Trump motives: fighting antisemitism? Or won’t be shown up by Joe Biden!

President Donald Trump wound up proceeding with his scheduled campaign stop Saturday on behalf of Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., even though it had been contemplated to cancel the event at the Southern Illinois Airport in Murphysboro out of respect for the incident that morning where people were killed while attending Shabbat services at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

TRUMP: Answering back before attacked?

Trump, the tough-talker who’s particularly vehement when communicating via Twitter, said he ventured to the land of Little Egypt (how the locals think of themselves) because, “we can’t let evil change our life and change our schedule.”

NOW THERE MAY be an element of truth that Trump wouldn’t want to cancel out on his appearance meant to bolster the re-election bid of Bost just because some bigot decided to bust into a synagogue armed with a rifle and pistols and start shooting the place up.

Some 11 were killed, others were wounded, and it is being called one of the bloodiest attacks on Jewish people in this country. Even Trump is calling it an “antisemitic attack at its worst.”

But I can’t help but think of more crass motivations in play for why Trump felt a flight on Air Force One to a remote part of Illinois was so important to make.

It will be just a few days before none-other-than Joe Biden, the former Vice President under the chief executive whose memory Trump would love to erase from the history books, will take place.

BOST: Beneficiary of Trump goodwill?

FOR BOST IS the guy being challenged by St. Clair County Brendan Kelly, who is the Democrat seeking to knock Bost from the House of Representatives, and one of some two-dozen Republican members of Congress whom Democrats think might be vulnerable on Election Day.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that Southern Illinois has changed significantly since the days when it was a working-class region (with many union member coal miners living there). Bost (whose moment of national prominence came back six years ago when he shouted, screamed and threw documents around during a session of the Illinois House of Representatives) may well be safe politically – particularly since that region is the lone part of Illinois where Trump is taken seriously.

HULTGREN: Will he get Trump help?

I have no doubt that Trump on Saturday was in a place where he felt much political love. Reinforcing his belief that he really does represent what this country is about.

Exactly the kind of sentiment that could be threatened if the perception got out there that Trump somehow got scared off, intimidated of sorts, into not showing up in Illinois.

JUST THINK OF how much trash talk Biden could spew come Wednesday when he appears on behalf of Kelly at a union hall in East St. Louis.

Which will come a few hours after Biden appears in suburban St. Charles to campaign for Lauren Underwood, who’s the nurse with political aspirations challenging Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., for his congressional seat.

He’s probably more vulnerable than is Bost, but you can be sure Biden will go out of his way on Halloween to bash both congress members by tying them as closely as possible in every possible way to Trump.

BIDEN: Dumping on Trump come Wednesday?

I don’t doubt Trump would not like the notion of Biden appearing in Illinois twice while Donald himself would not at all. It would probably seem to him like he’s surrendering to the former Vice President. And I suspect an unanswered taunt is the biggest evidence of political cowardice that exists in Trump’s mentality.

SO I SEE a touch of self-righteousness in Trump, feeling the need to answer back Saturday in anticipation of the Illinois-oriented insults he’s likely to get on Tuesday.

He may actually feel a touch of sympathy for Jewish people, although I suspect that’s largely because daughter Ivanka likely would read him the riot act in private if he didn’t (she did convert her religious faith when she married Jared Kushner).

If anything, I wonder if he’ll try to squeeze in a last-minute campaign stop this week in Kane County to benefit Hultgren. Anything is possible, I suppose.

One can talk about high-minded ideals as much as they want. But when it comes to political people, there’s usually a selfish motive behind anything they say or do – particularly when it comes to “the Donald.”

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How many Congressional candidates get help from Ben & Jerry, Sha Na Na?

I’m sure Lauren Underwood wants us to think she’s merely a health care professional whose interest in electoral politics is because she wants the federal government to do more to improve the quality of health care available to the general public.

UNDERWOOD: An Obama-era appointee

Which sounds nice. It sounds noble. Yet Underwood wouldn’t be getting prominent attention if she were just a nurse.

IN THIS YEAR of ’18 in the Age of Trump, a key strategy for Democratic political operatives is to try to boost the chances of every single Democrat running for office by reminding us just how abhorrent a majority of us find President Donald J. Trump to be.

The idea is to make us think that every single person of the GOP persuasion is nothing more than a Trump lackey, and that we need to dump every single one of ‘em from office.

Which means that even Republicans running in parts of the country that usually are fairly safe for GOPers are going to face some serious competition.

That includes Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., who typically would be considered safe in his northwestern suburban district. It’s not an area inclined to think of Democrats as being a legitimate choice. Heck, in the past 145 years, the area has only had five people of the Dem persuasion represent it.

YET IN THIS year, political operatives are putting their worth in Underwood, who if she wins would be the first woman ever to win that district – and also the youngest black woman (she’s 31) to win a Congressional seat anywhere in the United States this election cycle.

How seriously are people taking her candidacy?

