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PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2016
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
Two big ballot questions remain
unanswered
Did ‘rigged’
comment really
hurt Trump?
Congratulations.
We’re almost to the end.
By the incredibly low standards set by the
first two presidential debates, last week’s out
ing would have to be considered the most
productive one between Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton.
We saw in the early stages a focused Trump
landing punches on his opponent, classifying
her experience as “bad experience” not con
ducive to being an effective president.
We saw Clinton, cool and calm as ever, effec
tively playing the “triangle offense.”
She again seemed to
pick the right times to
take a shot at Trump
and provoke his lack of
self-discipline.
For me, it didn’t really
move the needle. Many
important issues were
again barely touched
on, and I came away still
resolved to not vote for
either candidate.
The key point was
something Trump said
toward the end of the
night, but I was more taken aback by the gen
eral reaction to it, especially among the large
media conglomerates.
When asked by moderator Chris Wallace
whether he would “accept” the results of the
Nov. 8 election, win or lose, Trump waffled a
bit and then said he would keep us “in sus
pense” while suggesting that the election was
rigged.
It was certainly a puzzling answer and bizarre
thing to say at a debate, but was it as cata
strophic as people have insinuated?
Doubtful.
After the debate, I flipped around the various
news channels and with the exception of Fox
News, Trump’s comments were generating the
most buzz.
They were characterized as everything from
a kiss of death for his campaign to “a threat to
the American democratic system.”
What?
1 never thought I would do this, but after 16
months, for the first time, I have to partially
defend Trump here.
First, while I get what Wallace was trying to
say, the question was oddly worded.
Maybe I’m taking it the wrong way, but how
can you “accept” something that hasn’t hap
pened yet?
That’s not to suggest we’re about to have
another 2000 on our hands, when a micro
scopic vote margin in Florida triggered an
automatic recount that led to a month-long
legal battle ultimately decided by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
But something wild could indeed happen.
Where did Trump go wrong?
All he really had to say was, “Barring an
unforeseen circumstance, I will accept the
vote of the American people.”
Still, there seems to be a little bit of amnesia
here, particularly on the part of the national
media.
First, voting irregularities and people in lead
ership of both parties questioning the legitima
cy of election results are hardly new concepts.
In fact, they go back several decades and
have been a part of this election cycle previ
ously with accusations by the Bernie Sanders
campaign against the Democratic National
Committee of collusion.
Secondly, the apparent consensus that
Trump’s comment seemingly sealed his defeat
is just flat out ignoring what has happened to
this point.
After a tangled web of insults and hidden
tapes sure to sink any other campaign in histo
ry, Trump remains standing.
A major part of his support system is people
who really believe the system is rigged. And it
may very well carry him to victory in 13 days.
The polls suggest he has an extremely steep
mountain to climb, but the polls also showed
a neck-in-neck race late in the cycle four years
ago.
Barring something far more sinister than
we’ve seen to this point, the climate is right for
Trump to ride a wave of near-record dissatis
faction with the direction of the country into
the White House.
We’ve seen voter registration numbers way
up in several states, which I think suggests a
movement toward Trump not being captured
in the polling.
It may not be enough for him to tilt enough
of the battleground states, and his path in the
Electoral College remains narrow.
But after everything I’ve seen — up close and
from a distance — I wouldn’t bet against him.
Scott Thompson is the editor of the Barrow
News-Journal. He can be reached at sthomp-
son@barrowjournal. com.
As Georgians ponder how they will
cast their ballots in this general elec
tion, there are only two issues that really
have any suspense to them.
Will the state’s electoral votes go to
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the
presidential race?
And will voters agree to
approve Gov. Nathan Deal’s
school takeover plan?
The future does not look very
bright for the school takeover
proposal, known formally as the
Opportunity School District.
Deal is asking voters to give him
the authority to appoint a spe
cial superintendent who would
take over the administration of
low-performing schools, but the
voters don’t seem inclined to go
along with him.
Two polls released last week
tell the tale.
A survey commissioned by the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed 59
percent of Georgia voters opposed the
Opportunity School District proposal
while only 34 percent supported it.
Ironically, the lowest level of sup
port for the proposal was among
Republicans — only 28 percent of those
polled said they supported the consti
tutional amendment, even though it is
being pushed by a Republican gover
nor.
Another poll released by WSB-TV last
week also showed only 34 percent sup
port for the school takeover plan, with
44 percent opposed.
Those numbers don’t look good for
the constitutional amendment.
It appears that voters support the con
servative principle that people should
decide at the local level how they want
to run their schools and how their tax
dollars should be spent for this purpose.
There are signs that Deal knows his
proposal is in trouble.
The governor’s chief of staff has
already sent emails to local school
districts demanding that they provide
records of dues that school systems
collect for two teachers’ groups, the
Georgia Association of Educators
(GAE) and the Professional Association
of Georgia Educators (PAGE).
The intent of this is very clear. PAGE
and GAE have campaigned energeti
cally against the passage of the school
takeover amendment.
Deal very likely will try to punish the
teacher groups by asking the Legislature
to pass a bill prohibiting school districts
from using payroll deductions to collect
dues from teachers who join profession
al organizations.
That would be the governor’s way of
lashing back at teachers and adminis
trators who worked for the defeat of his
Opportunity School District.
The question of who wins Georgia’s
electoral votes is not quite so clear-cut.
The aggregation of recent polls shows
Trump to be leading Clinton by two
to three points, which seems about
right for a Republican-leaning state like
Georgia.
