As many of you -- especially those who have an eye toward Illinois politics -- have surely heard by now, Scott Lee Cohen has (tearfully) withdrawn from the race for Lt. Governor of Illinois.
I think this is wrong.
As many of you -- especially those who have an eye toward Illinois politics -- have surely heard by now, Scott Lee Cohen has (tearfully) withdrawn from the race for Lt. Governor of Illinois.
I think this is wrong.
It's wrong for several reasons -- it's wrong for Scott Lee Cohen, it's wrong for the people of Illinois, it's wrong for the Democratic party, and it has serious implications for the future of our "state."
Consider this:
For Scott Lee Cohen himself, and his family, I think he's made an odd decision here. First off, he knew about his past when he got in the race, and he had to have at least an inkling of an idea that it would come out at some point. When he won the race, and the news started to come out in droves, it was clear to all of us that he was completely overwhelmed and outclassed, and likely very stunned at the level of attention and ferocity of the media and the press.
That being said, if I were to be SLC's media advisor, I'd basically tell him, "People have gotten out most of the bad stuff about you, you are going to be a laughingstock either way, and they are not going to stop trashing you in the press because you dropped out of the race."
Here's the thing, though -- I think SLC is actually moderately genuine. I think he does actually believe in the Democratic party, and I don't think it was just a publicity stunt to run. After all, the guy spent $2 million of his own money to get elected as Lt. Governor. Not exactly chump change.
I think SLC is crazy (I think his blase "I was trying to put on muscle" explanation about using steroids is a good example of this) and I think he would have torpedoed the Democratic ticket in the fall, if Quinn would have acquiesced. But that being said, I don't see the motivation for him to have dropped out. His name is already garbage. He's out two million bucks. He won an election. Why not stick with it?
Now let's consider briefly what happens next. Pat Quinn and Mike Madigan will now exert tremendous influence over the choice for Lt. Governor, which will be selected by the Democratic Central Committee. They have informed the public that they're not just looking to the other candidates from the race, but they are going to look for the best candidate that will give them a chance to win in November.
This, to me, is a travesty. How is it reasonable that days after an election, a candidate is publicly humiliated and viciously pressured to resign by the very people who then hand-pick his choice for a replacement? How is that a reasonable scenario? It's one thing if these guys would say, "Okay, we're taking Art Turner, he came in second place, we're going to roll with that," but they're not. They're saying, "We're going to make the decision that is going to give us the best chance to win."
The implications of this are huge. First off, if there was ever blatant evidence that in Illinois, our votes don't really matter at all, this is going to be it. Second, what's to stop people from forcing out crappy candidates left and right and replacing them with hand-picked, scenario-specific selections? If I'm the Republicans, I'm forcing the Lt. Governor nominee to drop out as soon as I possibly can and picking my own dream nominee to go along with the nominee for Governor. If the people of Illinois are willing to sit idly by while this happens, then guess what -- this sort of thing is going to keep happening. And it's going to be more and more blatant and more and more outrageous.
Part of it is the system, to be sure -- not only the byzantine election process for Governor and Lt. Governor (which need to be fixed, stat) but also the general approach that people in Illinois have succumbed to, which is that our "elected" officials exert a huge amount of influence in controlling, reversing, and correcting the outcomes of elections and other general politics.
We had an election on Tuesday in Illinois. The people voting elected Scott Lee Cohen. It was stupid to do that. But people do stupid things. A lot. And sometimes they do stupid things in a group. And we should force ourselves to live with these decisions. Because if we don't, then what's the point of us voting at all?