller's first cartoon for the Des Moines Register in 1954, and ends with the cartoon he had not quite finished drawing when he died in 1983.

Since it was Miller's editors at the Register who chose the cartoons for the book, they may not have been the ones Miller would have chosen himself. They tend to be on the gentler side, particularly where individual Iowa politicians are involved. (An exception is a cartoon showing Senator Roger Jepsen, who had switched his vote on a military sale to Saudi Arabia, carrying his own head under his arm.)

By way of illustration, this cartoon by Miller, a Korean War veteran, probably didn't raise a lot of Iowans' hackles in 1965:

"Some of Us Are, Fella" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, Nov. 30 1965

Ten years later, as the South Vietnamese military collapsed, this cartoon might have been a little more controversial. It's not in the book; nor is any other cartoon about Saigon's defeat.

"American Monument in Southeast Asia" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, ca. March 29, 1975

The writers of the book describe Miller as "unassuming but not humble, aware of his talent but not crowing about it," so perhaps fire and brimstone cartooning was simply not his style. He might not even have seen any point in collecting his cartoons in a book in the first place; to clear out his basement, he once sold several of his original drawings in a garage sale for only 25¢ apiece.

The book allows that at least two of Miller's cartoons provoked such a response that he was forced to apologize for them. In one, a calendar of September hath 31 days. The other, commenting on Sandra Day O'Connor's ground-breaking nomination to the Supreme Court, hangs on a mildly sexist, even trite, joke. If  Miller stuck by any of his cartoons in the face of reader complaints, there's no mention of that in this book.

What you will find are every president from Truman to Reagan, a couple of Iowa governors, lots of lovingly rendered Iowa scenery, and one famous visitor to the state.

No caption, by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, Oct. 4, 1979

Facked App

We'll be with you any minute.

Q Toon: Yes, We Have No Palmettos

If the polls are to be believed, Pete Buttigieg has soared into the lead among Democratic candidates for president in first in the nation contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But even if December polling translates into actual voting in February, the next stop on the campaign trail is in South Carolina, where Mayor Pete is polling just slightly ahead of A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick.

Whereas Iowa and New Hampshire electorates are among the whitest in the nation, South Carolina Democrats rank among the blackest. Not that race has helped black candidates there; even if you added Cory Booker's numbers and those of Kamala Harris before she suspended her candidacy this week, you'd still fall well short of former Vice President Joe Biden's support among South Carolina Democrats. Apparently, being anti-malarkey is a big selling point down there.

I don't hold a lot of stock in polls this far before any actual voting, however, especially where Democrats are concerned. Democratic candidates are like a bunch of cats in a room, and the polls are like a laser pointer shining on one of them. The rest all attack that spot of light until it lands on one of the other kitties.

Remember: at this point in 2003, Howard Dean led the polls; Hillary Clinton had a substantial lead over Barack Obama in December of 2007.

But once the cattle calls debates are over and the caucuses and primaries are underway, my cartoons will have to focus on issues, not who's up and who's down. My deadline for cartoons that will appear after the polls close is well before the polls open. So if I'm gonna comment on the horse race, I have to do it now.

Q Toon: Judging by Its Cover

Caitlyn Jenner is going to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing nothing but an American flag and an Olympic medal.

There's not a whole lot of point getting worked up about that, so let's talk about the West Virginia primary.

There's not much point in getting worked up about that, either. It's late in the primary process; the Republican contest has already been decided, and the state's Democrats have a history of voting against the front-runner.

Or do they?

Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton 51% to 36%; it's hard to imagine that coal mining enthusiasts who disagree with Hillary Clinton that there's little future in coal mining found much more in Sanders's position on mining to agree with. (On guns, maybe. Mining, no.) Indeed, an additional 9% of the vote went to a protest candidate, Paul Farrell, upset with the two candidates' attitude against coal mining, and 2% went to Keith Judd. In 2012, Judd, a felon who filed from a Texas prison to be on the Democratic primary ballot, garnered 41% of the vote against President Obama. And in 2008, Democrats there were just fine with Hillary Clinton, voting overwhelmingly for her over the presumptive nominee, The Black Guy.

