IL-Gov. 2018 Megathread

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

State Senator Daniel Biss is expected to announce shortly. Or he has some non-gubernatorial "exciting news" to announce at 10am on his Facebook page tomorrow.

My IL for Bernie friends seem to really like him. He's got a very interesting biography via his Wikipedia page, including an academic stint at my university.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

You're asking Republicans to be honest, man. It's not worth it.

Hope Rauner gets curb stomped.

It actually exactly reflects the situation.  You pay a 32% higher income tax... how is that misleading?  What's the "honest" explanation?  If you make 50,000 your tax goes up from 1,875 to 2,475... Maybe if this is confusing for Democrats, it explains why they continue to screw us over again and again.

Saying it's a 32% increase makes someone who isn't paying attention feel like the income tax is being increased TO 32%. Which yes, a 32% flat tax would be ridiculous.

The most accurate way to describe it is as a 1.2% increase, since an additional 1.2% is taken out of your income.

Alas, Dems haven't really grasped that these distinctions matter, so they didn't fight back on it.

<snip, you have a conservative position on the crisis>

Surprise, I have a left wing stance on the crisis. Stabbing retired workers in the back was never an option, and not just because it was written into the constitution.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Bliss drops Ramirez-Rosa from his ticket

God dammit.

I am convinced that Illinois wi never have even a halfway decent governor.

It does, the voter will just be dumb enough to vote him out and start over.

That's a funny way to spell Madigan.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Fun fact: Turns out Ramirez-Rosa told Biss' campaign that he'd always opposed BDS shortly before his selection.

Rosa has opposed and continues to oppose BDS at a state and municipal level (voted against a resolution on the city council). He believes there is room for a nuanced debate nationally, Biss does not. Only the former issue came up, for obvious reasons, in the selection process for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.


In other news, Biss is announcing State Rep. Litesa Wallace (D-Rockford) as his new Lt. Gov. candidate today. Rep. Brad Schneider, who de-endorsed Biss over the Rosa pick, has declined to re-endorse.

There's room for nuanced national debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  There is not any such room for "nuanced" debate over supporting anti-Semitic hate groups like BDS nor should there be.  They must be condemned in the strongest possible terms for the same reasons that it's vital for politicians to unambiguously condemn white supremacists.    

...but BDS isn't a hate group? You can't repeat something over and over and expect people who disagree with you to suddenly take your stance on the issue. I'm not passionate about this issue and I'm actually more sympathetic to the pro-Israel side (I can understand why Sunrise and such have the opinions that they do since they and their family actually a personal connection to Israel) than a lot of others on the hard-left, but boycott, divestment, and sanctions is a legitimate tactic of protest against nation-states one deems to be oppressive. You can disagree with their labeling of Israel as such, but neither BDS nor DSA are "hate groups".

Since you are more nuanced on this than many who share your ideological orientation (to your credit!) I'll ask: why Israel? Why a liberal democracy where Arab Israelis have full political rights? Why is the same standard not applied to other countries? I used examples earlier of the pogroms against LGBT in Chechnya (an extreme version of general Russian persecution against queer people), the Rohingya attacks in Burma, An *actual* genocide in Darfur. It's absurd to compare these places to Israel and that's the point - there is no comparison. Like the earnest question every time a terror attack in the West happens, "Why aren't we talking about this instead?" If there's genuine concern for human rights, focus the energy on boycotting the Middle East's one stable democracy on thuggish regimes engaged in ethnic and religious cleansing. There's the real outrage.

<insert position that I don't really care about re: settlements, gaza blockade, etc etc that you're conveniently ignoring>

Like I'll be real honest - the emotions and feelings I have about either side of Israel/Palestine could fit in a thimble with room for cream and a little bit of simple syrup. But pretending that Israel is morally blameless and just perfect is at odds with the facts.

And like, the fact that you're saying "well, they're not Al-Shabab" isn't really filling me with confidence.

 I was personally opposed to DSA endorsing BDS just because I know a lot of people's berserk button is primed on the issue, and whatever good we'd do in supporting it is vastly outweighed by the s*** we'd catch because of it, but I really admire CRR for sticking by DSA's position on the issue. And let's be clear, CRR's personal position on the issue is NOT full endorsement of BDS, but he was willing to stand up to the berserk critics anyway.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Why wouldn't Rauner want to debate Ives?

