All over America, politicians, pundits and other interested parties are assessing what happened in the midterm elections earlier this week. On the whole, it's not a clean, simple storyline: the House flipped to the Democrats, but Republicans gained ground in the Senate. If a midterm election truly is a referendum on the president, the commentariat consensus seems to be that President Trump neither was wholly repudiated nor wholly endorsed. Nationally, we seem to be in for gridlock on the governing front, and interminable investigations and warfare on the political front, for the next two years.
But here in Illinois, the story is a good deal simpler: the Republicans were routed. It was a bloodbath. It was a massacre. It was Bears vs. Redskins, 1940 NFL title game. Among the highlights, or lowlights, depending on your point of view:
- First time Democratic candidate JB Pritzker cleaned incumbent Republican governor Bruce Rauner's clock, winning the governorship by 15 points and a half million votes
- Democrats swept all of the statewide races on the ballot, and now hold every statewide elected office in Illinois, including both Senate seats, the governorship, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Comptroller, Treasurer and probably a few more I'm forgetting
- Here in the Chicago suburbs, two long-time Republican-held US Congressional seats were flipped to the Democrats. Peter Roskam, at one time the fourth-ranking member of the Republican caucus and the architect of last year's Republican tax cut, was defeated by Sean Casten, a clean-energy entrepreneur. Randy Hultgren, a four-term GOP incumbent, lost to Lauren Underwood, an African American woman and first-time candidate in her early 30s, a registered nurse and veteran of the Obama administration. Every Chicago-area suburban US House seat now is held by a Democrat, which is more than surprising
- In state senate and house races and county commissioner races, the same storyline prevails, including across the traditional Republican suburban strongholds. My own state senate district flipped, with a Democratic woman defeating a Republican man.
Of all the Illinois GOP losses, shellackings and stinging rebukes on Tuesday, the one that feels the most like the tectonic plates are shifting beneath our feet are the two congressional seats going to Democrats. Those seats both incorporate parts of DuPage County, which is the traditional heart of the Republican Party in Illinois. If DuPage County goes Democratic (and nearly half its county board members are now Democrats), the GOP in Illinois no longer has a geographic center. The Chicago suburbs traditionally have been one of the feeders for Republican leaders in Congress nationwide, including such notable names as Henry Hyde, Phil Crane and the now-disgraced Dennis Hastert.
Why did this happen? In no particular order:
- Democrats ran bright, energetic, appealing and well-funded candidates against Republican incumbents who were, on the whole, older, male-er and more complacent than their opponents. A good way to win in politics is to run a better candidate
- The Republican at the top of the ticket, Governor Rauner, was a dead man walking. He was extremely unpopular across the board, and managed to alienate his own party's cultural-conservative wing last year by signing a bill that increased abortion funding. Simply put, there was zero enthusiasm to re-elect Rauner
- Donald Trump doesn't play well around here. The Illinois Republican Party's base, at least during my lifetime, has been suburban voters, and Trump doesn't appeal to suburban, educated, affluent conservatives. Illinois suburban women in particular are reported to have voted Democrat in record numbers on Tuesday
- The Illinois Republican Party's woes have been around a good deal longer and run far deeper than Donald Trump. A few months ago here at NewGathering, I wrote about Dan Lipinski, the Democratic Congressman representing the southwest and west Chicago suburbs, who narrowly won a primary challenge from the left. That hard-fought primary battle might have suggested to Republican leaders that Lipinski is vulnerable. So who did Republicans manage to choose to oppose him in the general election? A Holocaust denier - well, that was how he was originally billed; perhaps in an effort to update his "appeal", he's now reportedly also come out as a white nationalist. There may be areas of the country where that kind of thing is countenanced, but not around here. In my own congressional district - my precinct is gerrymandered into a lakefront district that always is represented by a Democrat - the Republicans ran a local conservative Christian pastor with a police record of embezzlement and a history of erratic behavior. Many races on the ballot on Tuesday had no Republican candidates. Republicans in Illinois are struggling to run good candidates, or any candidates at all. Democrats, on the other hand, seem to be replenishing their ranks of candidates with young first-timers, something that bodes well for the future of the party
- The only kind of Republican candidate less popular than a Trump Republican is a non-Trump Republican - and most Republican candidates around here are not Trump Republicans. The issues on which mainstream Republicans have run, at least since the Reagan years, don't play as well as they used to, especially with younger voters, who seem to respond to issues such as a higher minimum wage, government-funded medical care, gender fairness, civil rights for LGBTQs and liberalized marijuana laws. None of these are Trump signature issues; these are issues for which traditional Republican stances seemingly are waning in popularity
Well, Jim, Col. McCormick is dead and the Republican Party is nothing like it was in 1975 when you were a teenager or in 1955 when I was. It is not and never will be again what it was when Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, he of the lost comb, helped LBJ pass two civil rights acts from the other side of the aisle.
ReplyDeleteBut cheer up. You know where you stand. It now appears that our governor's race, where the Democrat has conceded, and the senate race, where our sitting governor has proclaimed himself the victor, are both going to constitutionally mandated hand recounts -- of the kind we didn't have (although we should have) in 2000. Proving he is as ignorant as I thought, Gov. Scott is suing our elections supervisor -- a female version of Piney Straight Arrow -- and her counterpart to the South for, um, ah, not awarding him enough votes to win.
When I was a teenager in Chicago, the only Republican we knew was the Rep. precinct captain, who as far as I knew was also the only Republican voter on our block. My Aunt Ann was the Dem Precinct captain, and I was her faithful acolyte.
