Forum at Cedarville U. helps sort out history-making presidential race

A history-making presidential campaign with history-making candidates will make for a remarkable election, the director of Cedarville University’s Center for Political Studies said tonight.

“No matter what you think of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, this is historic,” the director, Mark Caleb Smith, said.

“No matter what takes place, it will be remarkable,” he said, because the nation will either election someone who has never held public office or the first woman president of the United States.

Smith, Dr. Christopher Devine, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Dayton and Laura Bischoff, political writer for the Dayton Daily News, were panelists for a 90-minute public forum “Election 2016: History in the Making.”

The idea of the session, held in the Dixon Ministry Center on campus, was to help citizens navigate the stormy and very negative campaign.

“None of this is predictable,” Smith said. “Campaigns are negative because negativity works. Voters remember negativity.”

WHIO news anchor James Brown was the moderator for the evening.