I was invited to Dinner and Found Out I was on the Menu.
I will leave it to the political science majors, pundits, consultants, and talking heads to make all the prognostications about the Red Wave that wasn’t. They will have a laundry list of explanations, many of them valid. It is very important to get to understand the election outcome because the country – and specifically Illinois - could not be in worse shape culturally, economically, and from a freedom perspective.
Like many of you, I have read several articles and informed emails about the election results. I have looked over the numbers myself locally. The Red Wave was predicted based on historical results for mid-term elections (the incumbent party usually loses), Biden’s approval rating (below 40%), and more than anything, THE ECONOMY, record inflation in 40 years, declining stock market, rising housing costs and no end in sight for any of it.
All of those factors should have added up to a massive rebuke of the status quo. It didn’t happen. Not nationally and not in Illinois. Instead, in Illinois, we got furtherance of Democrat control. The Illinois House will likely move from a Democrat control of a 73-45 chamber to a 79-39 control. It will be the lowest number of Republicans in the history of the state. In the Illinois Senate, Republicans will pick up one seat and maybe two, but it will remain a Democrat-controlled chamber, most likely 40-19. The Democrats will have supermajorities in each chamber again and occupy all statewide offices. Additionally, the expert Democrat cartographers drew districts that gave them what they were after – Congressional seats with Democrats in control of 14 districts and Republicans squished into 3 districts.
Here's the conundrum – doesn’t anyone care about policy? Are voters, especially in Illinois, really that tribal, that uninformed, that insulated from bad policy, or believe in the moral right to abortion to the point that nothing else matters? The answer based on election results is yes. It is either one of those things or a combination.
And I know where it all starts, which brings me to the title of my commentary.
I accepted an offer to be on WGN election night to discuss the outcomes. I've had fair interactions with a couple of the people on that show before, and so I was comfortable going on. If you watched any of the shows, it was easy to discern that I was defending conservative positions against seven other people who believed differently. The conversations that were off the air were even more astonishing.
A few examples – in a discussion about student test scores, other panelists/tv journalists dismissed poor test scores in Chicago as a problem with all big cities, they disputed the actual facts about Florida having better outcomes with lower spending and said it wasn’t fair to compare Illinois to Florida. Huh?
On climate – they accused me of not caring about the climate because I cared about providing reliable, low-cost energy instead. When I asked one guy how his house was heated and what type of stove he has, he replied gas. I asked if he is ready to retrofit his system in a few years since the Democrats are shutting down all fossil fuels in Illinois. He said, "I guess I’ll go electric." Good grief.
The lady sitting next to me said the crime commercials put up on Bailey’s behalf were racist. I asked her to explain which commercial and why it was racist. She couldn’t respond and gave me that shocked face because I dared to challenge her premise.
We're in trouble, folks.
So many people are insulated from the bad policy that they vote for and are equally ignorant of how things work (yes, those LuLuLemon leggings are a petroleum product). It is scary. And the powerful media is part of the problem.
In my opinion, we have an education problem. People are voting against their own interests, and many of them do not even realize it. Socialism fails every time. Freedom is why millions are crossing the border, and we are letting the elected elite and woke corporations take it from us. And you can only defy the market for so long. Thankfully, other states with commonsense will lead us out of this morass by their example, and after taking our businesses and residents as people flee high-tax, government-centered places, eventually, Illinois voters will figure it out.