DeleteCan we conjecture that a good part of the voter outpouring was the usual non-voters who were provoked into going to the polling booth? I speculate that those who voted Democratic were not thrilled with their choice, but as Jim demonstrates the Republican candidates were as bad as if not worse than Trump--at least in Illinois.
In New York, the Democrats swept the House races even in Staten Island and the Mid-Hudson Valley...Perhaps the only Republican win (haven't checked) was Collins in western New York under indictment for insider trading--a practice that some people don't find illegal.
Ah, Everett Dirksen. Them were the days: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o
DeleteHere's the dope on Chris Collins:
Delete"Collins' margin of victory appears to be narrow at about 1 percent, with a lead of over 3,000 votes. The Associated Press reports Collins received 133,412 votes, McMurray received 130,316 votes and Reform Party candidate Larry Piegza received 5,737 votes.
"The Hill reports Collins was initially expected to easily win reelection, but doubt was raised when the Justice Department filed charges and Collins briefly suspended his campaign."
Another example of third party candidates taking up the votes of the losing candidate.
Jean, Thanks for that stroll down memory lane with Ol' Ev' worrying about the "staggering" national debt, which was $369 billion when the video was made, $909 billion when Reagan took office and $2.6 trillion when he left, and is $21.4 trillion now, headed for $25 trillion in 2021 under current budgets.
DeleteEv would be appalled. As everyone should be.
Yes, everyone in my neighborhood were blue-collar Democrats who demonized Dirksen and co., but now he looks benignly avuncular.
DeleteMichigan statewide races went narrowly blue, but Gov. Gretchen will be dealing with a red state legislature with a chip on its shoulder. Bad times ahead.
ReplyDeleteThe NYTimes gives a shout-out for Governor Gretchen.
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/us/politics/gretchen-whitmer-michigan-governor.html
Whitmer is a pretty white rich liberal who won the most populous counties in the industrial south and a few prosperous areas in the north. See map: https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/11/see_map_of_how_michigan_counti.html
DeleteSchuette is a pretty white richer liberal from my hometown who graduated from high school the same year as me. He was destined by family connections to be a corporate lawyer for Dow or Dow's tool in Congress or the state.
But Schuette had a pretty good record as AG: He was surprisingly passionate about keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, made an excellent effort to get rape kits languishing in evidence lockers processed, and stuck up for Flint residents affected by the water crisis. I didn't vote for him because he sought Trump's imprimatur.
Schuette's mantra was that Whitmer will be another Jennifer Granholm. I think he's right. Granholm was stonewalled by the predominantly red legislature. She failed to keep industry in the state (the loss of the Lifesaver factory in Greenville to Canada made her unpopular in my area). She was a good AG, and she worked hard as governor, but her smarts didn't translate into effective gubernatorial leadership.
I predict she'll be a one-termer, though if she studies Granholm's failures carefully in order to avoid them, she may do better than I expect.
Jim, gridlock would be better than what the GOP would do if it still had both houses of Congress.
ReplyDeleteSince politics is the local industry, and we are deluged with it every day in ways I don't see when visiting other parts of the country and reading/watching their news, I came to the conclusion years ago that the best thing for the country is divided govt. I knew in 2016 that since both the executive and legislative branches were controlled by one party that it would not be good. And it hasn't been. The corruption of Trump, his family, and his political appointees have made it even worse, since the GOP that should have acted as a brake on Trump's worst impulses has stood by - mute.
Now Trump is terrified that his tax returns (and suspect business deals) will be examined by the House, and he is threatening total war.
Can't imagine why he is doing that. After all, he's an honest man and a brilliant honest businessman, and a true genius. So he says. Of course, some genius is evil.
His threat of total war against the Dem controlled house might suspect he has been hiding a whole lot and the GOP has let him. The whole lot are both immoral and amoral.
So concludeth this former lifelong Republican.
Ohio news analysis says we are a red state:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/07/ohio-red-state-breaking-down-tuesdays-midterm-election-results/1915179002/
and a Trump state
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/columnists/politics-extra/2018/11/07/ohio-2018-elections-results-winners-and-losers/1895844002/
Did Cordray ever have a chance? Didn't follow this closely, but strikes me that he's a policy wonk and not a politician. Am I right? wrong?
ReplyDeleteLake County is a swing county. Brown got 52% vs 48% for Republican. however DeWine got 54% vs 43% for Cordray (3% other). Our Republican representative got 58%, his new challenger 42% about the same as Cordray.
DeleteI think the familiarity factor played a large part. Brown is very familiar, so is DeWine who was once Senator. Corday less so. He was opposed by Kucinich in the primary so he likely did not benefit from a progressive turnout among Democrats. Our representative has been in office for about eight years now. Both he and DeWine have nice family guy images.
Out here in Coastal Deep Blue State California, the Democrats (as predicted) cleaned the slate and, for the most part, cleaned Teapublican clocks. The House results are not final yet:
ReplyDeleteU.S. House ›
Dem. 40 won (+1 seat) 2 lead
Rep. 8 won 3 lead
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-california-elections.html?mtrref=www.google.com
One good result is that warmongering Dana Rohrbacher got his clock cleaned big-time.
Eric Swalwell, a definite up-and-comer, won his district handily. He is a darling of MSNBC and will be a formidable opponent of Trumplethinskintinyhandserialadulterer come January 1st.
Rohrbacher, but the last time I heard Hunter? Must be great to be a Republican and facing indictment. Was it Nevada where the true blues elected a dead pimp because he was R?
ReplyDelete