Random flotsam from the shattered windmills of my mind

Is buying a burial plot "shopping local for Christmas"? Inquiring minds want to know.

We're coming up on Christmas soon, and I'll be re-reading "A Christmas Carol". I'm soooo into this novella, that I should really do an annotated version for publication.

The story is just so much more vibrant when you know what they are talking about, and what things mean.

Fer instance: Today, I went down the rabbit hole looking up the duties of bank clerk from 1800 to 1900.

An atmospheric medieval fantasy set in a world where an arboreal plague called the "cold blight" fells entire forests.

Those in power blame witches. But Lorel, who has always wanted to be a witch, doesn’t believe they could be responsible.

Her best friend, Lane, has been promised to the witches since birth, but would rather be a knight. Lorel offers to pretend to be her when the witches arrive, and joins them in Lane's stead -— despite worries that she will be kicked out if the coven learns she lived as a boy before joining them.

November 7, 1967 - Carl Stokes becomes the first Black man elected mayor of a major American city. He is also Cleveland's first Black mayor.

He was sworn into office on November 13.

Italian-American Anthony Celebrezze was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1953, and took office on January 1, 1954. Cleveland was losing population very fast, and was in the midst of shedding 30,000 residents in 1954. Celebrezze stemmed the losses momentarily by investing heavily in public housing and mass transit. But in 1961, President John F. Kennedy tapped him to become the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

Ralph Locher became his successor. Locher was an attorney and protege of Frank J. Lausche, Governor of Ohio and later a U.S. Senator. Lausche appointed him to the Ohio State Industrial Commission in 1945. Locher was Cleveland's top legal officer ("Law Director") under Celebrezze, and became acting mayor when Celebrezze resigned.

Cleveland was a city wracked by racial tension and deindustrialization. Celebrezze had stalled on school and housing integration to garner support for his housing and transportation initiatives, and now the devil had to be paid. Crime was rising, jobs were being shed rapidly, and for the first time in its history Cleveland had a significant Black population.

Ohio Attorney General Mark McElroy was expected to win the Democratic nomination for mayor, which all but ensured he would be mayor. But in a stunning upset, Locher won the nomination with 54.2 percent of the vote to McElroy's 33.6 percent. Locher viciously attacked McElroy's character during the short campaign. His victory was also likely due to Black voter disenchantment with Gov. Michael J. DiSalle; DiSalle had backed McElroy.

Locher served out the remaining year in Celebrezze's two-year term. He had no primary or Republican opponent in 1963, and easily won a full two-year term on his own.

A conservative Democrat, Locher had no clue how to solve Cleveland's problems. By 1965, the city had lost a whopping 63,000 residents. Home prices were plummeting, along with property and income tax revenues. Whole neighborhoods were emptying.

Locher refused to admit there was a racial problem in Cleveland. The only problem he saw was in "extremists" like Martin Luther King Jr. coming to town and stirring up trouble. He announced a school building program to calm Black parents demanding integration, but then doubled-down on racism and constructed schools only where they would reinforce racial segregation in education. He refused to allow the Cleveland Police to hire a single Black person.

In 1966, the massive Hough Riots struck Cleveland -- and Locher blamed the event on "communist infiltrators".

Locher embraced social conservatism very strongly. He banned rock concerts at city-owned venues, claiming rock music led to sex, teenage pregnancies, single mothers, and drug addiction. He limited welfare payments to Black families, single mothers, and divorced women. When he discovered that single parents were congregating in low-income neighborhoods, he cut city services like trash pickup there in an attempt to "drive them out" and "disperse" them from the city.

In 1965, Carl Stokes had had enough. Obtaining his law degree in 1956, he founded his own firm before serving four years as an assistant prosecutor in Cleveland. In 1962, he was the first Black person to be elected as a Democrat to the Ohio House of Representatives. He was reelected in 1964.

Stokes knew that he could not win the Democratic primary, so he decided to run as an independent. McElroy again attempted to defeat Locher, but lost the primary by a vote of 52.6 to 46.3. Locher lost heavily in all the Black-majority wards in the city, and his support among the strongly conservative ethnic encalves in the city had dwindled due to his support for a city income tax. (He'd lost that effort decisively in the May 1965 municipal election.)

