Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.
Think about this. We have the worst inflation in four decades. The worst collapse in real wages in 40 years. The worst crime wave since the 1990s. The worst border crisis in U.S. history.
We have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman — since presidential polling happened. And there wasn’t a red wave.
That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party. That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They looked at all that and looked at the Republican alternative and said “no thanks.”
The Republican Party needs to do a really deep introspective look in the mirror now because this is an absolute disaster. — Mark Thiessen, conservative pundit and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, on Fox News Tuesday night.
I take issue with some of Thiessen’s sweeping assertions — since President Harry Truman, for example, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, both Bushes and Donald Trump hit lower approval marks than Biden’s lowest mark — but not with the overall thrust of his comment. On Election Day, the latest polls showed 72% of voters were saying the country is on the “wrong track.” So just about all of us except for liberal cheerleader Michael Moore were expecting a repudiation of the sitting president similar to what we saw in 1994 when Democrats under Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats, in 2010 when Democrats under President Barack Obama lost 63 House seats or even 2018 when Republicans under President Donald Trump lost 40 House seats.
Under Biden, it looks like they’re going to lose only somewhere around a dozen House seats, which will still cost the party control of the chamber but is widely seen as an enormous disappointment to Republicans and a rejection of Trump, who appears likely to announce next week that he’s running again.
Yet here’s my inner Eeyore offering a Thiessen-like take on the results from the other side:
Think about this. We have a Republican Party that’s in the thrall of a crazed narcissist and is dominated by election deniers and fearmongers whose policy positions tend to be vague and unpopular. Its lack of probity and moral compass was revealed, again, in the nomination of the carpetbagging quack Dr. Mehmet Oz for the Senate in Pennsylvania and the nomination of clueless hypocrite Herschel Walker for Senate in Georgia. And yet the Democrats lost the House and seem to be losing ground among Hispanic voters. The party needs to look in the mirror and figure out how to broaden its appeal.
Promoting the craziest opposition candidates worked for the Democrats
Many of my ethically minded friends along with my indignant wife were aghast and angered by the Democrats’ investment in promoting the wackiest, most MAGA-minded Republican primary challengers. It was quite a poker play, as described here by the Huffington Post:
In Republican primary after Republican primary, Democrats aired ads serving two purposes: promoting seemingly unelectable candidates to the GOP base while attacking them for a general election audience. The ads noted how close the Republican candidates were to Trump, played up their support for strict restrictions or bans on abortion and other things the GOP base loved but general election voters hated. …
Thirty-five former Democratic elected officials signed a letter suggesting the party was playing with fire: “Our democracy is fragile, therefore we cannot tolerate political parties attempting to prop up candidates whose message is to erode our dedication to fair elections,” the officials wrote in August. …
On election night, those risky bets paid off. All six of the election-denying candidates on the ballot whom Democrats boosted ― three gubernatorial candidates, two House candidates and a Senate candidate ― lost, most of them resoundingly.
Here are the six:
Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania governor
John Gibbs, Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District
Don Bolduc, U.S. Senate, New Hampshire
Robert Burns, New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District
Dan Cox, Maryland governor
Darren Bailey, Illinois governor
And if Kari Lake loses in her bid to become Arizona’s governor, that would make it seven.
It’s “beyond debate … that Democratic meddling in Republican primaries was very effective,” wrote CNN’s Chris Cilizza.
I defended the tactic as a good bet, one that honestly reminded the Republican electorate (and, later, the general election voters) what the candidates stood for. The risk paid off.
Even though they’ll be in charge, House Republicans are now unlikely to unleash an impeachapalooza
One big takeaway from Tuesday’s results is that, by and large, nationally speaking, extremism ain’t selling. Indoor Republicans, like Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, outperformed the more radical Republicans on their statewide ballots. And Republican leadership surely knows that if the House hotheads give us two years of fiery partisan gestures — holding endless hearings about that sad sack Hunter Biden or voting to impeach President Joe Biden over and over for one failing or another — instead of serious legislating, the party will be poorly positioned to prevail in 2024.
