“Come on, baby don’t ya wanna go? Back to that same old place, Sweet Home Chicago” The Blues Brothers (Lyrics by Robert Johnson)
First Amendment has already posted an excellent DIARY on the subject, but as a born and raised Chicagoan, there is a little local perspective and expertise I’d like to share here.
As any of you who read me know, I am a proud native Chicagoan, I love my hometown warts and all. And if the Predators don’t roll over for the Blackhawk’s, I’m gonna whisper in Trump’s ear to cut funding for Nashville! But I just found another reason to be proud of my hometown.
According to a recent ARTICLE in the Huffington Post, Chicago really stepped up to the plate in their recent local elections last week, and for a Chicago Democrat, it was a “ting a beauty”. To quote;
The city of Kankakee elected its first African-American, Democratic mayor. West Deerfield Township will be led entirely by Democrats for the first time. Elgin Township voted for “a complete changeover,” flipping to an all-Democratic board. Normal Township elected Democratic supervisors and trustees to run its board ― the first time in more than 100 years that a single Democrat has held a seat.
“We had a pretty good day,” said Dan Kovats, executive director of the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen’s Association. “We won in areas we normally would win, but we also won in areas Republicans never expected us to be competitive in. They were caught flat-footed.”
I cannot tell you how proud I am, but more importantly, I can’t tell you how important this is, for a couple of reasons. First of all, while the nation remembers the might of the Chicago Democratic “machine”, especially under the locally beloved and revered “Boss Daley”, it was exactly that, a Chicago machine. Suburban towns and townships, especially the further out you got, became more reliably Republican. Most of the then GOP held seats on the Cook County Board were held by suburban GOP committeemen, their suburbs generally more affluent than most neighborhoods of Chicago. To be able to make these kinds of inroads in these kinds of traditional Republican strongholds is, to me at least, a stunning example of the amount of discord and apathy the GOP may be facing next year in the midterms.
The other reason this is so important is this. Like a lot of major industrial and urban center states, the state is fractured in two. The large, urban areas, like New York, Chicago, Boston and the like are more traditionally Democratic dominated. But the further out you get from the urban areas, the stronger the GOP gets. The standard, accepted excuse, back in the wild and crazy vote fraud days of “Short Pencil Louie” in the 50’s and 60’s was “The Republicans are stealing so many votes downstate that all we’re doing in Chicago is keeping up with them”. For the Democrats to be picking up even local seats in places like Kankakee, a good ways south of Chicago should be sounding an air raid siren for the GOP.
This did not happen by accident. Like most good things that happen in life, it took planning, and effort;
In the case of Illinois, a number of Democrats who just won got a boost from a program launched by Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) called Build The Bench. It’s an all-day boot camp that offers nuts-and-bolts details for running a successful campaign. Bustos came up with the idea last year when she noticed a dearth of new Democratic candidates for Congress, and decided the best way to help build up her party’s ranks was at the local level.
She’s held two boot camps in her district so far ― The Huffington Post attended one of them in March ― and she’s already seeing tremendous payoff. Twelve Build The Bench alumni ran for local seats in this election cycle, and eight of them won. A ninth alum, Rita Ali, is currently down by one vote in her race for Peoria City Council.
Please excuse my enthusiasm, but this is how you build a fucking bench! Right now the DNC is trying to do a phoenix, and arise from the ashes. But committed Democratic officials are not sitting back and waiting for the DNC to get their shit together, they’re striking while the iron is hot. Boot camps like Representative Bustos are running not only increase the confidence of local candidates that they can compete and win, but they will also recruit qualified candidates who can see that they won’t have to go it alone and learn on the fly, they will have training and support.
So, fight on, and be confident. Not only is the grassroots stepping to the front, it is having a positive effect on local politicians who are stepping up to mentor and do their part to create the leaders of the Democratic party going into the future. There appears to be much to look forward to!