Wednesday, March 16, 2016

It's okay Rahm. You can come out now.

Much of the credit for Foxx victory belongs here. 2 Down, Rahm to go.

Will the mayor come out of hiding now that pal Hillary Clinton has left town?

She succeeded in avoiding Rahm long enough to narrowly squeak by Bernie Sanders with just 50.4% in her home state. It was a race she was picked to win by double digits and surely would have lost, at least the popular vote, if the race had gone another week or so.

With the Illinois victory, Clinton secures 68 delegates and Sanders pockets 64 delegates. Not too shabby, Bernie. Credit should also go to groups like Chicago Votes who have made it easier to register, even on election day. More credit, at least in my mind, goes to the anti-Trump protests at UIC last week, which more than any campaigning, generated a sense of urgency and passion for political struggle in thousands of young folks.

Of course, the popular vote doesn't mean as much in this state, since, win or lose, Hillary controls the 29 big-shot elected officials ("super delegates") who automatically get convention seats. In that sense the game was rigged from the start.

But congrats to Bernie and his team of Chicago progressives for running an amazingly close race and engaging thousands of new voters in what otherwise would have been a dull race. The movement for social justice comes out the better for it.

Voter turnout in Chicago was over 50%, according to the Chicago Election Board, and 26,000 new voters, mostly young registered to vote on Primary Day.

The biggest win yesterday belonged to Kim Foxx who rode to victory over police-murder cover-up artist Anita Alvarez, on the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Two down, Rahm to go.

Proud of Harish I Patel and Jay Travis for fighting the good fight. Progressive first-time candidate Patel was not only battling political boss Dick Mell's machine dirty tricks, he also was abandoned by unions who decided to play it safe and throw in with the machine's Jaime Andrade. I hope they hold Andrade's feet to the fire.

The unions split on Travis, with AFSCME and SEIU throwing [our] money behind pension thief and school privatization (Stand For Children) incumbent Christian Mitchell. The CTU backed Jay.

Glad Andrea Zopp got clobbered. Voters remembered her role on the school board in support of Rahm's school closings in the black community and her role in the Byrd-Bennett/SUPES corruption scandal.

Theresa Mah & Chuy Garcia
Congrats to Juliana Stratton. Bye-bye to Rauner's puppy-dog Ken Dunkin. You knew he was toast when Obama pointed a finger at him and said, "We'll talk later."

Congrats to Theresa Mah for beating the machine in the 2nd Dist. State Rep race.

Congrats to Omar Oquino for beating the machine in the 2nd Dist. State Senate race.

And did you see? Sue Sadlowski Garza whipped Pope/Rahm in the Ward Committeeman race. This despite massive vote fraud (ballot box stuffing) by Pope's machine goons.

Kudos to Aaron Goldstein for kicking machine boss Mell in the ass in the committeeman race. I've been waiting 40 years for somebody to do it.

When I went to bed last night, Goldstein was ahead of Mell by 143 votes with 2 precincts left. But I'm not celebrating yet. Aaron better keep close eye on the ballot box. Remember Deb Mell was down by 26 votes to Tim Meegan last Feb's aldermanic election and then beat him by somehow "finding" enough Mell absentee votes.

The Machine does its best work after the polls close.

Now the struggle moves back to the streets, April First (no foolin') when CTU teachers hit the bricks in a citywide, one-day strike action.

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