44% of Sanders voters in West Virginia's open primary plan to vote for Donald Trump in November, even if Sanders somehow seizes the nomination from Clinton. There might very well have been down-ballot races of interest to genuine Democrats, but I suspect that a significant chunk of Sanders's so-called support could be chalked up to Trump voters making mischief in the Democratic race. (Trump himself told his supporters there not to bother to voting for him.)

I confidently predict that West Virginia will vote against the Democratic nominee in May and November of 2020. And 2024. And 2028. Even if any of those nominees are Donald Berzilius Trump.

The problem here isn't with West Virginia; it's with the presidential primary and caucus system. Come May, one or both parties have no contest remaining, leaving the voters in the late states — including the largest one in the nation — no voice in deciding who will be on the ballot in November. Who is more likely to bother to vote at this point: someone who is fine with the choice made by the early state voters, or someone who thinks that choice is full of crap?

Candidates spend a full year campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the whitest states in the union. Those states are followed by South Carolina, then "Super Tuesday" throughout the South, so moderate candidates tend to be out of the race by February. Any candidate running third in March is viewed as a joke no matter how serious his or her issues are. By April, at least one of the contests is usually in the bag, which is why the New York primary forces voters to declare way back in October which race they plan to vote in.

In a country the size of the U.S.A., I don't know what system would work better. A national primary would put lesser-funded candidates at an even greater disadvantage than U.S. v. Citizens United already has, and regional primaries would tilt the race in favor of the predominant biases of whoever comes first.

Maybe states should vote by month the same way voters do in line at the polls: states A through D in February, E through L in March, M through R in April, and S through Z in May. Four years later, rotate the order just to be fair.

Okay, fine, Iowa and New Hampshire can get to be first all the time. But at the conventions, their delegations don't get to cast their votes until after the balloons have dropped for the winner.

100 Years Ago: A Midwestern Perspective

I'm kicking things off this Sláinteback Sathairn with a large (nearly half a page) ad in the April 23, 1916 Chicago Tribune for their own editorial cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon.

"For more than 20 years he has been the favorite of the Chicago public," the ad boasts. "Thousands of Tribune readers look for McCutcheon's cartoon first, and the war headlines second." After touting his experience dodging bullets in various war zones and interviewing citizens and diplomats, the ad concludes, "He often says more in a single cartoon than many writers can say in a whole page of type. ... Don't miss them. You'll be behind the times if you do."

You hardly see that kind of promotion for the staff editorial cartoonist these days unless he's just won a Pulitzer Prize. (Congratulations, Jack Ohman!) Why, in most papers, you hardly see a staff editorial cartoonist at all.

McCutcheon's cartoon on the front page that day considers the prospect of America joining the Great War, the idea that our troops might be sent anywhere around the globe being quite novel back then. For someone with experience dodging bullets, he makes war seem like quite the jolly adventure:

John McCutcheon for the Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1916

"Looking Forward"

On the Tribune's editorial page that day is a cartoon by J.N. Ding for the Des Moines Register with the midwest's other prominent Republican cartoonist's thoughts on preparedness -- the topic of a great many cartoons of the period -- and a the prevailability of cooler heads.

J.N. Ding for the Des Moines Register, April, 1916

"Place Your Bets Now"

C.F. Naughton was a less prominent cartoonist, drawing for the front page of the Duluth Evening Herald. He doesn't seem sympathetic to either the Republican/Progressive former President Theodore Roosevelt or the Democratic incumbent President Woodrow Wilson in this next cartoon.

Bill Clinton and Harry Truman may have remained active in party politics, and Jimmy Carter continued to work for human rights and election monitoring around the world; but I don't think there has been any President since T.R. so eager to meddle in affairs of state after leaving office.

C. F. Naughton for the Duluth Evening Herald, April 24, 1916

Roosevelt: "Right or wrong, I'm Agin' You."

Naughton labels Roosevelt "Copperhead," originally the term for northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War. In the top panel, Roosevelt urges Wilson to declare war on Germany; in the bottom panel, he complains "What are you trying to do? Get us into a war with Germany?" Yet, in neither panel does Wilson seem to be set to "do something."

Meanwhile, rebels in Ireland (then still wholly a part of the United Kingdom) attempted to take advantage of England's entanglement in the continental war, issuing the "Easter Declaration" of an Irish Republic on April 24. Several days of violence followed in the streets of Dublin. Germany attempted to send weapons to the Irish, but the shipment was intercepted. Still, Naughton exaggerates the German connection with the "Made in Germany" ribbon on his cat:

C. F. Naughton for the Duluth Evening Herald, April 28, 1916

Germany: "Scratch Him, Kittie!"

