Credit given where credit is due.
I watched the part of yesterday’s “Meet The Press” show where host Kristen Welker interviewed Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker. And she tried – three different times – to get him to explain why he would be attacking Texas’s attempt to redistrict the state in a way that is beneficial to Republicans, when Illinois has been grotesquely districted in a way that benefits the Democrat Party he belongs to.
Three times she tried, and three times he ducked, dodged and didn’t answer.
Here is one of the three exchanges:
KRISTEN WELKER: I do want to look at the map of Illinois. Let’s take a look at this: despite President Trump winning 44% of the statewide vote in 2024, Republicans hold only three of Illinois’s 17 districts. These districts seem to be to maximize Democratic advantage. What do you say to those who argue that it’s hypocritical for you to criticize Texas for partisanship when your state also drew maps to boost your party’s standing?
JB PRITZKER: Well, remember that what Texas is trying to do is, again, violate the Voting Rights Act. We didn’t. We held public hearings, legislative hearings. People attended them. They spoke out. There was a map that was put out. There were actually changes made to the map and a map was passed.
Forgetting, for the moment, that Texas’s legislature appears to be acting 100% within the law/not in anyway violating the Voting Rights Act, the question did not relate to HOW the districting was done, the question related to THAT it was done. Welker wasn’t asking about procedure, she was asking about the fact that Illinois gerrymandered the state to minimize Republican representation. And, as you can see, he did not answer. Nor did he answer the other two times she pressed him, after which she gave up trying.
There is a famous anecdote (I have no idea of whether it is true) about Carl Sandburg, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winning poet/author, who was asked by a young playwright to watch a rehearsal of his latest play and give his opinion of it. At some point Sandburg fell asleep, and did not see a large part of the play. When he eventually woke up, the playwright – no doubt offended and humiliated – accosted him and said “How could you sleep when you knew I wanted your opinion?” Sandburg supposedly replied, “Sleep IS an opinion.”
With the above in mind, would it be fair to conclude that ducking and dodging to avoid giving an answer, IS an answer? I’d say so.
By the way, Pritzker is a billionaire who grew up in a family that, if anything, was richer than the Trump family. If he wasn’t spending his career dutifully spouting his party’s talking points, wouldn’t he have been despised by the very same Democrats who happily suported his runs for Governor and are now hailing him for his welcoming of AWOL Texas legislators hiding from their duties in his state?
Just asking….
