Post Election Blues

Politics as Usual, People Keep Losing
By Jim Vail


The primary election is over and the usual suspects won.

No real surprises.

People are hailing the victory of Chicago Teacher Union endorsed Will Guzzardi over machinest Toni Berrios as a victory.

It was, kind of.  Guzzardi supports progressive issues including saying yes to an elected school board and unions, and saying no to massive privatization and charter schools.

He is a dynamic politician who ran a highly impressive campaign. He is someone to look for in terms of a bright political future.

But there is another politician that caught people's eyes several years back. A young, good-looking obscure black guy, a graduate of Harvard, who had a funny last name.

Ask former CTU president Debbie Lynch how we fared when she got the CTU to endorse Barack Obama to run for office and catapult the unknown politico onto center stage and into the presidency.

Once he kept climbing the political ladder, the union was no longer an entity to respond to. And now Obama works full-time for Wall Street, screwing the unions, but collecting their votes of course!

In the 40th district where I live, superstar Jaime Andrade won convincingly to be our state representative.

Jaime who?  Yeah, the guy's name was plastered on every store front, lawns on election day, everywhere. This no-name guy who worked in long-time hack Dick Mell's office was the recipient of machine power to the max.

Business owners complained to challenger Aaron Goldstein, the better choice, that the city is like the mafia, where if they didn't comply with putting Jaime's signs up in their store windows, guys would show up with baseball bats.

Then there was Nancy Schiavone, who got about 30% of the vote after Andrade won about 50%. 

I honestly don't know why Schiavone ran. The attorney is the 35th ward democratic committeeman. She is the one who gets Andrade on the ballot. Some unions backed her, like the Illinois Federation of Teachers IFT.

In real races, the machine puts up straw men to take votes away from real challenges to their power. 

The real story was the incredible low voter turnout. When you read the corporate media, it's because of no big name races.

I say, the unemployed don't vote. And their numbers are growing.

Overall, it's suckers who vote in a rigged system while the Pritzkers put money in both candidates to make sure they don't pay taxes and we the people continue to get screwed in this system.

The clown in the gubernatorial race won - who even told the people they should be paid even less than a minimum wage, but incredibly still won the republican nomination to be governor.

You gotta admit, that's kind of impressive. Here is a rich dude making fun of working people, and you vote for him. 

Impressive!

Bruce Rauner is playing his role to the hilt. It will force the unions to take another step back, agree to the assault on our pensions from the democrats because, eegads, we can't let Mr. Rauner become governor.

I say let's support Rauner. He is the true symbol of our political system.

Why lie and elect slick politicos like Obama and Clinton who actually do even more damage to the working class.

At least when Bush was in the White House, millions were in the streets protesting his wars. 

But the democrats won - and the wars increased, privatization increased, the banks got bigger and the people lost. And they went home, not to be seen til the next election.