Illinoize has an excellent wrap up on the 6th CD of Illinois

[wndycty]

While I did not write it, I embrace many of its arguments, I know I will be criticized for not moving on and I agree we need to move on, but what this blogger writes about the 6th CD of Illinois needs to be said and more importantly read. Flame if you must or you can consider and debate the arguments it makes.

I have been lectured A LOT ABOUT UNITY lately and how my continued posts on the Illinois 6th CD are divisive, however true unity does not come from silence to protect feelings it comes from being able to discuss our differences. Maybe this will be my last thread on the 6th CD maybe it won't be, but whenever I come across something I feel is worthwhile I'm not going to be intimidated by other DUers from posting it.

Here are some facts the Cegelis camp needs to own up to:

-- Team Cegelis put together a great field operation, but they were still soundly beaten, despite having a two-year head start. The main reason they lost is that Christine Cegelis could not make a compelling case that she was the better candidate to face Roskam, either to core Democratic groups, prospective donors or a plurality of voters. And, as I've pointed out many times, you won't even find the names of any other Cegelis family members or many of her most ardent bloggers on Cegelis's campaign finance reports.

-- Cegelis's 44% showing against Henry Hyde was no predictor of her performance in 2006. Peter Roskam would have slashed and burned her for her extremely liberal views, including but not limited to: banning not just assault weapons but all handguns, decriminalizing possession of narcotics, increasing welfare spending, raising taxes, and "developing a universal single health care system for this country similar to our Canadian neighbors." Even though I personally agree with many of her views, no one in their right political mind can possibly believe she was electable in DuPage County with those extreme views on record.

-- Whatever you think of Rahm Emanuel, Tammy Duckworth ran an honorable and positive campaign, never criticizing Cegelis or Scott, but instead focusing all of her criticisms on the Bush administration and Roskam.

-- The "old line democrats" aren't casting Christine and her supporters as "disloyal Democrats," as bored now claims. Team Cegelis did that yourselves, by constantly attacking the Democratic Party and it’s leaders over the last six months and laying out your "us versus them" attacks. In fact, by Christine Cegelis’s own admission, it took an invasion of another country under false pretenses to get her activated in the Illinois Democratic Party. She was what — 50? I’ve been walking precincts since I was 12, and have paid my dues doing grassroots campaign work for candidates in all but a handful of Illinois counties across three decades. Many of the people I know supporting Duckworth have given up that and much more, so forgive my umbrage when Cegelis appoints herself the arbiter of Democratic ideals and whether or not Duckworth is living up to them.
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-- Cegelis's "Good luck" is not an endorsement. It is a polite way of saying "go screw yourself, you're on your own," while bored now is much less polite when he says "Sounds to me like y’all are trying to set up blaming christine for duckworth’s inevitable loss against roskam." If that's your idea of being a team player, you must play alot of Solitaire.
-snip-

http://capitalfax.blogspot.com/2006/03/facing-facts-in-6th-congressional.html

[wndycty]

1. A Friday night kick

:kick: