Cheri Bustos Wants Help To Fend Off Teabagger Bobby Schilling-- But Did She Earn It?

Cheri Baby

When the Democratic-led Illinois state legislature redistricted the congressional districts, Bobby Schilling looked like a marked man. The legislature cut out red area in Quincy, Decatur and Springfield and replaced them with blue areas of Rockford and Peoria. Schilling, who acknowledges Glenn Beck as his "leader," had first won his 17th district seat in 2010 beating Democratic freshman Phil Hare 53-43%. Although laughable prognosticator and conservative shill Charlie Cook was predicting Schilling would be reelected right up 'til the end, Cheri Bustos, a former East Moline City Council Alderwoman, beat him 53-47%. She rolled up big margins in the district's most populous counties: Peoria (64%), Rock Island (55%) and Winnebago (65%), leaving him doing well in small rural counties like Henderson and Warren.

An inconsequential backbencher, he went back to his family-owned pizzeria in Moline, Saint Giuseppe's Heavenly Pizza, and no one expected to ever hear from him again-- unless he decided to serve gluten-free pies.

But yesterday Cheri Bustos added to the speculation that Schilling is plotting a come-back bid. "All signs point to Bobby Schilling making a run against me to try and regain his seat in Congress," she wrote in a fundraising letter. "If he makes the jump, we need to be ready. Last year, Schilling and his band of Tea Party backers spent millions of dollars attacking our campaign with distortions and misleading ads. We succeeded, but only because of our grassroots strength."

And the rest of her letter is all about "Tea Party," "Tea Party, "Tea Party" and "send me money." I had high hopes for Cheri because at freshman orientation one of the congressmen I most respect said she was the smartest one he met. I suspect he's changed his mind since then. I sure have. Her over all, ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is 44.44, worse than any other Illinois Democrat in Congress, even worse than corporate shills like Dan Lipinski and Bill Foster. She didn't mention to prospective donors that she voted with Republicans on her committee to slash food stamps by $20.5 billion or that she joined the Republicans in an attempt to deregulate derivatives in return for support from criminal Wall Street banksters. And not only did she oppose the progressive budgets offered as alternatives to Ryan's Ayn Rand budget, she even voted against the moderate Senate budget. I can't imagine why she forgot to mention any of that! Nor why she didn't mention she voted to force through the Keystone XL Pipeline but unconstitutionally removing President Obama from the process.

It doesn't look like anyone is going to primary her, but what I expect will happen in 2014 is that Democratic base voters will just stay home-- the way they did in 2010-- and she'll lose the seat. Then the DCCC can start the whole process all over again-- recruiting a garden variety Democrat with no ideas and no strongly-held values (at least not on economic justice issues), persuading them that to raise money they have to sell out to Wall Street and that to win reelection, they have to vote with the Republicans. Nancy Pelosi claimed that Steve Israel, a complete failure as chair of the DCCC, is "reptilian" enough to do a good job. She's lost her mind. Israel is incapable of learning from his own mistakes and because of that Pelosi will never be Speaker again and we'll be stuck with Boehner until we wind up with something equally horrible like Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Steny Hoyer.