The public is not behind the zealous opponents of abortion rights.
Voters in California, Michigan and Vermont put lasting protections for abortion rights into their state constitutions, and voters in Kentucky rejected an anti-abortion measure. Montana voters rejected a ballot referendum to impose criminal penalties on health care providers who fail to act to preserve the life of infants during the course of an abortion procedure.
These results followed the overwhelming rejection at the polls in August of an amendment in Kansas to remove protections for abortion rights from the state constitution.
State Supreme Court victories turned Illinois’ blue wave into a tsunami
It was fairly predictable that the Democratic candidates would prevail in all statewide races and maintain supermajorities in the General Assembly. But if the Republican candidate had won the two races for Illinois Supreme Court seats, the party could have put a serious crimp in the Democrats’ agenda.
But in the 2nd Supreme Court District (Lake, Kane, McHenry, Kendall and DeKalb counties,) Democratic Lake County Judge Elizabeth Rochford beat Republican Mark Curran, a former Lake County sheriff. And in the 3rd Supreme Court District (DuPage Will, Bureau, Grundy, Iroquois, Kankakee and LaSalle counties), Appellate Justice Mary Kay O’Brien upset incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Burke.
Now, I lean strongly Democratic (could you tell?). but I’m aware that the party can go off the rails and needs to focus harder than it has been on fiscal responsibility and improving the quality of life measures that will make the state more attractive to new residents and entrepreneurs.
Ranked choice voting received an overwhelming vote of approval from Evanston residents on Election Day, with more than 82% of ballots cast in favor of the new voting system for local consolidated elections. … The change will be implemented in April 2025 and affect elections for mayor, City Council and the city clerk. Evanston will now become the first municipality in Illinois to enact ranked choice voting.
Yes it’s more complicated. Yes the candidate with the most first-place votes doesn’t always win. But ranked-choice/instant runoff voting systems are designed to better reflect the consensus will of the electorate and to prevent extremists from winning with narrow pluralities in crowded fields.
I had a number of interesting discussions regarding my item last week about the closure of the Hideout in the wake of performer boycotts prompted by the Instagram post of a disgruntled former employee. The longest by far was my conversation/debate/shouting match with Reader columnist Ben Joravsky on his daily podcast.
Joravsky co-hosted a monthly talk show at the Hideout with Injustice Watch reporter Maya Dukmasova, and the two decided that the allegations posted to Instagram by former Hideout program manager Mykele Deville were so credible and serious that they just had to move their show to Nighthawk in Albany Park. This was one of the cancellations that all but forced the Hideout to close for at least the months of November and December, and I wanted to challenge Joravsky, as a journalist, to explain the factual basis for his consequential decision.
The Hideout is within the boundaries of the massive Lincoln Yards project near the Kennedy Expressway on the North Side. And though the owners have so far refused to sell the property to developers ,it seems possible that the financial stress of closing for two months combined with the realization of how vulnerable they are to unhappy employees will prompt them to cash out and move on.
As I wrote last week, it was clear to me that Deville, who is Black, had unpleasant experiences working at the Hideout, some of which he experienced as racism. His bill of particulars lacked detail, though, and he has refused to grant interviews where journalists might referee some of his claims.
The claim that Joravsky told me during the podcast that he took most seriously was that club “leadership did nothing to support” Deville after an anti-mask customer spat on him. No one should ever spit on anyone, of course, and such an act would demand an immediate ouster and lifetime ban, if not a call to police to report an assault. So I wanted to know more about what “leadership” did and didn’t do or say when they saw or were told about this attack.
Joravsky said that because the club owners didn’t specifically deny this accusation in their response statements, it was tantamount to an admission of culpability. But in our litigious era, employers are frequently counseled, for legal reasons, not to offer public counternarratives to the complaints of former employees.
But the owners did expressed a willingness to participate in “restorative justice,” an indication that they wanted to talk out what had happened and address some of the broader allegations of mismanagement at the club without falling on their swords over an incident that they might not even have recalled.
