Posted by Ed
It can be really hard to be a liberal Democrat these days: the Democratic party has been trending toward the center for over a decade now, and the number of liberals running for office is always meager. Moreover, I've been unimpressed by Illinois politics since I arrived in the state three years ago. All the candidates for governor two years ago were underwhelming, to say the least; about the only Illinois state office-holder I like is Senator Dick Durbin, who I hope will be in the running to become John Kerry's running mate.
That's why I'm excited by today's Illinois primary results: the easy winner in the Democratic Senate primary was Barack Obama, a prominent state senator who teaches constitutional law here at the University of Chicago. Obama strikes me as one of the smartest and most talented people in public life today, and has an impressive life story: if I'm not mistaken, he was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. My one concern about his candidacy is my fear that the state won't want to elect a liberal African-American with a foreign name, but Obama's decisive primary victory is reassuring. Moreover, the Republicans have nominated Jack Ryan--an unimpressive businessman whose main strength is his personal fortune, and whose campaign has been dogged by rumors about his messy divorce from the actress Jeri Ryan. Ryan can't be counted out, but I think Obama's chances look good--and I'm excited by the prospect of his joining the Senate. On to November!
Posted by Ed at March 17, 2004 12:01 AMSTOP THE PRESSES.
The Republican candidate was married to Seven of Nine?!
And he let her go?!?!
No one that stupid should be allowed to stand for public office.
Posted by: JX at March 17, 2004 09:17 AMRyan an "unimpressive businessman?" This would be the guy who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth, then did a few years in some kind of Peace Corp-like gig, then took a JD and MBA from Harvard, then went to work for Goldman Sachs (You know, the place where former treasury secretary Robert Rubin and New Jersey Senator John Corzine spent their careers), eventually rising through a brutal up-or-out process to be head of the firm's Chicago office at a ridiculously young age, and who then quit Goldman to become a history teacher at a Catholic high school serving almost exclusively African American boys in one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago?
Unimpressive indeed!
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