Discussion for article #229059
There’s a whole lot more bad about Rauner that Quinn hasn’t exploited yet. Private equity vampirism, a desire to privatize everything, thuggish business practices. I hope he does before the election. We can’t afford to have Bruce Rauner, who admires Mitch “Architect of Bush’s crash” Daniels, Mike “Shut it Down” Pence, Rick Snyder and John Kasich, as governor of ILlinois.
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“Pat Quinn has run a better than expected campaign and Bruce Rauner has run a horrible campaign,” Bowen told TPM.
Bingo. Quinn has always been the populist politician and it’s reflected in every aspect of his campaign. But what has impressed me most have been the brutal, well produced ads against Rauner.
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A good politician saves his heavy fire for when voters are paying attention. Jerry Brown v Meg Whitman was a good example. These billionaire fascists still think they can buy whatever they want.
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Right now,there is story after story,poll after poll,coming out that debunk the cw so many people,including journalists,have relied on in their election projections. Lotta astute TPM readers/commenters have been challenging that cw all year long. I’ve said it and I’ll say it again. Lotta Repubs/cons are gonna have a “Wtf just happened?” moment on 11/5 and some pollsters and commentariat are gonna have some explaining to do.
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Your reporting doesn’t the extent to which Rauner’s campaign has sucked. First, he went quiet after winning the GOP nomination in the spring, allowing Quinn and Dem groups to define him. Then his message has been all over the board. First, he was advertising his social liberalism, then he was flooding the air with news about Quinn letting child killers out of jail. Quinn maybe a bad governor but he is an instinctive politician with an extremely good sense of what the voters want to hear.
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Rauner has run exactly the campaign he wanted to run, void of issues. Anytime an economic issue was raised Rauner shouted “Class Warfare” and every time a social issue was raised Rauner shouted “race card”. The effect was to keep issues out of the race which is exactly what Rauner wanted, an issue free campaign.
Rauner thought that by avoiding any issues from abortion to taxes he could run as a business guy who could clean up Quinn’s mess while not having to say what he might actually do as governor. This would make the entire campaign about character and trust.
The problem is people know Quinn and that he is actually trying to clean up the mess left by 26 straight years of GOP governors followed by Blogo. People don’t know Rauner and by avoiding issues Rauner has done everything he can to keep people from knowing him. As a result Rauner’s attacks on Quinn have changed no minds but Quinn’s attacks on Rauner have defined Rauner to many voters.
As a result in this Dem state, Quinn who at least is willing to and would actually prefer to talk about issues is winning a campaign most thought Rauner could not lose.
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“This guy’s got plenty of money.” That’s about all you can say about him.
Actually this isn’t a problem about Bruce Rauner. Rather it’s a problem about the Republican Party in Illinois simply not being able to select a candidate with broad state-wide appeal. They blew it with Brady and they’re going to blow it this time with Rauner.
(And yes, I know, I shouldn’t count my chickens…)
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'Blowing"
Yeah.
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No matter what the early polls said, this was never going to be an easy pickup for the GOP. Illinois has become a blue state where the GOP is a war with itself. Four years ago pundits were writing Quinn’s political obituary against right-wing state senator, Bill Brady. Although Quinn only won 4 of Illinois’ 102 counties, he took Cook County (Chicago) overwhelmingly and cut into traditional GOP margins in suburban Chicago counties.
This year, Bruce Rauner spent his way to the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Rauner not a culture warrior like Brady but a proud Romney-style billionaire. Rauner also bloodied a few GOP noses in the primary, not winning any friends in the regular GOP organization. These are factors that many damp downstate GOP enthusiasm and turnout for Rauner.
Pat Quinn has been running for office in Illinois for more than 30 years. While he has lost as many races as he has won, he has been a fixture on the political scene here since the 1970’s. People in Illinois know who he is. Quinn has been able to draw a clear distinction between himself and an arrogant, bullying Bruce Rauner.
A Quinn win is not certain but, at the moment, he seems to have the momentum .
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Rauner runs his jaws about cutting income taxes and real estate taxes and spending more on education and infrastructure. He never says a word about how you can spend more money while taking in less money when you already can’t pay the bills you have. Rauner hopes that people are too dumb to figure out that he is only giving the public a load of “bovine plant nutrition.”
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When all is said and done, Dems will have a majority of state governorships. That will be more important that the Senate.
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Rauner was asked in the last debate to name one job he has created in Illinois and could not.
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Quinn asked Rauner point blank in last nights debate to tell Illinois what jobs have resulted in the state from his supposed “great businessman” claim.
Rauner stuttered, hemmed, hawed and then gave some bullshit response about going to his website. He only talks about typical Republican “rosy scenario” garbage that will result from his cutting taxes and the go to “waste”.
Rauner’s a waste. Pat Quinn is boring, bald, not a great speaker…but he’s honest and people trust him. And he’s always, ALWAYS tried to do right for the working strokes of Illinois (myself included). I love the man!
GO PAT!!!
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I saw a commercial last night saying that of the major newspapers endorsing Illinois’ version of Mitt Rmoney, one of them was the Sun-Times.
THE SUN FUCKING TIMES!?!?
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