Cross-posted from Blue Downstate
Remember the last time the Democratic nominee lost a presidential election? That was in 2004, and the Democratic nominee in that year’s presidential race was John Kerry, then the junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who is now the U.S. Secretary of State. Kerry lost to one of the worst presidents our country has had, Republican George W. Bush, for many reasons, one of which was his flip-flopping on the issue of funding for the unjustified Iraq War.
Now, in 2014, Illinois Republicans have nominated venture capitalist Bruce Rauner as their candidate for governor, and Rauner has a John Kerry problem of his own. In Rauner’s case, he flip-flopped on the issue of the minimum wage. Governor Pat Quinn’s campaign is wasting little time attacking Rauner over wanting to lower the minimum wage in Illinois before flip-flopping (after being sharply criticized for wanting to lower the minimum wage) and claiming that he doesn’t want to lower the minimum wage in Illinois:
Lowering the minimum wage in Illinois would result in working-poor Illinoisans having less money to spend on goods and services, which would hurt our state’s economy and worsen our state’s fiscal problems. Anyone who is even open to the idea of lowering our state’s minimum wage is bad for our state.
More importantly, when a candidate flip-flops on an important issue for primarily or exclusively political reasons, voters are not going to trust that candidate. We saw what happens when one flip-flops on an issue in the 39th Representative District Democratic primary last night. In that race, Toni Berrios was for the Mike Madigan-supported pension theft bill before she voted against it for purely political reasons (specifically, progressive activist Will Guzzardi was running against her in the Democratic primary), and she lost the primary to Guzzardi, who did not once waver from any of his stances on the issues, even when his stance on pension reform was to the left of the public-sector unions. Just like John Kerry and Toni Berrios before him, I have a gut feeling that Bruce Rauner will lose the 2014 gubernatorial election thanks to his flip-flop on an important issue facing our state.
Unlike Rauner, Governor Quinn has always been for lifting working-poor Illinoisans out of poverty and boosting our state’s economy by raising our state’s minimum wage.