Illinois Democrats have been saying for a long time that they want to modestly increase the state’s minimum wage to around $10.65 an hour. For several years, they have had everything a political party needs to pass this legislation. But they found a way to not do it. And that tells us a lot about Democratic Party leadership in Illinois and across the country.
Illinois Pat Quinn and the Democrats could have won the governor’s seat in the November election simply by passing legislation that people want and then campaigning on those accomplishments. But Party leaders choose instead to let a super wealthy Republican and financial wheeler dealer move into the Illinois governorship. Why? The answer is crucial to understanding politics and the Democratic Party in Illinois and the US today.
Quinn lost the election due to a small (4%) increase in Republican voter turnout and a larger (8%) decrease in Democratic turnout. [1] Some say that Dem voters are apathetic, but there’s a growing body of commentators who says that former Democratic voters are deliberately refusing to vote.
Turnout in the governor’s race was around 3.5 million or 36% of the state’s 9.7 million voting age population (VAP) and nearly 50% of the state’s 7.2 million registered voters.
So no matter how you cut it, a huge number of Illinois residents chose not to vote and a good majority of those who stayed home have in the past voted Democratic. As a result, Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner was elected governor by about 18% of the state’s voting age population. Do Democratic Party leaders even care?
Clearly with no presidential race to stir up interest, several million likely Democratic voters decided they weren’t coming out for the likes of Quinn and other Illinois Democrats. And why should they? Neither Quinn nor any of the Party leaders gave the average Illinois voters any solid economic reason for voting. And as President Clinton famously said about elections, “It’s about the economy, stupid.”
Oh the Democrats talked a good game leading up to every election, but after they win office, Democrats either can't or won't deliver for their voters.
Take the minimum wage issue. The Democrats have been saying for a long time that they want to modestly increase the state’s minimum wage to around $10.65 an hour. They had everything a political party needs to pass this legislation. The Democrats have super majorities in both houses of the general assembly, 60% in the House and 70% in the Senate! Even if a handful of those rascally downstate (rural) Democrats refused to vote for it, there would still be more than enough votes to reach a majority.
Polling before the election showed the people of Illinois strongly supported increasing the minimum wage. Plus Governor Quinn has long proclaimed his support for the minimum wage.
Republican opposition would have been futile, and besides the Republicans are leery about criticizing a boost to the minimum wage before an election.
So the stage was perfectly set for the Democrats to pass a minimum wage bill in 2013 or 2014 and then brag during the campaign about what they had done for the working people of Illinois.
They could have proclaimed that they did it to help the low wage workers, that it was morally unacceptable for people to have to work for poverty wages. They could have shouted about how it would boost consumer spending throughout the state and how that would stimulate business; they could have crowed about how higher wages and more consumer spending would enable the state to collect more in income and sales taxes. So it would have been a big win for everyone, including conservative business people.
And for Quinn passing a minimum wage could have brought hundreds of thousands more friendly voters to the polls. He coulda been a champ!
But instead of passing the minimum wage in 2013 or 2014, the Democrats squandered the last two years arguing about whose pensions to cut and by how much, supporting charter schools, giving away tax payer money to highly profitable corporations, and in general doing little to improve the economic circumstances of average people. Finally they sent the minimum wage off to the legislative nether world of committees. In that atmosphere, who could tell the Democrats from the Republicans?
Maybe Party leaders figured they could get enough voters out using scare tactics. Hence a tidal wave of emails and TV messages about how bad the Republicans are for working people so you’d better vote Democratic to keep the more bad Republicans out of office.
Unfortunately, for Quinn the scare tactics didn’t work. What’s more, the massive get out the vote efforts put on by unions and worried activists and even community organizations failed utterly to stir the voters. Let this be a lesson for future elections, working class voters don’t respond to do nothing politicians, regardless of phone banks, emails, facebook and ads.
After the election, Democrat Party leaders made another lackadaisical run at passing the minimum wage increase. But clearly their heart wasn’t in it. Mike Madigan, Democratic speaker of the House, did little to bring reluctant downstate Democrats into the minimum wage fold. And despite heroic efforts by progressive activists and unions, the minimum wage died quietly and is unlikely to pass during a Republican administration.
So what’s really going on? Why is it that after eight years of Democratic control of the legislature and the governor’s chair, Illinois has seen almost no progressive legislation that would improve the economic situation of the state or working people?
Surely master politicians like Mike Madigan (Illinois House speaker) and John Cullerton (Illinois Senate President) and even newbie Quinn know the score better than you and I. Why didn’t they raise the minimum wage and then campaign on it? No one in leadership is going to fess up, but let’s try some educated guesses:
1) Money is the milk of Illinois politics. The Democrats under Mike Madigan have focused like a laser on collecting tons of cash from all sources businesses, unions, wealthy individuals and lobbyists. In fact when it comes to fund raising, it’s hard to distinguish Democrats from Republicans. So while individual Democrats will sometimes talk progressive populists, the party leaders consistently act like royalist.
2) Focused as they are on money raising, Democratic leaders are uncomfortable with having a legislative majority and a Democratic governor. Why? Because when Democrats hold a governing majority, their base expects them to pass progressive legislation that benefits working people economically. And that’s bad for donations. The rich and powerful don’t pay for progressive legislation. Nor will some unions.
3) Consequently Madigan and many of the Democrats across the nation, are not unhappy with Republicans like Rauner as governor or with split control of a legislature. When Democrats don’t have a governing majority, their base--the voters who put them into office--no longer expect the passage of progressive legislation. And Democrats can say, “see we support a progressive economic platform, but those mean Republicans won’t let us do it.” That’s why Obama never seems very concerned about taking big loses in the mid terms and why after a huge defeat, he unrolls a progressive agenda.
4) Most likely in this 2015 Illinois legislative session, Democrats will start taking and even proposing some real progressive legislation confident that Rauner will veto anything they come up with and the cash will continue to flow.
This approach has worked well for Illinois Democrats over the past 10 years bringing in millions and millions and opening doors to lucrative jobs following their political careers. Expect them to continue their deceptive practices.
But as one famous Illinois politician once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Let’s hope he was right.
Let's also hope that a movement for independent progressive politics will arise in Illinois and across the nation that will push aside corrupt Party leaders and build a progressive governing majority inside or outside of the current two party structure.