Multiple people told me, sadly, during that era there were several assaults of that type by customers against Hideout workers who tried to enforce COVID rules. In response the club hired a security guard to work Thursday through Sunday. Those sources argued that it’s not obvious Deville was singled out for his skin color. Moreover, they said, there’s no possibility that the owners could have heard about his spitting incident and not have at least offered words of support.
I say Greenfield is a “former” Reader contributor because the free weekly, which published a column and editor’s note on the imbroglio that pointedly refrained from any journalistic effort to sort things out, cut all ties with him this week shortly after his post.
Ah Twitter! Home of the public, performative spat that no one ever wins!
I hope The Reader takes belated, deep, objective dive into the controversy that’s seriously threatening the future of an important venue for the arts, politics and community events (the nonprofit my wife founded held several events there). Many of us still have questions about just what happened during the course of Deville’s employment, which ended in the spring, and whether a mass boycott was necessary or even helpful to anyone’s cause.
If you’re interested in more back-and-forth on all this, check out this Reddit thread based on Greenfield’s post.
The American people have seen enough. They’re tired of being pushed around by jesters who shriek for their heads and their jobs.
They’re fed up.
That Red Wave gathers force. And the time of the jesters honoring themselves will soon be at an end.
(By the way, when Kass writes “The hysterical left sought to cancel me at the newspaper I worked at for almost 40 years as revenge for outing George Soros’ involvement in selecting do-nothing prosecutor Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Fox (sic) and other like-minded progressive prosecutors in regions all over the country” he’s lying, again, about what happened at the Chicago Tribune. For reference, read my magnum opus, “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild.”)
Think of all the good that could have been done with all the millions that mega MAGA donors Liz and Dick Uihlein threw away in their doomed effort to prop up the Illinois Republican Party. I give right-wing radio host Proft a grudging tip of the cap for continuing the grift in which he makes big bucks posing as an effective political operative.
In “What's Going On With 'Nonplussed'?” Merriam-Webster online writes:
By the early 17th century nonplus was being used as a verb, with the meaning of “to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do.” Then, as now, the word is often encountered in its participial form (nonplussed), with a meaning that is nearly synonymous with “perplexed.” … (But) then in the early 20th century some people began to use nonplussed to mean “unruffled, unconcerned.”
Nonplussed is one of those troubling words that seems to come up most often in discussions of its use and misuse. People do still use it in earnest, but those who use it in its traditional sense risk confusing people, and those who use it in its newer sense risk being corrected by careful readers.
I suspect that many people mistake “nonplussed” for “nonchalant.” One way to remember the correct meaning is to think of its roots: “non” means no, and “plus” means more. When you’re nonplussed, you feel as if you can do no more. In other words, you feel helpless. … Unfortunately, it’s a word that’s almost never used correctly now, which probably bodes ill for its survival.
Jurors? Please weigh in:
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Now, about “reform.”
For most of my career I’ve haphazardly sprinkled the word "reform" into my work without much of a thought — criminal justice reform, health care reform, immigration reform, campaign finance reform, welfare reform, tort reform and so on.
Economical. Usually well understood.
Yet the price of that clarity, as I admitted in a column several years ago, was a loss of neutrality. In the most literal sense, yes, to "re-form" something is merely to change its shape. But for hundreds of years, the dominant definition and implication of "reform" is improvement.
Think of frequent references in our culture to reformed addicts and abusers. Or think of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, the Illinois Reform Commission and a host of other organizations, initiatives and legislative caucuses that use the word to burnish their motives.
"Reform" says our goals are righteous, our cause is just.
The word is loaded. It's prejudicial. It's presumptuous.
"Tort reform," for example, puts a terminological blessing on the idea of diminishing the awards in lawsuits, just as "immigration reform" signals support for proposed modifications in laws dealing with people the United States illegally. News stories shouldn't do that.
Opinion essays shouldn't either. Columnists and editorial writers should make their own arguments in favor of proposals rather than lazily enlisting the aid of the R-word — a view I camto after, again, many decades of just such rhetorical indolence and inattentiveness.
Style mavens recommend such words as changes, revisions and overhauls..
