Democrat Meredith Shiner May Challenge Dick Durbin's Senate Seat

[Passages]

** Senator Durbin has not yet announced if he will run again.**

Meredith Shiner
February 3, 2025

Cleaning House
Primary Every Democrat
It’s exhausting to watch poll-tested, donor-beholden congressional Democrats continue to be too old, too cloistered, and too bumbling to do anything as the government burns.

I spent almost a decade covering the United States Senate. So, believe me when I tell you that I do not want to be a United States senator. Imagine having a job where your mere existence in the role is a symbol of democratic backsliding, where your leaders torture you by forcing you to watch five-year-old videos of your co-worker microwaving canned tuna, and where you literally hold the same title and standing as Tommy Tuberville—an anthropomorphized ChatGPT answer to the question of “What if we gave a supposedly important position of public trust to someone too ignorant to know the three branches of government and too incompetent in his previous role to beat Vanderbilt in football?”

But two weeks into the Trump administration—which is just as lawless, destructive, and inhumane as anyone who lived through the last one could have imagined—it is clear that Democrats on Capitol Hill are failing so spectacularly to confront a constitutional crisis (which their own political incompetence helped create) that I am willing to channel the anger coursing through my body and finally put my country before my own personal well-being.

Today, it brings me no pleasure to announce that I am launching an exploratory committee for a Senate run to replace the senior senator from my home state, Dick Durbin. And I think anyone of good conscience should join me in what’s known as “testing the waters” to run against their sitting members of Congress too. There is very little entailed; anyone can do it. All it takes is not accepting or spending $5,000, not saying outright that you’ve decided to run, and a dream that we can break through to some of the most feckless, dense politicians history has ever seen.

SNIP
It would never in a million years occur to Democrats that maybe their supporters are mad because they gave bipartisan cover to Donald Trump to turn Guantánamo Bay into a concentration camp for immigrants, helped to confirm a man whose only qualification for being transportation secretary was winning the Road Rules Challenge, and can’t stop talking about “finding common ground” with a party currently being run jointly by a convicted felon and his unelected fascist salute–throwing pal.
https://newrepublic.com/article/190922/primary-every-democrat-trump-durbin?utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_term=Autofeed

Meredith Shiner
Lecturer
The University of Chicago
Harris School of Public Policy
About
Meredith Shiner is a professional writer and strategic communicator with expertise in: national politics, media relations, executive media training, government affairs, issues and crisis management, opinion writing, broadcast media and social media.
https://harris.uchicago.edu/directory/meredith-shiner

She sounds equipped and prepared to me.

[Voltaire2]

1. More like this.

We need to get the collaborators out.

[2naSalit]

2. I hope she succeeds.

[displacedvermoter]

3. Someone I would send money to

Dick Durbin has been a dud for a decade or more now, he exudes status quo as the way to go each and every time they stick a microphone in his face.

[AllyCat]

4. Fabulous. I'm done with the "we've always done it this way" crowd.

If they voted for any of these TERRIBLE appointments, primary ‘em with someone who will f’in stand for something.

[Prairie Gates]

5. That Vandy line landed

[msfiddlestix]

6. Absolutely Brilliant!

[lees1975]

7. I'd like to hear a little more from her, but I'd support a candidate other than Senator Durbin.

Durbin is 80 years old, and frankly, he's been there too long already. I think we really need to give term limits a shot again, and if we can't do that we need to impose them as voters.

I like Meredith Shiner, but I want to be careful to make sure that while we get highly qualified candidates, they don't speak over people's heads. From the academic world, which should be our buffer against the kind of ignorance that has led to the existence of the Trump cult, we need to speak in a language that is clear and concise.