NOT READING THE ROOM
As the country steamrolls rapidly towards a second Trump administration, there are the normal uncertainties that lie ahead.
Much of the media coverage this week has been dominated by cabinet/advisor appointments. As expected, a few of these nominees are raising eyebrows. Trump’s blowout election victory gives him the benefit of the doubt even with skeptical supporters. Republican control of the House and Senate grants him the congressional power needed to enact Trumpism, regardless of pushback from Democrat opposition.
We’ve heard this expression used frequently since the Nov. 5 results: loyalty and competence are the preferred qualities of Trump 2.0 deputies.
Here in Chicago and Illinois, we’ve long given up on competence from our political leaders. Post-election, they’ve shown loyalty is a one-way street: personal ideology matters more than the will of the people.
Both Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson were so “outraged” by election results that they called individual press conferences. They were indignant, calling Trump and his new administration a “threat,” a throwback to Jim Crow laws in the 1960s era deep south.
During Pritzker’s briefing, a reporter asked how the American people and 44% of Illinoisans could vote for someone he labeled a “fascist dictator” and “threat to democracy.” Pritzker had no answer other than to filibuster “it will take time” to comprehend election results.
In reality, Pritzker has zero interest in analyzing the electorate. He knows the federal money spigot will run dry with Trump in the White House and is planting an oppositional flag with an eye towards 2028.
Pritzker’s battles with Trump go back to his first administration. He despises Trump’s anti-establishment populism. This campaign season, Trump famously mocked Pritzker about his weight. It’s personal.
Johnson, who makes every decision with a guiding worldview that black people deserve reparations, has the worst approval rating of any mayor in history. Thursday, the city council rejected his budget proposal — a proposal that included hundreds of millions of dollars of new property taxes to cover Chicago Teacher’s Union contract demands — with a 50-0 vote. Imagine if football players for the Chicago Bears, during a game, refused to go in, ignoring their coaches and their paid assignments (with how the Bears have played lately, that may be a better path to victory). What happened Thursday is the political equivalent of that scenario. It’s a complete and utter rejection of Johnson’s leadership.
One veteran alderman labeled the vote “a defeat of epic proportions” for the mayor. Johnson’s response was to say it’s all part of a “healthy process.” If we are to give Johnson credit, it’s for his thorough devotion to not acknowledging his detractors and how bad he is at his job.
Of course, a healthy dose of defiance is a requirement of all politicians, opposition part of the democratic process.
But what we are seeing this week from Pritzker and Johnson is not defiance but blind ignorance. Last Tuesday’s election results objectively reveal a population concerned over the economy and immigration and tired of the progressive policies that led to those anxieties. Rather than address those fears, they demonize Trump, a fallback position for leftists for almost a decade.
At his press briefing, Pritzker, in reference to Trump’s campaign promise to deport illegal immigrants said, “you come for my people, you come through me.”
I don’t know what “people” Pritzker is talking about. Illegals? Gamblers, potheads, abortionists? Because those are the only people Pritzker has shown any affinity towards since being first elected in 2018.
None of it really matters. It’s all performative junk. Pritzker and Johnson can continue to make headlines by portraying our country like we’re still living in 1965 Selma. The rest of us reasonable folk will move forward.
But the events of this week provide another stark reminder of how utterly hopeless the political leadership is in Illinois and Chicago.
THE SIX
*If on TwitterX, as I am, Pritzker’s feed is a relentless exercise in political propaganda. It’s non-stop “Illinois leading the way” in one industry or another or how the state is “creating new jobs every day.” He throws hissy fits about Trump, restricts media access to friendly fire (almost all of the Chicago press) and doesn’t face questions about the actual state of affairs in Illinois: billion-dollar deficits and no federal money to bail him out. Wirepoints with this report on how the state is on track to face eight figures of new deficits. But thank goodness for that rainy day fund!
*Trump’s movement to trim the administrative state — and hiring of Efficiency Czars Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — has been the subject of much discourse (and creation of memes) this week. There’s already been leaks to the left-leaning press that the Musk/Trump bromance in Mar-O-Lago is showing signs of “fissures.” The Musk-Goes-To-Washington storyline is red meat for the DC Press Corps and Politico pens this story on how “two big unknowns are already looming over the whole idea. One is exactly which parts of government the new office will target. The other is how seriously it will be taken in Washington.”
*Read this in one sitting this week: a mother kills her three young children. She pleaded insanity, citing severe postpartum mental health problems that triggered psychosis. Prosecutors allege it was premeditated murder. The New Yorker presents the perspective of the husband and father of the murdered kids, who balances grief and compassion as he navigates an unimaginable tragedy.
*Switching to sports…it’s been a while since college basketball had a Great Hype — a player that enters as a first-year player with great expectations and a publicity machine to match. Meet Cooper Flagg, the Duke freshman expected to take men’s basketball by storm this winter. ESPN with a deep dive on Flagg, who hails from a small town in Maine but got his hoops education all over the USA.
*Now to music…this is a fun multimedia story from a website called The Pudding. By some metrics, we’re in a declining age of love songs. A stat: of the 5,100 Billboard Top 10 hits from 1958 to 2023, 1,040 of them could be called “serenades,” or songs about love and devotion sung from one person to another. These are indeed in decline, going from 23 percent of hits in the 1960s to 12 percent of hits in our current era. According to data in this article, songs about other, more ambiguous kinds of love — complicated love, sexually confident songs, love songs about the self, songs about pursuit — have gone from 18 percent of hits in the ’60s to 42 percent of hits today. Where oh where have you gone, Diana Ross and the Supremes?
*Finally, to put a bow on the music thread…the decade of the 80’s saw all sorts of love songs, from desire to heartache. Many were unintentionally hilarious, due to the advent of video. On the intentionally funny scale, here’s one from the master of funk, George Clinton, who asks the ladies in his orbit, “Do Fries Go With That Shake?” Enjoy this piece of mid-80’s pop culture.
Have a suggestion for The Kerr Report? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.