Dems didn't put out for Quinn/Vallas

No car today. I had to cab it home from basketball practice this morning. Yes, I know I said I retired from coaching last year. I lied. But anyway, the cabbie Jesus, who moved here from Mexico a few years ago, is also the janitor at a CPS high school. Plus he works in a restaurant downtown at night. He tells me that his CPS boss, Aramark has fired lots of his co-workers, leaving the school with three custodians. He says, there's no way they can keep the whole school clean with only three people.

He shared some stories about his home town. I talked privatization and asked him if he knew about his namesake running for mayor. He didn't. But he does now.

 Rahm and Rauner outside the Paradise Valley Grill near Livingston, Montana

Please don't blame progressives, African-Americans, teachers, or my brother Fred (he was in Mexico) for the Quinn/Vallas defeat. They earned  it on their own because they couldn't excite their own base.

Never, at least in my memory, has there been a worse pair of candidates who pissed away more than $30 million, trying to match billionaire Rauner's negative ad for negative ad instead of spending enough time and resources on voter turn out in Chicago's south and west-side wards.

Quinn sent his own aide in a chicken suit to stand outside Rauner appearances, while Rauner swiped back by campaigning beside actual chickens. And that was the high water mark of the campaign. Quinn certainly had nothing to offer black and Latino voters or union rank-and-filers besides chicken poop.

I would suggest it was the party's support for pension grabbing (Quinn) and union-busting privatization (Vallas) that kept lots of folks home on election day. They were also done in by a total abandonment of the campaign by Rahm Emanuel's own ward organization machine and lost the downstate Democratic counties of St. Clair & Jackson.

By now everyone knows that the  Rahm/Madigan gang hates Quinn and Vallas and feels much more comfortable playing let's make a deal with Rauner running the state. Greg Hinz at Crain's writes:

What counts now is that the Big Dance has begun, in which winner Mr. Rauner and General Assembly leaders Michael Madigan and John Cullerton take each other's measure.

While the turnout was low, there were enough registered Democrat voters statewide to elect Quinn/Vallas -- if they wanted to. For example, Sen. Dick Durbin was elected easily over his Republican opponent, and got over 100,000 more votes statewide than did Bruce Rauner. But the same voters who punched Durbin's ticket didn't vote Quinn/Vallas. Why not? Isn't it obvious that IL Dems didn't really put out for them?

It's true, Durbin wasn't running against Rauner but his clone, the Oberweis dairy magnate. But still.