Stokes campaigned hard for mayor. He knew his support in the city's 13 Black-majority wards would be overwhelming, so he worked to win over whites on Cleveland's conservative West Side and in its ethnic white wards on the East Side. He actively reached out to labor unions. He knew the local AFL-CIO would vote to endorse Locher, but he felt he could split the labor vote if he could convince out-of-work steel, iron, auto, and shipping workers that he knew how to get the city back on its feet.

In the closest election in Cleveland's history, Locher barely won a second term in office on November 2, 1965. His margin of victory was only 2,458 votes -- just one-tenth of one percent of all votes cast. Stokes shocked the political establishment by winning more than 50 percent of the votes in some overwhelmingly white wards.

In 1967, Stokes decided he could not win the mayor's race without the support of the Democratic establishment. Locher had slightly improved his political position by winning passage of a city income tax in May 1967.

Yet, Locher was in trouble. His deference to West Side voters, who screamed bloody murder if Locher tossed even a penny at the problems of the overwhelmingly Black East Side, hindered his reelection bid. He was so disliked in Congress that Cleveland had all but been locked out of urban renewal money flowing from Washington. Locher had also alienated the city's business community, which was reeling from the loss of jobs. Locher had not proposed a single policy to help improve business conditions in Cleveland, and openly denounced business leaders at the annual Democratic Party Labor Day rally.

During the primary campaign season, Locher turned to law-and-order issues. He vowed to fill the city jail with "extremists", and pooh-poohed the claims of Black residents that city housing inspectors had ignored their problems. (They had. Locher lied.) He accused Stokes of threatening race riots if Locher won the primary, something Locher called "racial blackmail".

For his part, Stokes again campaigned heavily in majority-white wards. He emphasized his ties to the Lyndon Johnson administration, and pledged to get urban renewal funds flowing again. He employed white campaign workers, urged white voters to "vote for the man, not the Negro", and blasted Locher as amiable but ineffective. "If Ralph Locher had deliberately worked the last four years to bring Cleveland to its knees, he couldn't have done it."

Toward the end of the primary campaign, Stokes picked up the critical endorsement of The Plain Dealer, the city's largest newspaper. The Teamsters, the city's largest labor union, declined to endorse Locher (although it did not endorse Stokes). Several important businessmen and business groups also endorsed Stokes.

In the October 3, 1967, primary, Carl Stokes walked away with the nomination. He won 52.3 percent of the vote, while Locher had 43.6 percent and Lakewood mayor Frank Celeste had 4.0 percent.

On November 7, Stokes defeated Republican Seth Taft, grandson of the former president, with 50.5 percent of the vote. Initial polls after the primaries showed Taft ahead in the race, as racist whites united against Stokes. (80,000 white Democratic voters defected to Taft in the election.)

Stokes, however, won the support of more and more white businessmen, who were increasingly convinced that Stokes had a plan for renewing Cleveland's industrial and manufacturing sectors. Stokes also vowed to fire Police Chief Richard Wagner and Law Director Bronis Klementowicz, both major forces in the local Democratic Party and the two men many held responsible for the sclerotic and pathetic attempts at dealing with the city's troubles. (In fact, at 5 AM on November 8, Stokes fired both men.)

November 7, 1989 - L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first African American elected governor of any U.S. state when he wins election as Governor of Virginia.

African Americans had been appointed governor before, or been elected undemocratically under Reconstruction. None had ever won office in a free election until Wilder did so.

Trump did something no Republican has done in 20 years: Won the popular vote.

This is what political scientists call a "realigning election". It is a permanent shift in American politics.

Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties.

For the next four years, liberals will exhaust themselves fighting. And when J.D. Vance runs for president in 2028, he'll blame them for "hindering" progress. And win.

White people are protected by white privilege. Because of that, they will not suffer much in the coming storm.

So they will vote for authoritarianism again and again.

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