Six more months of retaliatory Rauner bashing by organized labor interests

It almost seems like a stereotypical image to the point where it is amusing – the sight of a couple of guys in a bar wearing ballcaps talking about how the interests of everyday people benefit from organized labor.

Will these 'guys' become TV regulars between now and Nov. 6?

With Gov. Bruce Rauner being the guy intent to undermine the influence that labor unions have within Illinois state government. How dare he!?!

OF COURSE, WHEN one considers the large amounts of money that Rauner and business-oriented organizations have spent in recent years to try to push the message that the unions are all that is wrong with our state (and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is their corrupt champion), this may be a long-overdue bit of political payback.

What motivated me was a few hours I spent earlier this week with my grandmother, who at her age isn’t the most mobile of people around. Which means that for a bit, we had the television on.

Somewhere between “Judge Judy” and the local television news (which usually gets her all worked up into how stupid our political people can be, and at her age of 96, she’s seen a lot of nonsense spewed in the name of government), I saw the latest advertising spot by the Fight Back Fund.

From what I can tell, the group is headed by a suburban Countryside attorney, Marc R. Poulos, whose own interests are in defending the political people who have been taking quite a rhetorical beating because of their refusal to think of labor unions as some sort of criminal conspiracy.

ACCORDING TO THE group’s web site, they are, “tens of thousands of workers who are standing up for middle class families by standing up to politicians and profiteers who seek to serve their own special interests rather than the greater good.”

Aside from putting together political spots for television, the group says it has worked to prevent Illinois from becoming a “right-to-work” state (one in which businesses can openly behave in ways meant to discourage their workers from joining labor unions) and to force Indiana officials to adequately maintain state highways.

But what caught my attention was the advertising spot, which I’m wondering if we’re going to see much of over and over and over again between now and Nov. 6.

I’m talking about the spot set in a bar with many people enjoying an alcoholic beverage or two following a hard day’s worth of work. The focus is on two particular guys, one black and one white (got to keep a sense of balance, which I’m sure will offend the ideologues amongst us) talking about how peoples’ work benefits us all.

NOBODY’S HERE IN a suit. We’re talking ballcaps, with one of the men in a purple sweatshirt and the other in a green t-shirt.

A vision of the “common man” upset about the political people who want to use them as a punching bag to benefit their own Election Day interests.

Not that this should be surprising. I have long wondered how long it would be before the union interests started fighting back against all the cheap shots that Rauner & Co. have been spewing out in their direction.

A part of me has wondered why it took this long. Although I’m sure the level and intensity will step up later this summer when the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat J.B. Pritzker begins spending his millions of dollars to put up their own ads that will directly bash Rauner upside his head in its desire to “Dump Rauner!” come Nov. 6.

SO AS FOR these purple and green guys taking up the cause of the working man, are we going to see far too much of them this summer? Will they become regular characters in a series of ads that mean to tell us of the evils of Republican politicos (and Democrats who feel compelled to suck up to conservative ideological interests)?

Are they going to become a 21^st Century equivalent of Harry and Louise – the characters of those 1993 television ads who told of us the evils of then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s efforts to bring about health care and insurance for all people; rather than just those who were fortunate enough to have jobs that provided it?

I literally wonder if these guys are going to get names and develop backstories of their own, as though we’re supposed to think they’re real people instead of characters in a commercial spot we see on television?

Considering that we’re nearly at the six-month mark (it’s Sunday) until Election Day, that’s going to be a lot of advocacy television spots we’ll have to endure between now and then. Will it become so much that we’ll have to hide from our TV sets?

  -30-