She’s actually gaining some celebrity stunt-type attention that typically wouldn’t waste itself on a candidate who (in typical election years) would be regarded as longshots.

Come Wednesday, Jon Bauman (a.k.a., Bowzer from Sha Na Na of old) will do a formal endorsement of Underwood at an event in suburban Huntley. Bauman, who is now head of an organization called Social Security Works PAC, admits he’ll sing a few old tunes before talking with Underwood about healthcare issues related to senior citizens.

THIS ALSO COMES as the guys who created Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (a disclosure, I thoroughly adore both “Chunky Monkey” and “Cherry Garcia” flavors) say they’re creating specialty flavors to promote the political campaigns of seven would-be members of Congress who they think will be supportive of improved health care.

Underwood is amongst the seven.

Now I know many people will dismiss Bowser and Ben & Jerry as a batch of third-rate celebrity-type stunts. Nothing that should tell us that Underwood is a legitimate candidate.

Yet we have to admit, particularly when it comes to some of these lower-perception political races, such stunts can help draw attention. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that Underwood gets a few votes from people who like ice cream or have memories of Sha Na Na.

AND IF YOU want to dismiss those things as being merely of interest to “old” people, consider that it could out to be the old people who take this election cycle most seriously.

So Hultgren vs. Underwood could turn out to be an election campaign of the 2018 cycle that gets a little bit of undue attention. Whether that will be sufficient to sway the vote away from this being a routine Republican political victory has yet to be determined.

Of course, I suspect Ben & Jerry’s will influence the outcome in one significant way. There’s no word on just what Lauren Underwood-type ice cream will taste like.

I suppose they could doom her campaign to political defeat if they wind up creating an unappealing concoction for her that makes voters think they’re better off with “two more years” of Hultgren.

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Walsh opponent drops out to avert the hostility of Illinois Republican Party

A part of me feels like I administered the “kiss of death” to the Republican official whose dreams of running for a seat in Congress were quashed by the fact that the GOP wants to avoid primary political fights whenever possible.

RUSCITTI: Got her  reward now

I tossed out the line on Wednesday about wishing for a Darlene J. Ruscitti victory in the March 20 Republican primary, and still wish it was possible so that we could avoid the nonsense we’re going to get from the Joe Walsh for Congress campaign in 2012.

BUT IT WON’T be. For Ruscitti on Wednesday decided to drop out of the campaign for the Republican nomination for the Illinois Eighth congressional district.

That is a district that doesn’t have an incumbent member, but was drawn to focus on the inner ring of suburbs to the northwest of Chicago. It is a Democratic-leaning congressional district.

The conventional wisdom says that the winner of the Democratic primary will eventually go on to win the seat in Congress. Either Tammy Duckworth or Raja Krishnamoorthi.

It means that Ruscitti, at best, was running a token campaign for Congress.

HER BIG HOPE, it would seem, was to conduct herself in as professional a manner as possible so that Republican Party officials in Illinois would take her seriously in the future.

Being the GOP token in 2012 could mean a serious campaign run for electoral office in 2014 or 2016. It means she has a chance to be something other than her current post – the regional superintendent of schools for DuPage County.

WALSH: Finally unopposed?



But Walsh, an ideologue of the Tea Party persuasion, decided that his chances of getting re-elected to Congress next year were better by considering a move to the Illinois Eighth district, rather than the district in which his McHenry home is located – the Illinois Fourteenth.

Running in the district in which he actually lives would make him have to run against Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., in a primary election.

EVEN FOR THOSE Republican Party officials who privately think Walsh is an embarrassment to the GOP, they would just as soon not have to see Republicans fighting against Republicans for votes.

Having Walsh shift districts opens him up to charges from Democrats of being a “political carpetbagger,” but it also makes it likely that the two incumbents will have only token challenges in the primary election season and can focus all of their fundraising efforts and energies toward the general election cycle.

Which will boost Walsh somewhat – although he still likely has the drawbacks of running in inner-ring suburbs where the Democratic Party does not get demonized.

But what about Ruscitti?

SHE’S BEING A “good girl,” so to speak, by not creating a primary fight with Walsh – which could have become credible because of the segment of the GOP who think Walsh embarrasses them by association.

At least a few of them likely would have cast a ballot for Ruscitti as an “Anybody But Walsh” vote. Which means the party establishment had come to view her as someone who could only stir up embarrassment for the party.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock that she dropped out; and that the party gave her a reward. She now has a title of “co-chair” of the Illinois Victory Program – an initiative that is meant to drum up support for Republican candidates in general.

HULTGREN: Avoids a challenge



Considering that the whole point of a Ruscitti campaign in the first place was to build up support for some future reward, it would seem she has already achieved that goal.

SHE GETS A position that could let her make the same contacts that could result someday in her having a serious chance to win election to a higher government post than being a top educator in DuPage County.

She was never going to be Rep. Darlene J. Ruscitti, R-Ill., as a result of this election cycle. Perhaps she’ll get that chance sometime in the upcoming decade.

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