Statistics guru Nate Silver calculates
that Trump at this point has about a 70
percent chance of carrying the state.
Write a Letter to the Editor:
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include the city of the writer.
But this has been a presidential cam
paign unlike any other we have seen in
recent memory.
Trump’s numbers nationwide have
been falling since he performed poorly
in three debates against Clinton.
He is also having to
deal with the fallout
from a videotape that
had him bragging to
an Access Hollywood
host about how celeb
rities like him can grab
women and have their
way with them.
Since that videotape
went public, at least
12 women have come
forward to allege that
Trump grabbed them
or touched them inap
propriately without their
consent.
Trump has denied all of the alle
gations, but it’s possible we could
see another embarrassing videotape
released in the two weeks remaining
before election day.
The biggest factor in Georgia’s out- \
come could well be this: over the past \
12 months, there have been 342,000
blacks, Latinos, and Asian-Americans
registering to vote.
Where whites made up 80 percent of
the state’s registered voters not so long
ago, they now account for less than 57
percent of Georgia’s voters.
In this highly polarized era, it’s no
big secret that most whites tend to vote
Republican while minority voters are
more likely to vote Democratic.
This increasingly diverse voter pool
is the main reason why analysts and
pundits keep predicting that Georgia
will one day flip from being a red state
to a purple state.
That may happen in 2016, 2018, or
2020, but if demography is destiny, it will
happen one day.
Those 342,000 newly registered voters
may determine whether that change
over happens this year.
It all depends on how many of them
actually turn out and cast a ballot on
Nov. 8.
(Tom Crawford is editor of The
Georgia Report, an internet news ser
vice at gareport.com that reports on
state government and politics. He can
be reached at tcrawford@gareport.
com.)
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJoumal.com
Mike Buffington
Scott Buffington
Co-Publisher
Co-Publisher
Scott Thompson
Editor
Jessica Brown
Photographer
Susan Treadwell
Advertising
Sharon Hogan
Office & Reporter
Also covering beats is Alex Pace.
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Drug abuse in rural
America a growing
problem
Forget Islamic terrorists.
The likelihood of a foreign terrorist killing
you is almost nil.
You’re far more likely to be killed by
lightning, a heart attack, cancer, the flu,
Alzheimer’s, an infection, Parkinson’s, or a
car crash than by terrorism.
Or maybe you’ll die
from a self-induced
drug overdose, or at
the hands of an angry
lover, or mad neigh
bor.
America is gripped
in a frenzy of fear
right now with a fear
of terrorism far out of
proportion to reality.
But if you want to
see what you should
really be afraid of,
look in the crime and
court pages of this newspaper. A rising tide
of drug abuse — much of it prescription
drugs and meth — is swamping local law
enforcement and court officials.
Once thought of as the bane of urban cit
ies, serious drug abuse has been sweeping
suburban and rural communities over the
last decade. Meth has been a major part of
that, but so has the abuse of opium drugs.
On an individual basis, that abuse is bad
enough. But it’s larger than the individual.
Many of those hooked on drugs can’t get
jobs because they can’t pass a drug test.
Their lack of resources affects their chil
dren, too, who often struggle in school and
who are in danger of continuing the cycle
of drug abuse as they become adults.
And drug abuse is all too often part and
parcel to physical abuse within homes and
families. Often, those involved in domestic
fights have been drinking too much or
abusing drugs.
In the larger picture, this abuse is also
destroying some rural communities across
the nation.
Rural areas have been struggling for years
as its younger generations move to jobs in
cities. That leaves behind empty school
buildings and decaying downtowns as the
population drops.
In addition, many areas have seen a
decline in manufacturing jobs as our eco
nomic system moves away from industrial
manufacturing toward an information and
technology based economy.
That has left many rural areas with shut
tered factories and a population that lacks
the resources to transition into that new
economy.
Some cite that economic change and
the stress it brings as the underpinning of
the drug abuse epidemic in rural areas.
Maybe, but there’s more going on than just
economic dislocation.
The basic idea of “community” that has
been so much a part of rural America is
itself fraying. That’s apparent in the overall
vulgarity of our culture and how that is
expressed in everything from music to
politics.
For too many people, the concept of
“community” has gone from one of geog
raphy to that of the dark isolationism found
in social media. It’s easier to have online
“friends” than the real thing.
Perhaps all of those things have unmoored
rural America from its traditional roots.
Personal aimlessness seems to be part and
parcel to the drug abuse epidemic. Work
is replaced with welfare, accountability
replaced with neglect.
Back when much of America looked at
drug abuse as mostly an inner city problem
in the black community, the cry was “law
and order.” Many Americans, especially
white citizens, just wanted to lock up the
city crackheads, most of whom were black.
But now that the meth and opium epi
demic has spread to rural white America,
the focus has changed. The call to “lock
them up” has faded as white Americans
see drug abuse in their own neighbor
hoods and families.
The result is that many rural communities
have created local drug courts that seek
counseling rather than prison for drug
abusers. It’s easy to call for prison when
the problem is somewhere else, but more
difficult when it’s in your own backyard.
Still, many rural communities don’t have
the resources to deal with the onslaught of
drug addiction, family violence, the neglect
of children and accidental drug overdoses.
In many cases, rural law enforcement,
DFACS, schools and courts just can’t keep
up.
This is a national problem, but the
answers won’t come from Washington.
See Buffington on Page 6A
‘\Mr
scott
thompson