I have never read an editorial in which the editors of a major newspaper danced around an idea in such a determined fashion as this editorial from the Chicago Tribune. In the editorial, the editors clearly cannot bring themselves to recommend we vote for Don Tracy, the Republican challenger to Juliana Stratton for the seat in the U. S. Senate that Dick Durbin has held for nearly 30 years. Here’s their conclusion:
Stratton is to the far left of her party; Tracy is on the moderate wing of his. But by moderate wing, we don’t want to imply he’d be a Republican revolutionary. And, given where we are this moment, many will conclude that will just not be enough.
Their rationale is earlier in the editorial:
For many of our readers, the notion of flipping the venerable Dick Durbin’s seat in the United States Senate to a Republican at the very moment when Donald Trump has capriciously abandoned his support for the brave people of Ukraine and climbed into a diesel-filled waterbed with the dangerous Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, would be as irresponsible as it is unconscionable.
We more than sympathize.
The editors focus on the Senate seat as an instrument of national party politics. For me the more crucial question is how effectively will the next senator advance Illinois’s interests?
I wonder if the people of Illinois realize what’s about to happen to us and it will happen whoever we elect to the Senate. We are about to replace one of the most powerful figures in the Senate with a backbencher. Illinois is typically ignored by the national Democratic Party. Illinois is characterized as a “Blue State”, i.e. it is carried by the Democratic candidate in national elections. Illinois last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988. We are taken for granted. That will be even more the case when Stratton succeeds Durbin.
