Having lived through and closely covered the Bruce Rauner gubernatorial administration, I’ve been getting a strong sense of déjà vu lately as several famous “wise old men” have publicly advised Gov. JB Pritzker to call President Donald Trump and make some sort of deal that settles their disagreements.
This effort by political consultant David Axelrod and others was highlighted earlier this month when a Chicago TV reporter asked Pritzker: “Don’t you think if you maybe called [Trump], you can lower the temperature?”
Those of us who lived through the Rauner era heard and even futilely asked that very question time after time for more than two years.
But the truth was Rauner was fighting an existential battle with labor unions. To accomplish that goal, he set out to damage and even destroy the state’s human services network and their clients by refusing to sign a state budget to force the Democrats to gut unions of their power in the workplace and the state legislature.
Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, for all of his gigantic faults, recognized the dispute for what it was. This wasn’t a simple “budget impasse,” as the news media still prefers to call the fight.
The battle cut deep into the very fabric of the Democratic Party itself. There could be no real negotiations by either side, as evidenced by Rauner’s opposition to the then-Senate Republican leader’s attempts to broker a compromise with the then-Democratic Senate president.
All talk of a possible “grand bargain” was fake. The same holds true today.
Pritzker has made the point that if the president’s beef was really about crime, then the federal government would start by sending troops and cops to cities with higher violent crime rates than Chicago (like Memphis), and with more undocumented immigrants than this state’s largest city (like Houston).
Plus, he said, the military isn’t trained to fight crime in America and can’t legally be used to do that anyway.
The basic Pritzker argument is that Trump has been targeting Chicago and Illinois to please his base and set the stage for even greater attacks on civil liberties.
It’s always been difficult to see how either Pritzker or Trump could negotiate in this environment. They both clearly want capitulation, and they both say they believe they are the true patriots.
Trump has withheld federal anti-violence program money; he’s slashed programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, (which studies have shown reduce violence); and he hasn’t significantly increased federal spending on local law enforcement.
His alternative is massive immigration sweeps and deploying the National Guard and even (in the case of California) the U.S. Marines. And he has wanted Pritzker to submit to all of those things in the name of law and order, claiming Pritzker is anti-American for not standing with him.
Pritzker has demanded a restoration of federal anti-violence money, more funding for local police, a reversal of congressionally mandated social program spending cuts and increased cooperation with federal crime-fighting agencies. He has also opposed massive immigration sweeps and flatly rejected military intervention.
You can argue with credibility that Pritzker at least partially opposes harsh immigration enforcement to prevent the state from losing more than one congressional seat in the next reapportionment. But losing national influence can also be grounds for refusing to negotiate.
You can also argue that Pritzker is doing this to bolster his presidential ambitions. But that argument means surrender would destroy his ambitions. That’s not a policy argument or a justification, by the way, it’s just political reality.
So, as we saw with Rauner on a smaller scale, both sides lob powerful rhetorical grenades at each other in the hopes one or the other is vanquished. Total Democratic victory (which Illinois Democrats eventually achieved over Rauner) seems highly unlikely in the coming months.
That is definitely an argument for compromise, but it’s also the same one used here starting in 2015, the first year of the Rauner impasse that didn’t end until July 2017 when a bipartisan super-majority broke the impasse by passing an income tax increase and overriding Rauner’s veto.
Trump, for his part, spent weeks waffling over whether he would indeed send in the National Guard. On Friday, he said he’d skip Chicago for now and instead send troops to Memphis, where the Republican governor welcomed the deployment.
But this fight is far from over. Both Rauner and Madigan scored temporary wins back in the day, after all.
Expect more opportunities for another clash.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.