One of our jobs in media is to guard against those who try to usurp freighted words and phrases for their own purposes — the "family values" crowd, for instance, the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" factions, those who object to "death taxes" or advocate "violence prevention measures" that involve restrictive firearms laws.
So, gentlepersons on the language jury! I put it to you:
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Songs of Good Cheer update
Anna Jacobson at Songs of Good Cheer rehearsal, Nov. 6, 2022
We had our best rehearsal yet Sunday under the guidance of our musical director, multi-instrumentalist Anna Jacobson. Every year, we add new seasonal songs and dust off/shine up some of those we’ve done at previous shows. Among the new songs this year will be “Al Hanisim,” for which we will also lead the singing of an English translation.
Mary Schmich, my co-host for the annual event, posted this to Facebook the other day by way of explanation and exhortation:
Today’s a good day to get your Songs of Good Cheer tickets.
On Dec. 9, 10 and 11, my pal and former Tribune colleague Eric Zorn and I will host the 24th annual Songs of Good Cheer holiday singalong at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Nearly a quarter of a century! And all because of all of you who have joined us year after year.
We share the stage with an amazing band of professional musicians who lead you—the audience—in song. We sing a lot of familiar tunes along with a few you’ve never heard but will be glad to learn. Our bandmates play almost every instrument you can imagine. I play piano. Eric plays fiddle and cracks jokes—yes, Virginia, that guy is really funny.
Thousands of people have joined us through the years. For many it’s become a holiday ritual, a moment to gather with friends and family freed of commercial overload.
We’ve scheduled four shows. A couple are close to sold out. We’ll decide in the next few days whether to add a fifth show.
The school is in Lincoln Square, one of Chicago’s most vibrant neighborhoods. Lots of great restaurants in walking distance to the school for a drink or a meal before or after.
Here’s a Ken Carl photo of one of last year’s shows, which shows you the beautiful Old Town School hall where we gather:
We’d love to have you come sing with us. — Mary Schmich
Minced Words
Former Tribune Metro Editor Mark Jacob joined me, Jon Hansen and host John Williams to talk about Tuesday’s election results. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The best thing about being a man is the ability to pee anywhere. That and the patriarchy. — @Bob_Janke
You get: One hour of extra sleep. You lose: The will to live after the sun sets at 4 p.m. — @javasok
Is an argument between two vegans still called a beef? — @ln0217
Gollum wouldn't have lost the One Ring if he had cargo shorts. — @justinmatic5000
If you ever struggle with things being fair, just remember that camels and dairy cows have the prettiest eyelashes and nobody even cares. — @CynicalTherapi1
Stuff at the gas station is more expensive because you’re paying for the experience. — @rsf788
People who can pronounce foreign foods correctly are the real gyros. — @beefman138
My therapist says we're not living in a simulation, which is exactly what a therapist in a simulation would say. — @Kendragarden
Nobody ever gave me nothin’ -- except for the entrenched, systemic advantages of my race, class and gender expression, and also all this money. — @timpratt
Kids should come with a “skip intro” button for their stories. — @IHideFromMyKids
Lou and Peter Berryman’s “Orange Cocoa Cake” is the soundtrack of a mother of three small children trying to impart a recipe to a friend over the phone. I prefer Cathy Fink’s version —
The two, who are in their mid-70s, met in high school in Appleton, Wisconsin, and were married in 1967. They divorced about seven years later, but their wildly inventive musical collaboration has continued. They are both in long marriages to other people and live in Madison, Wisconsin.
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The only good thing about the skeletal Tribune of today is that they no longer feature the vulgar oaf Kass. I think it was Carville who described Indiana as a middle finger given by the South to the Midwest--i.e., an apt place for him to land.
The only good thing about the skeletal Tribune of today is that they no longer feature the vulgar oaf Kass. I think it was Carville who described Indiana as a middle finger given by the South to the Midwest--i.e., an apt place for him to land.
Happy Veterans Day 🇺🇲 to my fellow sisters and brothers at arms in service to our country! Hooah!