Democrats across the country were watching the primaries in Illinois on Tuesday, trying to read the tea leaves to see what might happen in other federal contests.
What happened was that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker impressively flexed his political muscle and brought several progressive candidates to victory, all of whom identified with the mainstream Democratic Party in Washington, D.C.
Candidates who railed against Israel and were backed by radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Justice Democrats were buried in what may presage a backlash against the crazies within the Democratic Party.
Democrats won't release the "autopsy" of their crushing defeat in 2024, largely because the document skewers the radicals who took over the Democratic Party at the beginning of this decade. The party may have finally decided that a reckoning of sorts is in order, and these primaries over the next several months could serve as a way to create some separation with the gender radicals, open borders advocates, anti-human greens, and racialists who have brought the party to ruin.
"The left suffered a virtually total collapse in the Illinois Democratic congressional primaries on Tuesday night — even in races where the AIPAC-backed candidate lost," reports Axios.
"Last night Illinois progressives, flush with both national money and enthusiastic 'out-party' rage against Donald Trump, running in one of the bluer states in the nation, got completely steamrolled by Governor JB Pritzker and the entrenched powerbrokers who have run the state for decades," writes National Review's Jeffrey Blehar.
Pritzker and the establishment are the "true" Democrats. They are hardly issue-oriented. Their business is winning elections, which is why they specifically targeted the crazies in order to sideline them. Like trying to hide your drunk uncle in the closet during Thanksgiving dinner, they would rather the radicals not be so visible when the actual business of acquiring power takes place.
In truth, they support many of the goals of the radicals but look to frame the issues in a more electorally advantageous way. They're not in favor of boys playing on girls' athletic teams. They're for "fairness" and "tolerance." That will be the sort of "framing" that we'll see in November.
In the senate primary to replace the retiring Dick Durbin — a ticket to a lifelong sinecure, in other words — Pritzker threw the weight of his money and institutional power behind his Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, securing her victory with a 40 percent plurality of the vote. When last month I predicted Stratton as the guaranteed winner of this primary, I received pushback from readers who thought I was dismissing the candidacy of Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (of the northwestern Chicago suburbs) too lightly. Krishnamoorthi had hustle, I’ll give him that — he was up on the air early and often, and dominated advertising downstate.
But nobody lives downstate, not after two decades of outmigration to other, saner lands. The voters live where the jobs still are — in Cook County and, to a lesser extent, Chicago’s collar counties. Everything else is table scraps. And after 21 years here it’s impossible even for a Republican not to understand at least a little bit about Chicago Democratic voters. (Krishnamoorthi originally hails from Peoria. To invoke the old phrase, “what plays in Peoria” typically cuts little mustard around here and in fact triggers the opposite reaction.) Put bluntly: The voter demographic that reliably shows up for a Democratic primary in Chicago wasn’t going to choose a guy named “Krishnamoorthi” over a black woman from the South Side running with the governor’s endorsement.
Raja Krishnamoorthi ran ads that made fun of his name, just telling voters to "Vote for Raja." He also bragged about his anti-business creds and hatred of Donald Trump.
Trump was on the ballot in Illinois for both parties. All Republicans swore fealty to the president while Democrats tried to outdo one another in expressing their loathing for him.
The primaries also exposed the Democratic Party's faultlines on Israel and the Palestinian issue. Once again, Pritzker's machine froze out candidates who openly supported the Palestinians, as opposed to those who expressed disgust for Israel's tactics.
In Illinois 8 and 9, Israel was the primary issue.
Kat Abughazaleh, a left-wing influencer and journalist backed by Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement, lost to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss in the closely watched race in Illinois' 9th district.
Biss and Abughazaleh were both opposed by AIPAC, whose proxy Elect Chicago Women spent millions in support of pro-Israel state Sen. Laura Fine, who came in third.
But AIPAC pivoted in the final week of the campaign to focusing its fire on the more pro-Palestinian Abughazaleh than Biss, who was backed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Another AIPAC affiliate, Chicago Progressive Partnership, ran ads painting Abughazaleh as a closet Republican and boosting a lower tier leftist in the race, Bushra Amiwala.
A similar story played out in the 8th district, where progressive Junaid Ahmed lost to moderate former Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.), the pick of both AIPAC and crypto and AI-affiliated PACs.
Unlike Abughazaleh, however, Ahmed was supported by both the CPC and Warren, as well as Justice Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a local Democratic Socialists of America chapter.
Again, it's not that the winners are less "radical" compared to the rest of America. They are less radical than the wannabe Squad members and those who professed being acolytes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. How that plays out in November will be interesting to watch.
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