Michael Sacks, a top Democratic donor and supporter of Joe Biden, questioned efforts to push Michael Madigan out of the speakership at a time when Democrats need him most.
“We have a raging pandemic, a precarious economy, a huge budget hole and we might be coming into one of the toughest budget-making sessions we’ve ever had. The idea that we don’t have all of our best players on the field protecting social services, education, working families and other things Democrats care about is nonsensical,” Sacks told Playbook in an exclusive interview. […]
Top Illinois Democrats have blamed Madigan in recent days for not capturing the 13th Congressional District and for the graduated income tax’s failure. They say Madigan’s connection to an influence-peddling investigation into ComEd is what crushed Democrats’ hopes of winning.
Sacks disagreed, saying Trump’s supporters toppled any blue wave Democrats had hoped for anywhere. Congressional Democrats sustained losses in places like New York, Florida, California and New Mexico. And former Minnesota Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach, a Republican, defeated Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat in that state who voted against impeaching Trump. […]
In the 13th District, Democratic turnout was up, but so was Republican. Betsy Dirksen Londrigan’s race against Republican Rep. Rodney Davis saw Davis receive 187,583 votes to Londrigan’s 126,811. In 2016, Davis received 179,567 to his Democratic opponent’s 148,517.
Sacks isn’t wrong about down-ballot races nationwide, either. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 5,876 regularly scheduled legislative races in 44 states, “the big surprise is that only two chambers — the New Hampshire House and Senate — changed hands. The GOP won both.”
There seemed to be one safe bet when it came to the 2020 election results: Democrats would easily hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives. Not only that, but the conventional wisdom held that Democrats would pick up more than the 235 seats they won in the 2018 midterm elections.
While Democrats will have a majority next Congress, Republicans vastly outperformed expectations and nearly pulled off an election shocker.
As of this writing, CNN has projected that Democrats have won in 219 seats. Republicans have been projected the winners in 203 seats. There are 13 races outstanding, per CNN projections.
Of those 13, the Democratic candidates lead in a mere two of them. (One of these 13 is going to a runoff, where the Republicans are heavily favored to win.)
According to the AP count, President Trump is losing Illinois by 17.1 percentage points, which is his same margin as 2016. The House Republicans were saying before the election that if Trump could keep his losing margin under 20 then they’d have a shot at staying in the hunt.
* About a week before the election, Gov. Pritzker’s operation began running this ad telling voters that President Trump wanted them to vote “No” on the graduated income tax…
By that time, a ton of Democrats had already voted and a comparatively few Republicans had yet to cast a ballot. So, there’s a school of thought which believes the Trump ad may have “reminded” at least some Republicans to vote against the Fair Tax. And while they were at the polls, they kept voting Republican down the ticket.
I’m not saying that the governor is responsible for Republicans doing better than expected here because the GOP did that nationally. I’m just saying he may not have made suburban Democrats’ jobs any easier.