England managed to put down the Easter Rising by the end of the month at the cost of 500 casualties on all sides. Thousands more were arrested and imprisoned or sent to internment camps, and the seven signers of the Easter Declaration were executed.

I was interested to find out how John McCutcheon and the Chicago Tribune handled the Easter Rising, what with their pro-Allies stance vs. the significant Irish population in town. But while Ireland rated banner headlines all week, McCutcheon appears to have taken the week off (that April 23 advertisement notwithstanding). When he returned to the front page the next Sunday, a speech in Chicago by Teddy Roosevelt overshadowed the failure of the Irish revolt as far as McCutcheon and the Tribune were concerned.

Q Toon: Log Cabin Fever

At the risk of piling on Mrs. Clinton, here's this week's cartoon:

Last month, The Log Cabin Republicans emerged from their hole in the ground to issue a political ad criticizing Hillary Clinton for being “wrong on gay rights when it mattered.” Their ad shows clips of Hillary Clinton making statements such as "I do not support gay marriage" in 2002 and 2004, followed by one of Bernie Sanders on Rachel Maddow's show last October in which he says, "It's great that people evolve... but it's important for people to stand up when the going is tough."

Now, whatever one thinks about Bernie Sanders' record on LGBT issues, it's hard to imagine that LGBTs who identify as Republican actually want to see the Vermont Socialist elected President of the United States. (The Log Cabin Boys do post a disclaimer at the end of the ad stating that they aren't endorsing either candidate. Whew! I'm glad they've cleared that up.)

Log Cabin president Gregory Angelo told the Washington Blade, "I personally think and Log Cabin Republicans thinks [sic] that voters should be aware of Hillary Clinton’s past, specifically on marriage equality. We felt that urgency to do so now ... because other LGBT organizations have not done due diligence regarding Hillary Clinton’s past, and we felt we were in a unique position to step up in that regard."

A decade ago, you'd have been very hard pressed to find any Democrat at the national level willing to vouch for marriage equality. Civil unions were as far as most of them were willing to venture.

You'd have had a hard time finding any Socialists at the national level pushing for marriage equality, either. Not included in the LCR ad is Sanders, in the same Rachel Maddow interview, defending having told the Rutland Herald in 2006, when asked whether Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, “not right now.”

Nor do the Log Cabin Boys include anything from this 16-year-old column by the late Peter Freyne about Sanders' reaction after Vermont's Supreme Court ordered the state legislature to do something to afford same-sex couples equal rights with different-sex couples. I'll quote Freyne at length:

Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth...from a rhinoceros. Last month, shortly after the decision of the Amestoy Court was issued, Mr. Sanders publicly tried walking the tightrope — applauding the court’s decision and the cause of equal rights without supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples.
This week we were no more successful getting a straight answer. All we did get was a carefully crafted non-statement statement via e-mail from Washington D.C. And Bernie’s statement wins him the Vermont congressional delegation’s Wishy-Washy Award hands down.
Once more he “applauds” the court decision but won’t go anywhere near choosing between same-sex “marriage” and domestic partnership. “By all accounts the legislature is approaching this issue in a considered and appropriate manner and I support the current process.”
Supports the current process, does he? What a courageous radical!
That’s as far as Ol’ Bernardo would go. It’s an election year, yet despite the lack of a serious challenger, The Bern’s gut-level paranoia is acting up. He’s afraid to say something that might alienate his conservative, rebel-loving rural following out in the hills. Something that could be interpreted as “Bernie Loves Queers!”

As Freyne noted earlier in the column, however, the two Democrats running for Sanders' seat in Congress that year were both on the record in support of full marriage equality. Sanders easily won reelection in 2000, so I guess Sanders had the better read on those rebel-loving rural Vermonters.

To be perfectly honest, I tend to think the Democrats would be better off not nominating a guy who wasn't even a member of their party a year ago (and the Republicans would be better off not nominating a Donnie-Come-Lately, too, for that matter). But wherever the candidates stood on marriage equality in 1972, or 2000, or 2004, or 2006, I want to support a candidate who'll stand up for LGBT rights "when it matters."

Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires.

