Who would Pritzker choose to fill Duckworth’s seat?
Tammy Duckworth, the junior U.S. senator from Illinois, will probably not be presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s choice as a vice presidential running mate.
Though Biden has pledged to pick a woman and Duckworth is a genuine military hero, the national moment seems to call for a Black woman. My money is on California Sen. Kamala Harris, but, remember, I’m the guy who thought Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar would win the Democratic nomination, so don’t start crafting handmade yard signs just yet.
But what if Biden does pick Duckworth and they win in November? Or, somewhat more likely, what if Biden beats President Donald Trump and then taps Duckworth for a position in his cabinet? Secretary of Veterans Affairs or Secretary of Defense seem possible given her service bona fides.
That would leave a vacant Senate seat for Gov. J.B. Pritzker to fill.
Just the words “vacant Senate seat” are enough to prompt harrowing flashbacks for anyone who was around in 2008 when Gov. Rod Blagojevich took the “effin’ golden” opportunity created when Sen. Barack Obama won the presidency. Blagojevich ended up in federal prison for the criminal way he tried to exploit that opportunity for personal gain.
Assuming Pritzker would want to avoid any comparisons to the disgraced Blagojevich and make an appointment that’s above suspicion, whom would he name?
Almost certainly a woman of color. Duckworth is of Southeast Asian descent and political reality would make it problematic for Pritzker to replace her with a white or male politician — sorry former state Sen. Daniel Biss, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Treasurer Michael Frerichs, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and others!
My first thought was Lieutenant Gov. Juliana Stratton, a very impressive African American attorney and advocate for the poor who served briefly in the Illinois House before joining the Pritzker ticket. She’s considered a rising star in the Democratic Party and is obviously close to Pritzker.
But when I put this fantasy question out on social media — with the request that no one suggest Roland Burris, the seatwarmer whom Blago appointed after his arrest — several other names rose to the top.
1. U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, D., Naperville. This first-term African American congresswoman and health care policy expert won in a traditionally Republican district. Win or lose in her November reelection bid against perennial candidate state Sen. Jim Oberweis of Sugar Grove, she’s definitely future-senator material.
2. Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. She’s a quick, smart, formidable and fearless Latina. But her too-close relationship to controversial House Speaker Michael Madigan and indicted Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, may have lost her the Chicago mayoral primary in 2019 and would probably dissuade Pritzker from elevating her.
3. U.S. Rep Robin Kelly, D., Matteson. Known primarily for her gun-control advocacy, Kelly, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who has represented the south suburbs in the House since 2013 is “passionate and pragmatic,” in the words of a Tribune primary endorsement earlier this year. She “a broad portfolio of interests, ranging from women’s health issues and prescription drug pricing to job creation.”
Upon further review, Kelly strikes me as Pritzker’s most likely choice if he gets to fill a v-v-v-vacant … a v-v-vacant S-S-S- …. I can’t say it!
Un-great expectations
“We have to lead the world. We should be the ones doing what we did during the Ebola crisis, bringing the whole world together and saying, ‘This is what we must do.’ We have to have a common plan. All nations are affected the same way by this virus depending on exposure. And so this is — we need world leadership. We need international leadership. We need someone who knows how to bring the world together and insist on fundamental change in the way in which we’re approaching this.”
That was Biden during his March 15 primary debate against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only one-on-one public clash of ideas he’s had since his October 2012 vice presidential debate against U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. And I offer the quote not so much for its substance as for how it addresses the question, “does that man sound senile to you?”
The Trump campaign and Trump himself are all in with the strategy of portraying Biden as a dotty sundowner gumming soft foods and wandering around in his slippers trying to remember what he was just looking for.
“Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.” Trump said during a recent interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace. “He’s shot, he’s mentally shot.”
Now Biden, at 77, may in fact have lost a bit off his cognitive fastball. But he’s always been prone to gaffes and verbal stumbles, some of which are due to his struggles with stuttering. And I reviewed every word he spoke during his debate with Sanders and found no evidence of the supposedly raging dementia that will make him, in Team Trump’s fevered fantasies, the tool of manipulative radicals within the Democratic Party.
Trump, 74, suffers from the same form of discursive logorrhea that afflicts Biden — the sentences that don’t always quite track or conclude — and I wouldn’t want either of them on my Trivia Night team. But what’s puzzling isn’t that the attacks on Biden are unfair or hypocritical, it’s that they’re unwise.
With each over-the-top assertion that the Democratic nominee is catatonhas ically senescent, the Republican attack machine lowers the bar for his performance in the upcoming debates. All Biden has to do is show up, not fall asleep at the podium and regurgitate a few sound bites, and he’ll vastly exceed the expectations Trump has set for him.
One of the first rules of politics is that one should always underpromise and overdeliver. Trump’s people seemed to realize this in the 2016 campaign when they warned that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was an experienced debater with a degree from Yale Law School and their guy was just a real estate developer who was relatively new at all this. So when Trump wasn’t a stammering mess on the debate stage he was able to claim victory.
As president he seems to have forgotten that rule, a failing seen most notably in all the empty, false promises he’s made about the coronavirus as it tears through the population.
He calls Biden “Sleepy Joe,” but it’s Trump who needs a wake-up call.
Re: Tweets
The winner of this week’s reader poll to select the funniest tweet was ” But if we don’t reopen the schools, where will 5-yearolds have their active shooter drills?” by @OhNoSheTwitnt
The poll appears at chicagotribune.com/zorn where you can read all the finalists. For an early alert when each new poll is posted, sign up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/newsletters.