Based off of that ad, a reasonable fear for his personal safety?

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I really like Pritzker, I don't see everyone's problem with him. He is a really close second to Chris Kennedy, and I would gladly vote for him against Rauner if I could, and I think he would make a great governor.

He's a billionaire who's too closely connected to the corruption of Blagojevich and will not provide the change Illinois desperately needs.

What's too like?

Some people care about policies, not just "which candidate has less money/I would want to have a beer with."

Pritzker has no policies tho

He's campaigning on implementing a progressive income tax, raising the minimum wage to $15, a state public option, and legalizing marijuana. I would call those policies, and so would the dictionary, but maybe you have a different definition.

Biss meanwhile is campaigning on "MUH NOT RICH" and "don't believe what I said six months ago, believe what I'm saying now!" which is why he's going to get thrashed next month.

Having heard JB dodge on all three of those in a town hall meeting that I was at in person, you can understand how I'm less than enthused.

Not to suggest I like DB, but let's not pretend Pritzker is a rose.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I feel bad for Illinoisans who consistently must vote for the lesser evil. In VA, we generally have sensible choices. Generally.

You literally have who Dominion Energy picks and that's it lmao.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I feel bad for Illinoisans who consistently must vote for the lesser evil. In VA, we generally have sensible choices. Generally.

You literally have who Dominion Energy picks and that's it lmao.

How's y'all budget doing?

Needs more revenue, last I heard.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I feel bad for Illinoisans who consistently must vote for the lesser evil. In VA, we generally have sensible choices. Generally.

You literally have who Dominion Energy picks and that's it lmao.

To be fair, the vast majority of the new Democratic delegates who won all those HoD seats turned down Dominion money. I think it was around 13 or 14 of the delegates - a sizable chunk of the Democratic caucus, so it's no small potatoes.

Obviously many/most of the Republicans and Northam are on the wrong side of that, but there does seem to be hope. Even more hope if Democrats make more gains in 2019 with those same kinds of anti-Dominion delegates.

Oh yeah totally. I was being flippant there re: who a *conservative * thinks is reasonable, but I'm enormously optimistic for the future because of A) 2017 and B ) Perriello seemingly working to set up support networks for folks outside of the Dominion pipeline (heh).

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-jb-pritzker-bahama-offshore-shell-company-20180313-story.html

I don't know if I could tell anyone to vote for Pritzker in the general and keep my conscience.

COME ON BISS RAUNER MARSHALL

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Interestingly, only 57% of Pritzker's statewide vote came from Cook while Kennedy and Biss both got >60% of their votes from there.  Since Pritkzer's victory was more dependent on minority voters, I expected the opposite but I guess Pritzker really crushed it in non-Chicagoland areas.

Pritzker had the money to have a full-fledged field operation outside Chicagoland, is the big difference there.

Right, like he was spending on staff approximately 66% of Biss's total budget.

We need not pretend that the Pritzker nomination is a result of the Chicago machine. He did well statewide. It's a result of $$$$.

I don't know about the Chicago machine, but the statewide party apparently embraced him early on (like almost a year ago) because he had the money to self fund. Which is hilarious (in a bad way)

Yeah, but what really made the difference was his capacity to run ads early and often, which boosted his name rec and put him way ahead early.

To put it super simplistically, I think you can attribute his performance in Cook to traditional 'machine' tactics (or at least having CLF out to help him &c &c) while downstate the fact that he could go up early and, as SJoyce said, actually hire a downstate field operation helped him downstate. And as PW points out, CLF, Cook County Dems &c backed him because he promised to spend oodles of his own money on the race (and boy has he delivered!).

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Rauner really doesn't want to win

https://twitter.com/craigrwall/status/1017836934658494464

Eh JB trustfund was always going to win, he'll be Madigans obedient gimp and drive my former state further into oblivion.

Considering JB just muscled a flunky in as IDP executive director, I wouldn't be so sure he's going to be madigan's puppet.