Q Toon: Through the Eye of the Needle

I take a risk any time I draw a cartoon like this one on the weekend before a presidential primary or caucus, knowing it won't be published until after the votes are counted and their entrails analyzed beyond recognition.

It's too bad I didn't draw it a week earlier. I have been at a loss to understand the fulsome praise heaped upon Donald "Two Corinthians" Trump by Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. (I didn't realize they had a history together.). Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas has also come as close as he can get to officially endorsing Trump without risking his megachurch's tax-exempt status (and I guess those two have no history together to explain what Jeffress sees in The Donald). An NBC News/Survey Monkey poll taken before the Iowa caucuses led one to believe that evangelicals were "flocking to Trump."

Among white evangelical Republican voters nationally, Trump earned the support of 37 percent, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father is a pastor and has played a key role in recruiting faith leaders to support his son, is at 20 percent. In the same survey conducted the previous week, Cruz registered 9 percentage points higher. Below the top two contenders, Ben Carson earned 11 percent among evangelicals, and Marco Rubio took 10 percent.

What do these people who think President Obama is the Antichrist see in the guy often described as a thrice-married casino mogul? It can't be his powers of insightful exegesis:

Trump was raised Presbyterian and has often fumbled in his attempts to appeal to Christian and Evangelical voters. He declined to discuss his favorite Bible verse in August, after claiming the Bible was his all-time favorite book. He later tried to recite a verse that didn't actually occur in the Bible. He has also said he never asks God for forgiveness, and when asked which book of the Bible was his favorite, he said he likes the Old and New Testament equally.

On the other hand, they probably appreciated his promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the current Court's rulings for marriage equality. The Muslim-bashing didn't hurt his standing with them, either.

But the evangelicals could get that stuff from nearly every one of the candidates in the Republican party. They bought it from Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum before -- two Iowa caucus victors who are now stranded in the wilderness wondering how they let some Richie Rich from Noo Yoark Sitty swipe their schtick.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I'm going out on a limb this week and crossing my fingers that heavy snow doesn't result in an upset win for Jim Gilmore tonight.

Long Road to Victory, Part IV

Part IV: State by State

After voters in Hawai'i overruled their state supreme court on marriage equality, states all around the country began passing Defense / Definition of Marriage laws and constitutional amendments. Marriage rights activists believed that their best chance of stemming this tide was in the state of California. A ballot initiative written by State Senator Pete Knight to write marriage discrimination into the California constitution was on the ballot as Proposition 22 in 2000, actively supported by the Catholic and Mormon Churches, among others.

"No on Knight" tried to close the gap in the polls with print and television ads calling Prop 22 unnecessary: "You want the best for your children, but what if your child, or the child of someone you know, turns out to be gay? ... Gay marriage is already banned and it stays banned when you vote no. For your child, or someone else's, vote no on 22." This mealy-mouthed approach utterly failed, and Prop 22 passed by a whopping 61% to 39% margin.

Where marriage equality was finally able to stem the tide was in New England. I mentioned last Saturday that Vermont had led the nation with its recognition in July, 2000 of same-sex civil unions (nine years later, it would be the first state to recognize same-sex marriage by legislation rather than a court ruling). The first court ruling in favor of marriage equality came in the fall of 2003, in Massachusetts. In a 4-to-3 ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Court gave the state legislature 180 days to legalize same-sex marriages.

The California Supreme Court found Proposition 22 unconstitutional in 2008, and the Connecticut Supreme Court found in favor of marriage equality that same year. Both decisions, like that in Massachusetts, were by one-vote majorities. Surprisingly, the first unanimous court decision came in April, 2009, not in some liberal coastal state, but in Iowa.

(Someone from central Iowa contacted me after this cartoon appeared, wondering how I knew of Sac City. As it happens, it was the only small town I found on the map with a name which clearly fit metrically in the Green Acres theme song. I've never been in Iowa west of the Mississippi River Highway.)

Conservatives in Iowa succeeded in ousting three of their Supreme Court justices in the next election, but the tide was turning in favor of marriage equality. I can't include my cartoons about each of the fifty states here, especially since the most recent progress has come, via U.S. Circuit Court rulings, several states at a time. But here are a couple favorites -- Hawai'i in 2009:

Minnesota in 2011:

And finally, from last year, featuring Wisconsin's then-Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, whom I could have replaced with any of a few dozen elected Republicans from other states: