Eight days after thunderstorms containing microbursts, straight line winds and a few tornadoes ripped through the St. Louis and Illinois metro areas, things are getting back to normal for many people. Currently, my village's outstanding, hardworking city employees are using a backhoe, and huge dump trucks to remove the last of the brush from my front yard. YAY! We spent six days with no electricity. Nights were spent outdoors, trying to keep my black lab, ten years old and in poor health from dying of heat, while listening to the roar of generators from the um, well, wealthier parts of town. You should count my mosquito bites! Well, perhaps not. What has this to do with Illinois politics? Follow me below the fold to find out.
I live in the second bluest county in Illinois, second only to Cook County. You can hardly swing a cat and not hit a Democrat, unless you are standing next to my mother. I've written diaries and responded to diaries about Rod Blagojevich and still hope he is re-elected in November. But dammit, his political instincts are hideous, and it will no longer surprise me if he loses southern IL altogether.
Officially, as watched from my garage (like an idiot, but I have a fascination with storms) the storms of July 19th were amazing and terrifying. 80-90 mile per hour winds shredded hundred year old trees and buildings. We could hear the wail of a tornado, several miles to the north and east of here. Our village was one of the hardest hit. There is not a street in town not lined with wall to wall brush piles and nearly everyone lost the contents of freezers and refrigerators. Homes were destroyed. Fortunately, no one died as a direct result of the storm, though the number of deaths from heat due to lack of electricity have now reached four in St. Louis. According to Ameren, eight days later, there are still 32,000 people without power in the St. Louis area :
http://www.ameren.com/...
Though he declared several counties disaster areas on Friday, after a second set of storms rolled through, and released the environmental restraints on a local refinery so that they could return to production sooner, (at least in theory...in reality this allows them to continue to profit while polluting the environment, but that's another diary) no sign of the governor has been seen in the southern parts of this state. Hundreds of thousands of people were affected by these storms. Only yesterday did he file for federal funds, something the odious Matt Blunt of Missouri did last week. We've talked on Daily Kos before about how alienated Blagojevich is from the southern 3/4 of the state, but this is enforcing it in ways I can hardly describe. Last week, before the storms, I noticed the local paper was beginning to run editorials questioning his ethics, along the lines of "Is He Really Any Different From Ryan?". I was a little dismayed at that, but now I think things may only get worse for him, editorially wise. Oh, and guess who has been here since the storms, and was widely photographed? Yep, Judy Barr Topinka. She came to announce low income loans, to me a false "benefit" but something many people will appreciate. Has the Governor been seen in this part of the state? (Where is the rolly-eye icon when you need it?) Not hardly.
I'm really afraid he may lose Madison and St.Clair counties altogether and these counties are heavily populated with Democrats. I hope Cook County can carry this election for him, because the thought of Topinka scares me to death, but I no longer expect Blagojevich to make any sort of impact on the national scene. He is completely, totally tone deaf when it comes to the finer points of politics.